Overwatch Season 2 has begun, bringing us a new hero and some rebalancing. However, one of the many new additions that came with Season 2 stood out more than the others – the ability to talk to the other team via voice chat at the end of a match.
That feature is live now and allows players to choose to participate in a casual post-match voice chat. Blizzard seemed to hope this would encourage some positivity, perhaps allowing players to customize their GGs a bit more than they would in text chat. The obvious problem with this is that text chat isn't always used for GGs. In fact, you're lucky if it is.
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So it will come as no surprise to see post-match voice chat not being used as intended. On social media, we're seeing some weird and wonderful depictions of how players interact with each other – and a video being shared around shows just how hostile it can get.
It sounds like people are using Overwatch's new post-match chat to yell at each other
This video has blown up the most, but I see others being shared around as well, and yeah… I don't hear a lot of GGs. People use it to shout about how much better they are and flex their top rank. At the very least, this can lead to them being humbled in real time, if you can make out any of the responses above the shouting.
Of course, those that are clipped and shared online will always show the funniest or worst of society. That aside, I see a lot of people say that the post-match chat is actually pretty dead in some games, because everyone is too awkward to talk to each other. I was wondering if that was Blizzard's thinking behind this, making it so that nastier players can't hide behind text chat, and it sounds like this works in some cases.
It also helps that the post-match screen has received a huge overhaul. Now you can vote for MVPs like we could way back when, and there's just more going on to encourage you to stick around instead of immediately queuing. So it's not like you're just yelling at each other while staring at a static screen. You yell at each other while the characters express emotions.
- Released
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24 May 2016
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Blood, Tobacco Use, Violence (Online Interactions Not Rated)
- Engine
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Proprietary
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer
- Cross-platform play
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ps5, xbox, pc
- Cross Save
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yes
