It’s far more common for Democrat run municipalities to create municipal cable and for Republicans to outlaw (or propose outlawing) municipal cable state wide.

It’s not even politicizing it’s a literal Republican talking point that the government should stay out of things and let free market competition sort these things out.

The problem with that of course is that they’d rather take money from some regional monopolies than actually create a free market system with reasonable restrictions on it.

You can mute everyone from every game made in the last 20 years.

I literally just listed one where you couldn’t that was released within the last 10.

If tea-bagging pushes your buttons so much the only solution you find is to ask the dev to remove crouching

Didn’t ask for that.

Those “turn X off” buttons are fine; they’re great actually, that’s exactly what I’m advocating for (at least in the in game portion of things). There should be more of that, and they should be standard options.

e.g. it took Quake Champions years before they finally decided to add a mute chat button … and when I suggested it almost a year before they implemented it, the discord chat lit into me “get tougher skin”, “lolololol”, etc kind of comments.

Every time it’s brought up people take it personally like it’s their right to be a dick in the game you both paid for… just because developers didn’t implement an option to allow people to shut them up. Even here there are some pretty obnoxious takes (I’m not talking about yours) insisting I just need to get over it because “it’s just a game.”

I’m not saying anybody should be prevented from having a competitive rage baiting game where they trash talk left and right … but some people do not enjoy trash talk regardless of whether or not they can “handle it” and I am one of those people.

Edit: For forums, I think non-constructive criticism/disrespectful comments/personal attacks should be “punished” by disabling forum/comment access though. There’s no benefit to “mind games” or “trash talk” there… if you don’t have anything constructive to say… I don’t think you should be on, e.g., a suggestion forum. It’s not helping the poster or the developers, it’s just outright spam.

“If someone pushes your buttons repeatedly to try and tick you off, and it does or you just generally don’t like it, you’re the problem … it’s just a video game”

I don’t buy this argument… and characteristically that’s the exact argument you’re making. If it didn’t work other people wouldn’t be in here defending it as a “mind game.”

This has been sorted out in other competitive spaces, there’s no reason gaming has to be this way.

You’re welcome to be toxic with others who want that, but I hate that this behavior, defines the competitive gaming experience. There should be other options.

I’m not talking about “safe spaces”, I’m talking about giving people options to say “fuck that” without having to just avoid the game (something that’s totally possible).

You don’t need banned for doing stuff like this, but you also don’t need to be shoving it down people’s throats that just want to play the game on skill and strategy alone without this cringe “mind game” idea and blatant disrespect for other players.

Most of us are adults and I’d like to feel like one when I log on.

I’d like to feel like it too. Adults shouldn’t act like children.

I’m not sure I even regard this as a developer studios responsibility.

I mean, they’re the ones running the servers and ultimately providing admittance. There always going to be “bad people” unless owners of establishments actually exclude them (or as I’ve suggested – since this is an imaginary world – just take away their ability to be a jerk in said world).

Change what is in your control: Play in a good state of mind where this stuff does not get to you (not when you’re tired after work). Turn off voice comms. Don’t let it get to you. Worst thing you can do to a troll is ignore them.

Definitely good advice. Part of it is genuinely just friends too though. Like this isn’t “my friend”, this is my friend (though that’s not to say I enjoy this crap either)… and sometimes it’s hard to gage their mental state, or even though they’re in a bad mood, I’d really like to do something more challenging … and of course they get t-bagged or abused on comms … and then everybody is having a bad time.

I wish I had access to these game’s source code… then the whole thing would be in my control ☺️

Yeah that’s very fair; I definitely miss when I could run my own servers for big games and just axe anyone who didn’t behave

I love outplaying people … I typically don’t find AI enemies challenging/creative enough … I just don’t care for the childish “mind game” (which seriously whoever started claiming they’re “mind games” is … well I’ll let you finish this sentence with your own choice of creative words 🙂)

It’s pretty typical that my team is all friends on discord or similar 🙂

Definitely see the issue with monetization… but also depending on the game the emotes have value outside of this particular situation.

Freeze frame (or just a black screen) is a good idea

I think it’s a bit more disrespectful than “you’re going down, bro!” But typically when I’m thinking of this, I’m thinking of situations where the person has like a 10-0 KDR vs the person and is either clearly just way better or cheating and t-bags after every kill. It’s completely classless at that point.

Like, if it’s a fairly even match and occasional … sure it’s not worse, but when it’s mixed with outright domination (or as you said talking massive shit) it’s more than that.

In either case… it’s just so unnecessary.

… and to be clear, I think that’s okay.

But, I don’t think those that want a multiplayer shooter (or game in general) to be a mind game should be able to force that on everyone else. I just want my games to be games.

Like, even if it changed how match making worked, I’d personally prefer to just avoid that stuff entirely. I can “deal” with it, it’s just not fun/annoying to me.

Ultimately, I think just being able to visually “disable t-bagging” and “disable emotes” while dead as options in major shooters would be fairly easy to implement options.

For the people who don’t want “that experience” they can just … turn it off.

For the people that do, they never need to know whether it’s on or off… just like they don’t know if I have a profanity filter on… or if I’ve got voice coms muted… etc

It’s not about what someone can “handle” it’s a game. It should be about what someone “enjoys” or “likes.”

A victory based on throwing your opponent off their game by being a jerk is no victory in my book. It just makes the person doing those things a jerk.

That’s crazy! I can’t understand why someone would spend all that time on a game they’ve barely played.

Like, I can get regularly giving constructive criticism/trying to bring light to an issue … but to just comment stuff like that is so annoying.

I’ve only heard this take from cringe twitch streamers… and suffice to say I don’t think it’s a good one.

I don’t want someone to lose because they’re too mad to aim… it’s a game. We should all just be playing to have fun, not treating it like some psyop.

Edit: Also plenty of what I’m talking about here is outside of an actual match as well/forum behavior.

Removed by mod

This is why it has become customary for online gamers to have fucked your mother last night.

I got a laugh out of this one, thank you 😂

Yeah, this is basically what I’ve done. Hunt I’ve been pretty happy with. Destiny is the one that triggered this post, and the one that keeps catching me off guard.

I mostly play PvE stuff with friends and feel at peace with the game and how Bungie presents themselves … then I get total culture shock when I engage outside of my friends group.

Appreciate you looking out for my mental health though 😅

Well if nothing else… I appreciate your comradery. 🫡

I’ve generally been pretty happy with the Hunt Showdown community (part of what I think helps there is stopping to t-bag someone can easily result in you getting shot and losing a match, part of it is the dead person can’t see you t-bag, part of it is it’s an older crowd).

I also mostly stick to PvE destiny (i.e. avoid the PvP portion)… I’m largely fine, it’s just when I forget and go into one of these areas I tried to forget about I’m like “why is this still a problem? 🙃”