Overwatch Season 2 has kicked off and is giving us a new hero and some rebalancing. However, one of the many new additions that came with Season 2 stood out above the rest – the ability to speak to the other team via voice chat at the end of a match.
The feature is now live and allows players to log in to a temporary voice chat after a match. Blizzard seemed to hope this would encourage some positivity and perhaps allow players to customize GG a bit more than they would in text chat. The obvious problem with this is that text chat isn't always used for GG. In fact, you're lucky if you do.
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So it's no surprise that post-match voice chat isn't being used as intended. We're seeing some weird and wonderful reports on social media about how players interact with each other – and a video shared around shows just how hostile it can all get.
It sounds like people are using the new Overwatch post-match chat to yell at each other
This video blew up the most, but I see others sharing it too, and yeah… I don't hear much GG. People use it to shout about how superior they are and bend their superior rank. At the very least, it can lead to them being subdued in real time if you can make out any of the responses over the shouting.
Of course, the ones that are clipped and shared online will always show the funniest or worst of the community. Also, I see many saying that post match chat is actually pretty dead in some games because everyone is too awkward to talk to each other. I wonder if Blizzard thought this was so that nastier players couldn't hide behind text chat, and it sounds like it works in some cases.
It also helps that the post-match screen has received a huge overhaul. You can now vote for MVP like we once could, and there's more to encourage you to stick around than to immediately queue up. So it's not like you're just yelling at each other while staring at a static screen. Yell at each other while the characters emote.
- Released
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May 24, 2016
- ESRB
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T for Teens: 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
