In Destiny 2, there are no public text chats. This seems to be an effort to avoid the well-known spam from MMO games. The community is calling for a different solution.
In MMOs, general chats are often found where everyone can communicate with each other. You don’t have to be in a group for this. Usually, it’s enough to play on the same servers.
These public chats are often used by trolls to spam aimlessly and annoy other players. On the other hand, public chats in multiplayer games are important for communication with other players.
In Destiny 2, there is not even a public text chat. Chatting is done within the fireteam.
First, you can only talk to the fireteam
Bungie consciously opts out of a general text chat. In a statement to PCGamesN, PC Project Lead David Shaw explained that you can only talk to people from the fireteam for now.
“This setting created an unusual MMO feeling for the players,” Shaw explains. “It was now difficult to annoy other players. The worst thing that happened to me was when a player followed me around the tower for 20 minutes. And that was only moderately annoying,”
You must manually join the chat with the fireteam. However, you can set this to “Automatic” in the gameplay options.
Through the text chat, you can also whisper to other players – this is the direct messaging feature in Battlenet. However, this is only possible if those players are in your clan or fireteam or on your friends list.
This is, according to the developers, another way to avoid toxic comments from other players. They can’t reach you without direct contact.
Community dissatisfied – Wants the public chat
From the developers’ perspective, the renouncement of the public text chat is only partially understandable. They want to avoid toxic behavior. However, parts of the community are dissatisfied with the decision. On Reddit, user Bistoory writes:
“You can’t be serious, Bungie? This is an online game and we need to communicate with other players who are not on our friends list or belong to our clan. You make it hard for solo players who don’t have the time or desire for a clan.”
Bistoory suggests that the public channel should be activated but players should have the option to leave it. This way, players at least have a choice and can make their own decision. Additionally, annoying players can still be ignored.
Do you wish for a public text chat for Destiny 2, or is it not that important to you?
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