Proximity chat why is that not a thing

I feel like proximity chat could be cool, but ONLY if you can completely mute/disable it, as someone above already said.

I personally wouldn't use it, since I really don't want to get yelled at, because we all know how toxic this community can be.

But like, now that I think about it, it'd be unfair for the killer. SWFs are already living hell for most killers and now imagine proximity chat, literally 90% would quit playing killer imo. It's a nice idea, but it would make things much more complicated, toxic and just straight-up bad, yeah sure there could be funny moments and such, but we all know those would be rare.

I like the idea, and it'd fix the main issue with solo queue and allow this game to be balanced properly for the first time in five years (the big issue is that comms exist, but the game is built on the premise of survivors not having information by default), but I'm ninety-nine-repeating positive it's never going to happen. Why? BHVR clearly wants to police the text chat, and they can't. Voice chat is several magnitudes harder to handle, especially when they don't have records of matches to fall back on. And while I can imagine plenty of ways that would improve my games, being able to convey intentions to my teammates or even the survivors, I'm pretty sure I'd get demoralized and turn off voice chat by the end of day two. The community is pretty compulsively horrible and I don't care to know what a lot of these people would be saying if they could do more than tbag and click or facecamp and hit me on the hook. And that's not even getting into the incoherent shrieking and the twelve year olds and the horny creepers and the internet-mandatory racism/sexism/homophobia.

At least when you permanently mute endgame chat, it has no effect on your gameplay. With comms, it's a harder choice, at least when you're playing survivor - risk being abused by both your opponent and your teammates, or play worse by cutting off what is an objective performance booster?

Ping system? Sure. Deathgarden did it just fine.

VC is a NEVER for me and most of the community.

At the same, it'd not fair to balance the game around the notion that there is no communication when it's so popularized and so blatantly improves performance. I understand if this isn't a question you can answer, but has the team ever considered adding more elements of information to try and equalize the gap between comms-SWF and solo? Like improving the HUD for survivors so that it shows if you're being chased, working on a gen, doing a totem, opening a gate, or healing in addition to what it currently displays, or having pre-written (and translated) messages players can scroll through and send out that convey their status or intentions (i.e., don't rescue me, I found a totem, the killer is [Pyramid Head], I'm going for the save, we need to do gens, stop doing that), or making all survivors' perks visible to each other so that players can better plan around their teammates?

If languages are a problem, just put a line wheel ingame, whatever... How can SWF have all advantages while solos are just killer guinea pigs

You can't really opt out of it in games like this without hurting your team and basically griefing them. Overwatch is not an asymmetrical game nor do the two side in a match work toward completely separate goals. In F13 you NEEDED to use voice chat for various things. It was barely an option. You were a massive drag on the team if you couldn't tell people you found the battery, or that you were repairing the phone lines, or that you had the car fixed and ready to go. Then you have a game like Phasmophobia where it isn't even an option since the game relies on voice recognition and isn't playable without it short of using a sound board.

Imo, voice chat isn't worth discarding because of the 76 people that don't know even basic words like "gen" "heal" "hi" etc.

And generally, I don't think that, in Europe at least, there are that many people that don't understand ANY English at all. Nowdays pretty much any gamer knows English.

That's cool but you're not a company trying to sell a product. They're not going to take a stance of "English matters only" when the devs themselves aren't even primarily English speakers.

I dont see any problems with proximity chat either... because the killer can hear you and that can be used as another form of information.

The only problem proximity voice chat has going against it is the childish demeanor most people have while sitting comfortably at home.

Phasmophobia has proximity chat that some trolls use in some very rare matches to play insanely loud and screeching music. Trolls like those could ruin the experience for everyone in a game like DBD.

I used to play CS and the voice chat worked most of the time. Occasionally there were some crazy guys who had to be muted.

So then what about a ping system? Or just more information on the hud to show what your teammates are doing, such as a little generator, totem or chest icon at the bottom of their portrait.

Hell it seems like you guys are going the route of making characters have voice lines, what about "proximity voice lines?" Where you have a wheel to select many different quips your character can say, such as "The Killer is coming!" or "Generator! Over here!" You can still make the game immersive by making the character speak their native language, and it would be a big step forward to help out Solo Q.

Communication in a game like this is key, and its truly what separates Solo Q and SWF. To get even a small portion of what SWF has as a Solo Q you need perks, which SWF otherwise wouldnt need, meaning they get more freedom in their choices of builds.

McLean said on stream something along the lines of "Proximity chat was something we discussed in the early days of development, and decided it wasn't the direction we wanted to go."

oh boy, having to listen to voice comms as killer when I play killer to not have to ever possibly deal with voice chat. How fun. /s

Having played F13 for over 1k hours, I can attest that while it does happen, not every lobby is that way.

DBD could easily just add optional voice for those who want to voice, and a mute option for those who don't.

Any feature declared optional that gives an advantage de facto isn't, because you'll be bullied and shamed into using it if you just want to play. Not using VC? Team'll throw.