Remove Global chat from the game. It will greatly benefit GGG and players.

Right now (based my personal observations after hours of being in Global chat) the main things global chat is used for currently is trading (which is considered spam and a mutable offense by GGG when in Global) and new players or learning players asking questions about things in the game.

Aside from that all I really see is people debating petty things, trolling, insulting other players, or saying things that are hate speech or otherwise designed to be offensive. In one instance, a new player had asked for help with Dominus in normal and was met with 2 people telling him to "git gud" and a handful of other people laughing about it.

While I've both received help from Global chat in the past and helped plenty of newbies with whatever I could, I fully believe removing Global chat from the game will greatly improve many aspects of both the game, people's experiences with it, and help people get information/price checks from legitimate sources.

I'd also like to note it is very easy to get caught up in a debate or other controversial conversation in Global chat and end up saying something you regret/get reported for, especially if you spend a lot of time in Global chat.

There are literally no cons (at least that I can think of) to removing Global chat from the game but many pros.

Some positive consequences for removing Global chat from the game are as follows:

- Players looking for information, whether it's about gameplay, technical aspects of the game, or price checks will be encouraged to go to the forums, the wiki and/or poe.trade for much more accurate information.

- Players will be MUCH less likely to be insulted, harassed, or baited while trying to find out information or trying to find a group to play with (as a result of the first statement being true).

- Public Parties will become much more valuable.

- People looking to troll/harass/offend other players will have to put more effort into doing so if that's what they want to do.

- Grinding Gear Games will have substantially less reports to sort out from people trading or trolling in global.

- Players are less likely to have a bad first impression of the game.

There are probably hundreds of other positive consequences to removing Global Chat from the game that's not coming to mind right now, but the above is beyond enough to make my point.

Furthermore, if a new trading system is implemented, this would be an extremely beneficial change to go with it.


In conclusion,

Global chat was very useful and made a lot of sense to have in the game's early stages and even for a while after release. However, over time it seems it has gotten more and more toxic with less and less people willing to follow the rules GGG has in place for their game (as more and more players come to it's community). Although right now it is hard to see how much this change would benefit players and GGG alike, I fully believe it's removal would be a step in the right direction for GGG and a fundamental change they wouldn't regret making, but rather be glad they did.


Disclaimer; I'm not saying trade chat is fine, nor am I saying it should or shouldn't also be removed, this thread is solely about my suggestion for Global chat, and it's effects on the Path of Exile Comunity.

How about you disable it instead? Voila, your problems are gone.

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Ceri wrote:

How about you disable it instead? Voila, your problems are gone.

Except it's not about me.

Then why do you care? People can have the channel on or off at their leisure. Removing an option for everyone can never be a good thing.

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Ceri wrote:

Then why do you care? People can have the channel on or off at their leisure. Removing an option for everyone can never be a good thing.

I care because I support GGG and their game being the best it can be.

Also, Global chat is on by default when you create a new account, meaning new players are immediately subject to whatever is being said in Global chat when they first log in.

Furthermore, the majority of people abuse this option/privilege by using Global chat for inappropriate things.

Ah, I see your point now.

Well, to be blunt here I think this is a battle that cannot be won. Global chat channels are and have been toxic in every online game I've played in the past twenty or so years, and PoE is not an exception. The first thing I generally do when starting a new game is disable all chat channels.

That said, of course I'm sure it could be improved upon. That will certainly require online moderation however, which I doubt GGG has the resources to apply. But that's speculating of course.

In any case: simply removing the channels altogether will cause more problems than they solve - for sure. I don't even want to think about the storm on the forum that would inevitably happen.

"

Ceri wrote:

Ah, I see your point now.

Well, to be blunt here I think this is a battle that cannot be won. Global chat channels are and have been toxic in every online game I've played in the past twenty or so years, and PoE is not an exception. The first thing I generally do when starting a new game is disable all chat channels.

That said, of course I'm sure it could be improved upon. That will certainly require online moderation however, which I doubt GGG has the resources to apply. But that's speculating of course.

In any case: simply removing the channels altogether will cause more problems than they solve - for sure. I don't even want to think about the storm on the forum that would inevitably happen.

I don't see it causing any problems aside from an initial wave of complaints on the forum.

Unless you can enlighten me?

The only global chats I've ever opened are 820 and now in Warbands 710 a few times.

820 is pretty well moderated by players themselves, as offtopic trolls & spammers can quickly end up on everyone's ignore list.

This is one way to (somehow) solve the issue: have official (meaning designated by GGG) chat rooms, that cover specific topics / functionality. People will mostly keep to the topic, those who won't, risk being ignored.

Well, for starters: how would people talk to eachother? If you remove global they would just go to trade chat and continue there. And their experience would be even worse since that is also full of constant trade spam. Then what, remove trade chat too and direct people to the forums?

You can't simply remove the option for people to chat with eachother. It's a fundamental feature of any multiplayer game, like it or not.

If you don't like it, you can disable it.
Why should someone who actually likes discussing in global, be stopped from doing so?