Is it worth turning off voice and text chat? Will this do more harm than good?

If toxic teammates are distracting you from enjoying comp, then I say it’s well worthy it. Honestly you won’t get quality comms regularly until high masters. Just work on your positioning, gamesense and only focus on improving yourself

Chat is only good if it's being used correctly which it very rarely is. If you still want to use it then just have it on by default but leave as soon as the shit talking starts, at least you can say you tried.

I've found if you start the game off in chat with positivity, it will last the match, even if you're losing. But there is definitely a skill to this. You yourself have to not get tilted, and you have to stay actively positive in chat without sounding fake. People really react to this, and you really notice a difference. It only takes one person to rally the team.

Leadership in voice chat wins games. If people start getting toxic, tell them its okay. We will figure it out together.

It's a waste of time and major distraction to mute people. Just turn it off all together. It's the best thing I ever did with this game.

I have a one strike policy about someone saying bad stuff about a teammate, then I mute them. Especially if they weren't doing callouts before that

Voice chat can make or break a game. If the chat is good, stay with it. If someone gets toxic, mute them. If people are getting tilted but not toxic, mute them. If someone is typing in chat, don't respond and hide chat.

If chat just annoys you regardless, just leave it. It is more important that you focus on your play than what people are saying. A lot of shotcalling is just vocalizing the obvious for the oblivious. For example - "McCree low! Focus him down!". Well that should be obvious if you're paying attention, right? Same with a Rein pushing or retreating. That should be obvious.

According to Jayne, you can go all the way to Masters with only voice lines.

You can mute people in social, and just make sure to only mute people who are being toxic or have bad echo-y mics and not those who are actually shot calling.

I'd leave it on by default.

If people are toxic, hit P and you can either one click to leave voice chat completely, or quickly mute anyone who is being toxic.

Just mute people as needed, I think that’s the best balance.

Turn it off if you’ll have more fun without it, voice comms help a lot but until you’re passing 4K sr, turning off voice won’t be the difference between winning and losing. It can however be the difference between having fun and getting tilted.

What platform/region are you? I'm PC NA and have experienced comms from low silver to low diamond. There is bullshit in maybe 1/5 games at worst.

Are you starting off the game with positive comms yourself, making helpful callouts and encouraging people after good plays? I do this and pretty much every game has excellent and positive comms.

If your experience is different or if you are on a different platform/region that sucks for comms, then yeah just mute the bullshit.

Just mute all and pretend they are bots.

Leaving text chat isn't a bad idea. My policy for Voice Chat nowadays is to just stay withdrawn from the chat (you wouldn't believe the number of people who ask shotcalling players to shut up and stop talking), and then mute players who get toxic like, at all.

Just mute teammates that have proven themselves to be unhelpful/toxic

Never overlook the importance of being in team voice tho, sometimes comms alone can overcome skill

ie. smurf on enemy team is still going to have a hard time hard carrying his idiots from silence if your idiots are using communication against him

Feel free to mute those who aren’t being constructive towards winning, but voice chat in general is very helpful, and should be used whenever possible.

If there's no productive communication then mute. If only a couple of players are actually being productive in voice chat and the rest are toxic, then mute the toxic ones and try and encourage the productive ones to do the same. No need to get excited over it and mute it all beforehand. Sometimes, even in lower ranks, some teams actually communicate well and it's a shame to miss out on those games, as rare as they might be.

Had some real toxic stuff today that it pushed me to get toxic back, made me realize it wasn't worth it and just muted and ctrl shift C. Generally most are nice, but you get atleast one real toxic shit every session. Its a shame i generally try to block but sometimes it's just better to have a quiet session. Also generally evening seems the worst time even despite lockdown in most countries.

Sometimes it really helps me to turn it off because my focus goes way up. I also have a friend who gets way to emotional sometimes because of the chat so I basically tell him to mute everything if he wants to keep playing and suddenly we do way better 🤷‍♀️

It really depends on the mood you are in and what you are trying to learn.

Yeahhh i would suggest just muting all and leaving voice chat off. I think it would be better than muting individually because this way you won’t even think about your teammates and focus solely on the game.

Personally I only do this once in a while when I don’t feel like dealing with people because I like to shot-call. Its a good way to reset mentally.

Also you can look for a 6-stack on reddit or discord or wherever. Assuming they arent going to be toxic, its a great experience when everyones on the same page