i have a lot of fun playing valorant, but in order to preserve my sanity i immediately mute everyone and disable text chat whenever i join a game. if something is important, they can ping it. it makes me sad, because in my experience the valorant lobbies are a coin toss between the sweetest and goofiest people you’ll ever meet online, or the most unhinged sociopathic 16-year-olds letting their life frustrations out on you.

i want to meet those sweet and goofy people and have fun with them, but i just can’t be bothered sitting through 3/4 lobbies of toxicity until i find one with mentally stable people

Absolutely. I enjoyed playing a bit of Smite at one point in time (mostly that big open area map) and some Heroes of the Storm, but I’m not a big MOBA guy. Decided one day to give League of Legends a try, why the hell not ya know?

I have never been called a ‘fucking fag’ and been told to kill myself more times in a 5 minutes period of time in the entirety of my 40 years on this flying shitball of a planet. Not in public school, not on Xbox Live while playing Halo, not from my abusive family, never.

Uninstalled that shit 10 mins later and went back to TF2 where I get called that only once an hour.

I have the misfortune of being a woman, so I play absolutely zero things with voice. And when I was younger, I’d pick the most ‘bro’ username possible just to avoid the bullshit.

Now that I’m older I just refuse to play competitive games at all. Life is too short to be constantly insulted. (Like the above user, I played LoL maybe twice before uninstalling.)

Big part of the reason why I enjoy cooperative games nowadays like Risk of Rain 2, Helldivers, Deep Rock Galactic, etc.

You can occasionally come across a toxic person, but the broader communities in said games are amazing on the whole.

They need to run peoples text through a sentiment analyzer and categorize players based on toxicity and group tiers of toxicity together. Maybe include tips on how to be a better human.

I avoid any fast-paced competitive game designed to appeal to 13 year olds with no attention spans and inferiority complexes.