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Comment by BiteCode_dev | Hacker News Reader

> That reminds me of Rocket League's approach. The D-pad is bound to several predefined words and phrases that are useful such as "Nice shot!" or "Great pass!". Because of the fast paced nature of the game it's pretty tough to try to abuse this system (maybe by spelling words with the first letters of allowed phrases?) but no one does that.

Dota has that, and it didn't work.

People just used the nice phrases sarcastically, and repeatadly.

When you miss an actions for the 3rd time and your team mate congrats you everytime with a "nice one", it's equally infuruating. Even more, because it cost so little to be an ass.

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> People just used the nice phrases sarcastically, and repeatedly.

As an avid player of rocket league, this happens. For example, if one team scores a goal, if they want to be mean they can spam "What a Save!" quick chat. Making fun of the other team for not saving the ball. The same for "Nice Shot!" when the opposing team misses, or "Great Pass!" if the other team makes a bad pass.

But it is still a decent system. People who abuse it are always gonna find ways to abuse things.

Is there a timeout on repetitive chat? In RL you're temporarily blocked from chat after repeating the same phrase three times. Solves the repetition issue.

As for sarcasm, yeah that can be used to harass people but only mildly. I consider that about the least toxic possible form of chat in a competitive video game where people want to engage.

If someone hits the ball into their own goal at least someone from the team that got the goal will say "Nice shot!" sarcastically. Mildly toxic but everyone's done it at least once before and so there's usually someone else chiming in with "No problem." Ultimately works out really well. Sometimes people quit but it's rare and it's usually due to embarrassment than anger.

Edit: just to be clear, I agree with the premise that it's an unsolvable arms race with the community. I just meant to say that RL's implementation was pretty good considering that fact.

It's not about repetitive chat in that game. The community always adopts certain phrases that are there to signal that somebody sucks. I've yet to play an online game where people compete and this doesn't happen. Even the most innocent words and phrases work for this.

People focus too much on the specific words used. That's not what hurts. What hurts is the intent behind the words.

Eggplant emoji.

well, it's different games, in dota (relatively to RL) your teammates have all the time in the world to harass you.

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