Banning PM Chat

[Seksi]

Ban PM.  Pretty much every FFA player with any skill agrees with this too.  You can still team the strongest, even team whoever you want thorugh ALL chat.  As longas you coordinate through ALL chat it is an even playing field.  The players who are better at manip will still have an advantage through all chat.   You can hear what everyone says and they can hear you.  Fair.  You can manipulate fairly based on this, or succumb to other's outchatting you.  Regardless, every level of chat and teaming and manipulation is done where all players can view it and have a chance to respond.

Fair.

[FML|Renaud]

Actually pm have most likely been built exclusively for ffa (in what other game type could it be useful?)  I pretty much have always defended pm, but at this point I think removing it would help reduce some of drama

[Walking.TrL]

Even though PM is a function built into the game that everyone has equal access to, I still believe it makes the game worse (as an interesting point, preteaming is also a function of the game that everyone has equal access to). I think PM is bad for the following reasons:

(1)PMing can facilitate preteaming arrangements by allowing those players to privately reconfirm their plans during the game.

(2)PMing makes games boring to watch because the players are seemingly acting arbitrarily with no discussion.

(3)PMing is frustrating to play again because : (a) When you lose to PMing opponents it's very hard to learn from those losses, as you have no access to information on when and how much they PMed and what they said in PM, even after the game ends. b) it feels as if there was nothing you could have done to prevent it (more on this in the next point).

(4)Since you don't know who and when opponents are PMing, one of the most effective counter measures to PM is to use PM yourself, and use it earlier than opponents might use it. This means that in a game where everyone is playing optimally it is likely there will be mass PM, which just goes to amplify the other cons listed here.

Those are my 2 cents.

(1) there has never been any cases of preteam in the league, and if there was ever an actual preteaming case, I'm sure they would be using vent or skype

(2) 95% of FFA's are boring to watch, thats why there is OBS chat and 8x replays.  Also watchability should never be a factor

(3) Very opinionated.  You can out chat someone in /all when they are PMing

(4) Very opinionated.  I find the best counter to two people PMing is to kill one of them.

[Walking.TrL]

It really, imo, just doesn't make any sense to have an all out war between 4 people and not allow the private chat between two players.  Thats not FFA imo. 

I would say that the majority of players don't PM, which is why the vote is winning to remove it.  They want to take away that advantage from the players who do, for their sake, not the leagues.

[Lightweight!]

Private chat ruins much in fml games, because every player is above the nub level. So if two players pm in a 3 way and decide to eliminate you, they will be able to do it in 80% of the games. If they will have to use public chat the player who gets teamed has a better chance to compete like rushing one guy before they can group in front of his base. if you make this rule we will prevent a lot of idiotic discussions and trouble after the game.

[humans7ar]

only noobs PMing in fml game without any balls... like eshan :O
i didnt read the rest of the threads/topics -_-

[FML|Renaud]

Yeah, the more i'm thinking about it, the more i want pm to stay...
Well, we could always try and see what removing it does for 1 round?

[Lightweight!]

Thats a great idea renaud. We could try it for one round and see if its suitable for everyday use. But in the end admins have to decide if they want it or not. I think this is more a suggestion then a must for the league.

[w8man]

i never use pm, but really dont wanna to ban it...
Ps dunno why..

[DarKNeSSCaLLs]

i never use pm, but really dont wanna to ban it...
Ps dunno why..

Very insightful 

[Lightweight!]

Don't wanna ban it, but also don't want other players to use private chat against yourself.

Sounds to me like: "The earth is flat and at the end there is a huge waterfall"

[FML|WorpeX]

Thanks for all the responses guys! A lot of great points were made in this thread and thanks to everyone for keeping it civil! The results of this were about what I expected - the community is mostly divided on the issue. Still, a lot of people seem to want to ban private chat so we will likely end up doing Renauds suggestion of trying it for a round to see what happens.

Thanks again guys!

[Rain]

I dont really care at all.

Voted no-ban because its fun to get PM teamed 2v1 and lose and rage hard.

[FML|WorpeX]

I dont really care at all.

Voted no-ban because its fun to get PM teamed 2v1 and lose and rage hard.

I can't tell if you're serious or not.

[Rain]

serious obs. Everyone knows I dont make jokes.