I get that people can be toxic in chats. However, no text chat or quick chat wheel is just absurd.

[Gotriss]

I understand that having chat in games could mean bad words being exchanged over mistakes or pretty much anything someone disagrees with. But no communication whatsoever also implies that you can't even tell someone if they're doing great, or having fun with them and want to play again, or telling people when they're messing things accidentally due to not understanding some important mechanic. Even if you don't want to add chat for the possible toxic aspect of it, a wheel with commands like "WAIT" "HELP" "COME HERE" "OK" "COOL" would be pretty nice when playing with random people and that'd limit a lot any toxic behavior while still allowing some basic communication.

If toxicity is the main concern, I believe that as a player, when you encounter toxic players, you should be able to block them from your games and move on. I don't know how Deep Rock Galactic or Warhammer Vermintide 2 do it, but if you block someone on Steam, the matchmaking blacklist them too so they never can get in your games (or in the case of Vermintide 2 with quickplay you won't be put in blocked players games).

As an example of my online experience in co-op games, I have about 600 hours in DRG, a 4 player co-op game that can get pretty intense in high difficulties. And yet, I can only count with the fingers of one hand the times I really had really toxic/♥♥♥♥♥♥ matches with people. Same with Vermintide 2. About 260 hours in, and only 1 terrible experience due to toxicity so far.

Completely eliminating the ability to communicate in a co-op game is not OK as a solution to potential toxicity. It makes even playing with friends a hassle as it forces you to use an external solution (discord or any chatting app) to communicate. This is even more annoying when playing on Steam and using crossplay with Xbox players. With Steam friends at least can use the chat feature by just hitting shift+tab. With Crossplay that's not an option and all you can do is either use voice chat on discord or alt tab to a chat app.

Please add a quick chat wheel, a chat option, or even better, both.

[dag]

Agree