Censored text

[We Have A Situation Here]

Hello everybody,

Game keeps censoring a lot of phrases, is there a way to disable this?

[Nickzilla]

The in game profanity filter

So while we all have some time to spare with MP being down, can we talk about how bad this games profanity filter is?

I don't care about reading swear words and struggle to imagine anyone who plays a game online caring either. However if you want to cater to that small minority of people, an option to filter swearing wouldn't be a bad thing.

Three things annoy me.

1) the fact it's forced on everybody when most people playing this 20 yr old game will be grown adults who are seeing/hearing swear words in other entertainment they consume

2) how zealous it is. Not only does it censor the usual swear words you'd expect it to, it censors abbreivations of them too, and even when you try to tiptoe around the filter, being very careful not to say anything that could possibly be construed as a swear word, it will still censor you and you'll have no idea what you said wrong.

3) The fact it censors the whole sentence instead of just the offending word! If it just blanked the word or chain of two words it thought was a swear, I could live with it but when I type a perfectly innocent sentence and it just comes up with **** * ****** *** ****** **** ******* it makes me want to throttle whoever thought this was a good idea. If this was a slow paced 4x game, I could live with it, but it's not, and this is a huge problem in team games.

So am I alone in thinking the filter should be removed, relegated to being an option or at least scaled down so it's not removing whole sentences?

*EDIT*

Been told in thread that signing out of xbox live is a potential fix for this, but haven't been able to test or verify.

[Higgledy]

I'd make it optional

[King of Avalon]

yeah agree

[WastedTrojan]

It should be completely optional. I don't get offended by swear words or slurs so to people like me the filter is only an annoyance.
I can understand that some people want the filter, but that shouldn't mean that all of us have to have it.

[e+]

I am yet to hear some official answer to this, so many threads here, on reddit, on AoE forums, everywhere, yet nobody has reached out to the community.

That being said, I agree the profanity filter should be entirely optional.

[๖ۣۜStrikeX]

This ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ filter should be removed for sure.

[Mikhail J'argo]

Agreed, though nowadays people can get fined for swearing in public these days in places like the UK and Canada may have anti-swearing laws in the future as well. So don't be surprised when more games start doing this in the near future. ♥♥♥♥ the authoritarians

[Grandaddypurple]

Please step down on the profanity filter...

Earlier today I had a bad game (lost a vill to boar, lost 2 of my 4 scouts into town center, messed up my build order), so I resigned pretty early and said to my opponent "GG, sorry for wasting your time, I f*cked up hard". I resigned and noticed afterward that all he could see was **** ******* ******** ***** ***, only because there was the F-word in the text.
This is against the purpose of filtering. For all I know he thought I flamed him while I was actually courteous.
It also breaks the experience for people who play with friends. So either make the filtering a word by word feature, or just make a toogle option. This is ridiculous.

[Bunny]

Should just make it optional. Dont want to see swear words? Enable the filter. It's a no brainer to me...

[Baragon-Kun]

Yeah, just make it optional or remove it completely. It's pointless.

[110]

i have no idea why they filtered everything, as opposed to word for word. it really makes no sense, if im careful i can flame anyone just using symbols and incorrect spelling

and converesly due to the stupidity of the filter, entire sentences are filtered even if they contain no flaming .. really weird

[mister_right]

they even filter out "ez". When you type ez, all you can see **********

[76561198892587675]

**** *** ****** *** ***

[GosuCab]

I couldn't even type "onager". it was censored out for me but not for other players in the lobby. something tells me this whole filter is wip and I hope they either refine it so its not ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up or make it optional.

[Mercenaru]

They should make profanity filter active by default, WITH the option of disabling it.

You know, in situations like these, I am actually appreciating Valve and their policy. You can swear in their games like there's no tomorrow, and it's awesome. And online gaming is surely no place to get "snowflake" about it ; I find these profanity filters annoying.

Least of all, I have never encountered a toxic person in AoE 2. Maybe they are at higher level, but I doubt even there. This game is made up of grown ups, and you can see it in-game ; no kids cursing and saying things about your mother when you attack them or something.

After playing Dota 2 for so long (a very toxic game), when I play AoE 2, I feel the same peace you find it in a church - which amuses me even more on why they even bothered to introduce a mature filter.