MvM: Friendly Gaming for the Deaf

This guide is designed to help create a better gaming experience in TF2's MvM game mode for deaf/hoh gamers and those who play with them.

Introduction

Believe it or not, there are deaf and hard-of-hearing (hoh) gamers in TF2, and we like to play all game modes. I favor MvM, myself. Before I found a dedicated MvM group to play with, I often queued into random teams, which was a mixed bag of results.

Just as some players discriminate against a certain class in MvM, some players discriminate against deaf/hoh gamers. This guide will provide a few tips for those deaf/hoh gamers and for the general community to make this game mode happier for everyone involved.

My intent is not to tell you what you should or should not do, but to encourage everyone to consider ways to easily incorporate those without sound into the events of the game so that you can all win together. I will lay out some of the techniques and systems I have developed over time that make things easier in my experience. These do not require specialized binds in console, but are, instead, designed for anyone to be able to use in any server.

Captions

First off, it's important for deaf/hoh gamers to be comfortable. For me, this entails using captions that are designed for current game modes and regularly updated for new ones. If you're unsatisfied with current captions, I would urge you to visit Clovervidia's Guide to Captions to get started. It may take some tweaking to get it the way you want, if you're picky like me, but it also just works right out of the box.

Game Events

Aside from captions, which display locally on your screen, the whole MvM team can assist in making the game run much smoother for everyone. Using default voicebinds, below is a list of voice binds I've come to use for events in MvM:

Giants (or other significant bot, such as a krit medic) - x1: "Incoming!"

This one is obvious. See big bot, call incoming.

Spies - x2: "Spy!"

This one is easy enough - if there are spies, call out spy. I pay close attention to the giant flashing arrow that appears when spies show up, but I've noticed that this arrow is largely inconsistent. As it stands, calling out when spies show up helps everyone, deaf or not.

Sentry Buster - x3: "Sentry Ahead!"

When I am the engineer, I do my best to watch for busters. Sometimes I get distracted, so a callout that a sentry buster is coming helps tremendously.

When I am another class, I use this voicebind to alert the engineer. I know the buster makes some kind of sound, so maybe they don't need it, but it never hurts.

Additional comment: As I have had this problem in the past, do not lure the sentry buster near a deaf player and assume they will run away from its blast radius. Sorry, but we can't hear it!

Snipers - z4: "Move up!"

I'm told that what is SAID doesn't match what is written on this voicebind, but the intent is to attract attention to snipers. Since most snipers arrive from an elevated location and since there are no easy voicebinds for them, I use "move up" to indicate snipers are present (not huntsmen, just assistant bot snipers). This tells whoever you've designated as the sniper hunter (scout, soldier, sniper) to look out for them.

Split waves - z5/z6: "Go Left/Right!"

These help direct attention to one entry point or another on a map. Also fairly straightforward.

For the advanced maps, it's left or right. For Mannhattan, I tend to use Go Left for bots coming from the top, since they enter level arena on the left-most entrance.

Valve's Visual Feedback

I'll add more to this as I come across anything.

Two Cities

General

• When losing a gate, you will see the gate symbol flash and indicate how many bots are attempting to capture that gate.

Mannhattan

• When a gate is captured, bots will power down until the "enemy robot mastermind" reroutes his forces. Once the waves begin again, you will see the giant whistle, located between A and B gates above the arena against the wall (eye level when you're on the shipping crates), blow off steam. This can be seen from a large part of the map outside of the initial gate warehouse.

Conclusion and Feedback

That's about it! The bottom line is to make the game playable for everyone in order to maximize both the enjoyment you get from it and to achieve a successful round of whatever it is you're playing - CTF, payload, MvM, or some other type.

I welcome feedback and your ideas and methods for deaf/hoh gaming!

Allison

[bluffoak]

(:

[76561198017886521]

That's a good point. I may do that.

[bluffoak]

Allison, you should also make a guide for TF2 in general. You covered some of the stuff but what about stuff like game modes, fires, dead ringer decloak sounds and how to be able to notice anything like that.

[76561198017886521]

I fixed MannWorks to Manhattan - thanks for the correction!

[XenoSai]

Well said

[Flvffi]

@Faptian

What TdogRedman Said

@Allison

Will try to do this if i ever come across a HoH or Deaf Tf2 player! thanks! :)

[tdogredman]

@faptain
don't be an asshole.

[Faptain Hook]

Please make a guide for the blind gamers who enjoy mvm.

[Major Mari]

Hey its little mac!
how super smash bros goin for you?

[76561198087579882]

how to use voice commands: the guide