[2023] Blizzard Charges Money For Voice Lines, Then Mutes Them?

Apologies if this has already been addressed. But this really bothers me. I personally love voice line spam, however that's not even why I'm saying this.

For any who aren't aware Blizzard has decided to make a change so that voice line spam will lead to your character's voice lines being silenced. This is initially temporary, however if you do it again within a certain timeframe you will be muted for the entire match.

Blizzard currently charges players real money for purchasing voice lines. Just like every other shop item. How is it justifiable to take someone's money for something, just to take away the ability to use it? This would be like selling a skin, but only letting someone use it every other game.

Many players such as myself actually ENJOY hearing voice line spam.

I understand many players hate voice line spam. And instead of this, Blizzard should have improved the Squelch Chat feature. Squelch Chat currently mites all voice lines and commands. They could have simply made it so that Squelch Chat mutes only voice lines.

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Hey all, I want to apologize for the confusion around this feature and the fact that it's currently overzealous. The intent behind this system was to reduce the instances of voice lines being used to annoy other players and to ensure that players still get to enjoy their own voice lines. We all know how it doesn't feel great to try to pause in the middle of a match to squelch or block another player, so this was intended to help reduce that pressure.

Speaking to the system being overzealous, it's currently counting cases where you only hear your own voice lines as spam. That's a mistake on my part that I've corrected for Season 3. This means that if you never stop spamming voice lines in game now, you won't be heard again after a short time.

There is one inaccuracy about the system in this post though. There is no concept of a permanent mute in this system; but you can effectively cause this if you never stop spamming because of the aforementioned mistake. It's true that this system scales with the level of spam, so the more a player uses voice lines (spamming the button for longer time periods for example) the more likely they are to only hear their own VO. If this system is still too severe after the changes we've made in Season 3 we're open to modifying it further.

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