Rocket League has an option called quick-chat. It's only canned messages. And in QC mode you only see or reply QC messages. Make being real toxic difficult.

What a save!

It’s amazing how from the launch of the game that quick chat has pretty much only been used sarcastically.

Yes. However, you see it's limited. Can't use the "bad" words.

But intent matters far more than the actual words used.

Somebody that's tilted is going to be annoyed by a message that's mocking them regardless how innocuous the words are in the message.

In Magic the Gathering: Arena, player chat messages are limited to 5 predefined words. Of those five words, the only one that isn't considered toxic is "Hello". It turns out that banning words doesn't stop people being awful.

Interestingly, there was a period of time where spamming "Hello" in Hearthstone (using a very similar system) was considered particularly toxic, especially while running out your timer every turn.

Dota 2 uses a very similar system (in parallel with several other ways to communicate). It works really well: "chat wheel" communication is significantly more efficient than typing, or even talking, and always on-topic. There are a lot of games where I'll immediately ignore/mute all players' text- and voice-capabilities and solely leave canned chat wheel pings for communication.

Right, and then you die and the guy who has it out for you immediately goes like

> Well played!

> Well played!

(There is a mandatory delay after sending two canned messages.)

TheCrew2 uses emoticons as a quick chat options, and some canned messages. Overall it’s a positive for games that attract trolls.

Souls games have a templated message system, but nature finds a way ("try finger but hole", etc.).

This is only true if the only value you see in playing video games online comes from talking to other people.

Some of us play video games online for the competition, and because human opponents are much more unpredictable and fun than programmed bots.

You've got it backwards. The value I see in other people is talking and communicating. I have zero doubt that a sufficiently advanced bot would pass a video-game opponent turing test long before the original turing test.

You can still play with your friends and communicate over a side channel.