Guild Wars 2

It’s amazing to me how ignorant people are when it comes to certain things. Let me tell you a short story. A few guilds were hosting ToL team tryouts and regular tPvP teams tryouts. So I whispered that I was interested in joining the tryout process and see where it goes. They all were ready to begin the tryouts and told me to go on teamspeak. But there’s a certain thing that prevents me from doing so. The fact that I was born deaf. So when I informed them of the situation, they just simply told me that teamspeak was a requirement in order to participate. That made me sad that they wouldn’t even give me a chance just because of that. It’s not really hard to remedy that. Just set up numbers that’s a shorthand of what to do. Like 1 = bunker far, 2 = cap mid with team, or such. Not hard. So that was disappointing to hear.

Now a little backstory about me. I was told that I couldn’t play sports growing up because of my deafness (Not as well as those who could hear, at least). I played varsity soccer and tennis all 4 years of high school and made the division 1 college tennis team despite being told that I would not make it during my junior year in high school. So that kind of level of ignorance never ceases to amaze me. It does not impair my playing skills or style at all. It does not mean I’m kittened and don’t have map awareness or knowing where to go in the specific situation.

To be fair, any guild that is still looking for players is not going to qualify for the actual tourney unless there are some godly players hiding in champ trains.
But more about your problem, you cant hear them say:
- im stomping
-im going down
-go far
-peel
-etc

so it is fair for them to say ts is required but if you are good enough you should try to network with good players you find in soloq so you can get into solid pug grps for teamq, and from there you can probably make a team.

It would take the same amount of time to type F = Go far, H = go home, and such to say what you just mentioned. P for peel. It’s not hard. To not even be given a chance was ridiculous in my eyes.

But they cant attack or dodge while typing that, your team fights would be a mess unless you’re a support so they wouldnt have to tell you anything anyway. (good supports play re-actively)

I have enough common sense and map awareness to be able to judge what’s needed and all. I really do not need to be told much anyways in the first place. But thanks for judging prematurely.

He’s not trying to judge you. I get why your being defensive. If I were you I would try to prove myself more in soloq teamq and duel servers. If your really as good as you think you are and really don’t need to be told when to rotate or say when a player is calling g out a water field or any skill type call out then someone will eventually notice. I myself have been having trouble getting on a team, but today a couple people starting messaging me and gave me a little tryout qed up in tq a few times and didn’t lose a match.

I have been playing online games since Legends of Kesmai, Ultima online days and I have been using voice coms for a very long time. And as much as I know you don’t want to hear it having a leader and having players that know what to call out matters alot. They can tell you exactly where other players are on the map, they can tell you whether or not they can take the point or if they need someone else, they call call out their stuns and immobilize s so the range nuke and aoe teammates can drop the damage when their enemy is stunned…. honestly I can go on and on about why voice comm has taken online gaming to another level but I’m not sure you even want to hear it let alone accept it. This requiring of voice comms never has been more apparent than today playing with that team that gave me a tryout.

Zirith.6429:

But they cant attack or dodge while typing that, your team fights would be a mess unless you’re a support so they wouldnt have to tell you anything anyway. (good supports play re-actively)

If only ANet didn’t ban macros that could type out nearly everything important in a single click (unless they allow them for typing).

I was thinking about that as I was writing lol ^

That’s unfortunate however I understand why they insist on TS. If anything you could start your own team with voice comms being optional.

To be honest, team speak doesn’t help most teams anyways. Being able to talk to one another isn’t some miracle cure for having kittenty awareness or a low tactical IQ. So many times I’ve been invited to a random team and told to get into TS only for everyone to either a.) sit there silently all match and not use it, or b.) have no idea what info to communicate anyways and they just use it to yell at each other.

To me it just sounds like a weak excuse from weak players and you don’t want to be in that kind of team anyways OP. Don’t let it dissuade you. If you got skills, people will notice and invite you. Team speak has kitten all to do with it.

gl

To many people to quote so I’ll just say a few things to what I’ve read in here…

While I get the frustration, I do see why they turned away from you on the roster. I’m not saying it isn’t fair (because it sucks to be in your situation and have this happen to you), but the actuality of reading or typing in chat versus a higher caliber team during a match can spell disaster. Since macros aren’t available (that would make it easier if they were), typing just isn’t feasible as those couple of seconds to relay a message can be life or death for you or a teammate. Setting up a number system is great, but it requires people to learn it and it may be too vague at times as you need more than what may be thought i.e. stomping, peel for me, heal me, condi clear, xxx people here at xxx node, pushing xxx node, etc etc. Just way too many numbers for all these situations to keep straight/commit to memory on short notice. Teams right now want somebody they can just pop in the lineup and easily communicate with and focus on strategy and team synergy. They don’t want to deal with an X-factor so that means it isn’t fair that you may be a great player but people won’t give you the shot because of the extra work it would be for them.

And to the comment on TS being useless for teams? I just don’t even… The teams you are talking about clearly don’t reflect the ones I’ve been in where we call EVERYTHING (within reason). The fact that you can call for a condi clear, heal, peel, call number, etc is vital as it means people can focus on what they are doing and divert support when you call for it rather than worrying all the time about your teammate or overlapping cooldowns trying to condiclear that immob off your teammate, for example, but they pop theirs right when you do yours so effectively somebody wasted a cooldown they didn’t have to. Now, I will agree that TS is not needed for an experienced team vs a less experienced team. In those matchups map awareness is generally all you need and the general team synergy that has been built through countless games prior so movement is fluid and roles of the members commit to memory. For evenly matched teams, the one with TS wins hands down.

You don’t need ts for this game, all you need is map awareness. This game is situational….ignorant peoples I swear. Don’t let this get you down op.

Chaotic.9742:

To many people to quote so I’ll just say a few things to what I’ve read in here…

The fact that you can call for a condi clear, heal, peel, call number, etc is vital as it means people can focus on what they are doing and divert support when you call for it rather than worrying all the time about your teammate or overlapping cooldowns trying to condiclear that immob off your teammate, for example, but they pop theirs right when you do yours so effectively somebody wasted a cooldown they didn’t have to.

Too*

Also if your team has to type everything out then you spend more time staring at your chat log and less time paying attention to the fight which could lead to you eating a lot of damage.

I’ve used chat macros (though not fully typing, that’s insane) in games that were much faster paced than GW2 and did just fine. Just like using coms its a matter of communicating only information that matters in a succinct manner.

Its certainly nothing that couldn’t be done, but as others have said this late in the game the teams who are still looking for players most likely are just looking for someone to shove into a team and pray it works. I’d suggest that you just keep playing, and someone will pick you up eventually. I’d also suggest if at all possible that you try to play builds and roles that don’t need you to necessarily talk to/hear from your team too much.

Zirith.6429:

Chaotic.9742:

To many people to quote so I’ll just say a few things to what I’ve read in here…

The fact that you can call for a condi clear, heal, peel, call number, etc is vital as it means people can focus on what they are doing and divert support when you call for it rather than worrying all the time about your teammate or overlapping cooldowns trying to condiclear that immob off your teammate, for example, but they pop theirs right when you do yours so effectively somebody wasted a cooldown they didn’t have to.

Too*

Also if your team has to type everything out then you spend more time staring at your chat log and less time paying attention to the fight which could lead to you eating a lot of damage.

(If the too* is supposed to be a grammatical correction for me, I respectfully decline and will keep it as to.)

But yea, looking to read/type/communicate is the crux of this whole ordeal. It’s faster to talk as long as the person isn’t calling a play by play of what’s happening.

Online games rely highly on sound (voip AND ig sounds). As long as there’s no reliable way of translating sound to another sense (like visual output) in realtime, you will always get that reaction.

Real sports is another matter, because there you can compensate with your other senses to a certain degree, with some sports actually with same or better results.

Btw, I played 8v8 in daoc with someone that was half-deaf. It worked to a certain degree, but on some days he just couldnt concentrate fully and it showed immediatly. The rest of the group had to compensate for him, which we did gladly, because we played with him in one group even before his accident that left him half-deaf.
But at one point he stopped logging in because it was just too draining for him and he hated how we had to compensate for him.
And daoc was way more “friendly” for such a situation than gw2 is. There you could easily use chat macros, there were ig-macros for that.

Gw2 doesnt have anything like that, you have to use third party tools, not everybody is willing to risk his/her account with that, or even spending the time setting those up.
And even though you can for example ping on minimap, there’s no different color for every teammate. Etc.

And sorry, but playing tpvp in gw2 needs a lot more communication than just “going far”. It needs a lot of interaction. Especially with current metas, where you have to rotate properly and fast.

I’m not able to use TS either for undisclosed reasons and yet I have no trouble contributing to my team in a positive way.
I understand very clearly how TS can be beneficial to a group’s co-ordination but very few people seem to also understand that it isn’t mandatory to be a good player. Personally, I have a hard time concentrating when people are screaming in my ears. And even if they’re giving simple orders, I can lose sight of my own agenda which may at the time be more important than theirs.
TS can be helpful but it isn’t game-changing. It’s for people who can’t multi-task and are too narrow minded to understand that some of us have better situational awareness than they.

There is no ignorance in those players not wanting a deaf person on their team. I’m not deaf so I wont pretend to understand.

I cannot have 4 people who are in ts and 1 that is not. I will talk to the person who isn’t there by accident and will waste finger time by typing to the one guy not in ts. It will result in poor communication and poor play as a result. A good example of that would be the game I played with 2 english speakers, 2 spanish speakers, and 1 bilingual guy who had to interpret during the game. (It went poorly).

The fact remains that players will look at the most practical and effective recruitment methods. If trialling for you takes a different learning curve and extra time they could by statistic have gone through more applicants in the same amount of time.

The other reason is as pointed out, voice comms offer a level of communication not provided in the game itself and allow teams to become highly coordinated and efficient. It just turns out that this is a resource you are not able to utilise.

I won’t be able to feel what you must be feeling right now. You are a competitive player who wants to compete, but maybe these players aren’t for you. Only thing I can say is keep looking.

Maybe when voice to text technology improves, or when anet implements visual support.

Just off a quick search on google there seem to be some ways to do speech to text. May want to look into that, at least you will be able to read what is going on in TS. That i think would be a fair compromise if you were a good player and could just figure out the rotations by playing.

That wasn’t even the point of my thread. Most of you failed to get it. I wasn’t even given a chance to try out just because I’m deaf. That fact alone was ignorance at its finest. Who knows? I could surprise the kitten out of you with my map awareness and situational awareness and guess what? Since I’m a very visual person, I actually do see a lot more than most people do aka I do pay attention to my party’s condition stats, map locations, timer for certain spawns, animations, and such all at once. I do not need to be told much during a match if given a chance. You’ll see it’s very minimal typing with me but oh well, keep the ignorance going stronk. If anyone was wondering, I main d/d ele. Also can play phalanx warrior and cele rifle engi with trip kits.

@The guy who talked about a half deaf dude

Well that’s great. But that’s something that was an accident that made him go deaf. So he’s still adjusting. I was born that way. I’m not adjusting. It doesn’t take any focus for me at all lol. I pvp reactively and I feel like I have a good gauge on what to do. In fact, I’ve played 3 other mmorpgs before and have been the leader of all of the guilds on those games that dominated the server. Dominated.

Unless there is a top team which doesn’t use TS there is hardly any argument about usefulness of this tool.

adam.8692:

Unless there is a top team which doesn’t use TS there is hardly any argument about usefulness of this tool.

Why would they if everyone else says its the way to go. The real test would be to listen in and see how much worth saying is actually said.

And frankly, “top teams” have had issues like a person’s mouse running out of batteries, just because they are the best of a small community doesn’t mean they are infallible or right about everything.

Lettuce.2945:

That wasn’t even the point of my thread. Most of you failed to get it. I wasn’t even given a chance to try out just because I’m deaf. That fact alone was ignorance at its finest. Who knows? I could surprise the kitten out of you with my map awareness and situational awareness and guess what? Since I’m a very visual person, I actually do see a lot more than most people do aka I do pay attention to my party’s condition stats, map locations, timer for certain spawns, animations, and such all at once. I do not need to be told much during a match if given a chance. You’ll see it’s very minimal typing with me but oh well, keep the ignorance going stronk. If anyone was wondering, I main d/d ele. Also can play phalanx warrior and cele rifle engi with trip kits.

@The guy who talked about a half deaf dude

Well that’s great. But that’s something that was an accident that made him go deaf. So he’s still adjusting. I was born that way. I’m not adjusting. It doesn’t take any focus for me at all lol. I pvp reactively and I feel like I have a good gauge on what to do. In fact, I’ve played 3 other mmorpgs before and have been the leader of all of the guilds on those games that dominated the server. Dominated.

We didn’t miss the point. But it’s very hard for us to look at this from your pov. Things like this happen to everyone ive had asthma since i was 2 and was still able to play hockey, lax, and box hell i had more wind and was in better shape than most of the people i played with and when i turned 18 i wanted to join the military but they wouldnt even give me a chance and its not because they are ignorant. It didn’t matter if i could run 15 miles or if i was physically capable of keeping up with everyone else. Its an X factor, a risk/reward.

What MMO’s where they if you dont mind me asking.

But like i said before if you are really as good as you think you are then work your way up the leaderboards do some dueling servers and people will notice you.

Sorry, but you werent allowed the chance to trial because you wouldnt or couldnt use teamspeak.
You being deaf might be the reason for you being unable to use voip, but it is NOT the reason why you werent allowed to trial.

Every guild, group, whatever has the freedom to set certain ground rules, being able to use teamspeak is just one most groups use.

You dont like that – nobody is keeping you from building your own team.

Sorry to be so harsh, but imo you are riding a dead horse here. You are not going to force any kind of change because arguments for using voip for team-fights are just way too strong atm. This will change as soon as teams have more tools for ig communication on hand, but until then… voip is the smoothest way.

Stop trying to force people to adapt to you. Stop insinuating people are trying to discriminate you just because you are deaf. Someone that wont use voip because of other reasons would be treated just as you were.

Yasi.9065:

Sorry, but you werent allowed the chance to trial because you wouldnt or couldnt use teamspeak.
You being deaf might be the reason for you being unable to use voip, but it is NOT the reason why you werent allowed to trial.

Every guild, group, whatever has the freedom to set certain ground rules, being able to use teamspeak is just one most groups use.

You dont like that – nobody is keeping you from building your own team.

Sorry to be so harsh, but imo you are riding a dead horse here. You are not going to force any kind of change because arguments for using voip for team-fights are just way too strong atm. This will change as soon as teams have more tools for ig communication on hand, but until then… voip is the smoothest way.

Stop trying to force people to adapt to you. Stop insinuating people are trying to discriminate you just because you are deaf. Someone that wont use voip because of other reasons would be treated just as you were.

This.

Also, regarding your better visual skills and map awareness – this in no way lets you see what the other people see on their monitors who are halfway across the map, and while you can make an educated guess based on experience and be right, say, 90% of the time, they would still have to type the info in to make sure you know of it in order to reach 100%, and this would mean that they waste valuable seconds in which they can’t interact with what happens around them because they have to type. In this respect, I don’t think it’s about you being a bad player, it’s about you forcing the others on your team to not play as well as they normally would.

Teams are selective they have every right to be.

I have TS and I’ve only got a tryout once.

skullfaerie.7203:

This may just be my impression but is it possible that people are missing a certain point?

The issue wouldn’t seem to be that s/he was denied a spot on said team, it’s that they rejected her/him without a try out.
It wasn’t that they took a look at what s/he can bring to the table and decided the X factor wasn’t worth it. It’s that they assumed, in pure theory, that this player has nothing to offer because of an attribute distinguishing them from the majority of players, just as the majority of this thread does.

There is, frankly, something pedestrian about that kind of thinking.

I doubt OP would’ve taken issue if s/he had been allowed to showcase what they are capable of but was rejected, even if the reason remained the same.
The difference lies in the assumption. You can’t know what you have in front of you, if you refuse to take a look at it.

I don’t see the harm in giving a player in an unusual personal situation the respect of a simple chance. If it doesn’t work out, so what? It’s just a tryout,

Or maybe they don’t want the hassle of learning a system to communicate on top of everything required to get a team up and running. It’s hard enough to get 5 people to work together let alone throw this X factor in. NOTE I’m not saying that what they did isn’t unfair at all, but it is their decision as to what they want on their team. I guess they wanted to spend time trying out others without the X factor in the equation. Such is life – everything isn’t fair.

i’m all for equal opportunities in the real world workplace, as long as they can perform the task assigned. for example, it’s impractical to hire a deaf air traffic controller.

this is a game, why should a team handicap themselves in combat by having to type comms? they have every right to deny you a tryout based on this fact alone.

this is basically the same argument as a team requiring TS to join, but you only have ventrilo, and for some bizarre reason you can’t get TS to work. why should the team have to make an exception for you and use ventrilo?

he wasn’t denied a tryout because he was different or deaf at all, he was denied because he was unable to use the same means of communications as the rest of the team. how hard is that to understand.

in most team games, communications is everything.

No it was because he is deaf and everyone team is going to say no because they all hate deaf people. It has nothing to do with not wanting to play with ridiculously delayed communication.

Let’s say a team put you on. You did well in a tryout in teamq. Get to an ESL game and they try and type something to tell you to do something and in that time they took to type some thief back stabs them and then you do what they told you to meanwhile they now want you to do something else because the theif back stabbed them. Or with your map awareness you decide to go do something without them telling you too, but the team had a good reason for not telling you to go do that or whatever there is literally hundreds of reasons a team wouldn’t take someone that cannot utilize voice comm.

VOIP programs are the most effective method of communication mid-game. There are ways to get around them, but they are all sub-optimal. I don’t care what you say, it’s faster to say ONE than to type 1. People don’t do that, though. Why? Because it’s less confusing mid match to say what you mean, albeit in a concise manner. It’s just a hassle they didn’t want to deal with, and there’s no reason they should have to.

Thanks to those who came to my defense. But it’s no use arguing with ignorant and naive people. As someone mentioned, you might be passing up a chance to find a diamond in the rough. You just never know. The fact I was not even given a chance to try out (what do you have to lose with this tryout?) was pretty hilarious to me to be honest. I personally don’t think I’m stupid to not figure out what’s the right thing to do in the situation. It’s not so hard to just simply look at the map, timer, team scores, team positionings and team line up hp bar and figure out the proper course of action to take from there. I’ve watched enough mistpedia and the entire ToL to study team strategies to know some common sense when it comes to this kind of thing. Just because you can’t tell me the fastest way possible doesn’t mean I can’t understand what needs to be done. And what I find amusing is that when people peel away or someone goes far to bunker or such…The team communicating in TS could tell the person that’s moving towards a certain cap or location (they are just running or sb 5ing there…surely they can find the time to type shorthands in the chat for me for the rest of the team that wants to pass a message along to me). It’s funny to assume that everyone’s fighting nonstop. Teammate dies? Relay message to me while respawn time counter ticks. As for battle strategies like removing conditions or stealthing the team, reviving downed teammates, and such…might stacking, etc…I’m sure I know when to do that…And how to properly do it…

But it’s fine. I’ll just make a name for myself and work my way up the ladder and you’ll see how stupid your ignorance was down the road.

I was apart of a LAN counter strike 1.6 team with a deaf fellow. He had amazing headphones. They had such bass he could feel the vibrations from the game “rounds being fired”. I put them on once and heard ringing in my ears like a firework blew up next to my head. This dude taught me a lesson in life, don’t ever hold some one back if you can push them forward. He pushed me forward and showed how to be a ninja. I started to play with in game sound off “music playing” while practing, in a match I’d turn sound on. My reaction times got a lot faster and now I have to play music while I game always.

The players that won’t give you a chance they won’t come close to winning anything including some “online” tourny

This thread is hilarious. Be good enough people will take you anyway or chill bro. Typing doesn’t work as well hand down. ESports ain’t got room for checked privilege.

Honestly though calling numbers at points constantly is important. This would be insanely difficult with typing. Minimap only gets you so far.

This is the same reason why the Special Olympics were created, maybe lobby Anet to create a Special ToL where people who are deaf/blind/have no arms can compete with each other. Other than that, there is nothing that says that teams in this game are not allowed to discriminate in who they accept.

SchiTown.7598:

This thread is hilarious. Be good enough people will take you anyway or chill bro. Typing doesn’t work as well hand down. ESports ain’t got room for checked privilege.

There is no esport in gw2 only online tourneys. gw2 has not support for LAN so it won’t ever be anything close to the word “sport”. You shouldn’t have posted your typing is nothing but hot air and another post count for you. He wanted a chance nothing else and he made a post about it. You shouldn’t have even tried.

The posts above show the age and lack of real world experience. I’m on a boat waiting for a fish to bite. Laughing at this community so rookie!

World is digital now bro LANs are for RL nerds.

SchiTown.7598:

World is digital now bro LANs are for RL nerds.

You know nothing and have really bad humor

voice communication is essential for about any kind of pvp. nobody has the time to write down sudden changes in tactics or player delegation. i’m sorry for you being deaf but you’re just not competitive. it might not impair your gameplay performance but it impairs team communication. what if the situation requires something that you haven’t yet crypted into a number? someone will have to write it down. how do you count down if you want to spike someone? you can’t. either one person will be standing still which means their death or you will probably miss the spike. this isn’t ignorance, this is simply reducing any possibility to lose by minimizing inconvenience.
i might not be the most considerate person, but instead of memorizing a whole alphabet of your number- or letter-code i would just kick you from the group. much easier and a lot of work less. when competing against others i personally wouldn’t care a bit about whoever has whatever limitation. before starting a match the only thing i care about is the highest possible chance to win. period.

Lettuce just curious but what class and build do you play, and how many tpvp games do you actually have?

zaced.7948:

voice communication is essential for about any kind of pvp. nobody has the time to write down sudden changes in tactics or player delegation. i’m sorry for you being deaf but you’re just not competitive. it might not impair your gameplay performance but it impairs team communication. what if the situation requires something that you haven’t yet crypted into a number? someone will have to write it down. how do you count down if you want to spike someone? you can’t. either one person will be standing still which means their death or you will probably miss the spike. this isn’t ignorance, this is simply reducing any possibility to lose by minimizing inconvenience.
i might not be the most considerate person, but instead of memorizing a whole alphabet of your number- or letter-code i would just kick you from the group. much easier and a lot of work less. when competing against others i personally wouldn’t care a bit about whoever has whatever limitation. before starting a match the only thing i care about is the highest possible chance to win. period.

This is a wall of text with a lot of “if” you assume a lot as well. Now watch this video with local SoCal LAN player who has no limbs. He plays cs go a game that is a “esport” and competitive. Don’t put limits on others especially in a video game that means very little in the big picture of life. It’s freaking gw2 hahaha

Mindtrick.5190:

zaced.7948:

voice communication is essential for about any kind of pvp. nobody has the time to write down sudden changes in tactics or player delegation. i’m sorry for you being deaf but you’re just not competitive. it might not impair your gameplay performance but it impairs team communication. what if the situation requires something that you haven’t yet crypted into a number? someone will have to write it down. how do you count down if you want to spike someone? you can’t. either one person will be standing still which means their death or you will probably miss the spike. this isn’t ignorance, this is simply reducing any possibility to lose by minimizing inconvenience.
i might not be the most considerate person, but instead of memorizing a whole alphabet of your number- or letter-code i would just kick you from the group. much easier and a lot of work less. when competing against others i personally wouldn’t care a bit about whoever has whatever limitation. before starting a match the only thing i care about is the highest possible chance to win. period.

This is a wall of text with a lot of “if” you assume a lot as well. Now watch this video with local SoCal LAN player who has no limbs. He plays cs go a game that is a “esport” and competitive. Don’t put limits on others especially in a video game that means very little in the big picture of life. It’s freaking gw2 hahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bONUFkP3i8s

i’m not. being it a third rate mmo or the #1 esport game in the end what matters is winning. ofc you can overcome nearly any limitation and shine in a specific area if you really want to. but those are exceptions, not the average. and there’s still the fact that the team has to adapt which for me personally is too much to bother with.

Waffler.1257:

This is the same reason why the Special Olympics were created, maybe lobby Anet to create a Special ToL where people who are deaf/blind/have no arms can compete with each other. Other than that, there is nothing that says that teams in this game are not allowed to discriminate in who they accept.

The level of stupidity in this post alone makes me giggle. You do realize that I’ve already mentioned that I played college division 1 tennis? Being deaf has nothing to do with my athletic abilities so that comparison to the special olympics was in very fact, however ironic, kittened. The special olympics were mainly created for those with physical disabilities, not deafness lol. What the actual kitten? You do know there’s a deaf football player for the Seahawks now? Everyone said that football is too much of a team sport and requires a lot of communication but…they managed to make it work somehow and look, he’s laughing his kitten off at the people who said he couldn’t do it. That’s why the ignorance of the people not exposed to this kind of thing really doesn’t cease to amaze me.

And this is a video game. I’m pretty sure a lot more work is required for actual ATHLETICS than a video game. Training and all. And no, team queueing every day as a training regime does not compare to working out in the gym, running, actual sports practice, drills, etc…So with all due respect, those of you who take this game too seriously to not even give someone the benefit of the doubt…Go outside kittens. Get off your kitten and actually play or take part in a physical activity. E sports. Lawl sauce. Don’t make me laugh. I just want the entertainment of participating in an online tourney, nothing beyond that.

While your cause is noble your beginning to come off as petulant. Not that I agreed with the special Olympics comment.

discriminating someone because they are deaf is perfectly fine if they are not able to compete at a high level….. I know in my team, if someone could not hear and I assume talk, then there is no way we would keep them. Communication is too important in this game.. sure in a perfect world everyone would play flawlessly and no communication, but in a perfect would u wudnt be deaf

The teams have a limited time to prepare for the tournament. Time that could be spent practicing builds and rotations now have to adapt themselves to accommodating unique communication circumstances that their rules otherwise left for granted (“please have TS and a mic”).

They are not worried about your ability to communicate with them. They are worried about their ability to communicate with you.

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

Does it suck that they didn’t even let you try out? Possibly, but if they already decided that it’s too much work to adapt to you then it doesn’t matter whether you’re asking for an hour of their time or a second. Even a second of wasted time is a second that could have been spent practicing or trying out someone else with no communication accommodations needed.

In another sense, TS+mic is like the Berserker meta of PvE. Is it possible for someone wearing PVT or something else to contribute more than someone running Berserker? Absolutely, but the ceiling is already lower on anything non-zerker. That player on the Seahawks will never be Tom Brady.

Lettuce.2945:

Waffler.1257:

This is the same reason why the Special Olympics were created, maybe lobby Anet to create a Special ToL where people who are deaf/blind/have no arms can compete with each other. Other than that, there is nothing that says that teams in this game are not allowed to discriminate in who they accept.

The level of stupidity in this post alone makes me giggle. You do realize that I’ve already mentioned that I played college division 1 tennis? Being deaf has nothing to do with my athletic abilities so that comparison to the special olympics was in very fact, however ironic, kittened. The special olympics were mainly created for those with physical disabilities, not deafness lol. What the actual kitten? You do know there’s a deaf football player for the Seahawks now? Everyone said that football is too much of a team sport and requires a lot of communication but…they managed to make it work somehow and look, he’s laughing his kitten off at the people who said he couldn’t do it. That’s why the ignorance of the people not exposed to this kind of thing really doesn’t cease to amaze me.

And this is a video game. I’m pretty sure a lot more work is required for actual ATHLETICS than a video game. Training and all. And no, team queueing every day as a training regime does not compare to working out in the gym, running, actual sports practice, drills, etc…So with all due respect, those of you who take this game too seriously to not even give someone the benefit of the doubt…Go outside kittens. Get off your kitten and actually play or take part in a physical activity. E sports. Lawl sauce. Don’t make me laugh. I just want the entertainment of participating in an online tourney, nothing beyond that.

Funny how you took his post so literally. He was alluding to you have a disability compared to others. The special olympics was created for those with a disability. Hence, Anet should make a special ToL to be the “esports equivalent of the special olympics.” It was meant to be a joke…sarcasm…

As backpack and others have said, this game is highly communication based if you are trying to actually win at high end pvp. It requires rapid relaying of things that typing/reading will hinder. If teams devise a system to communicate, take the time to learn it and do some games to perfect communication with you (because if they give up before its perfected you will call them kittens anyways), then they determine you aren’t a fit for the team/high enough caliber, then they just wasted all their time. They want to just pop a guy in the lineup, do some games, try the next one out and find a fifth. Simple and fast this way. They don’t try you out – we get it, you’re mad but don’t target them with your frustration for them acting in a pretty reasonable way. Find a team that will give you the time or make your own and quit trashing people who don’t “give you the benefit of the doubt.” Just because they don’t give you a tryout doesn’t mean they are kittens as you seem to jump to. I’ve been on a team with a “mute” member and it was hard enough to accomplish our victories at times at high end pvp, if she didn’t have the ability to listen on TS it would have been near impossible to achieve what we did – of that I’m sure. ToL teams want to win and get better rewards. They don’t want to make it harder on themselves then it already will be. Sorry you can’t accept this response from people.

If TS is a requirement that you can not fulfill, you can not fulfill the requirements of a tryout and are therefore not capable of trying out.

That is simple logic not ignorance. Ignorance is ignoring the requirements because you believe you are entitled to different rules.

I used to play with a deaf player in another game, worked just fine. He had a speech to text program that displayed what we were saying in a window on his second screen which he could look over at. It flashed when new messages were up. He was a great player as it was even without teamspeak.
Personally I find that it makes your team look amazing when they can play well regardless of any personal handicaps they might have.
But this is just my opinion though. If the others teams requested that teamspeak was a must then those are their rules and it’s their option to follow them. Can’t do anything about it.