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I don't understand why Riot won't make changes to make the game less toxic @MARC MERRILL

DarkinPrime··5 votes·584 views

This is really one of those unbelievably obvious things. Tribunals won't change human nature, and you have new players coming in all the time. The reality is that when people feel powerless, it translates into anger and frustration or sadness. This is human nature, thinking you can teach everyone to be nicer and calmer when they lose or a teammate feeds is just idiotic.

You listening Marc Merrill?

When you base someones rank entirely on a win or loss, you create a game that is inherently frustrating. If I lose a match, but my KDA was higher than the average, I should lose LESS LP for that match. Get it? If I win a match but my KDA was below the average I should WIN LESS LP. Players should always have a sense of control even if their team is going to lose, and a reason to keep trying their best even when it looks bad. Right now, we don't have this so players get toxic very quickly, including me. This would help mitigate the feeling of being powerless.

Moreover, if Riot wants this to be an eSports game, then they need to drop the hammer on players who don't take ranked seriously--its totally unfair to everyone else to have to have someone on their team who is beyond terrible. If player has a bad match, goes like 3/8/5 or 5/8/2 or something, that's fine, it happens. If they go 0/10/2 and just are awful, they should receive a warning after a few matches like that, and then, a ban from ranked play until they win X amount of normal matches. Riot needs to ensure that player have a fair chance to win when they sit down to play.

Marc, I served in the Marines with your buddy Pierre who you went to high school with. Unfortunately, whenever I talk to him about League is mostly about how much I am starting to loathe and hate Riot and the game now.

Is that what you want? For your customers to think ill of you? Because, so many do. I read your blog, and I see your rant of excuses about how the players just don't understand the struggle of being so successful so fast, growing a game so quickly...yes, the awfulness. Poor Riot.

The reality is, Riot has risen to its own level of incompetence. This entire season has been annoying and terrible on nearly ever level. I am getting very close to writing the game off. I wish you guys would overhaul your leadership and management.

For God's sake's you can't even decide on what bonus dragon gives. It changes like 4 times a year. Now we have 4 drakes and and Elder Dragon, but in 3 months....who knows!

31 Comments

BLACK REALM GOD7 votes

Supports are told by their teammates to not take kills. If k/d/a were to be factored in the only people at the top would be assassins and mages.

Dragon keeps getting reworked because high level teams do the math before the game starts and determine if it's worth getting. When teams constantly say it's not worth getting then as a game designer you either remove it or change it. This game keeps getting changed because every champion or item added that shows up in esports as a consistent winner sets off red flags.

The worst part of league is dealing with the angry people you play with who've invested too heavily into this game so they think they own it or the team captains who think anyone cares about their divine powers and the all mighty report button. It isn't okay in ranked to be an ass just because diamond Smurf crybaby lost his last match due to network issues or youtuber league trolling gets you lots of views. And it sure as hell doesn't belong in normals where people go to try out new things in a public environment. There's only so much you can learn from hard bots. It's like 60% or more of this community is addicted to league. It's almost as bad as dealing with physical sports fans every time a new madden or 2k comes out.

I recommend someone start a leaguers anonymous circle. It will help those of you who suffer from ptsd, anger management, instability, addiction, and creepy sexual desires among other things.

that's the only real solution to the game. It's not being sold to the 25 year olds who started playing when they were 16. You're not and never have been the target audience. The target audience is the 16-20 year olds in high school and in college. If you're unhappy with the game then quit playing it. Why do you think matches take so long? An adult with a family and a job doesn't have time to play this game. Just teens and the people whose lives revolve around this game - youtubers, twitch feeds, esports competitors, and the people involved with production and development. Everyone else we're just the casual crowd. Or in some cases sacrificing our lives for the game. That's addiction.

DarkinPrime1 votes

Riot is a billion dollar company. Obviously they wouldnt apply the same KDA standard to support roles. They would apply a different standard. Obviously dude. What were you even thinking with that line of thought?

DrCyanide3 votes

We're all thinking we've been down this road countless times, explaining why a performance based system can't be used to each person who comes along thinking that they've come up with something new.

In any situation where you divert the goal from "win" to "win better" you'll have problems. You'll have that enemy team that camps your fountain instead of ending, so they can get a higher KDA (thus more LP). You'll have players not risk their lives for the game winning play because if it doesn't pan out they'll lose more LP. Distraction plays (things like Proxy Singed) become completely unviable, tanks become far less desirable, and non numeric contributions (body blocked a skillshot, set up sight, threw out a lantern) mean nothing.

Performance based LP gains/loses will result in overall worse gameplay. It's not worth trading gameplay for a slightly easier time climbing the ladder.

DarkinPrime1 votes

Are you...serious right now?

If some idiot wants to camp a fountain and give the enemy time to possibly come back, that's on him.

You guys are acting like there is no way this could be fined tuned to take into account things such:

For tanks: damage taken in relations to deaths. High damage taken, low deaths means you did well as a tank support for example.

Low kill Top laner who destroys 4 turrets and 2 inhibs by himself.

Etc etc.

You guys are too busy getting wrapped up in criticizing the specific thing I said, when the point is to adjust LP won or lost based on some kind of performance metric.

It will result in better game play because players will be less likely to just throw in the towel when things are going bad. I can't believe this is even being debated.

DrCyanide1 votes

In your tank example, a tank that runs in 1v3 over and over, getting out each time but never being there for a team fight deserves more LP than a tank that was there every fight and died every fight. Is that fair? No, of course not. So now you've got to factor in team fights and participation there. But now you've also got to factor in if it should have even been a team fight, or if it was a tank diving in needlessly and throwing the game. Good luck.

Proxy Singed dies a ton, never at team fights, average at best split pushing. Can win the game by drawing multiple enemies to him over and over again. By every metric known to man, it looks like he's useless.

Come up with a generic solution that would work for any champion doing a proxy, identifying them as something different than a feeder or troll, and you'll give Riot what they need to make a troll detection system that can be as aggressive as the language one. Riot's been working on that problem for years, but if course you should be able to stomp it out in a few minutes, right?

DarkinPrime1 votes

I dont care what the metric is. I don't care if you gain or lose LP if you simply die 2 times or less.

And honestly I don't think Riot wants to work on it. I think that they make more money off of players struggling harder.

And they think its smart business but in reality, all the bs they've been doing, this game will be totally irrelevant in a few years because a new company will put out a better game eventually.

DrCyanide1 votes

I dont care what the metric is. I don't care if you gain or lose LP if you simply die 2 times or less.

That completely contradicts your quote in the OP.

If I lose a match, but my KDA was higher than the average, I should lose LESS LP for that match.

To get what you want, there will have to be a metric, and if there's a metric people will play around that metric. Just like you've had Tank Fizz and Tank Ekko, people will be changing how they play the game in a way that's not intended in order to climb in a way that's mathematically superior.

DarkinPrime1 votes

KDA was just an example.

And no they wont change how they play---Im sorry do you not understand? IF you do well in a match but lose the match YOU STILL LOSE LP, but just not as much. So if you are doing things that aren't working towards WINNING THE MATCH you aren't doing yourself any favors.

DrCyanide1 votes

It doesn't matter if it's KDA or some other combination of stats, people will figure it out and adjust how they play. They'll cater how they play so that it matches the formula, allowing them to gain the most LP for wins and lose the least LP for loses.

Saying "it won't happen" is like saying people don't pick flavor of the month champions.

DarkinPrime1 votes

Who cares? If it brings down the toxicity and gives players some control of the outcome because of individual performance, I could give a shit if people try to play to get the most LP out of the match---because doing so will probably mean not being focused on winning the match. I'm sorry but you don't seem very intelligent.

DrCyanide1 votes

You say you won't care and it'd bring down toxicity.

I say if you're toxic now you'd be just as toxic when a teammate decided not to follow your initiation because they feel it was too risky and they'd lose 2 extra LP if they did.

Sightless665 votes

If I lose a match, but my KDA was higher than the average, I should lose LESS LP for that match. Get it? If I win a match but my KDA was below the average I should WIN LESS LP.

The problem this system has is that it always ends up being very unfair to certain groups of players. If someone's playstyle was to take a lot of damage for their team and protect their team members, then your system would fuck them hard because you've placed value on KDA. A split pusher who doesn't get many kills but does take tons of towers and puts enough pressure to let his team get free objectives would be fucked too. And what about the support player? KDA is often very disconnected from how a support actually did. How is this a fair judgement for them?

This would help mitigate the feeling of being powerless.

You want to know what makes me feel powerless? Getting less MMR than an objectively worse player because he plays a champion that the rating system likes. That will happen, and it will piss off whatever players drew the short straw of liking a champion that the rating system doesn't support.

Dota used to use this system, and they ran into the problem that certain heroes earned more MMR than other heroes even if the player's winrate was worse. It was an impossible problem to solve, and it made all the support players mad because they were punished for being a support player instead of a zeus-spamming mid. The MMR adjustment system was gutted, and for good reason.

Going strictly by win/loss is good because it is always fair. If your playstyle is good enough to win more games than it loses, than you're going to rise. If not, you'll fall. If you're better than the skill level you're assigned, you WILL win more than you lose, so you'll rise. It fair to every playstyle, every champion, every player. That's a good thing.

. If they go 0/10/2 and just are awful,

If this is a common occurrence for the player then he'll drop in rating really fast. No need to ban him at that point, because he'll be closer to the skill level he should be at. No reason to impose punishments when the very nature of an MMR system corrects for this problem.

If he's not good enough for the skill level he's at, banning him from ranked won't solve that. All you'll do is push the problem back a few days. If his skill level is that overrated, he will lose his way down to his appropriate skill level. A ban isn't going to prevent that, just delay it, and there's no good reason to delay it.

DarkinPrime1 votes

"The problem this system has is that it always ends up being very unfair to certain groups of players. If someone's playstyle was to take a lot of damage for their team and protect their team members, then your system would fuck them hard because you've placed value on KDA. A split pusher who doesn't get many kills but does take tons of towers and puts enough pressure to let his team get free objectives would be fucked too. And what about the support player? KDA is often very disconnected from how a support actually did. How is this a fair judgement for them?"

No. Good lord, is everyone on there boards brain dead? It would be based on the average kda for that champion at that ELO. Therefore, if a shen KDA is like 4/5/11, then it would be based on how far removed you are from that.

Sightless662 votes

Again, cwrtain playstyles even within champions will have larger average kdas. A lOeblanc who plays like a bitch can easily never die and get assists, even though she will be completely useless. A split pusher has a lower average kda than the same champion who picks up assists in teamfights even when that is mot the right call. Kda is insufficient for determining if someone can play well, and it can be gamed.

Hell, our champion mastery system uses more than just kda because even riot knew kda was a stupid thing to use to determine whether someone did well. They use all sorts of stats, and it still usually doesn't feel fair.

Dota used to use average damage dealt and kda as main factors in their system. As a result, people spammed zeus and used his ult (like karthus ult woth a lowish cd) every time it came up without ever joining fights because it gave huge damage scores. Psople who played the hero well actually got less kmr than people who played him like a retard. People gamed the dota system, and they will game this one. Win/loss can not be gamed.

Handy Sandy 2 votes

Ok, who gets BANNED for not being good at the game?? The opponent could be some smurf, or that certain ally just didn't know how to fight against that champion, or the opponent could simply be better at the game. If you have that big of a problem with your team all the time then post a discussion on here asking for players like you to play ranked matches.

DarkinPrime2 votes

Ah the first comment and like clockwork, you didn't read or bother to understand what I am saying. There is a big difference between a bad match and going 0/10/2. It does happen sometimes, but if it happens too many times in too short of a time frame, well, you shouldn't be allowed to play ranked until you rehab yourself in normal's. Its unfair to the other players. Again, I'm not talking about banning people for bad matches. I'm talking about banning people for VERY bad matches consistently.

Handy Sandy 4 votes

{quoted}

Ah the first comment and like clockwork, you didn't read or bother to understand what I am saying. There is a big difference between a bad match and going 0/10/2. It does happen sometimes, but if it happens too many times in too short of a time frame, well, you shouldn't be allowed to play ranked until you rehab yourself in normal's. Its unfair to the other players. Again, I'm not talking about banning people for bad matches. I'm talking about banning people for VERY bad matches consistently.

You could always be paired up with people that don't belong in the league you're currently in. There's a chance that you can be up against people that deserve to be in a way higher league, and the game would just think that you're bad and should get temp banned from ranked matches when really, the opponent is some diamond main player on a gold second account over and over again. Someone could just be, again, some smurf just wanting to kill people that have way less skill than them or get a higher rank on that account. Then in normals, where you have to win a couple matches against people that aren't even level 30 or ranked yet...you're going to crush them so hard that they may go afk/ragequit. This could increase the number of sore losers there are out there because then they're going to be the ones with the 0/10 score. It won't be fair to the people who belong in the league that end up with bad luck.

Sightless664 votes

you shouldn't be allowed to play ranked until you rehab yourself in normal's.

What do you mean "rehab yourself"? That doesn't make sense. You can't rehabilitate being unskilled for the elo you're in by playing a few normal games. If he's losing that much, it's because he's not good enough for the MMR that he's at. He has to lose his way down to his appropriate ranking. All a ban can do is delay is the process. No purpose to that.

Ok sure but why1 votes

So many good points and facts. It's almost like all those dislikes are from Riot employees.

DarkinPrime1 votes

Its so sad that the Riot fanboys are so brainwashed that they don't even realize it

DrCyanide3 votes

Or like they're from anyone who has spent more than 2 seconds thinking about the problem.

vampirekid131 votes

Im by no means a riot fanboy.

ive been permabanned from these forums about 3 times, and ive been criticizing riot since season 2.

however i strongly disagree with what you say. your KDA should by no means influence how much lp you lose.

you SHOULD NOT lose less than the others because you last hit more champions. thats just mindbogglingly narrow minded.

in reality, you lost the game. you couldnt win it. and you were part of a team, you failed to work around your teams strenghts and weaknesses and pull together to get a win. your MMR isnt your individual skill score, its your ability to work in a team score.

and whatever your kda is you lost the game and should lose the same amount of MMR and LP as every other loser in the game.

if you didnt win you lost. there really isnt a "i didnt win, but did better than the guys that lost" because the guys that lost, included you.

kda is just a misleading stat in general, this isnt an FPS, its first and foremost a strategy game.

a good example of kda not meaning anything is suicide karthus, and proxy singed players, there are players in diamond that play suicide karthus, and proxy singed, players that repeatedly die on a minute by minute basis and win the game. because their strat is superior to their enemies strat.

DarkinPrime1 votes

Sigh.

Are you...serious right now?

Just forget the KDA.

You guys are acting like there is no way this could be fined tuned to take into account things such:

For tanks: damage taken in relations to deaths. High damage taken, low deaths means you did well as a tank support for example.

Low kill Top laner who destroys 4 turrets and 2 inhibs by himself.

Etc etc.

You guys are too busy getting wrapped up in criticizing the specific thing I said, when the point is to adjust LP won or lost based on some kind of performance metric.

It will result in better game play because players will be less likely to just throw in the towel when things are going bad. I can't believe this is even being debated.

you said "thats just mindbogglingly narrow minded"

No, whats narrow minded is people like you arguing the KDA idea when clearly, that is not the point, the point is to base the LP won or lost on some kind of metric. KDA was just a god damn example.

vampirekid131 votes

{quoted}

Sigh.

Are you...serious right now?

Just forget the KDA.

You guys are acting like there is no way this could be fined tuned to take into account things such:

For tanks: damage taken in relations to deaths. High damage taken, low deaths means you did well as a tank support for example.

Low kill Top laner who destroys 4 turrets and 2 inhibs by himself.

Etc etc.

You guys are too busy getting wrapped up in criticizing the specific thing I said, when the point is to adjust LP won or lost based on some kind of performance metric.

It will result in better game play because players will be less likely to just throw in the towel when things are going bad. I can't believe this is even being debated.

you said "thats just mindbogglingly narrow minded"

No, whats narrow minded is people like you arguing the KDA idea when clearly, that is not the point, the point is to base the LP won or lost on some kind of metric. KDA was just a god damn example.

the point is when you´re part of a team, and the team loses, its equally everyones fault.

you all failed to work together and get a win.

theres no "i failed less hard than the others" there is just i failed. and thats the bottom line.

you didnt lose a game because of 1 person, you lost the game because YOU FAILED to adapt to the strenghts and weaknesses of that 1 person. and thats equally your fault as it is all your teammates faults.

DarkinPrime1 votes

Hmm except in real sports teams, where a great player, say junior seau, playing for the shitty charger back in the day, is still recognized for being awesome despite his team always losing.

So, kid, there is no "bottom line". Take a step back from the riot kool aid youve been choking down and come back to reality.

vampirekid131 votes

{quoted}

Hmm except in real sports teams, where a great player, say junior seau, playing for the shitty charger back in the day, is still recognized for being awesome despite his team always losing.

So, kid, there is no "bottom line". Take a step back from the riot kool aid youve been choking down and come back to reality.

yes, and in league, a great player, playing for a bad team still earns an individual grade (like an S, and gets rewarded for being good) anyway, every time you lose, its your fault. because you failed to make your team be better than the enemy team.

Surr20plz1 votes

Marines are crying about pixels on the internet now?

We need to screen applicants better.

DarkinPrime1 votes

Haha, wow good one. Look pal, this is my escape. I like playing league when I have free time. Save your judgement. No one cares about what you think.

Surr20plz1 votes

{quoted}

Haha, wow good one. Look pal, this is my escape. I like playing league when I have free time. Save your judgement. No one cares about what you think.

If you feel the need to add "And I served in _______ " when making posts about goblins and dragons you cheapen the value of that.

Save dropping that for things that actually matter guy or else no one will care what you think either.

DarkinPrime1 votes

It was to provide context, even though Marc Merrill will never read the post. But if he did I want him to know that this is what people say. Marc grew up with my friend, and the Marines is where I met him. The fact that you just had to find something to try to attack me about says more about you than it does about me. Perhaps you are upset, deep down inside, that you never sacked up and served.

LU Vanilla Rice 1 votes

This season's been pretty interesting in my opinion. Not bad, not good, just interesting.

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