5 Elements Missing In League (leading to toxicity)

(5min read) You don’t have to play League for very long against other human beings to see the bile in the human soul. Not only do people simply give up when they die three times in lane, there are some people who completely lose their minds when you make a few mistakes or have a bad game.

At first I chalked it up to playing with young, immature teenagers who just don’t have the perspective to relax a bit.

But after thinking about it further here are 5 elements missing in league, and why I think League of Legends can be so toxic:

1. There are no moments to actually congratulate your team well.

Playing football, soccer, hockey, basketball, etc. when your team scores there is a brief moment where the game resets and teammates get to congratulate or encourage one another. Even in basketball, it’s brief, but there is a moment to run back down the court to defend and get a little fist bump in there. In soccer, the clock is always running but after a goal there is a referee who restarts the game and your team has a chance to celebrate.

In League, you get a kill, you keep pushing forward. You take on objective, you run away as fast as possible to avoid a Rengar cleanup. There are simply no good times to take a few good seconds enjoy your small victories.

2. There is no half time.

All other sports have timeouts or half time where the team takes a break, regroups, gets their head back in the game, analyzes the first half, etc.

In League there are no time outs or anything to stop the clock. The best opportunity you have to get your head back in the game is when the screen darkens after you die. While you might argue that is some time to get your head back on straight, I would argue that it is different than a time out or end of a quarter where the whole team can regroup. Dying in league is like going into the penalty box in hockey. You’re all alone unless there was a team fight and all you can think about is how your sup didn’t peel and how your team doesn’t have a tank. (Hypothetically because that never happens to me😉 )

3. There is no injury.**

One thing about playing other sports like basketball or soccer is there are little injuries that inspire compassion. Someone jams their finger from a stiff pass or a rolls their ankle in a small divot and suddenly 80% of both teams have some compassion for that person, calls time out, or kicks the ball out of play for them to walk it off.

In League the only things that can be hurt is pride and confidence, both of which are unseen. When it comes to pride, not many people care if your pride is injured, and confidence injures only the team you are playing for. In fact, I’ll admit, I want the other team’s ADC to lack confidence so I can farm like a boss without worrying about them poking me. Without any real injuries to inspire compassion, there is little compassion to be found anywhere in Summoner’s rift.

4. There are no faces.

Playing pick up soccer with a bunch of people from the community means you’re playing with high school kids in mint condition and 38-year-old dads who are huffin’ it down the field. Generally when you’re playing like that, you give the dad’s some space and you don’t intend to humiliate them for humiliation’s sake.

I’ve played league with guys my age and one I know is older than 50. Because there are no faces to the people behind the champions being played, there is generally no respect given when he makes mistakes. I think if league had something like the LCS where the team faces were in the bottom left corner via webcam there might be a little more respect given from younger to older players and even between genders.

5. There are no coaches.

There is no ‘authority’ that is above the players that can mitigate tense situations. For example, when a summoner just won’t stop running their team chat about feeding or mistakes that have been made, there is no coach to step in and tell them to stop. There is no coach to remind them that they’re SilverIV. There is no coach to remind them that it’s not helping the team. While other teammates could do this it’s not the same as an authority figure who has the power to actually make changes to the team. (i.e. sub out the feeder to regain confidence or even sub out the troll because it’s ruining team chemistry.)

2 Ideas

Below are some ideas of how to add these stoppages in without losing too much of the feel and intensity of League as well as a substitute idea. These would be significant changes to the game but could be helpful for the atmosphere of League. The trolls and the tilts seem to be on every rift whether norms or ranked. It’s interesting to me that they seem to be few and far between when playing some pickup soccer and even competitive soccer. (It probably helps that yellows and reds are given during a game… not after!)

1. “Reset” after 3 turrets are destroyed. Again for the second 3 turrets. After that it’s a fight to the finish.

In terms of periods, timeouts, or a break in the action. I wonder what it would look like to have a 90 second “reset” where everyone is sent back to the fountain, all sums and cool-downs reset, etc. after 3 turrets are destroyed. It may be 2-1 turrets or 3-0 but as soon as 3 are down everyone is frozen and forced to B. When 3 more go down (5-1, 3-3, 2-4, etc.) the same thing happens. After that it’s a fight to the finish. The reason I chose this is because these are all turrets outside of base even if you go 6-0.

You can still leave the surrender at 20 but I wonder if cooler heads would regroup, talk about how to team-fight better, who to focus etc., over ff.

Most people will hate this… I don’t even know if I like it… but it’s just an idea for breaking down the game into periods/halves/quarters. Maybe it would be better to do just one stop at 6 turrets? This is probably crazy...

2. Each team can have a ‘summoner sub’ on the sidelines (but are not required to have one).

Nobody likes sitting on the sidelines waiting for someone to get tired so they can go in. But having a sub in league who is able to farm better under tower early with Veigar but you want them rocking a tanky engage late game would be really interesting. It is important to note that the sub is only a summoner change NOT a champion change.

UPDATE: **A friend of mine recently mentioned he does have compassion for people who disconnect… I could see DC’s as an “injury” where some people have compassion, but in my experience, most people stomp the crap out of DC’s, kicking the injured player while they are down.