"Only a Tiny Minority of Players Are Toxic"

I've read this statement before, and while I obviously don't know what the community is like on every server, I'm going to talk about at least a portion of it that I've interacted with.

First off, though, just for clarification: Why is this in Gameplay & Balance? Well, because this is an issue that does affect gameplay, and quite heavily at that. It is a core part of most if not all players' experience.

So, let's start with today. I've played at least four games so far, and in every one of them when I didn't do well, I was repeatedly flamed and insulted by at least two players on the team. And if it's not my ally team flaming me, it's the enemy team abusing all-chat by either being unsportsmanlike and thinking they are funny by saying things like "ez" and "nice flash" or flaming and hurling insults like "retarded" and "noob." It happens so often that I've lost count of how many games this has happened in. It's not fun when my team apparently focuses more on typing and flaming than playing the game itself and commenting on every single mistake I make. Yes, people sometimes have bad games. So what? Nobody is perfect, and it's not like my performance is going to improve if someone flames me.

And then there are the tens of games I've played in the last few months. In a lot of them, whenever I ganked a lane and it didn't work out/go well, I got flamed or received passive-aggressive comments like "nice gank," "nice help," "thx for help," etc.—and sometimes players spam these comments within a few minutes. That's not even the worst of it; sometimes I was raged at for running away from obviously lost team fights after at least two or three people had died. One of the most common occurrences is that two people, usually squishies, go into a team fight before the tanks even have a chance to engage, get blown up in a few seconds, and blame the rest of the team for running away from the fight. I've been on the receiving end of comments like "useless kassa report," "kassa only ks," and "useless tard," just for a few examples.

On another particularly... "remarkable" occasion, I mentioned that I was playing with my cousin, and the Vayne on our team said, "And you both have cancer, right?" This and the above are just a tiny sample of the things I've seen during my experience with League; they're not even the worst I've seen.

And no, "just mute them" is not an answer. Even if I do mute someone, it doesn't make their comments any less demoralizing or toxic. When people flame so much in a game, I just don't enjoy it anymore even if we end up winning it. I usually try not to respond and just report the offenders after the game, but the toxicity is really taking a lot of the fun out of this game for me. I've taken breaks before because of it, and it's always the same every time I come back.

Riot, I really enjoy League. Actually, I enjoy it so much that I've put up with the toxicity of this community for so long, but I can't help but wonder whether the toxicity only comes from a "tiny minority" of the community when I've run into so many ragers and toxic players in so many of my games. Something has to be done about this. Bring back the tribunal. Make the tribunal compliment the current system or vice versa. Promote players with a clean history to become in-game moderators so that they can spot toxic behavior in real time and deal with it accordingly. Whatever you do, leaving the community like this is certainly not the solution. It is making the League experience far less enjoyable for many of us who just want to play without fighting or flaming and commenting on every single mistake other players make or using all-chat to mock our opponents.

/(constructive) rant.