Dealing with player toxicity

Antisora·1/10/2015, 6:57:30 PM·1 votes·277 views

I've noticed a significant lack of toxicity in Heroes of the Storm compared to League of Legends and it made me think about ideas for helping prevent toxic players in League. Overall I think a big part of the issue is the emotional investment players have in winning in league. Here are my ideas to help remedy this:

  1. Change First Win of the Day bonus. Many players become invested in that first win of the day, sometimes because they can only play one or two games that day. This makes them emotionally invested in the win, and brings out bad emotions when they start losing. Change this to a first GAME of the day bonus. Perhaps make it smaller if you want to, but remove the emotional 'need' to win.
  2. Make IP/XP for winning and losing very similar. There's about a 10% difference for gaining XP in heroes for a win vs. a loss. It gets less the longer the game is played. This reduces any anger caused by a perceived 'lack' of progression.
  3. Remove all-chat. This has been suggested before and it goes against Riot's policy of letting players regulate themselves. But I think players have shown their inability to consistently use all-chat for positively. It almost always turns into emotional slug-fests. Just get rid of it.
  4. Give smaller but more regular rewards for good behavior. Getting a mystery skin was AWESOME (thank you!) but one nice reward every YEAR isn't much of a deterrent. After a few months toxic players rationalize that it's over a year away and it no longer serves as positive reinforcement. Something like 1-4 double Xp bonuses for each month you aren't toxic. Very small, almost negligible, but it would provide a consistent reason to remain positive. Perhaps the bonus could start at 1, then increase over the course of the year for consecutive months without being toxic.

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