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League community needs some serious buffs.

Tentakill Myself··42 votes·2,641 views

I feel like this needs to be addressed more than Zed or Lee Sin right now on the boards.

The community has gotten almost unbearably toxic over the last year. I started playing last year around the time Vel'Koz came out, and I've seen the community go from being mostly friendly to just being a game to play if you want to get shit talked. I played 4 games last night, and every single game at least 1 person was completely unwilling to cooperate with the team and we ended up losing because of it. Not to mention the enemy team, who were flat out obnoxious whenever they got a kill (They were playing Udyr and Zed, surprise surprise).

I don't mean to be rude, but it's time someone told Riot how much of a joke their chat restriction is. You have to be reported around 10 times in different games within very small periods of time to get a chat restriction for 5 GAMES. That is literally NOTHING. I'm well aware of "welcome to the internet" but sometimes people take it too far. If a member of your team tells you to drink bleach and die over a bad play, that deserves a pretty harsh ban. There are some people that play this game and are struggling with depression and anxiety and stuff like that, and people will seriously consider suicide if people are repeatedly harsh to them online as well as in real life. Keep in mind that about 75% of players don't even bother reporting people, because they know it will do nothing.

Riot, simply put, your community needs to know that you're serious about these things. You can't keep letting them get away with telling people "GG EZ U SUCK KID KILL URSELF". They have to realize they are talking to actual humans who have actual feelings, and they can't badger a teammate to no end over a mistake. If people give their team positive reinforcement and help them, I guarantee they will be winning a ton more games. You can't keep treating people like shit because they lost you an online match in an online game.

EDIT: I was just in a game with a really toxic nocturne and at the end of the game the entire team was badgering me for making a bad decision. I feel this needs to be immediately addressed by Riot, as 2 players told me to kill myself. I have screenshots of one of them, since it was at the end of the game.

I've made a support ticket, and if the player hasn't received any sort of disciplinary action for these remarks, that just proves how Riot doesn't give a shit about cyber bullying.

31 Comments

Sailor Mint10 votes

If someone crosses the line (i.e.: death threats), you can manually report them by creating a support ticket.

Tentakill Myself7 votes

[{quoted}](name=Devi Freak Mint,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=FFgfTJt6,comment-id=0003,timestamp=2015-02-08T16:52:42.471+0000)

If someone crosses the line (i.e.: death threats), you can manually report them by creating a support ticket.

Someone once threatened to ddos me, they found my skype, resolved my IP and hit me offline during my following 3 or 4 games. I sent a support ticket to riot about that with screenshots and proof, asking to be unbanned or at least have the other player banned for ddosing me. The response I got was an automated response saying how riot cannot unban an account and leaverbuster bans are final. Then, someone responded 2 months later to the ticket saying the ddosings were "under investigation". The player is still not banned today.

TL;DR - Support Tickets do nothing.

NinjaToad999 votes

You see, when tribunal got taken down for a re-vamp a lot of people figured nothing could touch them now. So I feel until it's new and back up people will keep doing this. Of course before it was taken down there was still people who thought it did nothing and therefor didn't care anyways.

Rei Tenshi6 votes

The problem is Riot isn't showing any initiative or concern about this.

They'll just say "Report him and the system will handle the rest".

That's it. No confirmation if the offender was banned or whatever. No followups, etc.

And of course, they won't just ban or perma-ban instantly, they might lose out on some RP purchases even if these offenders are massive assholes.

Kingsgrave6 votes

Been playing since Sejuani.

The community has always been like this. The only reason it appears to have gotten worse to you is because its harder to remember the bad from the past and easier to notice the bad in the present.

Tal99221 votes

Actually, I think it's because he doesn't realize that as a new player playing against bots, he was teamed up with players who were also new, as opposed to now when he's lvl 30 and playing ranked, where people are taking things much more seriously.

Nameless Voice3 votes

Sometimes, when I see a particularly toxic player, I check their profile after the game and check their honour score. Often, these players have a lot of honour points, about what I'd expect from a long-time neutral-to-positive player.

Bear in mind that honour is reset to zero if the player is banned. This means that the most toxic players I encounter have rarely been punished.

Back when The Tribunal was still running (around a year ago), I started keeping track of the most toxic players that I saw in my games, and how long it took for them to get banned based on how long it took for their honour to reset to zero. I would check every few days and see if their honours had been reset yet. I found that the average ban time (between when I encountered the toxic player and when they were banned) was 44 days, and also that a large portion (~63%) never got banned at all.

To be honest, I feel that it's got a slight bit letter now, but that's because it's early in the ranked season. The last few weeks of S4 were a true nightmare.

Scramrail3 votes

The biggest problem with this community and its toxicity is just how absurd it is. I mean, if you've got a guy on your team just feeding and straight up not caring about it and being a general troll, its perfect reasonable to be angry at said person. But most of the time people just laugh at these people and troll them right back, asking everyone to report them at the end of the game and whatnot.

No, most of the time when people turn into mega huge rage monsters is when someone is just legitimately having a bad game. Ive seen people say in team chat in a game that theyre just completely getting shut down and slaughtered in lane, and one of their team members will just completely rail into them with insults and whatnot. Like, the person is being sincere about it and is having a bad game, atleast theyre still trying, you could try being a little more encouraging.

For me that's the crux of the problem. Everyone just expects that everyone else should be on their level and when theyre not they just fly into a rage. Its the dumbest thing ive ever seen. Hell, people will even do that if someone just makes one mistake.

I had a game recently where I was playing support Morg with an Ashe adc against an velkoz/draven lane, and I explained to my teammates that I was getting matched up with people way above my skill level all day (this match was no different, its one of the main reasons I asked to support). But we actually did really well in lane and even got Ashe first blood and wound up winning lane.

But one time, Ashe had backed after we just killed Vel, and Draven was pushing to our tower. I was doing what I could to stop the push but im a support morg, I cant do anything to stop a draven even with our lead. So Ashe pings "on the way", which I understand to mean she is coming back to lane, so I continue my attempts to stop Draven by trying to land a q/w combo, only for him to juke to the side. Next thing I know an Ashe ult comes flying by, missing draven, and Ashe just flies off the handle about how I need to stop "pushing him away" (I had been landing most of my bindings actually) and tells me to just roam around so she can farm. So I run off, warding around the map and helping people out in other lanes until I eventually get caught by Vel and the other team and die, causing a small skirmish to break out which we lose. At this point Ashe just says "gg" in all chat and immediately initiates a surrender vote.

I mean really, what the hell is wrong with that player? We were WINNING until the arrow missed Draven. And even if it hit Draven what was I, as a 0 AP items support Morg suppose to do? Obviously I cant kill the guy, so what was the point? After the game was over, the Ashe tells me not to pick support if I don't know what im doing. Whats wrong with people like this? Do they have some kind of mental condition or something that just makes them prone to completely unreasonable fits of rage? Im sure our loss had to do with that missed ult and not the fact that she picked ashe into an enemy team that had a Yasuo/Jax/Lee, definitely not.

TL;DR: People get way more butthurt about people that are still trying to learn the game than any human being should. Is it my fault ritos matchmaking puts me in games full of plats/diamonds when im a silver level player? No. But im doing my best and in some cases doing really well, and I even went to the lengths to explain the situation to you before the game even started! You could have dodged if you wanted to but you didn't!

Not everyone is Faker. Everyone sucked at one point. Youre not special nor are you the best, so people need to stop acting like theyre superior.

disregardable2 votes

I was under the impression things like that got treated more seriously than normal toxicity.

RogueWill2 votes

My friend what i have learned is that silence is powerful. Unless I'm playing with my friends I'm normally quiet, I don;t get bashed now.

JaguarKisses2 votes

I have actually been playing this game since Quinn came out and when i started playing I didn't meet a person that I didn't like. Now when I play it is all nothing but DIRTBAGS, JERKS, ASSHOLES, and many other different names. To be honest I am so sick of all the toxic players that if I didn't have a lot of money in this account I would just up and leave.

The fact that when people want to play games like this they used to be nice. I have to say that I want to play ranked but what is the point if you are only going to play with people that should have been perma banned a long time ago. This isn't right. The fact that people don't have common sense or any sort of decent things to say is just totally disturbing. I as a parent and a player will not allow my child to play these games because of the way that people talk or treat others.

I have not only dealt with toxic players but I was sexually harassed in a game and nothing was done about it. Sexual Harassment of any kind is illegal in the US no matter the form and I know this because I have a friend that is a lawyer and the fact that nothing was done about this just makes me think that RIOT doesn't care about what is going on with the players.

I have to also say that when you are sitting there playing a game and someone starts to yell at you about themselves dying and they are top lane and your bottom lane also doesn't help with the toxic levels of a game. They sit there and blame others when they buy the wrong item or your playing a champ that they wanted to play.

People do this to get a rise because they are a Sociopath (Antisocial personality disorder is a type of chronic mental condition in which a person's ways of thinking, perceiving situations and relating to others are dysfunctional — and destructive. People with antisocial personality disorder typically have no regard for right and wrong and often disregard the rights, wishes and feelings of others.)

I know that Riot is busy with other things but to be completely honest something needs to be done about all the bad things that are happening in this game.

TheTyeGuy2 votes

I feel like the boards are more of a "Loud minority" than anything else. (The opposite of a silent majority ofc.)

That being said, it is a VERY loud minority, and it can feel like the ENTIRE community is this way, when it is a lot less than you would think.

TotalJerk1 votes

{quoted}

Keep in mind that about 75% of players don't even bother reporting people, because they know it will do nothing.

This is exactly the attitude that keeps these people from being banned. Anyway, Riot can hardly help it, League of Legends is by far the most popular PC game in the world, and an absolutely shitty userbase comes with the territory. Almost every game that brings in AAA users has this problem.

mvargus1 votes

We all wish the toxicity would go away. Sadly, its not something Riot can entirely control. Some of the people playing this game have real anger issues and unfortunately grew up in an environment where the things they say in LoL chat was something they were subjected to constantly in real life.

It's the curse of the internet. due to the appearance of anonymity and the fact that you don't personally know the people who you are chatting with, some people just don't see the other parties as "people" and will freely insult them and vent all of the anger and angst they have in their hearts.

And while your post is insightful, as are the hundreds of others I've seen from people begging for the toxicity to stop, the solution has to come from outside LoL. The people being toxic need to change themselves. For Riot and LoL the only solution would be to pull out the banhammer and there are some serious $$ considerations regarding that which make any company dealing with online games very reluctant to use that tool liberally.

A KissLike Smile2 votes

{quoted}

For Riot and LoL the only solution would be to pull out the banhammer and there are some serious $$ considerations regarding that which make any company dealing with online games very reluctant to use that tool liberally.

It is a double edged sword really.

I wonder how many players Riot has lost due to the infamously toxic community? I wonder how many potential players Riot has lost due to the infamously toxic community?

I only started playing LOL mid last year and very nearly avoided doing so because despite knowing nobody who actually played it, I was already aware of how bad the community was. I only gave it a chance because it's Free to Play so I didn't have to invest money in it to try it out.

I am still playing, but I've almost quit several times because people make the game so unpleasant to play at times. It's not that I take it personally, it is that I don't need the hassle of dealing with such people during my leisure time. Games should not be stressful beyond the kind you get from things that are competitive (we all want to win after all, but that's no excuse for toxicity).

I love this game but I completely despise the community overall. I've been playing games for the better part of twenty years and have never come across a less pleasant gaming community. I have heard a lot from Riot about dealing with it, but the Tribunal has been down as long as I have been playing so I am yet to actually see anything done about it.

It Hertz When IP1 votes

Tribunal was the SHIT, I felt like the community was way more civilized when it was in place. Hence why I find it so annoying that after some much goddamn time Riot still hasn't reinstated it.

WastelandKittah1 votes

Tribunal was run by the same trolls you report everyday, they just spamed the absolve button.

Nameless Voice1 votes

I've had a lot of fun playing League over the years, but I must admit that I'm very hesitant to recommend the game to anyone else specifically because of this.

I'm not sure I want to subject my friends to the toxic environment that comes with the game.

Tentakill Myself1 votes

{quoted}

We all wish the toxicity would go away. Sadly, its not something Riot can entirely control. Some of the people playing this game have real anger issues and unfortunately grew up in an environment where the things they say in LoL chat was something they were subjected to constantly in real life.

It's the curse of the internet. due to the appearance of anonymity and the fact that you don't personally know the people who you are chatting with, some people just don't see the other parties as "people" and will freely insult them and vent all of the anger and angst they have in their hearts.

And while your post is insightful, as are the hundreds of others I've seen from people begging for the toxicity to stop, the solution has to come from outside LoL. The people being toxic need to change themselves. For Riot and LoL the only solution would be to pull out the banhammer and there are some serious $$ considerations regarding that which make any company dealing with online games very reluctant to use that tool liberally.

Riot CAN entirely control it actually. I used to moderate a Minecraft server (8x worse than the league community problems, nothing I will ever do again) and people were ALWAYS shit talking eachother in chat, no matter what time you were on. Rules were set in place which allotted harsh bans to those who were excessively toxic, threatened other users, homophobic chat, etc, and most of the toxicity wore out. Then bans were reset and the rules were modified so toxicity was allowed again. Such a poor experience, I would advise never running / staffing any MC server, especially factions.

Back on topic, all Riot needs to do to iron out the toxicity is make punishments much harsher. The current punishments for toxicity are basically like telling a child "don't do that again" without any actual punishment. Sooner or later, the child realizes he can manipulate his parents, just like how toxic players can manipulate riot's ban system.

qetzel1 votes

If you started playing with Vel'koz then there is a simple explanation. There has been little change. Newer players have not played for long enough to get toxic (mostly becaue they understand that they are bad). As you level up, people start thinking they are Gods, and so get upset at others for not being good enough. It really sucks.

I would say that the amount of toxicity has slightly decreased recently, although not by much.

AquariusGine1 votes

EU West has the nicest community in any English speaking server :)

NA and Eu East players have so many egocentric people. In EU East 1 out of 3 games will always have a problem person. By problem people, I'm referring to those people who need to taunt other players whenever they get a kill, and throw tantrums for their team's mistakes.

In EU west, it's more like 1 in every 7 games.

I guess it's the culture. I know for a fact that Eastern Europeans are quite prideful, especially Russians and Finns. I live here and not really enjoying my life.

I moved to EU West after people convinced me the community there is better, and boy were they right !!

Home Cooking1 votes

Everyone seems to have red buff

Ash Lockheart1 votes

{quoted}

I feel like this needs to be addressed more than Zed or Lee Sin right now on the boards.

The community has gotten almost unbearably toxic over the last year. I started playing last year around the time Vel'Koz came out, and I've seen the community go from being mostly friendly to just being a game to play if you want to get shit talked. I played 4 games last night, and every single game at least 1 person was completely unwilling to cooperate with the team and we ended up losing because of it. Not to mention the enemy team, who were flat out obnoxious whenever they got a kill (They were playing Udyr and Zed, surprise surprise).

I don't mean to be rude, but it's time someone told Riot how much of a joke their chat restriction is. You have to be reported around 10 times in different games within very small periods of time to get a chat restriction for 5 GAMES. That is literally NOTHING. I'm well aware of "welcome to the internet" but sometimes people take it too far. If a member of your team tells you to drink bleach and die over a bad play, that deserves a pretty harsh ban. There are some people that play this game and are struggling with depression and anxiety and stuff like that, and people will seriously consider suicide if people are repeatedly harsh to them online as well as in real life. Keep in mind that about 75% of players don't even bother reporting people, because they know it will do nothing.

Riot, simply put, your community needs to know that you're serious about these things. You can't keep letting them get away with telling people "GG EZ U SUCK KID KILL URSELF". They have to realize they are talking to actual humans who have actual feelings, and they can't badger a teammate to no end over a mistake. If people give their team positive reinforcement and help them, I guarantee they will be winning a ton more games. You can't keep treating people like shit because they lost you an online match in an online game.

I know how you feel. How ever in video games players are gods for the most part. I say this because most games players don't get banned for saying harsh things, or doing some harsh things. That's just the reality of video games. Its sad I know, but until some one makes a law for games and how player act. Players will always have the upper hand, and can be any thing they want. You can talk about death, some ones mom, or what ever for the most part.

Solaxo1 votes

I'm playing since 2010 and it's always been like that

Mr Slowdeath1 votes

Riot never should have given this community the word "toxic" to play with. The community is now attributing the word toxic to everything they dislike and can't deal with, especially whenever they don't feel like putting their guard up. It's now like telling mom what the other boy did, and mom is simply making that boy disappear. You don't solve the problem this way. You have to realize that "toxic" players are humans too, and the 'existence' of their accounts don't always deserve to be 'erased' because they offended you. Some of the community is what I would consider "true-toxic" and deserve the ban, because there are some people out there with terrible intentions that are out to get others, but with the ever-increasing volume of things you consider to be toxic, more toxicity is created. It'll just continue and continue until eventually everybody is "toxic" or has been "toxic" or by given evidence will become "toxic" some day.

You have to realize as well that each individual's feelings towards suicide, depression and anxiety etc are not things that are so easy to identify or relate to by every single other person. In fact, those people would probably be advised against putting themselves in this situation because of the multitude of unknown factors that could trigger the suicide, depression, anxiety etc. The specialists don't go and announce to the world that you need to be handled with care, and even if they did, there are some such as the "true-toxic" who would target the condition intentionally.

I sympathize, I do, and I try to never be that offensive to others, but the solution to everything isn't just "ban it". The community should forget the word "toxic", and realize that offense exists, especially in an arena for fantasy violence. You should first work on yourself and your capacity to withstand offense, because the world you enter when sitting behind your screen is, in part, offensive. Train yourself to enjoy that world without being "true-toxic" and that world should eventually open up to you, or avoid it altogether, whichever is wiser. You can't erase everything that opposes you without becoming that thing yourself. Have you seen the anime Death Note?

Champion Skin1 votes

It isn't that bad... I played ARAM yesterday and it went horrible... we lost the first tower and we didn't get anything done other then dying all over the place and picking up a few kills

But nobody raged or flamed... (but darn that start felt horrible) And then things started going a bit better and we were able to eventually push their inhibitor after some back and forth But then things started going worse again and Lux became kind of mad and negative but even then nobody was really flaming or raging much

And as far as I can see that is how things mostly are people don't flame or rage that much not those I am with anyways

http://matchhistory.euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/EUW1/1961204291/207589636?tab=overview

Kouga1 votes

I agree with what you're saying; like others have said, I think when the Tribunal first came out and was a "big thing", it did have an effect. I had quite a few friends that actually spent time going through the cases and making their 'judgments' but there are only so many dozen times you can go through that before people find it monotonous.

There are of course things that every player can do: try to remain positive, be nice to other players, etc. but its tough in an environment like this. I stopped playing Ranked a long time ago because I just found the atmosphere to be suffocating, whether I was winning or not. So I just play around in Normals because it seems to be more fun that way.

I also think the Honor system is not the most effective tool they could be using. It only acknowledges a percentage of the players and, like reporting, not everyone gives Honor in cases where it would be well earned or deserved to dish out.

I've come up with one such proposal on additional systems or mechanics that might encourage some better behavior. My idea was to include post-game "achievements", so to speak, that might serve to highlight the ways players contributed to the game other than the ADC's KDA. Things like securing objectives, damaging structures, or defending teammates should also be acknowledged in an effort to emphasize the 'team' nature of this game. If you're interesting in reading my idea please check it out Here

S H A Y C 01 votes

Man i dont know how many times ive heard someone suggest a teammate kill themselves or uninstall or both...If riot really cares, they may want to do something about it before some kid actually kills himself and the inevitable lawsuit destroys the company...just sayin.

slightly less impactfull, if everybody that has ever been told to uninstall actually did....think about it Riot

Klatn Yelox1 votes

You see, the problem is that the MOBA format is psychologically unhealthy. You decide to play a game right? So you sit a few minutes in matchmaking, before being set up with 4 complete strangers. You then need to figure out how to agree on a team comp (who goes where, which player picks an AP champ so you aren't all AD, who has to tank, etc.) Then you sit for 10 minutes in the loading screen, before getting into a game. In that game, the outcome is more focused on how your teammates perform than how you perform, but the result is that you die. This makes it feel like you aren't performing well either, and vastly inhibits short-term self-confidence. If you do win, this is replaced by an over-emphasized feeling of self-worth, but if you lose, you feel like you have to try again to see if you can perform better(Or get better teammates). This usually results in people re-entering matchmaking, with a low feeling of self-worth. That makes it very hard for people to respond positively, and is what causes the ragers and trolls. But even without the other people, playing this game (or ay MOBA) while psychologically unstable is simply an unhealthy endeavor.

Don't get me wrong, the community should be focusing on stopping the behaviors you mentioned. But the game would be only marginally more healthy to play.

Sinlaire1 votes

I played Aion Online a while back once and we had a kid that got accused of hacking several times.

He got upset about it to the point that he posted in the forums and said in game that he was going to kill himself.

wound up the mods has to ping his IP and alert the local authorities where he lived to make sure he didn't do it.

later on he got on and told everyone that the police went to his house looking for him because they heard he was gonna off himself and had mixed emotions about the community after they tried to save him even though they drove him to threaten suicide.

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