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@Riot, why does everyone hate everyone in this game?

Tentakill Myself··17 votes·3,912 views

Every single match I play, there is always a person who is toxic to the point of absurdity. All I have to ask is why. What is the purpose you see in breaking another person down. Is it to make yourself feel better about losing a game? Because it does nothing to help. All it does is hurt people. Heres a true story that I feel like I need to share with the League of Legends community.

One of my best friends started playing League last year, and he has changed a whole lot ever since he started playing. Me and him used to play MC and shit like that and just chill constantly, but when he started playing League, everything pretty much changed. He started acting snobby towards me and didn't want to talk to me anymore simply because I was bad at league. No matter how good I got at the game, he always found the need to point out my flaws and talk down to me because his rank was higher than mine. I always showed love and respect for him though, buying him more than $600 worth of RP through the course of the last year alone. We pretty much completely stopped talking because he has gotten so obsessed with League and being good at it.

I honestly have to ask what the point of being toxic is. It does nothing but diminish other people. May I remind you all there are people who play this game who have severe depression / anxiety? What would you say if somebody killed themselves over constantly being treated like shit over League? Would you say "He deserved it, he didn't gank mid and he was a fatass whore"? I think not.

Show respect to everyone. I really don't see what's so damned hard about it.

37 Comments

Sir ArmaMalum18 votes

See a core misconception you have is that toxic people 'think' about what they do. Most don't even give it a first thought let alone a second.

For example, I have a roommate I absolutely hate playing with. Well, actually, correction: I hate losing with. He's a swell guy and quite fun when we're winning and having a good time. The second the game goes sour though? Holy crap you should see him go. "X champ just killed me, Riot bullshit calling this a balanced game!" or "Holy fuck X teammate is mentally challenged, I seriously hope he chokes on his food tube later." I jump on him everytime he goes that far of course, but he just keeps going back to it a second later because he doesn't think about it. It just spews out like a never-ending fountain. I just thank god he keeps it out of chat.

I refuse to play with him now, but the point is very few people are toxic out of intentional malice towards anyone, they're just angry and type words. To them it's just venting, there isn't someone on the other end of the chat to them. Any response is just words as well. They simply don't consider the possibility that there is someone hurt on the other side, just a text generator to poke fun at and see what comes out. Hell I have a huge post from almost a year ago here on the topic. (warning, huge post)

Hercules Morse4 votes

Don't know why you were down-voted, this is true for many toxic people. I mean, the vast majority of it is not calculated or designed to cause a specific response, it comes from an emotional outburst. I know the feeling well, almost never with other people (in LoL or real life) but more often than I'd like with technology; I've broken a few devices (either for being unresponsive or because of some 'bullshit' game). And thats the thing, this kind of behavior is not at all rational or healthy and needs to stop, no matter what triggered it or in what way you react.

NoMonku2 votes

Ya, this is true. I used to be very angry and I feel I was a toxic player. I feel the main reason I never got in trouble, though, was because I always played with friends and exhibited this behavior to them. The thing, though, is I could see it and I didn't want vent/rage at them, so I stopped playing with them. As for the venting/raging for me, it was just anger at something that didn't really matter. It is me being irrational and lashing out in the chatbox to the people I couldn't see. For me, since I could actually see the people I did this to, my friends who I'd meet up with, made me stop, but it took awhile. Now I've learned to mellow out and relax and have more fun.

ssjx3squall2 votes

If you get hurt over what some stranger says in an online game you have larger issues than raging in lol

Drakzul the Dark17 votes

Because people like winning and they want fake internet rewards that have no value other than bragging rights with friends.

DJ Di04 votes

The mute button is your friend.

GaleWinUnleashed8 votes

Still doesn't help, though. By the time you see that you should mute someone, the damage is done.

DrNova1 votes

Not really. Just have a stricter policy. Soon as someone says something bad, kindly ask them to stop, if they wont they will come back with a snide remark, -mute-

GaleWinUnleashed8 votes

The point is that not everybody has thick skin and can just shrug off that first caustic remark. All it takes is one comment to ruin the entire game.

DrNova2 votes

If a single remark ruins the game for you, then you honestly shoudnt be playing multiplayer competetive games

ssjx3squall1 votes

I have been saying this from day one

OhOkYea4 votes

Their lives are sad and the only way they know how to make themselves feel better is to try to make other people sad.

ThePlasticSpork4 votes

If in every match you played there is always 1 toxic person, that implies that for every match you play, there are at least 3 other nontoxic people, since you can't tell what's going on in the enemy team unless they're waging one of those all chat wars on eachother. That's actually a pretty good ratio, but nobody ever pays attention to those guys that just play the game and don't use the chat for much.

The reality is that games like League are intrinsically frustrating. It's inherently more difficult to win in MOBAs on your own merits than it is in just about every other genre of game - your performance is so intrinsically tied to the skill of your 4 other teammates that it often leaves you helpless when they perform poorly. It's not difficult to understand why League is so rage inducing, and I won't believe anyone for a second that says that they have never EVER thought something along the lines of "Holy shit why is x teammate so goddamn stupid". Some people don't have the self-control to not voice those opinions in the chat, which is where most of the difference comes in.

I swear several of my games leave me frothing in rage at my teammates - I just don't actually type any of those feelings out and keep them to myself. That doesn't mean I don't experience those feelings though, so toxicity in League is honestly fairly easy to understand.

DestructoDave3 votes

This game breeds more toxicity than most. As someone who has ran the gamut of online games over the years, nothing causes toxicity like MOBAs. Just the nature of the game, how it plays out, etc, just causes toxicity, even in people who are not toxic in other games.

I know I can play FPS/RTS games all day until the sun comes up, with all kinds of trolls/poor teams/etc and never get angry. Sometimes, 1 game in on League, or Dota back in the day, and the fumes are pouring out of me.

This is just a toxic genre. Online games in general allow you to vent more than IRL, but none of them compares to MOBAs, and for a variety of reasons:

The game is simple. It's simple enough, that you can watch challenger tier players, and actually think you can play at that level, compared to watching a guy never miss a shot in quake and realize instantly that you will never be that good.

Its easy to blame other people. You can logically blame almost everyone else for your mistakes. Even if you died 1v1 in lane, you can logically draw it back to that one time the jungler showed up or didn't show up in your lane, or you get ganked at red and can logically draw it back to mid not warding, whatever. Unlike, say quake or CS, when you miss a shot and KNOW YOU MISSED. I mean, there isn't a single person you can blame for you missing that shot but yourself. You get instant, tactile feedback that you made a mistake, compared to the skewed instances in league.

You are locked into a game for 20 minutes at least, if you are lucky. So you got that guy playing first time teemo jungle in ranked. You are stuck with that for 20 minutes of your life at least. Oh hes duo? You are stuck with that for 45 minutes as they spam stop surrenders. This sort of situation just breeds toxicity.

You cannot solo carry like you can in other games. Like I said before, if you are good at CS, it doesnt matter if 2-3 of your teammates got shot in the first 10 seconds of the match. You, and your skills, can overcome that. Sometimes in ranked, when your teammates feed 10 kills before you even hit lvl 6, its incredibly hard to ever come back unless you just drastically out-skill them like some pro-smurf. For the most part, as much as people like to talk about solo carrying, this is a team game and your team failing can directly impact your enjoyment of the game. No matter how farmed you are, the enemy could be more farmed just because of that feeder. Where you are never put at that disadvantage in other games. You might be outnumbered, but you still have a chance. Etc.

There are more and more and more reasons as to why league is a toxic game, but these are some of the key ones. It just breeds more toxicity than other games by default. All of them compound into a giant mess. The benefit of other games, is if you dont want to play that other game, you can just leave. You aren't stuck in a bad game. You are never at a point where the game FEELS as bad as a bad league game, either, etc.

Anyways, its just a toxic game.

A Hug2 votes

If they're being toxic, there's not much to do besides mute and report them. It's League, you're bound to come across toxic players sometimes, if not most of the time.

But then when you meet a friendly, respectable player it's like :D

shark music2 votes

I mute first, and ask questions never. And I don't just mute once people are rude. I act friendly and chatty in the lobby. If people are friendly back, great, everything is cool. If I get silence in the lobby, I mute everyone the minute the game starts. Or just turn off chat completely. (You can hit enter to type, then grab the border of the chat box and move it completely off screen. It will bring itself back to normal every match, don't worry you won't lose it.) And you might say, "That's crazy, you can't just mute everyone who doesn't say hello."

But I can. If you walked into my house to play a game with me, and refused to even say hello, I would ask you to leave. I hold everyone I game with to the exact same standards I'd hold them to if they were setting up a game of Runequest in my living room. And the truth is, 99% of those anti-social people will only start talking to fuss about something. Assume people who are actively being friendly are friendly, and assume everyone else is not. It's basically true. I've found LoL so much more enjoyable since I installed these rules in my own play style.

Also, try playing at night, if possible. Like, late night, not 8pm. The vast majority of toxic players are little kids. There's no such thing as children who play video games in 2015; there are only children being raised by video games. Of course they're terrible human beings who throw tantrums like clockwork. By midnight they are gone, and the far more relaxed night shift is in place. I actually started playing LoL late night, and thought, geez, I wonder how this game became synonymous with online gaming's toxicity problem. Then I played during the day (daycare hours, as I now call them), and it was like guided tour of Lord of the Flies.

I also think Riot exacerbates these problems. A game about taking down towers and destroying a nexus has a scoreboard that has nothing to do with its own game play, and was lifted straight out of team deathmatch in CoD. You tell people they're a team, but only score them on the most individual of statistics, and then wonder why so many players approach the game from a POV of utter self involvement.

Solaxo2 votes

Because this game is designed in such way that it makes you hate other people, it pisses you off. Snowballing, iritating mechanics, buggy client, afkers, long games etc...

Eedat2 votes

Every day there is a person that you play with that is extremely toxic, yet the other 8 people in the game who aren't being mean get ignored

Narasimha2 votes

It really depends on each person. For example, I like to think of myself as a decent person. I like to make jokes. I like to banter with my opponent. I'll help out my teammates if I can. But I have the problem of being VERY reactive. If someone fires at me, chances are, I'll fire back without thinking. Is that an issue? Yeah, I'm far from perfect. But does that make me intrinsically toxic? I certainly hope not.

And there are certainly people who enjoy raging and ranting. It lets them get it out of their system. And often times, they're doing it as a defense mechanism, to try and make someone feel worse than they do. This in turn makes the target more likely to act the same way, causing an infinite loop. And sadly, thats just human nature. Humans are one of the few species that will fight for no reason at all. That's just who we are.

Jamaree1 votes

It isn't that Riot is trying to break him, it is just the nature of online multiplayer games. People aren't willing to blame themselves and would much rather blame others to avoid blame and thus causes rage. Nothing anyone can really do except look at one's self or ask for help when it comes to his story.

Tentakill Myself2 votes

{quoted}

It isn't that Riot is trying to break him, it is just the nature of online multiplayer games. People aren't willing to blame themselves and would much rather blame others to avoid blame and thus causes rage. Nothing anyone can really do except look at one's self or ask for help when it comes to his story.

I wasn't saying Riot was trying to break him, I'm asking why the nature of League makes literally everyone toxic and absurd.

Jamaree1 votes

It isn't just this game, any multiplayer game will do this, different is how long this one last. If your friend put in as much time and enjoyment into another game, his nature would change him into that kind of person.

Hercules Morse1 votes

I think a great deal of it comes from investment. You have to put a lot into this game, just to learn the basics in the first place, then to earn your champions and runes and such. Obviously money gets involved for many people. So it matters a great deal to many people, even before ego or competitiveness comes into play.

The nature of the game doesn't help, either. In LoL, a weaker player doesn't just put your team at a disadvantage, they often give the enemy a quantifiable advantage (in gold/exp) and in a personal sense, this simply isn't fair. Especially since the time you can least work around a weaker player is during lane, when you've got your own lane to deal with, this sense of 'we're losing and its entirely not my fault' is just too much for many players.

Then, since you've likely never played with the rest of your team before, you have no warning of a weaker player, and since its an online game limited to text communication, theres no inherent sense of camaraderie and very little reason to try to create any.

Combine all of that with the fact that, well, there will always be assholes. Some people have giant egos, some are overly competitive, many let their emotions and desires overcome them. The game is far too big for there to be none.

Anti-social behavior is not limited to online games, but since they tend to group up in real life its easier to form your own groups to avoid them. Again, in LoL you don't know who you're playing with, so there is nothing you can do to avoid a toxic player entirely. Riot does what they can, Lyte has some interesting ideas (even if some seem to be misguided) but a system that does not give false positives will always have enough room for some to slip through... and they're not even at that point yet.

DoomBot Shelby1 votes

They don't learn enough from our dear ol' Sp4zie in EUW.

Knight SoIaire 1 votes

BECAUSE I HATE YOUUUUUUU

Zaccea1 votes

Psychology has a lot to do with it... People are wired to really enjoy success, so losing is like a punishment. People are very selfish and tend to forget they are playing with other real live people. It's easy for them to type whatever they want and degrade their teammates (even their enemies) when it causes them no harm. It's a very bad combination and makes for some pretty bad toxicity.

I personally don't understand it either. You insult your team because you're going to lose. So... How does insulting your team increase your likelihood of winning?? It doesn't. If anything it causes them to tilt. In extreme cases your allies will stop playing the game at hand to begin arguing. Thus you've guaranteed the loss.

A Squid Now1 votes

It allows people's true, awful (and usually ignorant) nature to show through.

Chaotic Reks1 votes

screw your friend, he's not your friend. block him and move on

iMaB3AST1 votes

Riot needs to do more to help kelp LoL not toxic. And punish the people who are trolling not the people who doesnt want to play with the troll (aka dodging for a better game)

Woook3r1 votes

{quoted}

Every single match I play, there is always a person who is toxic to the point of absurdity. All I have to ask is why. What is the purpose you see in breaking another person down. Is it to make yourself feel better about losing a game? Because it does nothing to help. All it does is hurt people. Heres a true story that I feel like I need to share with the League of Legends community.

One of my best friends started playing League last year, and he has changed a whole lot ever since he started playing. Me and him used to play MC and shit like that and just chill constantly, but when he started playing League, everything pretty much changed. He started acting snobby towards me and didn't want to talk to me anymore simply because I was bad at league. No matter how good I got at the game, he always found the need to point out my flaws and talk down to me because his rank was higher than mine. I always showed love and respect for him though, buying him more than $600 worth of RP through the course of the last year alone. We pretty much completely stopped talking because he has gotten so obsessed with League and being good at it.

I honestly have to ask what the point of being toxic is. It does nothing but diminish other people. May I remind you all there are people who play this game who have severe depression / anxiety? What would you say if somebody killed themselves over constantly being treated like shit over League? Would you say "He deserved it, he didn't gank mid and he was a fatass whore"? I think not.

Show respect to everyone. I really don't see what's so damned hard about it.

Clearly, its because one person alone has the power to make a game fall apart for their team. If we werent punished so hard for our teammates mistakes it wouldnt be the same.

Meep Man1 votes

because his rank was higher than mine

A big point in why they are toxic. Classic school bully syndrome. They think themselves as better so when they see a weakness, they pick on it.

People also dont see the value of losing since it allows you to improve your game.

xLordZantx1 votes

I know this is a irrelevant question to the real issue,but may I ask what is/was your friend's rank,did you play ranked or normals together etc?I only ask because I wonder what rank he had to be from playing last year to now to have perception that the game was worth throwing away a friendship.

Lost R1 votes

It's the competitiveness and social pressure to get better that causes people to get toxic. I tend to get angry now and then, but the higher passion for me above League is my storywriting and artwork. It prevents me from getting too angry, even when I go in swinging for the fences.

ssjx3squall1 votes

to be honest i hate everyone in the game. i couldn't possibly care less about what they have to say, its their in game behavior. ignoring pings, running in 1v5, trying new champions in ranked. Sometimes when you call someone a moron you are not raging, you are making a statement of fact. Far too much attention is payed to the chat logs and not enough to the in game behavior of people. By far the most annoying thing is playing with people who brag about being drunk or high in ranked. screw them. If i could i would remove my chat completely. Riot can take my ability to say anything away and i wouldn't care. I like the game but despise the community.

DynamicEntrance1 votes

So, This is kind of late but who buys a friend 600$ in RP. I have many close friends who play the game and i have only gotten one of my buds a 10$ RP card lol.

ThePinkTickle1 votes

here is why, and i played it before these pretentious turds, they spend thier life on it. you cannot ever DC or leave or it kills the lil special persons day, hence why ghostcrawler who ruined wow is here, the cry babies always win. liberals always win. right is wrong, you must bow to caring people, your life gets to suck so things run smooth for them, just play something you despise so they do not whine, you got a champ you don't like no roll, take it so they don't cry too much) bout right ghostcrawler, i see you have killed another game full of cries, you are a locust, and the weak cheer you on. welcome to the end LoL, it will fall like all of em before it, bacause of YOU, cry all of you, it is ok ghost bots will make em all leave, great idea like killing BG's....locust

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