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Rioter talks about unwinnable League games | Hotline League Excerpt

woodvsmurph··2 votes·1,157 views

Wow. Just gotta say... I wish more people would think along this line.

So Blaustoise says gameplay and player behavior/mentality are connected - which is something I've kinda gotten flamed at for linking together on the boards. But here's a Riot employee saying they're linked... just like I argue. Different, but connected. So eat it.

Ok that aside... "soft inting". This is what bugs the crap out of me. It needs to be punished because it's just as toxic as someone flaming a teammate. If you are trying your hardest and one guy on your team decides it's gg ff@15 all because he didn't get enough ganks or he's behind or one bad play... it becomes multiplicatively harder to win that match - regardless of how well or poorly the rest of your team is doing. The I'm just gonna afk farm lane by myself not to splitpush and pressure the map but to check out of the game and not try. The guy who just runs at the nearest enemy he sees and chases halfway across the map only to end up 1v5 or baiting teammates into 3v5 and die; and then he repeats it.... over and over again. I've argued for over a year now how this crap needs to be punished and how THIS BEHAVIOR/MENTALITY is what creates much of the toxic chat behavior. Address the problem at its source. Nice to see someone at Riot actually understands this.

Now I'm not saying all toxic chat stuff should be tolerated either or that soft inting should get you immediately banned. I'm saying that if soft inting is properly addressed, people can get something as simple as - "You're recent in-game behavior of defeatism and unhelpfulness is not appreciated or acceptable for pvp (especially ranked) play. Further such behavior may result in a temporary ban from ranked or all pvp play.". Give them a chance to change, start with something as simple as a warning. If you start fixing this and properly addressing it, plenty of players who end up with way too much soft inting in their game start seeing that justice is being served. So the next time someone ints, then tries to lay the blame on them maybe they don't blow up and say something toxic in chat.... because they know the inting liar will be punished for both harassing them and for inting even if it is soft inting. There will still be toxic people, but the number will drastically drop AND the frequency I believe.

Furthermore, people need to wake up and smell the coffee about what's toxic. Some boards moderators don't even know the difference - I can testify to that first hand. Telling toplane "pls play safe, you are behind and can't win 1v1 right now" isn't toxic... but a massive amount of players somehow think it is. Because we've overly babied people who soft int and for other reasons. Somehow they think there is no difference between that non-toxic statement and another person saying "wtf dumbass noob - you died 1v1 again? Stay bronze you trashcan". Which IS toxic. Saying something painfully honest but focused on being helpful and informative is NOT toxic. Saying something rude and completely unhelpful/uninformative IS toxic. There IS a difference and people need to start realizing this.

I've gotten multiple JUSTIFIED punishments for toxicity. My behavior went beyond acceptable. It started out as merely honest and helpful but painful to hear chat. Like "we can't take that fight; just back off pls". But give multi-week streaks of being paired with soft inters who also low-key harass me, flame me, and/or blame me for THEIR mistakes all game long and I get fed up with it. You treat me like trash, I will eventually treat you like trash too... because that's what you are asking for with your play and behavior towards me and others. You treat me with respect or just silence, I won't treat you like trash even if you went 1/7/0 in lane... as long as you are TRYING and not soft inting I have no problem with you. So there's firsthand proof from a "toxic player" of just how much toxicity can be reduced if soft inting is properly addressed and low-key flame/harassment is addressed. Honestly I care more about the former because I can mute the latter in worst case scenarios. Address soft inting properly - it's not just "toxic players" who think it needs addressing.

Proof I'm not mindlessly toxic? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcvp_L30YmA Team wanted to open mid and surrender. I didn't give up and I didn't flame anyone. Instead, I offered encouragment, I was willing to sacrifice myself if needed to set up winning fights, and I didn't tolerate teammates flaming each other. Sound like somebody who needs to be banned or chat restricted? Like I said... if you're an ass to me, I can be one too. You willing to adjust your play and work for the benefit of the TEAM, I can be one of the nicest people you ever played league with. So what's going to make the difference in league and improve the community? Not harder crackdown on "toxicity". But cracking down on soft inting and addressing currently ignored under-the-radar harassment.

4 Comments

Asobi Spirit1 votes

Soft Inting, I haven't seen that term before. I'm assuming it's someone who has died a fair bit and wasnt necessarily giving enemies the kill. Can you define to me what Soft inting is so I can respond to your comment properly?

woodvsmurph1 votes

Did you watch the video? It's explained in it probably better than I can explain it, but I'll attempt to give an example below.

You ever had someone who decides to afk farm like 95% of the game, never help in teamfights, but not run it down lane feeding 10 kills in 15 minutes either? Someone who does this w/o applying any map pressure or giving your team any kind of strategical advantage with what they are doing? They kinda exist, they're doing SOMETHING, but never willing to work with team or do anything particularly helpful? That is an example of what soft inting CAN look like.

Another could be baiting my team into blindly taking outnumbered fights when behind which we stand no chance of winning. Doing this over and over again with the secret intent of getting my team to lose because they won't surrender and I just want to end the game and play a new one because I think we can't win. I'm not technically inting because it APPEARS I'm trying to help my team, but in reality I'm sabotaging any chance my team has to make a comeback. Sure we all make a mistake forcing once in awhile. But doing it over and over again when the result is a decisive loss for my team such that everyone knows we can't win a fight forced like that no matter how well we execute the fight... that's intentionally feeding/ruining the match for my team. It doesn't take 6 fights in a row to come to a logical conclusion about whether or not we can pull off something if it keeps failing every time we do it. Continuing to do the same thing then which only gets worse for us each time would be inting.

Asobi Spirit1 votes

{quoted}

Did you watch the video? It's explained in it probably better than I can explain it, but I'll attempt to give an example below.

You ever had someone who decides to afk farm like 95% of the game, never help in teamfights, but not run it down lane feeding 10 kills in 15 minutes either? Someone who does this w/o applying any map pressure or giving your team any kind of strategical advantage with what they are doing? They kinda exist, they're doing SOMETHING, but never willing to work with team or do anything particularly helpful? That is an example of what soft inting CAN look like.

Another could be baiting my team into blindly taking outnumbered fights when behind which we stand no chance of winning. Doing this over and over again with the secret intent of getting my team to lose because they won't surrender and I just want to end the game and play a new one because I think we can't win. I'm not technically inting because it APPEARS I'm trying to help my team, but in reality I'm sabotaging any chance my team has to make a comeback. Sure we all make a mistake forcing once in awhile. But doing it over and over again when the result is a decisive loss for my team such that everyone knows we can't win a fight forced like that no matter how well we execute the fight... that's intentionally feeding/ruining the match for my team. It doesn't take 6 fights in a row to come to a logical conclusion about whether or not we can pull off something if it keeps failing every time we do it. Continuing to do the same thing then which only gets worse for us each time would be inting.

So I watched the vid. I'll be honest I still have a hard time labeling it truly as "Soft Inting" because when someone gives up and stops putting in the effort, that's giving up or in some cases Griefing. I partially wonder if you saw the vid, agreed with it and reposted it here with your own thoughts thrown in.

I have an example of what you call "soft inting" in my own match history. I was doing Diana Top, which I know is iffy, but our team comp was still solid. What happened was our MF felt it would be better to split push and try for turrets instead of fighting with the team he she ze didnt say anything to us and went on her merry way. We could a won, but her lack of presence in teamfights led to us dying more often and losing turrets. I myself was frustrated that they didnt say ANYTHING, not even a ping.

We lost. I was upset with MF but I ultimately didnt report because they were still doing 'something'. With this suggestion of making soft inting a reportable offense, I feel like so many more people could get reported for having an off day and not being mindful rather than being truly toxic in behavior. it makes for an environment where players can be reported if people didnt like them or their performance which can also be toxic or become toxic

On the defeatist thinking idea, I totally get that games can feel unwinnable early but I always opt for playing the game through because I've won games where both nexus turrets were down with supers hot on our heels. Plus for me the game is still fun. Just yesterday I had a match drag on for 52 minutes because we still had that strong chance. We lost there but I was 10 2 23 as Zac, I did freat and I was happy with my performance. Yeah I know I'm S2 with crappy MMR, I have burst to thank for that, but I play to feel the rush and your vid mentions that our best highs come from winning comebacks.

I'll still second a test function of this though. Say a report category for Soft Inting is made but carries the same weight that Unskilled Player did. Heck I dare say that they be one and the same. I say if someone gets multiple reports, maybe 5-10, then they get reviewed. If shown that their gameplay deliberately hinders the team in all matches that are reviewed then they could face a Low Priority Queue. Repeat offenders getting suspensions etc.

woodvsmurph1 votes

I did throw in some of my own ideas here... partly because he only explains it so well and not very thoroughly in the vid.

Anyways, your story about diana top with a silent splitpushing mf kinda depends on the elo, gamemode, and specific details within the game. Allow me to give some basic factors she should be considering which I would use to judge her behavior:

  1. Opponents - can she safely split w/o dying to any enemy splitpushers and/or roaming assassins?
  2. Can she effectively apply meaningful pressure splitting? Is she getting stuff only at the cost of the rest of your team dying despite playing as safely as possible or is she getting stuff w/o costing her team more than what she gets or COULD get if she grouped? If the answer is she's costing her team more by splitting, then she's soft inting even if it's her TEAM dying... because those deaths are on her hands in reality.
  3. What elo/rank is this and is it ranked, pve, or regular pvp?
  4. She is on a teamfighting adc who is also NOT very good at taking towers, so it's almost certainly better for her to group and leave the splitting to someone like a diana who is designed for dueling and has both dmg and ATTACK SPEED to take towers much more quickly than she possibly can alone.
  • there's other factors, but I don't want to make an exhaustive list of everything. These 4 should serve as a basic example of stuff to consider and give people an idea of how to asses one's own play as well as others. I use basic decision-making stuff like this in my own games. Sure I miss out on the odd big opportunity to win a surprise fight or end a game 3 min sooner, but I also massively reduce/avoid terrible game-costing decisions much MORE frequently via such decision-making skills. And it allows me to assess both teams, determine when to split and when to group to maximize my TEAM's strengths and gains across the board even if it costs me or someone else a small bit personally. What's best for the team is what matters. Do this and you'd be surprised how often you can win fights from 10k gold behind or turn around a game that 9/10th's of players view as unwinnable... so long as your team buys in too.

Anyways, as far as punishment for soft inting, I'd say it has to be repetitive behavior. Something like your mf running it down lane solo say 5x and dying 1v1 to anyone they send against her while failing to get any tower damage down unless she's left 1v0 for an extended time and then only getting outer tower for you guys losing inhib tower or something. That would qualify as soft inting because she's leaving you guys in a position where you can't hold an objective or safely farm/soak xp and essentially screwing the whole team over just to help herself. Do it once or even twice... people mess up. Keep doing it over and over? Not acceptable; people learn and improve - at least if they are TRYING. So I'd say since people aren't used to being punished for soft inting yet, you give a bit of a grace period for people to adjust their thinking and understand that there are consequences for such play.

One game or so here or there should net you a warning and that's it. Two games in a row probably forgiven if it's your first time. If you see some trend of multiple games in a row though or repeated 1-2 game stretches over and over again during the course of a month or so, then action needs to be taken beyond written warning. It is just as hurtful to the rest of the team (and honestly even the enemy team) as toxic language in chat if not moreso. Chat can be muted; soft inting cannot. Chat violations are taken pretty seriously - with written warning off as little as one game of very poor behavior. A second violation after having been warned results in something like 2 week chat restriction and further violation probably a ban from the game. There is no reason soft inting should not face a similar but perhaps less extreme version of this.

Anyways, I know a lot of people over-react to stuff like my post and see the worst case scenario, but I want to reassure everyone, bad kda does not equal soft inting or inting. It's all about whether people TRIED and worked with their team. You 1/7/0 in lane and fed? Well if you show willingness to cooperate with team, improve your play, listen to others, and do what's best for the team (whether that's splitting or grouping or whatever) then I got no problem with you. You had a bad game; you didn't int or soft int. You go 1/7/0 in lane or 7/1/0 in lane and splitpush the rest of game as adc vs a fed enemy zed, and a fed enemy fiora both of whom can 1v1 you with no problems? Now you are soft inting or straight up inting. Do it once because you don't know you can't win the 1v1? Hey we all mess up; just don't KEEP doing the same mistake over and over again... you are smarter than that. Hope that reassures people and clarifies better the differences among bad game, soft inting, and inting.

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