The Root Cause of Toxicity is Riot

Out of all the gaming companies, it comes down to Riot as the only one that I have ever seen that can successfully fool people into thinking its game is the "most popular," while still failing to deliver on good new content on a consistent basis, failing to properly train lower level employees which results in copy-paste responses and a failure to read their supervisor's memos, and continually masking the true root of toxicity resulting in perpetuation rather than reduction. It's no surprise that we see massive ban waves, and ironically many of the people who scream for bans often end up getting banned at some point. While it may be an epic level of ignorance, since they were screaming for bans in the first place, it only perpetuates the problem further. How many of you trolls screaming for bans are truly that dull to think you won't get banned at some point? Come now, bring out the redundant cookie-cutter responses: "I've been playing since season 1 and have never received a single punishment." Might as well be a Riot robot in that case.

I've been playing since season 1, unlike people who pretend to. Toxicity is multi-faceted, which inevitably masks its true root cause: 1) Fear of being reported, and 2) Frustration due to fellow players griefing your team in ways that are not bannable. #1 is straightforward: Troll baiters always use this tactic to their advantage, and will continually put you down until you reply back, and then they ask everyone to report you despite them being the cause. #2 is more complex and goes hand-in-hand with #1: You're playing a game, doing well, you go bottom to help let's say, you spam assist on your way down and ask them to help as you go in to secure them 2 kills, when you go in and blow all your abilities, the ADC stands there and continues to farm. Now, the ADC is what we call a troll baiter. There are lots of troll baiters, people who will do things that will either cause your team to engage out of position, and then get aced, or troll baiters that just simply stand there and watch you die, hoping that you'll rage. Now, whether the troll baiting is intentional or not, it's ruining the game for everyone else, and it's also causing enough frustration for people that they want to surrender. When the 20 minute mark comes, the rest of the team is done and frustrated, and there is a pop-up to surrender, but the troll baiter came with a friend, and they both vote to not surrender. So here you are, stuck in a game with 2 troll baiters, who will stand there and watch you die, or go in when it's 1v5 hoping that 1 or 2 of you will also go in to help, so that 3 of you end up dying. Again, this may or may not be intentional, but the reality is it causes the vast majority of frustration, and leads to most arguments in League. How does this relate to #1? I'll tell you: Troll baiters will tell you, "Stop being so toxic," when you explain that they should have gone in when everyone else went in, rather than standing there and watching everyone die. Now, that is obviously going to further aggravate the situation, and what it ends up being is a continual cycle of troll baiting and bad engages, and despite continually explaining to that person, or even more than one person, they will instead call you "stupid," or "dumb," or "garbage," hoping that you respond even angrier, and most people, by nature, will probably respond.

This is when the argument escalates further, and the troll baiter is now in full control. Despite him calling you names that, on any other game would be a violation, he is getting you upset enough to reply back, even though your replies are non-vulgar, and not name-calling, he still wins because him and his friend will convince everyone to report you, and not him, which means it's your 1 report, versus his 2+ reports on you. Other companies, such as Blizzard for example, have a professionally trained game master to review each report, issue an appropriate punishment, and then move on. Riot on the other hand will never see the troll baiter's report, because he manages to escape this by getting everyone else to report, so he accumulates very few reports in return, while causing maximum damage to everyone's game experience. The reality is, people who stand there and watch their teammates die, or bait their team into engaging out of position and get aced, and refuse to help the team out, are even more destructive than the actual flaming itself, and ruins everyone's game as a result. Now, I personally would not mind these troll baiters if I could actually respond to them and explain what they're doing that is ruining everyone's experience, but the problem is that Riot will ban people for pointing things out like that, so while these troll baiters are causing toxicity by ruining the game itself, Riot is actually the root cause of toxicity, since Riot is the one causing further distress to people creating an all-out "report" conversation, as people try to get each other reported. If Riot didn't step in unless absolutely necessary, such as in extreme cases where there's actual racism, homophobia, etc., and just let players argue it out, since you know, it's a PvP game after all, the greatest cause of toxicity would suddenly vanish, and while people would still argue at times, they would be able to simply move on to the next game without being distressed even further due to Riot's mishandling. In the end, Riot is the true root of toxicity, and Riot is the one that also perpetuates it even further.