Gameplay Elements that generate toxicity and must be gotten rid of and changes that could be made.

Hi everyone, First things first this **isn't **a rant, it's me sharing with you my thoughts on why the gameplay design of League of Legends generates so much toxicity and what changes should be done instead.

Let's start with the basics. In Modern Warfare 2 for example everyone hated the Grenade Launcher attachment (which was quickly dubbed 'the n00btube') because it was considered a 'cheap tool for getting kills without much skill or effort'. Nobody likes a mechanic which evidently allows a player to rack up kills in a way deemed cheap, unskillful and/or even unfair and, unfortunately, League of Legends is saturated with such mechanics.

Most prominently there are champions who can jump on you from a distance, stick to you and kill you outright by dealing a large amount of damage very rapidly without giving you much chance (if at all) to react (for example you play Ashe and Warwick jumps on you with his infinite Duress ability, suppressing you giving you no chance to fight back and eventually kills you). Though such abilities may not always work for it depends on the situation, the very fact that they can actually happen (and believe me they do) generates salt. Any combo which prevents you from any way of defending yourself effectively with a decent chance of survival (with the exception of being swarmed by a large number of enemy players which is understandable) should never be included in any game because it is essentially just another 'n00btube'. Getting killed in such a fashion gives a player a sense of unfairness and leaves him annoyed at best and getting kills with such abilities, though it depends on the person, feels cheap without any real value because it was a essentially a kill which you were sort of fed with the spoon.

Another gameplay mechanic which correlates with the one stated above is 'crowd control'. Crowd control mechanics, when included in a game in a generally reasonable fashion, are acceptable but they shouldn't form the 80% of the whole game. Believe it or not the current gameplay of League of Legends strongly revolves around crowd control elements such as who will snare who in place reducing his chances of escape and rendering him vulnerable for an easy kill. This essentially means that League of Legends is more a game about who will bring someone to a helpless situation and get an easy (or at least relatively easy) kill instead of who will battle someone hard and earn the kill through skill. From personal experience I can tell you that, playing Lux , using the crowd control mechanics available for this champion and exploiting a combo which snares an enemy helpless in place, deals heavy damage very quickly and then finishes off the target with the ultimate ability, I was able to rack up streaks as high as 18+ in as many as perhaps twenty games in a row. Very effective but I'm sure some of the ones I killed in such a fashion would have been very annoyed for said reasons and I too found myself on the opposite end of this combo and I can't say I was impressed.

Thirdly, and very importantly, there's a lot of talk about 'this player got himself killed easily and fed the enemy with gold allowing him to quickly acquire new items strengthening himself in an abnormal rate gaining an advantage'. This is about the fact that when you get a kill you get a handsome reward in gold which you can spend on items. Though this sounds logical at first glance it does have some very nasty side effects. In any game you play there's always the possibility that you may end up playing with a team of unskilled players versus one more composed of capable players (no matter what matchmaking system you use; it's harder than it sounds to explain to a machine who is a 'good' player and who is not). Ending up in a situation like this is already unfair and dire for you and having your unskilled teammates 'feed' the enemy team with kills making them even stronger worsens the gap even further. Even if both teams were equally matched there's still the case that someone may be unlucky or do mistakes which can earn the enemy some kills 'feeding' them. This mechanic essentially punishes a more poorly performing team very harshly for not doing well by giving the better team an even greater advantage and this is very frustrating to a large number of players. It's commonplace to see someone posting toxic comments on the chat, yelling at the other because he died cheaply to the enemy giving him gold and worsening the team's chances for victory.

My own suggestions on changes in the gameplay may be called something of an 'overhaul' but if it is an overhaul, it's one which I believe could help save some people from death from rage induced strokes.

To begin with let's get rid of the gold earned by killing players. Though this may slow the pace of the game by removing a valuable source of income this will definitely get rid off the whole 'feed' nightmare which plagues the players of League of Legends ever since the game's release. Getting a lot of kills will no longer mean you have essentially much higher chances of dominating the game helping to maintain a greater mutual challenge between the two teams since the winning team won't have a crippling advantage anymore allowing the losing team some better chance of eventually turning the tide. If there's no longer any feeding there won't be as much reason for players to be angry when their teammate gets himself killed to an enemy champion. Lastly, if both teams earn gold in more similar amounts at a more similar pace this can lead to more balanced gameplay because there won't be players with much higher gold stash to spend for items than others.

Added to this gameplay should be made in a way in which every champion has a more or less equal chance in a 1 vs 1 fight against any champion. For example, Jinx should still have a very solid chance of fighting back up close versus a tank or assassin character (though still somewhat slimmer than a champion more geared to hand to hand combat) perhaps by making her deal more damage in close range (not sure this is a good idea though, this is just a suggestion). Champions should be made in a way where none of them have any weaknesses (or at least weaknesses which can prove fatal in certain circumstances thus leading to the type of situation described in the third paragraph). I'm talking about a more symmetrical gameplay revolving around versatility where every champion is more or less prepared for everything and where no one counters anyone. This could be done by giving every character the same composition of abilities such as 1 high damage ability, 1 crowd control and 1 mobility enhancement/escape ability (though my personal recommendation would be the complete removal of these two gameplay elements) and the ultimate ability all of which could feel diverse but all equally substantial no less.

So, to conclude this post, my general message here is to make the game more symmetrical without sacrificing diversity/variety of gameplay, remove the gold reward from killing players, the prevention of combos/situation which kill players without chance of fighting back and the removal of all crowd control and movement enhancement mechanics. If the last suggestion isn't viable or possible then as I've stated it would be best if all champions had an equal amount of those types of abilities being as equally substantial as possible.

Well that's all I had to say, what are your thoughts on this?