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"You deserve to lose": A reoccuring experience in Ranked

Digital Badger·12/2/2015, 8:04:20 PM·1 votes·1,266 views

I've been playing LoL on and off since about 2010-2011. I've got countless wins under my belt, and even more losses. At the end of the day, it's a fun game that I'm moderately competent at, and despite swearing off of it many times due to the toxic player's I've had the misfortune of being paired up with, I've had an all around good time.

Having come back from my most recent break, me and my friend decided we'd test ourselves by playing ranked, and honestly, I've had a lot more fun with it than normal queue. This was solidified once we got placed (me Silver IV, him Gold IV - he's always been better than me and had about two more wins up on me in placement matches) and started having some really good matches with some honestly enjoyable people, making my Season 2/Season 3 experiences in Bronze IV seem like nothing but a bad memory.

But you're probably wondering - if my most recent ranked experience is so good, what's the problem?

Well, while I certainly will acknowledge that I'm not getting called nearly as many obscenities as I was back in my Bronze days, I've started noticing that Silver has it's own strange quirk - people intentionally throwing games after a rough start because they believe their team "Deserves to lose".

Now I've played long enough to know that there are very few unwinnable situations on the fields of justice, and have been part of some pretty epic comebacks. Ranked games are no exception, and in fact some of my most enjoyable matches have started from us being rocked early game only to make a clutch team fight or Baron steal for the turn around and win. The "deserves to lose" mentality essentially spits in the face of this, resulting in someone intentionally tanking their own elo because they want to teach their teammates some kind of lesson for making mistakes in early game (tunnel vision resulting in a failed gank, losing a lane early due to repeated tactical errors, etc). These lessons can be the teammate intentionally feeding, afking in well, ignoring the rest of the team to farm jungle creeps - basically any way they can force a loss in order to give their teammates a good old fashioned "I told you so" in the results chat.

While I've had a few comebacks even despite this kind of negative play, It's been starting to become a little more prevalent as the pre-season has continued - more people freshly joining my league, I imagine. As such, it's starting to make solo-queue a bit of a crapshoot - if I'm on a team that doesn't disintegrate, victory is almost assured. If I'm on one that starts bickering with itself within the first 5-10 minutes, it's almost certainly a loss for "not deserving the win".

I'm currently down to Silver V after a 4 game losing streak, which is why I thought I'd bring it up for discussion. I don't want to sound like every single last loss I've received isn't my fault - I've certainly been "that one baddie" in my fair share of games, ranked and otherwise. But once again it does feel as if player attitude is playing a massive role on how games go, and that (at least pre-Gold, from what my friend tells me) climbing the ladder is as much about being lucky as it is being good.

Anyway, enough rambling - I wanna hear your thoughts and insights on this! Is this just a freak coincidence, or is it a significant problem at these lower elo tiers? Do you think there's a way I can work to counteract this kind of toxicity on the fly, or should I just accept it as an inevitability? Give me your thoughts, even if it's just "lol, l2p n00b" - I'm a big boy, I can take it ;)

21 Comments

Death by Glamour12/2/2015, 8:17:26 PM2 votes

Its uncommon in every league and gets rarer as you climb. On this account i envounter someone like this once every 10 or 20 games. In plat it could be 1 in 50. Though low diamond is apparently pretty bad for this.

Usually they feed a few kills, proced to blame the jungler and then troll. Nothing you can do besides asking them to play safe and camping/roaming to try and help which is more often than not it is a complete waste of time as they have fed so much that you cant fight 1v2 as they are under leveled and under farmed. The person doing this needs to l2p.

Francisco Pires12/2/2015, 8:06:27 PM2 votes

Insert "Didn't read" Gif

1st Movement12/2/2015, 8:41:28 PM1 votes

Losing 8 streak in siv 5 at the beginning of season

Congrats boys I graduated into plat4

Was feeding 0-4 in plat4 team didn't rage at me at all then once I got two triple kills it was gg

All you got to is believe and main champions that solid carry 1v9

Goosetard12/2/2015, 8:59:27 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Digital Badger,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=hH40noEI,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-12-02T20:04:20.884+0000)

someone intentionally tanking their own elo because they want to teach their teammates some kind of lesson for making mistakes in early game

You're almost right, but what's really going on is these people don't want to try as hard as they can and lose anyway, because knowing that their best wasn't good enough that game would hurt their (what I assume is, beneath the facade of toxic arrogance, pretty fragile) self-esteem. It's a much nicer emotional world for them to live in where, instead of taking that risk, they lose on purpose and justify it by inventing some kind of judgmental, authoritative role for themselves and using other people as a scapegoat for losing.

BluePolarizer12/2/2015, 9:01:32 PM1 votes

some teams truly deserve to lose not because of lane or bad decisions because they don't listen to the shotcaller

Ralanr12/2/2015, 9:02:08 PM1 votes

Sounds like a large reason why I want to avoid ranked. People take it much too seriously and trolls love to screw with those people.

1st Movement12/2/2015, 9:12:51 PM1 votes

nah it's only in low Elo because there's too many try hards who think they're good

In high Elo everyone wants to win

Better mentality

1st Movement12/2/2015, 9:47:33 PM1 votes

Best way to ignore this nonsense

Mute the person talking trash

It's k you will lose game happens if your feeling frustrated then take a break.

I climbed from the ladder in silver and trust me find the champions your good at and spam. If your good you don't even need jungler to gank because I know that I will win lane there is no reason to harp At your own teammates bc you got ganked it's your fault you died.

Guyy Fieri12/3/2015, 2:05:35 AM1 votes

That is the one single line that upsets me more than anything in league. First off, in a game, odds are everyone is generally the same rank or skill level. So why does that make one player inexplicably better than the others. Secondly, what gives that player the right to play God in League. It is not ther place to decide who wins and who looses. If ever someone says that, it's an instareport from me

SUPERIORFlavor12/3/2015, 3:05:07 AM1 votes

I've been playing roughly the same length of time as you, and over the years the amount of people being insulting and toxic in chat has noticeably reduced.

However, the amount of people ruining games with behavior like you just described has never changed, and riot seems more concerned with the nasty people in chat that the mute button can take care of. In my years of playing, it feels like on the best days 1/5 games has someone flat out trolling/throwing/ruining the game on purpose. In years before this still happened, although there were a lot more racial slurs and insults that went along with the behavior.

Long story short, league has always been consistent with this 1/5 games has a guy ruining it, but with the crackdown on bans, at least they don't insult my "whore mother" while they throw on purpose. I'd much rather they leave the insulting people alone, for me to mute, and wtfspeedban people that throw a game into the trash on purpose and turn a game into a 20 minute waste of time.

disregardable12/2/2015, 8:14:17 PM1 votes

Can personally say I haven't played with a "you deserve to lose" troll since Bronze. Not very common. AFKing is a different beast, that player just didn't want to play because losing isn't fun. I'd personally assume, like with all of these posts, that you just can't see your own mistakes. Because I've got to tell you, even when I hate my team (and I do that A LOT), when I notice my own mistakes I completely forget them. It's all my fault for missing 100 skillshots, not dodging the lee sin q, staying in the fight too long, walking away before noticing LeBlanc still had 40 health left. If I'd just done better, maybe we'd have won or comeback.