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Toxic Community?

Nin10do0014··16 votes·1,646 views

Hello, League of Legends players.

So everywhere I go, forums, YouTube videos, in-game chat, and even Facebook, I always see the one thing people associate with the League of community: toxicity. I just find it so sad that our whole player base is labeled as one toxic group of gamers. I just find it sad that the good teammates who wish for everyone to have fun are not recognized. I just find it sad that no matter where I go, my automatic first impression to my teammates is "He could be toxic."

Yes, I acknowledge that there are indeed players out there who wish the worst upon others, whether it be horrible diseases, a death of a family member, or just straight up death. However, it is impossible for our whole community to be like this. That would be like labeling the entire Halo community as a bunch of 343 Industries haters. In fact, it's a minority of players who are like this, and the illusion that the whole community is toxic comes from the raw number of players encountered each game.

Statistically, let's say that only 5% of the player base is indeed toxic. Each game has 10 people. There is actually quite a high chance that one of those players wants to wish cancer or call everyone mentally ill. Out of every 10 games, which involves 100 people total, 5 players in that collection are statistically going to be toxic. They might be all in 1 or 2 games, or they could be in an unfortunate 5 of those 10 games. Hence, it's just unfortunate that it's hard to avoid these players completely.

However, should we really condemn the whole community for even just a minority of our player population? I don't think I should be considered potentially toxic because of a few loose cannons, and I don't think my teammate over there should be either. I am not saying that our community is purely good, but what I do believe is that if just that one player is raging and being a total D-bag, the rest of the players shouldn't be condemned for it.

Anyway, that's just my two cents on this community.

16 Comments

Åron6 votes

This is why I don't like living in the US. Everyone labels me as fat, lazy and stupid before they even get to know who I am.

I 100% agree with your post.

MisterSmasher1 votes

Everyone gets generalized one way or another.

You just have to remember that the people who do it usually aren't worth talking to anyways.

KaisadiIIa2 votes

You can always come to Europe. Here you will be labeled as fat, lazy, stupid AND 'murican. And we have extra labels depending on your race, religion, age and even music preferences.

Awhegark3 votes

Even if it is a small minority, It is still more than 1 million toxic players. When you compare that number to other games that have a lot less players in general, people assume League of Legends is very toxic. And it does not help to encounter an afk, rager, team blamer, downer, insulting maniac,troll, etc, every 1 or 2 games.

KaisadiIIa1 votes

Also, people rage in this game because it's free.

People won't risk themselves to get banned at Guild Wars 2 (for example) when they just paid $50 for the game, but people doesn't care if they get banned from LoL, they'll just create another account.

Also, the vast majority of the community has assumed that "a bit of flame" is acceptable. You can write a "stop feeding noob" or "OMG GRAVES WHY DID YOU DO THAT?" if someone made a mistake and people will assume that "it was justified".

Rueian1 votes

That's not entirely true, cost of the game won't diter someone from raging if they are mad. Look at every shooter ever

alcatrazEscapee1 votes

Well, 27 million people play per day. If we assume half of games have 1 incredibly toxic person, then that's 1 out of 2 games of 10 people each. Or 1/20, or 0.05 (5%) which is the statistic reported by Riot. With 27 million players, about 1.35 million people each day are acting extremely toxic.

...

I think I just destroyed my faith in humanity.

KaisadiIIa3 votes

Statistically, let's say that only 5% of the player base is indeed toxic.

I won't sign for this.

From my experience through almost 3 years, I can tell there are 3 "degrees" of toxicity in this community:

1: People that are nice, talk about things (or they just remain silent) and do not flame nor blame anyone regardless of their performance (some may be a bit toxic when someone is blatantly trolling or flaming like hell, I can understand that, so I will still label them as "non-toxic" people). They are a real minority, they are less than 10%.

2: People that think they are nice, but they are actually toxic. Here we have people that are nice at start, but start flaming and blaming when the game goes bad. People that say things like "stop feeding noob", "WHY??????", "OMG Leona" or "What the f*ck are you doing?" when someone is losing their lane (not intentionally), messed up or failed a play. They always say that "it's justified, so it's not flame", but that's stupid. I can't tell how many times I've been flamed and harassed for losing my lane (not even that I was playing bad, in fact, I was playing good, just my enemy was playing better, THAT'S NATURAL). They are 70-80% of the community.

3: People that are just flamers. People that trolls for no reason, starts insulting you, your mother and the mother of your mother (for 3 months), always mentioning ebola cancer. There is nothing you can do about it, they use the game to vent their personal frustrations, so they'll just flame and curse every single game no matter what is happening, even when you are winning hard. We can also include here people that taunts the enemy or insults them for no reason, like those pesky Zeds writing "get rekt" when they just made a silly play that a monkey with a keyboard would be able to do. They actively try to make the enemy flame, so they are as bad as flamers themselves. They are the 10-20% of the community.

Personally, I think the worst group is 2: They are flamers but they think they aren't, and they always talk about the "toxicity" of this community like they were not part of the problem. Most people seem nice and reasonable at the boards but, in game, almost everyone has some justification to flame and think they are always better than the teammates and it's the jungler fault that you died trying to tower-dive a Leona at level 2.

Ayame Isaki3 votes

I tend to agree with you, and have experience all three groups in the past two days.

Group One:

TeamBuilder, our Shen jungle forgets smite. The other team even mentions it in all chat. Everyone is really friendly about it; our team assumes we will lose, the enemy Jungle (Vi) talks about when she forgets Smite; it is all really pleasant.

We end up winning... hard. That Shen worked his butt off to set up plays and compensate for the fact he couldn't jungle and it was amazing; the other team couldn't deal with us but 4/5 remained friendly.

To get some levels, Shen always asked permission before coming Mid to take farm and I always gave it. We all had a great deal of fun, except for the enemy mid (who was one of your Group Two above), who insisted that "It was bullsh*t" that I beat him in lane (he had no kills that match). His ending comment was "... yeah something like what's been said" after everyone said GG and was complimenting Shen for his play and friendliness.

I get teams like this maybe 20% of the time and it is always fun, win or lose.

Group Two:

TeamBuilder (it is my favorite mode; I always get to play what I want), I'm laning against a pretty good Zed as Akali. I am not having a good time of it; he is denying my farm and tower diving me to chunk my health and prevent what little farm I can do under the tower. I die within the first eight minutes. I have a second death not soon after when our Jungler comes in for a gank, pings me to engage, then runs away to avoid Zed's ult/shadows when I get below half health. He does re-engage and secure the kill though and we had some friendly banter in chat. Zed now starts roaming (I don't roam because I need that farm), so I ping MIA. He proceeds to get fed off of bot lane. I die somewhere in there to an invisible Nidalee spear; I found it funny, our Sivir did not. Sivir, after feeding Zed, proceeds to demand in All chat that I be reported for being a noob and feeding Zed. I was like, "I died twice to him in lane," and I left out that they ignored my pings and didn't ward when he roamed. Sivir was like "In the first five minutes". I muted her after that (you can see in the match history it was in the first 10 minutes). After the game the other team was like "Why would we report Akali?" to Sivir who was still going on about it, so I guess they were Group One. Sivir had seemed friendly in pre-game chat.

I get groups like this often, though I'm not usually the target of the rancor.

Group Three:

Intermediate Bots, I'm trying out the new Headhunter Akali skin (I always play new skins on bots first, especially with sound and visual changes), so I can get used to them. I R to an enemy (over a corner of the jungle) and accidentally kill it. Our Lissandra goes "You KSing Shitbag, I hope your burn in hell," as I was typing a quick apology. Ignoring the fact Lissandra was way to far to finish him off. I said my apology anyway. Lissandra then fed to bots to spite me I guess? I really had to shake my head at this one; I seriously did not understand it. I very rarely see this in bots or team builder, but do tend to see it in blind pick.

TL;DR: I agree with your assessment.

ALthaGreat2 votes

You need a poll. I vote yes , the community is toxic.

Puri Puri Taric1 votes

Well you know no one talks about a good community a bad community is much more reason to talk about and more popular anyways because negative talk is alot more famous than good talk.

For example i think that most people hate justin biever because he hates his own loyal fans and spits on them. just like mily cyrus they hate her for her drastic change and for her attitude but this is exactly what makes em as popular and known as they are today just like the toxic league community.

Fried Noob1 votes

The thing is, it doesn't matter if the basically no one in the LoL community was toxic, the loud asshole effect prevents most people from realizing that the community is not that bad. It doesn't matter if 49/50 players you played with were neutral to positive, that one loud asshole is going to remain in your mind because if how the human brain pays attention to things. Add on to this loud assholes are more likely to post on forums and such and fill them with complaints and threats than neutral to positive players are to post compliments, you wind up with a situation where the community as a whole appears worse than it is. In my own experience, which in no way speaks for the whole community, I personally haven't had a loud asshole on my team ruin many of my games (obviously I get some, but they are few and far between). Honestly, muting someone who is being a loud asshole or just not jumping all over a guy for making a mistake goes a long way to having a more enjoyable gaming experience.

Chaotic Reks1 votes

I remember reading an article about league in a GameInformer magazine. Such things were said like "Passionate community" and "Tools to keep jerks under control." Looking back i laugh about it now. Dota community isn't nearly this toxic (i came from dota...)

Simplicate1 votes

IMO it's hard not to see the community as toxic. My last match I seriously had to mute EVERYONE in that match enemy team included. All everyone did was flame each other and boast about who was better while both side gave up several kills because of their big ass egos.

MrBuffington1 votes

It's just the bad apples are really bad, and they leave the most lasting impression. That's sort of just human nature; we're more likely to remember negative events than positive ones. Plus the game itself is innately frustrating, so it tends to bring the worse out in people at times. Most people I encounter just play the game, neither positive nor negative.

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