Leave forgiven for leaving AFTER somebody left? - 5 years of feedback
Wall of text incoming, summarizing my past 5 years of LoL, and the worst side of it. Sure I'm having a good time a lotta times but the constrast is really strong. I'd like to share my experience, specificly only the darker side of it because creating a discussion about how great this and that last game was, is kind of pointless.
Sadly I meet more and more leavers, people who get salty and hardly see the point of constructive criticism (I know how sensitive some of them are so I'm extremely gentle and careful), or just simply start a match knowing they propably won't have time to finish it if it lasts more than 30 minutes, or simply disconnect because of being a douchebag, or didn't connect at all, or ruined the game already by constant 900+ ping and trying to reconnect every 2 minutes, or just straight up AFK from minute one.
When the client / server tags them as a leaver / afk / not connected for a long time, can we just please have a feature that allows the rest 4 of us to leave aswell? Through the years I belive I met them far more times than what is healthy for the game, the community and my own mental health, and I just cannot stand suffering 15-20 minutes pointlessly, without reason, only to hit minute 20 mark so we can surrender (and often trolls even make that impossible, locking us normal people who just wanted to play a fun match regardless if it's a win or lose, all I need is to have fun and see both teams doing their best). It's devastating, it's horribly depressing especially when the opponents disrespectfully toy with us, refusing to win the game and extend it by another horribly depressing 10-15 minutes just trying to go for multikills (and giving an excuse to people with poor situational awareness to refuse to surrender, beliving we have a chance in a TECHNICALLY unfair match).
So can we have an option to leave these games without being afraid of reports and punishments? I did not leave a single game (well, except a coop vs ai recently because 2 disconnected...), and I'm here since the first closed beta on the US servers. That's 5+ years. You can imagine that's a lot of tension built up, and the pressure is worse each day. Hell I even skipped MONTHS of playing because whenever I moved my cursor over the play button a PHYSICALLY bad feeling started to run all around my stomach and arms because of the toxic community. I close the client and I'm like, what to do now? I had no mood to do anything because of this bad feeling on me for several more minutes.
I greatly appriciate all the effort RIOT makes to cleanse the community of such... people (let's call them people for the sake of being polite), but let's face it, we can never get rid all of them. Instead, how about turn things around, and allow the normal people to throw off this rock from their shoulders the toxic ones put on them? I did not, and will not leave a game because someone is like that. I want to belive this is part of what makes me better than them, respecting my teammates (and opponents) enough by staying, and not starting a game when I know there is possibly no time for me to finish it.
WHY AM I PUNISHED FOR THIS, LIKE THIS? It's not about these people, no. It's about the system that allows this situations to happen and punish everyone without greater insight of what really happens.
Then comes the sometimes completely false autopunishes.
I do admit that every once in a while (3-4 months usually when I play a lot) I can go all Sion bloodrage when after the best of intensions and advices explained in detail why to do / not to do what, how we lost that teamfight and because who did what / didn't do what, and the only answer I get is "stfu". I do understand people don't like interference / being told what to do and how to so I'm trying to keep my communication (in this topic) on minimum to avoid frustrating other people, but when there are capital mistakes repeated over and over I belive it is healthy to point out mistakes or ask for a ward here and there. Even if I get ignored, sure, frustrating, but people are people, I can live with it. The pure "stfu" messages that can raise my blood pressure over the top.Then some tiny vein can possibly pop in my brain, and there we go Sion effect. Happens about 3 times a year. Was I the source of the problem? Nope. Did the report review see the whole picture (and all the swearing and shit thrown at me in postgame lobby for honestly trying to be helpful)? Nope. Did I get chat restricted? Yes. Do I understand that no matter the situation that such reaction is not the right way to live with these people? Absolutely. I'm a patient man, hell, even my job requires me to be one. I'm somewhere between a slug and a slowpoke. But from time to time there is always a last drop (which means there were a LOT other "drops" in the meantime by this cesspool of toxic players). I'm even considering to make a short pray now before I click on play, that's how lost and desperate I feel after all these years spent in LoL. Sure I expect a lot "get premade party" answers, well, feel free to join, you won't regret teaming up with me, but sadly I never cared to build up a constant team of strangers and my friends don't play LoL at all (and now that I think about it, I'm not up for waiting for months and possibly years to see them grow to a competitive level). Belive it or not, I actually skipped 4 seasons of ranked play, only because of being afraid of dragged down by these leavers and generally toxic players, then being tainted as "bronze" which is actually used as an insult by many people. I don't want that, I started the game to have fun, not to be constantly afraid, depressed and generally be in a hostile enviroment. This has built up in me up to a point when I went so desperate I actually STARTED to play ranked, hoping to get lucky and avoid these people for a time being, so I can play in a normal team and compete, hopefully leaving lower ranks behind. So I started the placement matches, for the very first time right before the end of Season 4. 10 games. 6 won, and 4 lost because of LEAVERS. Ended up Silver IV, I'm surprised I got this "high". But sure as hell this experience made me never want to play ranked again for a long time, again.
You know what I play? ARAM. I'd have time on weekdays to play 3 long games (50-60 minutes x3), instead I play ARAM until I get my first win bonus, and if there is still time and I'm in mood, I try a normal solo Q. I just... cannot see a way out of the darkness anymore. A light that is known as trusting others to not be toxic, is slowly becoming an unknown definition.
Can we please, I beg you, get a more accurate toxic player detection system that gives the option to handle the problem right on sight? Because no matter how many gets banned, they either come back, or others replace them, and normal people suffer because of them, over and over and over again. How, is up to you RIOT. My suggestion would be trying to figure out a system that gives power to the players to deal with these situations on their own, but with artifical limits that - while I'd like to start out from a point where people are being nice and honest, sadly this isn't the case - prevents exploiting it.
