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I love league, but the toxic playerbase makes me want to quit.

Simple Moon·8/14/2016, 12:37:42 AM·39 votes·2,512 views

I just don't understand the reason behind so many toxic people. I have thick skin, I've been in the army for 8 years, dealt with drill sergeants, idiotic captains and any type of morons you can think of. But the league community in a whole is by far worse. I have been a gamer all my life, it is what I do to chill out and have a good time. I have played league since season 3 on and off and it only seems to get worse. This season I have noticed it a lot more. From people being toxic the second they are into the pick lobby, whether it be banning your champion that you have intended to pick or just straight out harassing anyone in the lobby. I guess I don't see the point. What joy does someone get from behaving this way? From ruining every persons experience in the game. I guess it could be the way I was raised or the morals I learned but it makes zero sense to me. And from what I can gather from fellow players and friends they feel the same way. The issue I believe lies within the banning methods that Riot uses. They don't seem to work, kids don't care if you tell them you will report them because 9 out of 10 times nothing will happen to them. I know that you can't help that some people are just shit people, its the way the world works. Yet there has to be a system out there that can combat all of the toxic this game produces. I just want to see peoples inputs on the situation.

85 Comments

No Yellow Norco8/14/2016, 2:51:32 PM6 votes

It's because you are trapped in a game for 40 mins with trolling players and there is nothing you can do about it. If they actually started to punish trolls, you would see "toxicity" decrease.

Quindec8/14/2016, 10:30:05 AM6 votes

you know what they say "the weakest dog barks the loudest"

Moronic8/14/2016, 9:44:50 AM4 votes

I get told to kill myself on a daily basis because I'm bad at the game

tophit8/15/2016, 2:39:37 PM3 votes

That's the thing some people don't get. You go to work, you'll meet people you don't like. At the end of the day, you're paid for your time and you go home afterwards. When you get home and want to relax, you might want a couple of hours playing League. But then you have to deal with toxic players who see themselves as gods of the game and everyone else as inferior. It's nothing to do with "being weak" or "stop being such a crybaby", people play games to have fun. And when you've just come back from a busy day and want some time to yourself, it can hit hard when some nobody starts flaming you when all you want is to enjoy the little time that you have.

Iapetus448/14/2016, 5:06:40 AM3 votes

Unfortunately it's gonna be incredibly difficult to implement an automated system that'll accurately deal with the toxicity in the game, unless it's involving a massive team of actual people reviewing reports, but that is just not efficient nor practical. I agree that the current system is discouraging, as I only started earlier this season and I'm already tired of the consistent toxicity on summoner's rift, so I mainly just stick with ARAM and bots now. We all play league to have fun and take stress off, not to deal with more bullshit from people who think that a ftp game is a matter of life or death so its best to find something that'll achieve that for yourself.

HarmonicaSunbeam8/14/2016, 8:38:03 AM3 votes

Maybe you guys should stop sucking at the game. As long as you are bad at the game you will get flamed and harassed. That's just what type of game this is. It's never going to get better, only worse as dumb people continue to play leagues.

grayamir8/14/2016, 3:51:23 PM3 votes

I thought spreading some of the concepts learned in Resilience Training would help, since I found them to work. I do this in a number of games in which a toxic community has appeared, but LoL has the absolute worst I've seen, even beating out the Steam forums(very impressive LoL, in a bad way). Hopefully someone will gain from it, although the suggestion that someone should better their behavior just serves to rile up the toxics/trolls more(they need the hate and toxicity you see, it's how they grow and spread).

Part of it may be due to the average age of the players. In one board goer's poll, they found that the majority of the people who took the poll were 16 - 18 years old, followed by 19 - 21 year olds, then 13 - 15 year olds. While this was just a small study of just over 600 people, it at least gave an indication of the ages of the playerbase who are active most on the boards. The poll and other age group stats can be found here: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/miscellaneous/uXBhMwVp-how-old-are-you

With that in mind, it may also be due to kids nowadays not being raised to have the same respect for others as they used to. I've heard a fair amount of young people (both online and IRL) saying that if we want their respect we had to earn it. I don't know what they're teaching today, but respect used to be a two way street, you get what you give. Treat others as you want to be treated, as it were. Apparently that concept has largely been forgotten.

Another possibility is that in this age of texting and online interaction, with the plummeting social skills of young people, that the internet taught them to communicate like this. With parents letting computers and iPads fill their children's time rather than interacting with the kids themselves, the kids will end up learning a good deal of their social interaction skills from random people online.

The worst part is that these players either don't realize, refuse to accept, or just don't care that they have serious communication issues in one way or another.

TL;DR Lots of LoL players lack respect for others, and have no idea how to talk to people courteously anymore.

Temp solution, check out "How to Human 101: Basic Common Courtesy"

Now, we can suggest links to potentially helpful and/or motivational content all day, but if the toxics/trolls have no desire to change themselves...then there's not much we can do at our level beyond reporting them and moving on.

Pope Glitterhoof8/14/2016, 1:34:32 AM3 votes

I understand and sympathize with your concerns, but do you realize how hard it is to completely eradicate this problem or even just pinpoint the causes of this problem and make sure it doesn't happen 90% of the time? It's hard.

In my server for example, people do not understand what toxicity means. They spur insults with patronizing tones because they do not realize how stupidly annoying insults like "go play mario you guys suck" are. Servers' levels of toxicity are usually determined by the majority. The majority creates the rules, and if they don't think that "go play mario you guys suck" is against the Summoner's Code, they don't give a damn and they will just keep on encouraging these type of behaviours.

There are also some people who are indifferent towards everything and everyone and just keep on doing their things even when the world is burning down. They don't report behaviours that cross the line and they don't care about it.

Moreover, even when toxic players are banned permanently, they will just create new accounts. Banning IPs does not work against them because of many obvious reasons, unless you are a renowned streamer like Tyler1 (and Tyler1's IP isn't even banned because it's college IP).

Subwhey8/14/2016, 2:23:18 AM1 votes

dumb. there's a button called "mute"

No flash no life8/14/2016, 1:45:40 AM1 votes

True, the system can help to a degree, but by the end of the day the most it can do is give a helping hand. Ultimately, it's still up to players to behave like they should and there's only so much the system can do.

ZT Xperimentor8/14/2016, 8:15:52 PM1 votes

The community wasn't nearly as bad when the tribunal was still in effect, it was replaced with this inept automated system a couple years ago; and with riot's shoves for being an esport, it's drawn in quite a bunch of overly competitive solo-ists.

Meta Phyton8/14/2016, 7:47:32 PM1 votes

Ok, first I had put up a veerry long post, very expanded and broad. Maaybe it is too much though, and still not the right forum for that.

Anyway!

I want to make it fairly simple and straight-forward to understand the essence of what I was talking about, because it really mainly has to do with just having fun despite all of the bullocks and nonsense.

So, I found this video from a Youtuber whose videos I love - I think it shows a perfect example of what a friendly, untiltable player looks like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F71xS8QBAg

Take some time to get familiar with the video, and you can pause it and come back now and then.

See how Solwolf is very relaxed about the experience, and obviously has geared himself up to have a good time?

Consider that his LeBlanc ADC, if they were the average miserable LoL player, may have been secretly cursing him and themselves with thoughts like, "Wtf, Teemo sup?" or "Why is fucking Teemo in my lane? Wtf I hate people and I hate this game". Solwolf starts to make his Teemo "hump" LeBlanc even, and possibly that would make the average miserable LoL player even more pissed off, thinking something like "Wtf is this guy doing, what a %%%, wtf wtf wtf".

But then look! Watch as Solwolf's friendly, easy-going nature does not only translate into some pretty clever and considerate plays, but his overall pleasantness also contributes to his fellow teammates just having fun in chat as well. They feel free to joke around a bit, and what may have turned out to be a miserable match full of cussing, fighting, and butting heads turned out to be a pleasant one where people feel free to be themselves, without the terrifying fear that if they make a wrong move the whole experience will nuclear detonate.

Some of his plays turned out great too, and his teammates were positively influenced just by his personal pleasantness. This is a way to dissolve toxicness and make the game fun again. And since a team that is at each other's throats loses 14% or something more often than a team which isn't afraid of the other team-members detonating like C4, then it's not hard to see why that sort of untiltable presence is a great boon on any team.

After all, if the bare minimum of just staying silent means a 14% or so increased chance of winning over getting on the other team-mates backs like it's the freaking military, then what percentage do the odds of success go up if the team-members actually like each other?

True, not everyone has got such a charming humour sense, but anybody can at least internally esteem their team-mates, and go into any given match at least prepared to like the 9 other people at the other end of the Internet connection, even if one of them is surly and makes an ass of himself. This is already a big step forward, and already translates into better plays and a much, much better experience.

Moriss8/14/2016, 9:34:14 AM1 votes

The problem used to be a helluva lot worse. Props to Rito for improving it from the hellhole it used to be.

Man you probably just had a bad slew of games.

For the most part I don't even pay attention to in game chat anymore. It's the ultimate tool for letting your pride and ego go berserk and clash with others.

There's no sense and little to no good to be had from it at least I find a mass majority of the time. It really just acts as a tempting catalyst in game for us to use and vent negativity inappropriately when it gets to us. I do it a hell of a lot less then I used to but I still find myself wasting time in it every now and again.

wiggywonka8/14/2016, 3:34:51 AM1 votes

I know it really gets into some people but i frequently duo with a person who is constantly toxic but most of these trolls are actually just joking. We laugh about it and it gets pretty funny once u accept it as a joke