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Toxicity is Only a problem because "We" allow it to be a problem, and removing it instead of---

HexSketch·5/28/2015, 4:52:29 AM·8 votes·1,546 views

overcoming it, lowers the skill level of the playerbase.

(Note that this is all referring to verbal "toxicity" that does not register as an "Extreme" case)

"Removing" toxicity, essentially removes the "opportunity" for you to improve as a player mentally

I continue to disagree with riot on their stance on toxicity. Instead of trying to Remove and ban all toxic players they simply need to decrease the relevance of toxic players, Overcoming weak traits of the mind is part of a competitive game, overcoming toxicity as a player is the only way to improve past simple mechanical skill, and game knowledge, trying to remove toxicity in itself will create nothing but tension within the community, and a Weaker playerbase/region skillwise.

The strong willed, will mute

There is never a reason to afk from game, and toxicity is not preventing people from climbing, there is a mute button for a reason, and the only problem is that riot does not enforce the usage of the mute button, they in fact enforce "not" using it, they can create an auto ban system so there is so much more they can do, Pressing mute is not only a sign of a player actually trying to improve but proof that they have strengthened their own mind, a weak player will not press mute, take abuse and then complain that they were abused looking for others to fix a problem that was never a problem, you cant climb, because you look for excuses to why you cant climb.

What could riot do?

Some fixes for this for players incapable of Doing what it takes to focus on themselves. Automatic mute on people who use to much profanity, escalated chat restrictions leading up to "chat" bans, "chat ban mode" where a person can choose to only have 1 chat permission per min to invoke less volatile speech pattern of their own accord. Reporting a player automatically mutes him for the future. No chat mode, where you can just disable chat as a whole if you choose. Lest we forget that we also have the option to block all chat, we also have the option to keep on a profanity filter.

You "Chose" to see, you can Choose to close your eyes

The issue with this community is that People "Choose" to open their eyes, and their ears to all the good and evils of this world and They are to fragile to exist in that "awakened" state shall we say. when they meet up with the negative, the blunt, and the Cruel mindsets, their glass mind that was not ready shatters, and then they blame the world for being the world, and look to their adjudicators to "Fix" a "problem" that only exists because they "allowed" it to exist. You want a solution?

What "Else" could riot do?

Change the report options, remove the stupid shit like unskilled, and simply have, Racial/homophobic slurs, Negative attitude, Afk, Intentional feeding/Greifing, cheating. and that should cover it.(somewhere in their there would be something for people who wish you physical harm one way or another)

It is probably just as simple as this Now for almost every single report, you have your system check people, and for the people who continually report people for "negative attitude" all riot has to do is have the system automatically re-enable everything they turned off that allowed negative attitude to effect them, re-enable all chat mute, and profanity filter, and then when that person feels like they are ready, they can turn it back off. And every time they start to repetitively report people for negative attitude it re-enables all the shit they turned off again. and then at the same time a person who gets reported a number of times for negative attitude, may need to be chat restricted, leading up to a chat ban worst case scenario,

"Why even punish them you say? well its not really punishment, its a lesson, Exclusively for them"

Simple. Verbally toxic "hot headed" players are also weak minded, on the reverse side of the spectrum to the "Glass minds". They allow themselves to be swept up in a tide, and instead of swimming against it, and choose to simply flail in the water grabbing anyone around them, to try and drown everyone. If you want to go in the ocean, first you need to learn to swim, Chat restrictions, are your lessons, and everyone knows, when you fail in your studies, you simply need to be retaught the same lessons over, and over, and over, and over again, until you learn how to swim properly.

Just. Like. That.

You have created a community of players with thicker skin, because they no longer "need" to overcome the Barrier that is a weak mentality. You have Taught them how to overcome it, and you have Taught Both sides of the spectrum, how to meet in the center". We call the center, The enlightened members of The Higher Competitive Society. In short "high elo"

Is being an adult acting mature? or is it being mature enough to not let immaturity Effect you

Their are sooo many options to combat toxcity other than banning people permanently, or at all, You say people have to act like "adults" but lets try to remember the very simple lesson "adults" have tried to teach us since we were 4 years old "sticks and stones".

are you really that vicious? You may have hurt feelings, but just remember that when you ban someone for hurting your feelings you are collectively taking away everything they worked potentially "years" for, for a moment of superficial pain they caused you.

Tl;DR

Humans Live to teach, and so, humans live to learn, To give up on the Minority is to be a Hypocrite in the face of challenge. Even jail is/was "intended" to improve society not by locking up Criminals. But by teaching them how to Become true members of it. For the irredeemable, there is only death ):

12 Comments

Kriegskaiser5/28/2015, 4:56:41 AM2 votes

I feel the "report for toxicity" is too overused. While I do stand on the side that toxicity must be reported, I fail to categorize most of the so-called "toxic behaviour" as such. In fact, even a simple word like "f**k" (even in its censored form) is taken as abuse. When this is the case, we need to reflect on a question: are we too mentally weak to handle stuff?

Azoreili5/28/2015, 5:20:36 AM2 votes

I personally feel that OVERLY-toxic players should be punished. Criticism is not toxicity, unless it is extremely inappropriate and the criticized player repeatedly asks them to stop and is ignored, at which point it becomes harassment in it's simplest form. I also try to mute as few players as possible during a game because it removes a means of communication. Yes, there are a few pings available to use, BUT saying something outright in chat can be more specific and useful, at times, than just pinging something. If that muted player winds up stopping the harassment towards a player and begins to act better and just focus on the game and they're still muted, that can be a pretty significant handicap sometimes. Again, as for criticism, there is nothing wrong with giving someone your opinion, but constantly harassing them over a mistake is, in my eyes, unacceptable, and because we're humans (at least i think most of us are..... not sure about some...) we're going to argue and fight back when we feel threatened. THAT is toxicity. Where one person becomes so bad that it begins to negatively affect other people in the game.

As for determining the difference... that's where it all goes to hell. Some people get offended more easily than others, and they think that the thing that they take offense to is toxicity. Thing is; there's nothing wrong with simply being offended. Yes, there is a limit and a very fine line between an offensive comment or two and just outright harassment, but that's rather subjective. Though, i suppose Riot's distinction between offensive and harassment is what they go by when they sort through reports but...yeah.

Sarutobi5/28/2015, 6:52:21 AM1 votes

What Riot needs to realize is that "Toxic" people will never go away. its what we get for having a competitive game. really the only difference between this game and other competitive activities is the animosity. Because people are on their computers, not knowing who the person is on the other side they get that feeling that nothing can truly be done to them because its just the Internet! Because of that people will act certain ways because there is no real punishment. Oh the Account is ban, ill just make another one and continue/be worse than i already was!

The thing is while i do agree we need more report options, especially some that are plainly obvious for this game, there are some that is questionable. If we have a report for say bot accounts/cheating/using 3rd party program/etc. how serious would this be? I mean in both cases of the person being reported and the one who did the report. I have seen people call others out on Scripting, I have seen bot accounts who basically just walk around spamming skills and dying. Some are pretty obvious, while others arent. While this is a serious problem for the game what would happen to people who false report people just because they lost? Im sure if they had a reported option like this they would take it seriously, but what about the special cases who might get falsely banned because of that?

All in all, i feel like Riot is trying their hardest, they obvious dont want to be too strict when it comes to banning people. What it really comes down to is that this is a game. The chat should only be used to talk about the game. Not question someone skin color, sexual preference, or anything else. Talk only about the game, plan out attacks, objectives, nothing else is needed to said when you play the game!

Magic Mo5/28/2015, 7:33:19 AM1 votes

The funniest times are when someone says "Omg, league community so toxic"... when in fact all gaming communities are exactly like League's (no matter how competitive) if not worse.

MadmanWithBox5/28/2015, 8:06:41 AM1 votes

There's a lot of focus here on toxicity as it affects people's gameplay. I'm getting that you want us to learn how to play excellently despite the verbiage of strangers. You're saying that if we can all learn to do this, then toxicity will no longer be a problem because it will no longer affect our gameplay.

The problem is that you're belittling the way toxicity influences how we experience the game. Forgive the cliche, but there's more to fun than victory. When you acknowledge that people being jerks to each other makes the game less fun for most people, you also have to concede that an overall reduction in toxicity would make the game more fun for most people.

Instead of trying to Remove and ban all toxic players they simply need to decrease the relevance of toxic players

My understanding is that account suspensions are no longer Riot's go-to response to toxic behavior. Bans have questionable efficacy as a tool for reforming behavior, whereas chat restrictions are designed to train players how to properly use in-game messaging.

Worse, banned players often circumvent the suspension by creating smurfs that end up getting matched with new players. Mixing toxics with newbies is very bad - it drives the opinion that LoL's community is particularly bad, and it poisons opportunities for Riot to acquire more customers.

Yes, the recent rollout has issued 14-day bans, but the targeted behavior is extreme verbal toxicity: racial slurs, homophobic slurs, death threats, urging teammates to commit suicide. These are behaviors that an overwhelming majority of players have deemed absolutely unacceptable and therefore worthy of harsher punishment.

Overcoming weak traits of the mind is part of a competitive game, overcoming toxicity as a player is the only way to improve past simple mechanical skill

I think I may need some clarification: I am not certain which traits you are referring to. From the context of the article, I'm going to assume you're talking about a predisposition to poorer performance when discouraged. I agree that this trait is a weakness that many players have (myself included). I also agree that overcoming that weakness, developing the fortitude of mind to persevere and perform despite heckling and distractions - this is desirable character growth.

But just how thick does my skin have to be to enjoy a video game? I don't play League to better myself; I play it for fun. Professional League play is redefining "spectator sport", expanding it beyond athletics and spotlighting eSports in groundbreaking ways, but that doesn't mean that the entire playerbase seriously aspires to be the next Faker. This is my hobby, not my career. I shouldn't need the stoicism of a Vulcan to enjoy it.

Also, I disagree that overcoming toxicity is the only way to improve past mechanical skill. When organized, cohesive teams meet on the Rift (I'm talking premade, voice-chatting tryhards here) several factors beyond the mechanical determine the victor. Shot-calling, map awareness, comp-building, rotating, and general strategy all play a huge role on the outcome of a game.

In fact, I would argue that the burden to improve should be on the toxic player, because his negative behavior is a detriment to his team's ability to act as a unit. Forget the fact that his discouragement might make people play worse - by allocating mental bandwidth to verbal abuse (worthless tripe) instead of to a game-changing gambit (potentially useful), he is damaging himself and his team.

trying to remove toxicity in itself will create nothing but tension within the community

We have a difference of opinion. I believe that if there was less toxic, people would get along better. Feel free to disagree.

The strong willed, will mute

I would take it one step further. Whenever I suspect that a teammate might be slightly toxic or distracting, I mute them immediately. If exposure to other players' toxic damages your play, then take preventative measures. No need to wait until damage has been done.

riot does not enforce the usage of the mute button, they in fact enforce "not" using it, they can create an auto ban system

I do not believe that the 14-day bans are a mandate from Riot to stop using the mute button. If Riot really wanted us to stop muting other players, they would probably just remove the feature. Nor do I believe that these bans are a recommendation against its use.

Riot is implementing programs that use targeted punishments to correct undesirable behaviors. They are simultaneously giving us a tool that we can use to defend ourselves from verbal abuse by silencing the abuser. These two features are not mutually exclusive. (They help us help ourselves while they help us?)

I also feel the need to point out that the bans are not 100% automatic. The Player Behavior team is involved in these 14-day judgements; real-life people are reading chatlogs and reviewing the program's judgements.

"Why even punish them you say? well its not really punishment, its a lesson, Exclusively for them"

Actually, I'm with you 100% on this entire paragraph. That was actually exactly what Lyte in crew had in mind when they designed the Chat Restrictions. The idea was to turn chat into a limited resources, too valuable to squander on pointless abuse. The restricted player would eventually only chat to communicate key strategy, which was the original intent of chat in the first place.

Is being an adult acting mature? or is it being mature enough to not let immaturity Effect you

It's acting mature. Growing up doesn't turn you into a machine - immune to emotion and preference. Maturity is self-control, but doesn't mean the actions of others stop affecting you. It doesn't mean you're thick-skinned. It just means you don't react by misbehaving yourself. A well-adjusted adult might just get sick of soaking up other players' hate and quit League. How do you think Riot feels about that?

Their are sooo many options to combat toxcity other than banning people permanently, or at all

I agree. I wholeheartedly support Chat Restrictions, Low-Priority Queue, Behavior Alerts, the Honor System, and all other non-ban behavior initiatives.

You say people have to act like "adults" but lets try to remember the very simple lesson "adults" have tried to teach us since we were 4 years old "sticks and stones".

I don't actually remember any adults ever telling me "sticks and stones". That was usually a child's comeback to a witty zinger. Anyway, just because it's catchy doesn't mean it's true or useful. Behold my rebuttal:

The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one's life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

remember that when you ban someone for hurting your feelings you are collectively taking away everything they worked potentially "years" for, for a moment of superficial pain they caused you.

I do no such thing. I express a dissatisfaction with their behavior. If they manage to work their way up to a permanent ban, then it means two things: a frankly alarming number of people have expressed a similar dissatisfaction, and they've been given several chances to stop doing the bad thing. If their account is so precious to them, then I think they can manage to not say "n-gg-r" in-chat anymore.

a weak player will not press mute, take abuse and then complain that they were abused looking for others to fix a problem that was never a problem, you cant climb, because you look for excuses to why you cant climb. You "Chose" to see, you can Choose to close your eyes they blame the world for being the world, and look to their adjudicators to "Fix" a "problem" that only exists because they "allowed" it to exist.

I get where you're coming from, and I agree that making excuses for poor play severely limits a player's ability to climb ranks. However, while you believe that it is the abused's responsibility to mute the toxic and focus on the game, I believe that it's the toxic's responsibility to not be toxic.

You use a lot of words and imagery to put an onus on the recipient of abuse. You say that it is my job to have a thick skin, my responsibility to take insults with grace and let harsh words roll off my back. The jerk that's spewing hate will always be a jerk, and there will always be more jerks, and there's nothing that I can do about it except learn to deal with it.

No. I am doing nothing wrong. I am playing a video game and minding my own dang business, and this random troll came along and started calling me a f-g. IT IS NOT MY JOB TO TAKE THAT WITH GRACE. IT IS HIS JOB TO KNOW BETTER And I will not apologize for making it known that I'm not ok with that kind of behavior. And I am not alone.

The jerks are the minority. We will not all grow thicker skins just so the 1% may have an environment in which to thrive. Why should I have to be the bigger man, just so the immature can do whatever they want?