I've got a whole new perspective on toxicity in ranked
As someone who spends (or spent) most of my gaming time in ranked, I thought that I saw the majority of the verbal abuse, afker's, ragers, and trolls in comparison to most other parts of the game.
So many people tell me they don't see this, and those people tend to mostly play normals, twisted treeline, ARAM, or team builder. I just thought it was a product of competitiveness making people over aggressive, but then....oh but then....
A friend of mine (which has sadly since quit less than 2 weeks into playing, which makes my second friend starting then quitting this game in the last month) made an account after a long while (years) of being badgered into playing LoL with me. I made a new account to help his leveling up, trying to teach him while we were in voice chat, helping him out, and so on. I told him I'd prefer to stay out of pvp for now because it wouldn't be fair for newer players if I was playing against them on a smurf account so when he pvp'd he would be on his own.
Well I sort of played some pvp with him before in all for one since it is just a fun game mode (or not apparently). All throughout the time we played, people would rage about more things than I've ever seen. Most talking about how they were smurfs (I didn't run into one other new player even in bots aside from my friend), how anytime someone died they were a noob, they sucked, go die scrub, etc. It was ridiculous. Every game in all for one at least, people would afk, in most of the bot games as well, at least one person would just give up.
The problem was and is, there is no accountability there, because they don't care if they are reported, or banned, it is an alt account. My friend cared, because he didn't have another account, he wanted to play, learn, and have fun. Instead he had to deal with people telling him how terrible he was, people rage quitting over literally the smallest things (had two people refuse to dodge and then wait till the game started in all for one and just quit because they didn't like that we all picked morgana when they wanted Annie, and they didn't get the champ they wanted, so they threw a hissy fit and rage quit as soon as the game started). As if the new player experience wasn't bad enough, sadly they have to deal with more trolls, ragers, and afk'ers than I ever thought I did in ranked where I thought it to be ridiculous. Those people don't care if they get a below level 15 account banned or anything, and it is just a cesspool down there I never remember it being. It is a little depressing. There needs to be a way to curb that sort of smurfing, like having smurf accounts allowed to start at 10-15 instead of at 1, because those people just have no filter for the negative attitude they already have, and just let it out in a way they might normally hold back.
tl;dr All of those of you (and me at one time) who think you have it bad in ranked, sadly have it good compared to new players. Probably why we don't have many actually new players anymore, because the asshats who can't beat someone their skill level try to make new accounts to pick on "noobs" (which they still can't seem to do from what I saw) and act like mega idiots. Be glad you only have the competitive idiots and not the idiots who think bullying on new players is fun.
