I love this game, but... The people...

I love League of Legends, it's a great game and I usually enjoy my time playing it. That is, assuming I mute my entire team before the game starts.

When I load up League of legends, I'm looking to play this game for fun first, and I love innovating fun and interesting ways of doing things that people don't generally think of or haven't really done before. When I feel confident in my ability to do something, after being told by the many players in my normal games that I'm a "troll" and that I "am trying to lose the game for everyone", I'll take it to ranked, where the reactions are completely the same. "Report ChickenWrap, he's playing something I don't think will work, and therefore, he's trolling."

It's attitudes like this that make League of Legends a game that's better to be watched than to be played, because when you're watching a League of Legends match, you don't have to put up with all the things that other people are saying because they're frustrated about something that happened or a pick that was made.

There are three different types of endings a League game can have.

• The ten-minute "open mid" (stomp), where it just feels bad for everyone because a few players got upset at the start and gave up
• The come-back, where one team messes up and the other one plays better than them for the rest of the match, where the team that came back feels amazing
• The neck-in-neck, where both teams are equally matched, but in the end, one team pulls ahead and both teams leave feeling like they played a great game (although one or two people may be a little frustrated if someone got caught out)

I don't like muting my team-mates, because I like to convey important information to them, but due to the high density of jerks that can be found, many people opt to mute everyone before a game starts to avoid problems like being harassed by others. Sadly, this creates a huge barrier for the team because no one can communicate properly, but leaving chat open leaves you extremely vulnerable to the highly gross and vulgar things people are willing to say to someone else under the guise of anonymity. With Lyte's departure, I don't know if that's going to change for better, or for worse, but it's a hope that things will change in the face of competitive games some day.

It's so much easier to be a nice person from the start to someone rather than start flinging insults because they made one mistake or another. Where's the sportsmanship that people used to put so much emphasis on? What happened that turned "Good Game" from a show of good sportsmanship to something you feel mandated to say at the end of a match?

Why do I feel bad even when I win a game? I shouldn't feel bad, but I do.

It's because of all the vulgarity and negativity that happens during the game, twisting something that was once fun into something that I can only fully enjoy if I'm playing with a lot of friends or if I'm playing with everyone muted.

I wouldn't be playing this game at all if it weren't for how much enjoyment I get out of playing my main, because if I had to play a plethora of other characters all the time and still have to deal with the things that I deal with now, I don't think I would be able to handle playing League anymore. New players can't even come into the game without being forced to deal with this either, and that is why people think this game has the most toxic community of all. All games that play under an even remotely competitive scope will foster this kind of community, but League is so large that not even people coming into this game for the first time and playing against bots are safe from the scrutiny of their "team mates".

For the sake of the game, and for the sake of your team mates, the next time you see them, give them a smile, say hello, and help try to build a real stand-up community again.