I could write a book on how insurmountable it would be to eliminate this element from the game but this video does well enough I think.
I'll simply say that you can punish after the fact but that does not stop it from happening in the first place and caution has to be taken when judging those that provide your income.
Yeah, I'm sorry , but no.
"Powerlessness" is a victim-mentality problem, and it's a problem that effects 99.9% of the human race without knowing it. The average League of Legends player has no emotional discipline and no mental fortitude, the average player is incapable of accepting responsibility for their own actions and instead defers it via the process of "blaming". This blame quickly escalates into personal attacks, and emotions get involved. The end result is a player who is emotionally vulnerable and subjected, time and time again, to verbal abuse over things that have NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM.
What happens next is nihilism, and from here trolls and "toxic" players are born. When a player enters into a nihilism mentality they lose faith not only in themselves, but also in whoever they play the game with. They adopt a "devil may care" attitude about the game and, seeking to cover up their own emotional vulnerability, they become that very thing which hurt them, and thus perpetuate the cycle. Let me give an example:
player a likes to play mid lane, but he is last pick and winds up having to fill in the role of support, much to his chagrin. During the course of the game, player b (who is playing mid) has a bad game and feeds the enemy mid lane, this has a cascading effect on the mental and emotional state of the team. Player a, who is already frustrated over having to play a role he does not like, now verbally attacks player b. Player a, with his over-inflated ego (and let's face it we ALL have over-inflated ego's - even the best of us) thinks only about HIMSELF and how HE could have crushed the mid lane match if player b hadn't "STOLEN HIS ROLE" and now the entire game is a waste of time. The fact of the matter is player a never stopped once to consider the feelings of player b, or even considered rallying to his teammates side and offering words of encouragement, nope. Burn the witch.
As the game goes on, the situation gets more and more out of hand. Because player a is too busy being angry at player b, he isn't paying attention to his own lane, and fails to notice the incoming jungle gank, resulting in the enemy adc getting a double kill, tower, and dragon. Now, with multiple lanes snowballing against them, the team breaks down and ultimately loses the game.
Player a is incredibly angry, and vows to never let anyone else have "his role" ever again. From that point forward, any time he enters champion select he threatens his new teammates (who are completely unaware) that he will "mid or troll". If player a does not get mid lane, he purposely engages in toxic behavior and does his damnedest to lose the game for his team, feeling that there is no point in playing if he can't have what he wants. The rest of his team now feels as though they are being held hostage, and player a feels powerful and in control because he has everyone firmly grasped in his power-control drama.
Here's the kicker, player a has no actual power over anyone, it's all an illusion.
In this scenario, player a is unable to cope with not being able to have his way, and blames player b for all of the negative emotions that he is experiencing as a result. He is unwilling to consider the emotions of player b because he is too busy thinking about himself. He holds player b responsible and blames, judges, and criticizes to an absurd degree. The problem is player a has no emotional discipline, he is unable to accept defeat, even when it's player b who is the one struggling. In his mind, player a is being forced to watch "some idiot" lose "HIS" lane and he is unable to do anything about it. Player a then decides to threaten & bully other players who had NOTHING to do with his previous game in hopes of getting his way. Player a has lost any ability to relate to, or sympathize with the other human beings he is playing with. Player a is now a nihilist.
The most hilarious part is that somehow people think that this is Riot Game's problem to fix, when they couldn't be further from the truth. Hell, maybe even Riot thinks that they have to fix this problem. The truth of the matter is that there isn't a damn thing that Riot can do because it was never their issue in the first place. This is an entirely player-based issue, and only the players can fix it. I don't care how many bans Riot issues, how many top behavioral scientists they hire, or how many learning algorithms they program to track and catch toxic behavior, the problem will NEVER go away until the player base collectively gets over itself. The PLAYERS need to be able to accept responsibility for their own actions, and learn to deal with their emotions in a healthy, positive way. When a player dies they need to be able to own up to their fuck up, and absolve themselves of whatever guilt they are feeling over it. On the same token their teammates need to be able to recognize and ALLOW them to fuck up, apologize, and move on. Latching onto failure only causes the cycle to repeat over and over again. The problem is a total lack of self-awareness and empathy.
Everyone wants to win, and everyone wants to be to be the best. That's what happens when people are passionate about something, but without discipline and control that same passion and drive will erupt into a roaring inferno that will consume you and everyone around you. Success is often equated to an iceberg because, to the casual observer all you see is the very top. The reality is success is built upon a mountain of failures, you have to be willing to look harder in order to truly see that.
Players need to stop thinking about "me" and more about "we". Players need to recognize that defeat is a good thing, it's affirmation that you have room to grow and improve, defeat is the motivation to try harder, to accept weakness and make it strength. When you look at it like that, you are never powerless in a game. Even if your entire team feeds every game is an opportunity for YOU to play your best and improve, nobody can take that from you. You are never a hostage to a players poor behavior because you can CHOOSE to simply mute them and keep playing. You are never stuck being a toxic player either because you can CHOOSE to behave better whenever you want. You never have to languish in despair over losing a game because you can CHOOSE to be applaud your foe in their victory.
Because one of the things we most often forget is that on the other end of the screen is another human being who thinks and feels just like you do, and it's up to you to make the choice: am I part of the problem, or the solution? Nobody else can fix it for you, but you have all the power, and all the responsibility.
Then Lyte will tell you that it's internet's fault, because nobody was moderating it and everybody was allowed to insult each other.
I haven't seen a forum on the internet that tolerated racial slurs, insulting each other etc. that would be unacceptable in any or most real life situations.
I remember how I used to play Metin2 as a little kid that just started learning how to internet. There was a public thread on the forum with names of everybody who were banned, for how long and what for.
In League of Legends you can't even tell if a person who was an absolute dick to you got banned or not, for some fucking unfathomable reason. Best response to that was "because people would reverse engineer our system and exploit it".
Riot, do you really expect a troll who trash-talks people every game to go throught that lengthy process of gathering all the information to maybe, just maybe, not get punished? You are deluded, hopeless(ironically) company that doesn't care and doesn't trust it's own source of income.
Toxicity starts in your headquarters. Ban yourselves.
In HotS, toxicity isn't even a report reason, and there's a lot less of it than in League.
Why? Because League is designed to encourage toxicity, and HotS is designed to mitigate it.
League has a massive design flaw in that you win as a team but are encouraged and rewarded for selfish play at the cost of your team. The only punishment for playing like an egotistical ass is the eventual loss, but you've received so many awards at that point in the form of gold, score and multikills that you can easily blame your team, while people who actually play to win end up with a few more deaths and less gold and feel horrible about it.
