Why is "Negative Additude" a report option?

Rueian·7/26/2015, 4:07:10 AM·10 votes·3,774 views

Why is being a pessimist against the rules? Why is having low morale and giving up against the rules? Why is not trusting your team in Solo queue against the rules?

Why should a person be punished and possibly banned for these simple things? The only time being negative might be punish worthy is when you step the line and verbally abuse someone by blaming. But if you are simply giving up, so what, the game isn't going their way you cant force someone to be happy about a bad situation, and telling someone they are negative isn't really helpful either.

Once someone has had an emotional response, telling them that they are that and to stop that is like slapping them in the face.

No one likes losing, it is a negative experience it will be met with negative emotions. Everyone will deal with it differently, so why punish them for it?

293 Comments

sp4417/26/2015, 4:11:51 AM16 votes

Because bitching about how much your team sucks and attempting to surrender 4 times when you're just one dragon and 5 kills behind when they have a early-game comp is more irritating than Teemo fucking your wife.

Matthias91197/26/2015, 6:22:34 AM8 votes

Why is being a pessimist against the rules?

It's not. Spamming chat with useless negative comments can be, if you're doing it often enough.

Why is having low morale [against the rules]?

It's not.

[Why is] giving up against the rules?

Refusing to play (or deliberately letting the enemies take objectives, etc.) is against the rules in matchmade games because you are expected to play the game out to the best of your ability unless your team agrees to surrender. Most players really dislike having teammates that give up and screw them over. Even if there's only a small chance of making a comeback in a particular situation, having a teammate give up takes that down to essentially zero, and over time that costs the players you're matched with wins. If you're going to ragequit or give up on your team the moment things start to go badly, League might not be the best game for you.

Why is not trusting your team in Solo queue against the rules?

It's not. However, preemptively stating things like "I'm not going to help you" can be, because this can be interpreted as "giving up" or refusing to help your team when you could do so.

Ultimately, the reason that negative attitude gets punished is that Tribunal consistently voted to punish players who were a constant source of negativity in their matches. This can be viewed as a violation of item #1 in the Summoner's Code, "Support Your Team".

Nobody is saying you have to pour forth sunshine and rainbows no matter how badly things are going. But "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" would seem to apply here. It's one thing to offer constructive criticism, it's quite another to just whine about how badly everyone is playing or point fingers at your teammates.

Nameless Voice7/26/2015, 3:16:35 PM5 votes

It comes down to the same reason anything is reportable: don't be antagonistic towards others.

If you feel the game is lost, you can say something like "hey guys, I don't think we can win this. Should we surrender?" This is bringing across the point that you think the game may be unwinnable in a neutral manner, and unlikely to annoy anyone, especially if you continue playing as best you can if the team doesn't agree with you.

On the other hand, you get people who say things like "gg this is over", which drips contempt for the team and is a thinly veiled version of "we can't win this because my team is awful." This begins to move into negative attitude territory. It gets exacerbated when the player keeps making such negative comments repeatedly, makes negative comments every time something bad happens, and repeatedly spams surrender votes. Those aren't expressing the opinion that you think the game is probably lost, those are you specifically setting out to antagonise those players who still want to play. If your first two surrender votes failed 1-4, then starting the same doomed vote over and over is only annoying your team and distracting them from the game with that huge surrender box. If someone makes a bad play, they know that they did badly, and don't need thinly disguised insults in the form of negative comments.

Finally, the negative attitude reason can also be used to report non-sporting behaviour, such as not showing humility on victory (saying "easy"), etc.

Jubbinaut7/26/2015, 9:42:48 AM4 votes

{quoted}

Why is being a pessimist against the rules?

It's not, unless you're inflicting that attitude on others. In which case, it's against the rules because it's disruptive to the general enjoyment of the game - because it affects not just the players in that match, but also in the matches those players go on to have.

Why is having low morale and giving up against the rules?

It's not, unless you're inflicting it on others. If giving up was against the rules, every game that ended in a surrender would be accompanied by chat restrictions for the losing team.

Why is not trusting your team in Solo queue against the rules?

Once someone has had an emotional response, telling them that they are that and to stop that is like slapping them in the face.

Just like the message for ragers isn't "stop being angry," the message to negative/low morale players isn't "stop being negative." Rather, the message is "stop inflicting your negativity on others." What you think and what you feel are well beyond the bounds of Riot - or anyone else - to dictate. The way you act on those thoughts and emotions, however, are constrained by the needs of the community.

No one likes losing, it is a negative experience it will be met with negative emotions. Everyone will deal with it differently, so why punish them for it?

One could make the same argument about ragers: "Sometimes I feel angry, and this is how I deal with anger. Why should I be punished for how I feel?" It's no more valid just because the emotion is different.

Jubbinaut7/29/2015, 2:34:33 AM1 votes

[deleted]

Jubbinaut7/29/2015, 9:06:39 PM1 votes

{quoted}

I've been dealing with emotional issues, particularly black out rage since i was in early elementary school. I had the physical(offline) side generally under control at about late middle school, early highschool. After introduced to competitive games, I had a regression towards being very angry, as I had never been in a state of competing with others. (smash bros, street fighter, etc) I slowly started to accept more of what was going on with those games and then league... now i'm stuck in this state when all i care about is doing well, and since i dont control all aspects of the game it is tough to not get angry/discouraged at everything. i've been at this since day 1... to say i'm not invested enough is kinda odd considering the immense time i put in. I've invested so much with really no progress. thats not even including the fact that i've invested so much time in actually getting better at the game with really no progress either. I hit walls, but can never get over them.

You've invested time, sure. But I'm not talking about a time investment. I'm talking about an emotional investment.

I'm talking, specifically, about emotionally investing into this idea of "getting back up." I'm talking about caring so much about getting back up after every mistake, every fall, every screw-up, that you can't even imagine doing anything but getting back up and trying again. Because this is how you learn: fail over and over again. And this is how you eventually succeed: try one more time than you fail.