Toxicity of League of Legends is the worst I've seen in any multiplayer game

Pervy·11/7/2014, 11:25:54 AM·2 votes·1,106 views

I know Riot has done a few things to address this, but it seems that (atleast on my OCE server) there are some really super toxic people. An Idea I had to try to address this is to have an optional "toxic rating" at the end of every game for each player.

People rated if the player was either:

  • Toxic (gives a -1 score)
  • Didnt notice (gives +0 score)
  • Friendly (gives a +1 score)

From there you simply add up and assign an over all "score"

Then in the match making system apply to the current critera, to put all the Toxic players who have a - score together (they obviously like being rude, so it will be more fun for them) and it will reduce the amount that the general population encounters them.

Obviously getting an even skill matching system is more important, so if in the event that there isnt a selection of players who all have "positive" or "negative" scores to put together then the toxic people get lumped together.

You could expand this further so that people once they reach a certain negative score, they automatically: 1.) Have their chatting privlegeds banned for X period of time (incrementally increasing) along with auto ban warnings. 2.) Auto ban their accounts for X period of time (incrememntally increasing) along with warnings of a perm ban 3.) Perm ban

Obviously there would need to be some sort of logic put in place so that people couldnt just rate their friends "friendly" all the time to keep them out of being banned or muted, so something along the lines of if they have given a person a friendly rating any additional "friendly's" given by the same player to the same player dont increase their score for the next 24 hours (or something along those lines).

Then something similar to prevent someone from always rating people as "toxic" that for each player there is a tally for "what their overall rating's given are" and based on if they give out a statistically irrelevant number of Toxic's or Friendles that their ratings are not counted towards the people they are "rating".

This type of system also means that people who are Toxic have an opportunity to turn it around.

This would all add overheads to the match making system, but I think its worth it. I've thought about quitting playing lol multiple times because of all the toxicity, and hate playing with random people that I dont have a history with.

Further to this, a system needs to be put in place for ranked games (expecially promo games) for people who disconnect frequenly or go AFK frequenly. Once a person has reached % ratio of games to disconnects / AFK's, they should be banned from playing ranked games until they have improved their ratio in normal games. This disconnect ratio should be significanly lower than the current one to ban peoples accounts in general. When you are doing your promo games and someone goes AFK or disconnects its devistating.

12 Comments

Deep Terror Nami11/7/2014, 11:50:37 AM3 votes

It's because in games like this, there are no incentives to losers. You don't just get nothing, you lose something (LP). In most other multiplayer games even if you lose, you still get experience, unlocks, whatever, based on your own contributions. Here, you can be 20/0/0 and if you lose because your team is really really bad, you're S.O.L.

Drunk Rummate11/7/2014, 2:57:31 PM2 votes

Hey OP, I have to ask

How many multiplayer games have you played?

Because from my experience, toxicity in League is no worse than it is in most online FPS games (CoD and Halo come to mind) Because from my experience, toxicity in League is no worse than it is in SC2 (shit talking just comes after the game because you're too busy to talk during it, plus the community itself is rather elitist)

Consider this for a moment: League doesn't make people toxic, but it caters to the general population; and the general population is self absorbed and rude in their anonymity.

Stars Shaper11/7/2014, 12:39:55 PM1 votes

I fear that introducing a system like that with the comminity we have is gonna be toxic too. Riot should take heavy misures and serious scanning of games against toxic players to start to make things better. And they don't want to.

Edit: They don't want to because it's been their policy to let the playerbase behave itself via the tribunal (under reform which is taking years..). It surely is a good way to let a system grove but since the toxicity is so radicated into the game I don't believe that without a strong action things are going to get better.

Narasimha11/7/2014, 12:47:05 PM1 votes

You've never played CoD, have you?

Mahnigguh11/7/2014, 2:26:12 PM1 votes

What is supposed to happen when toxic people go around giving decent players bad toxic ratings ? are the non trolls supposed to be punished for that too? flawed system imo

Matthias911911/7/2014, 2:43:48 PM1 votes

Lumping all the "toxic" players together is a bad idea and Riot's discussed it many many times. You take the marginally negative people and drive them to be super toxic instead. Plus in the system you described you'd never get off "toxic island", since the toxic players will just rate everyone -1 in every match.

Automatic chat restrictions and bans based off unverified reports is a really bad idea. DOTA2 worked like this for a while (too many reports => auto-banished to low priority queue) and they had issues all the time with innocent players getting punished because they got reported by a few trolls. They went through several rounds of dialing the system back, culminating in heavily restricting the number of reports that players can hand out.

Punishing based on the net value of (honors - reports) seems... incorrect. If you're a raging feeder in half your games and super-nice in the other half, you shouldn't be immune to punishment. Also if you're doing things like intentionally feeding every game you shouldn't have to get reported 20 times to get a chat restriction, then another 20 to get a 1-day ban, etc... Riot should do what they're doing now and start with a 2-week ban or go right to a perma.

Further to this, a system needs to be put in place for ranked games (expecially promo games) for people who disconnect frequenly or go AFK frequenly. Once a person has reached % ratio of games to disconnects / AFK's, they should be banned from playing ranked games until they have improved their ratio in normal games. This disconnect ratio should be significanly lower than the current one to ban peoples accounts in general. When you are doing your promo games and someone goes AFK or disconnects its devistating.

I actually do think Riot should consider this. Perhaps they will now that they have the capability to do ranked restrictions in place. Although if you actually DC/AFK "frequently" you will start getting bans pretty damn fast in Ranked. Much like with verbal toxicity, most of the DCs/AFKs you see are from players who do it very rarely.

SecondChanceHero11/7/2014, 2:45:25 PM1 votes

Toxicity ratings were discussed at length several years back. It was eventually decided that having them be displayed would likely cause more issues, if you can see some one with a high score you'd be a lot less likely to be respectful to them. Check the archives if you want specifics.

isBen Swolo11/7/2014, 4:10:31 PM1 votes

I have been troubled by this before, and its because of this members of the community I've decided to stop playing lol, I cannot have fun anymore in any degree, it is always a flamer a troll or just a bad mannered player that insults you, and if is not that there's always an afk that ruins the match, then everyone starts cursing at each other and they report you if yous stay at base because in a 4v5 your butt is obviously going to be kicked I've decided to leave this community for good because the stress of getting cursed at or insulted in every game you play is just too much, and my year has been stressful enough thank you.

I just hope they could resolve this although I doubt it. Amumu

Pervy11/8/2014, 5:33:21 PM1 votes

Ive been out of the online game scene for a while, the last online game I used to play was wow (burning crusade expansion) & before that DOD.

They where not even 10% as bad as lol.

Pervy11/7/2014, 12:29:12 PM1 votes

Valkyrie, I some what agree with you. The drive to win & being placed with horrible players is really frustrating but being rude & abusive isn't really required.

Also there are a significant number of players in the team that are winning abusing people on the losing team which is really uncalled for.

A bit of trash talk is expected in a competitive game and is fun especially when its a closely matched intense game. But there are some really horribly toxic ppl out there