Edit: This was mostly a rant from someone that was frustrated, and I think a lot of my point was lost in translation (partially my fault) and started a bit of arguing, which wasn't my intent.
Just removing this so it won't further any arguments or negative comments. Thanks for the positive or helpful comments that were left regardless, guys.
I'm actually curious if your memory is impacting your experiences and perception. When I review accounts and players that say they constantly see toxicity, usually it's in less than 10% of their games and for most players, they've never seen hate speech for 100s of games now.
If we just do simple things like measure the number of times n*gger is used in games globally, the rate per game has gone down dramatically in the past 3 years. Leavers/AFKs are down dramatically, and in Ranked is in less than 5% of games. However, we could always do better, and these negative behaviors still do happen sometimes. Are you perhaps remembering the negative events too strongly?
I'm sorry the community ruined league for your friend.
It seems like it changed so suddenly too. I started mid S4 and still have fond memories of my climb to level 30. We were all new and all bad so no one flamed for feeding, no one called you an idiot if you were building hurricaine on Tristana, and smurfs were only encountered once in a while.
For the hell of it I made a new account recently and it's unbelievable how bad it is now. You have silver smurfs with suspended accounts calling a lvl6 a retard because they took Udyr mid, I kid you not every other game there is a lvl 12 Yasuo with 300 CS at 25 minutes, and matchmaking itself often decides to put a lvl17 against a legitimate gold 3 account in draft pick.
The new player experience used to be boot camp, now it's a gauntlet.
its funny how in eu boards ppl will kill you if you say anything against eh community and here you get upvotes.
"It's not our game it's your confirmation bias." fucking riot.
the reason for toxicity is honestly incredibly simple;
if you don't like someone, you're fucking stuck with them for like 30 minutes or more.
call of duty, halo, whatever the crap console game you want to play; you can literally just leave with hardly any repercussion, as a result, there is literally 0% shit talking and raging in my games when i play simple stuff like FPSs (my experience, but totally honest)
As someone who also has been playing for 5 years (Mordekaiser was the new champion release when I started), the fun of the game for me was because nobody knew what they were doing and the game lacked structure.
**There was immense reward for those who picked up the game well and knew how to play it right, and there was very low penalty for those who struggled to play the game right. **
Now look at League's culture. People are paying actual money to take classes from pro players. Playing the game has become a job for the average player, even if they aren't being paid for it. Everybody knows what they are doing now, even if they may not have the mechanics to perform those actions correctly. Now that there is a set meta-game, a structured way to play, there is more room for frustration for this team game because of team-based issues.
For example, post-beta League was a lot like basketball; everybody playing can be involved and doing something, but there is a lot of room for one player to carry really hard, and it's not that big of a deal to the newbies because that player is just really good at the game. The experienced player can do the same actions that every one of his teammates can, at any time of the game.
Current League is a lot like baseball; everybody has their own role and are limited to that one role, they cannot fill in for others at any point in the game, so any deficiency in the team's play can be pinpointed on a particular player not doing their job, and it is so obvious who is holding a team down given the structure of the game. Your first base man cannot also be fielding. Your batter pitcher cannot also be catcher. You can have great players guarding the bases, but if your fielders are shit, your whole team is going to be shit at defending.
And this is why current League is more prone to toxicity and negativity. It's easier to flame or get angry about players for not doing what they need to do, because the structure of the game defines that player's job, and everyone in the game knows it. All team's have a similar structure, so it's easier to compare/contrast players of the same role on the opposing teams. It's easy to rage over the fact that your left fielder can't catch/throw a ball to stop the other team from running the bases, while the other team's left fielder catches every ball and your team can't score at all because of it.
I'll even admit that my frustrations with the game come from this dynamic. It's when my teammates are completely outclassed by their counterparts or refuse to cooperate with the rest of the team. That one player who never follows their roaming lane opponent. That one player that calls Missing after their laner has already killed you. That one tank/support who is split pushing instead of team fighting. That one jungler who is always second to show up for ganks, only responding to the enemy jungler's movements. That one Marksman who refuses to auto attack in a team fight when only threatened by a zero-damage, cooldown-blown tank, and says "I NEED PEEL FROM LEONA". The structure of the game labels those who are weak and those who are strong, because of the criteria it provides to measure players by.
Now I'm not saying game structure is bad, but it certainly contributes to toxicity and negativity when the masses play the game by a certain structure, and it re-defines the conditions by which you have fun. You can have fun in basketball regardless of how everyone else is doing. You can't have fun in baseball when no one is working together. Current League is baseball, and ARAM is basketball.
tl;dr Bit of a rant from someone who has been playing for 5 years and wondering what happened to this community. Gonna be a long one.
While the bans have gone up (supposedly) as of late, the toxic behaviour has gone up with it (not saying it is because of it, just an observation). It has gotten to the point I don't even want to admit to my friends I play this game because they know just as well as I do how terrible the community has gotten, and sadly it is the unvocal majority that is this way, unlike the vocal minority that tend to show up here. It is the ones that go into fun game modes and start calling people the N word, threatening people with cancer, saying all kinds of ridiculous stuff, intentionally feeding, all because they don't get a champion in All For One they want. It is the ones who can't handle dying 1-2 times in a game and start flaming everyone and everything for their own mistakes till it just takes the fun out of a game. It is the ones who will flame and talk down to actual new players for not knowing the "meta" or how to play a champ properly at level 10 (saw a ridiculous amount of this last night trying to teach a new friend how to play. He has already quit after 3 days of constant trash talk and berating from smurfs and I don't blame him). I remember when this game was about having fun, but now it is about nothing more than winning at all costs, and acting like a child if you don't (I've seen 30 year old men acting like 12 year olds in this game, so it isn't just teenagers). When did the fun leave? When did it start becoming the nor m to flame and dodge ARAM because you didn't get what you wanted and someone wouldn't trade with you? The worse part is, there are less people like me it seems that remember when the game wasn't like this, as you even have people thinking this is normal, and defending the trash talkers and feeders because they have the same terrible mentality. I give Riot credit for trying to fix it now, but I think it is a bit out of control overall, and now the punishments are just making some act out even worse, and overall it is about a year too late. I love this game and have since 2010, but I loved Eve Online at one point too, and sadly just like that game, it is the players ruining the fun experience, not the game.I hate to quit, but everytime I log in, I stay logged out that much longer.
I have a question not just for you but most of this community.Why does it bother you when someone insults you or anybody else?Why is it important to you what a random probably a teenage moron says to you in a online game???Why do you all care??Why are you so sensitive? I presonally dont care if someone flames at me or my teammate i instanlty mute them and you know what i dont even report them because i simply do not care and its stupid to report someone for raging i simply do not care i enjoy the game because its a fun game regardless of what sam random person in it says.Altought the reworks latley havr been annoying
