The State of the Initiative, From A Player

This will be a long post. I'm quite sure it will just get skimmed over or ignored since its on this forum, particularly by anyone with a red name, but I really appreciate anyone who takes the time out of their day, be them player or rioter, just to read through it all and get a good understanding of what it is I'm trying to say. Mods, feel free to move it if its in the wrong place, but this is really not General Discussion.

To get started, this is one of the many alt accounts I have because there isn't anything left for me to do otherwise on this game aside from the occasional game with what few friends I have when they're ever on. I began playing around August 2011, after the end of the Season 1 World Championships. I easily got addicted to the game because of its accessibility on low end hardware, fairly well conceived lore, and strategic aspect that, when combined with the game's high skill curve, always seemed to offer players more to learn. I started playing ranked in Season 3 and ended up Gold, and peaked Diamond 1 in Season 4. Since then, I've been taking it easy and haven't played too competitively because for the most part I've always been a solo player.

Now, I'm fully aware that no matter what the history is, I'm still just another player. A part of a community. And, oddly enough, my community has been reported to be the worst community in all of gaming. The odd part being that it has reported ITSELF to be that way. And thus player behavior is taken so much more seriously in this game than in any other game, and it's not just an opinion, it's fact. There have been so many actions taken to try and improve this report of the community (I won't list them here) and it isn't looking like there will really be any end to them. There are even players who say that more manpower should be directed into improving the game in other aspects such as gameplay, stability (both connectivity and bugfixes), content (including champions, skins, and lore), and visual/audio effects. Whether or not they're right is not my argument (nor explicitly my opinion), but rather that many players do feel this way. All these changes to the system do have an impact on the players, and I'm not sure whether or not this is taken into account often enough or maybe it just isn't anything the Player Behavior Initiative is concerned with.

That being said, I don't have access to any numbers, but it's quite certain by the most recent changes like Dynamic Queue and all of the boosts to party play, such as IP gains and hextech key fragment chances, that these alterations to the system just aren't working. I'm bad with analogies so I'll say it straight: anyone who has even the slightest bit of a brain can tell that the number of reports drastically drops when players queue together because, of course, they usually know each other. So instead of addressing any concerns with why players are "toxic" in the first place, the changes were made to try and encourage a drop in the number of reports so that people get reported less. It's definitely a clever strategy until you stop to consider those people who have always played alone and still enjoy doing so.

I used to play this game all day, every day. I played mainly normal games during the afternoon and then ranked in the evenings when I felt confident my play was good that day. Honestly, I never felt myself improve when I played with my friends because they were either never good enough, or never had the intent to get better, and on a game like this, finding players like that while also making sure you're all compatible with each other is insanely hard. Note: The keyword is compatible. This is the internet and people come from all different walks of life and have different ways of doing things. So, I remained a solo player and the one thing I feared more than anything else while in queue was the dreaded four-man-premade, those players who were all friends with everyone except me. No matter what it is you do, no matter how it is you play, no matter what it is you say... if it bothers one of the four even slightly, you have all four as extra enemies instantly. This was something you couldn't get in ranked (although it was almost as bad when one player decided to instigate and remove the focus of the other four). Now, I'm not bashing dynamic queue, but if anyone has seen any opposition to the changes of the ranked system this year, this is why. Anyone playing solo is ostracized by his own teammates, and having to play a 1v9 upsets and discourages people.

I was going through some significant life events in early season 5, and this game was something I knew well, so I played it religiously. Tired of getting 1+4 v 5 games in normals, I started playing ranked more often in Season 5. However, like I said above, in ranked, it isn't too much better, and when life already has you down, playing this game was just a kick in the nether regions. So, for the first time after 3-4 years of playing, I received a chat restriction for 27 games or so, for talking back to players who stopped their game to ruin mine. I sent in a report ticket, a surprisingly sincere one given how furious I was, to see if it was in error or if anyone could show me what I was doing wrong, and really got back the typical "the community hates you and we don't care" reply from the Social Systems desk. I did my 27 games quietly and peacefully, and promptly stopped playing for a month after. When I logged into the game next, I was chat restricted for yet another 9 games... apparently, ghosts were talking smack on my account. I sent in a ticket and, this time, I received no reply at all. Two months later, I received an email saying something along the lines of "oh we can't do anything about it because we have no idea what this ticket is about anymore". I almost quit the game completely after that email, but the coming preseason 2016 actually had interesting changes that made it far too difficult to actually lose games, so I started playing again.

I haven't been punished since, so I'm one of those so-called "reformed" players. But, I haven't seen any changes to actually keep things like what I went through from happening. The system seems to be much stricter for people with reports from multiple teammates and players are encouraged to band together. This only means those playing alone have to be even MORE careful than before and the enjoyment of the game just drops all around. There needs to be significant support for the solo players. It's been needed for a very long time, and, honestly, I'm sure the main reason people still believe this community is so bad is because there's no incentive to even attempt to get along with four random people, be they together or not, and emphasis is placed instead on trying to remove the focus of players on actual gameplay and issues with it.

"Play together, you'll talk less about 'toxic' players."

"Watch our LCS instead of high diamond+ ranked games, so you don't actually play and learn the game yourself."

"Here's a shiny new crate system to distract you from our failing honor system."

"We removed intricate wall-flashes, so we don't have to provide you with a sandbox to improve your play."

This is a very small number of examples, but the trend has been like that for years. Please, don't dismiss this as one player's discouraged opinion, or even that of the vocal minority. I truly don't pretend to speak for everyone, but there is a significant number of players, including popular players, who feel the same way and observe the same things, and through them, I see many more people who have the same sentiments also. Whether or not this matters to anyone in the Social Systems Team or if anything will change, I don't know. But it really disturbs me that I'm being alienated more and more in a game I try fairly hard to enjoy.

If I was to try and fix any of the problems, I would start by being 100% upfront with the players with the truth behind actions and changes with everything (i.e., Patch Notes can sometimes be the most contradictory announcements ever made). Public relations between the community and Riot Games Inc. may seem fantastic on the company's end, but old players are not given very much, if any, support, and new players are being cheated out of the experience that kept the old players here for so long. It's not impossible to see why it seems such a hard fix; Riot Games Inc. is a profitable company and does not assume responsibility for things players do, and trying to change their attitudes isn't anyone's job description (no matter how much Riot Lyte likes to imply it is).

My advice to the players is this: If you've truly encountered a player who's sole reason for playing is to make your experience worse, that is a toxic player and that player needs to be removed from the community. Do not become that person for any circumstance. If you're competitive that is okay, but do not let anyone ruin your experience uninhibited. No matter where you've placed the line on what is toxic and what isn't, that and that alone is the definition of toxicity in gaming, for it spreads like wildfire and corrupts good people and it needs to be stopped. If you are not that person, you are not toxic and anyone trying to pass you off as so is attempting to get a rise out of you. Play your game. You are fine.

My request to Riot Games collectively is this: Please respond more to your community (and not just on the story/GD/concepts boards). And please, do it honestly. It's been 7 years since this game was released and people enjoy it. There's no real reason to pretend like it is us vs you. There never has been and never will be no matter how many of us there are. I remember Riot Repertoir and his collaboration with the players on the juggernaut rework. We truly appreciate things like that. There are millions of us and less of you, but the attempt he made at replying to so many threads was something so moving, I actually stopped being upset that my favorite faceroll champ got gutted a few weeks before (yes, I played Fiora to diamond). Support your solo players, be they competitive or casual. These are the players up every night finding your bugs, crafting new item builds, developing new strategies, and overall trying to have the most fun actually playing the game.

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. If you want to get to know me personally, shoot me a friend request on the client and we'll talk. I'd appreciate it if this didn't get downvoted to oblivion for being too long and sounding like a rant. Rioters or arbiters can feel free to reply. I really want to see this become an open discussion. Again, if this is on the wrong board, players please contact mods to move it rather than just downvoting.