How to solve a toxic players problem. My solution.

Dear Riot Games.

I am League of Legends player for around 4 years now. I really enjoy the game. I enjoy that it's developing, the lore and the feeling of team work.

But here's the catch. Teamwork. I don't mind losing, please notice that. If I know that we all tried our best. That even if someone was losing, he just tried. He tried to defend that tower, tried not to feed, tried to help in teamfights as much as he could.

As we know, that is not that common.

I sat down to think about the problem, and as I am pretty sure, many had sat like this before also. How to clean up the community, without loosing it?

And here is what I came up with:

What is the problem? Why people have so much contradicting opinions - who is to blame for the loss? And why they need to find SOMEONE to blame. Answer: I think it comes from the fact, that somehow, despite many years, most of the people still consider it a single player game. Sounds crazy, right? But I think it's true. That's the only logical explantion I came up with, when I thought about why players have so different interpretations of what is this game, how to win it, does kill matter. And why everyone wants to play MID/AD/TOP - depending what is the most THEORETICALLY impactful in current meta.

Even though we have examples set by professional leauge. By tournamets. By rules that you put out there, i.e.: the old argue about pick order vs. call order - some people still reject it. And why? Because they put themselves into the center of the game. That's why not that many people play supports. Because supports are in the shadows. No one congratualte support for setting up situation for good gank, saving marksman or providing vision that allowed dragon steal or pick off. They take it for granted.

Because everyone else in the game are like more difficult AI to them.

Look at wards. Vision win games. Professionals know that. Players - seem to still have problems with understanding it. 250g for getting 3 wards on the map? That's amazing. How often people actually upgrade it? Or any other kind of trinket for that matter...

What they don't get is that we are ALL here to win. If you lost your lane - it doesn't mean that the game is lost as well.

Now how to adress that?

Solution: fight the meta. People take this game as a stable, unchangable environment. Top has to play bruiser. Mid has to be assasin (current meta) and so on.

But let's look at the 2015 Worlds. I was personally shocked by the amount of lane swapping. Whole team in one quadrant of the map, pushing one lane and taking enemy jungle, while opposing team where completely abandoning it. Verdict - there is no meta. Meta is a trend, a set of tactics made by high-skilled players that they thought of and executed, therefore setting an example that we low-skilled are trying to replicate. Meta is bad. Whatever works - it ain't stupid.

All this came to me when I saw your 2016 preseason changes plans. Like adding some important camp near top lane. To create more versatile game environment. I think it's brilliant.

I have two ideas that I would like to propose. First is adressing the issue of misunderstanding that this is a TEAM game. With real life people. Which have feelings and desire to win also. It's radical, require big change and I think people would not like it.

IDEA: remove personal statistics. Entirely (well, you can leave the triple, quadra and pentakill sounds ;D). All kills you provide - would go to the team counter. All deaths as well. And assists. To see who is "fed" you would have to actually open the scoreboard and see what items they have. To SEE, ANALYZE and draw conclusions. Do a THREAT ASSESMENT. We could instead put a "gold earned" counter like we have in spectator mode, to make it a bit easier - to see who has a lot of cash on their hands ;). You can leave the stats for the LCS and tournaments. But I think that in the game what matters is how well person know the champion. How many hours played that champion.

I believe that it would remove some of the clashes between players. MAP effects would be speaking. Not the KDA counter. Dragons taken. Towers destroyed. Things that actually matters.

How to cleanse community from toxic players? Quantity over quality. Many games I encountered had bad players in them. But not of them were toxic. Sometimes someone tries new champion. New item. Doesn't know the matchup and fall behind. That all happens and however frustrating - it's acceptable.

What really frustrates is when I sacrifice an hour of my time to try to win a game. An hour that I sacrifice from my sleep. Or work. Or other reponsibilities. And then some [-------] decides that because I took his 3 minions, he will feed (real life situation, my adc was coming back to lane - those minions would die anyway, I just last hitted them]. Or leaves because he lost his lane so he doesn't want to waste time for what HE considers lost game. Because HE cannot be THE STAR of the game. The win doesn't count for him. The GLORY is. WE could still win the game - becuase, i.e.: our mid laner is fed and good. If we focus on protecting HIM, we can win. But oh no, that means we would loose our precious KDA. Or we would have to accept, that this game we'll win only if we make someone else a star of the show.

But how to recognize who the real toxic player is?

Simple. Restrict reports. Real toxic players happens rarely. Stupid, much more often, but that's not a crime. But yes, I believe that player who make me lose my time, my effort and my peace, because he cannot be the star of the show, because he cannot understand that this is a TEAM game, or finally - is just a cursing, racist, fasist (or something between those lines). He should be given warning. Once, twice. Then receive a seroius punishment. A week ban to cool off. Something.

Thing is - banning by automatic systems is not working. And it opens doors for complaints that it was unjustified, mistake and so on. Because right now there are thousands, tens of thousands reports. Not enough people to go through it.

But if a player would have a limit of 1 or 2 report per week (or some other number that could be adjusted), they would not throw it away lightly. They would keep it for a person that REALLY deserves it. And then, such report could be reviewed by actual employes.

And if the workforce would not be sufficient - you could get more professional help than tribunal. Make a real one. Prepare a contract. Player participating in tribunal need to feel that he is working for real. Outsorce the problem ;). A lot of people would do it with a real contract, for a IP/RP/skin payment ;). But in this case would be bound same as your all regular employees.

But that's just my idea. I bet that when I post it many people will disagree. But maybe it will help the discussion. Maybe it will inspire some people to look on it from different perspective. Hopefully someone with decisive powers ;).

PS. I do not hold any rights to the music video. But I think it's very good, showing the problem and fits the discussion. PPS. There is another video that I would recommend EVERYONE to watch. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu4uVh-rUrg