Why does everyone blame Riot for toxicity?
It isn't riot, it is the individual player that is the cause. Shame on the person for how they act, not Riot. Riot can't control people. The people control themselves.
43 Comments
Simple and to the point. I have to agree with you.
Riot can only influence our behaviour.
Which they do by offering rewards for positive/neutral activity (Hextech crafting, season rewards, random good behaviour awards) or by doling out punishments for unwanted interactions (chat restrictions, suspensions).
Some people just want to claim that their actions are someone else's fault. Especially if they are being punished for their actions. It's a terribly immature mindset to be stuck in, and I honestly pity those who can't overcome it.
What's worse is the ones who just keep on blaming others no matter how accurately you explain to them how they were in the wrong. It's like most perma banned players don't understand that "He started it" or "I spent money" aren't valid excuses for being a blazing asshole to other players. Especially when they agree not to be an asshole twice every time the game patches.
Because people need to blame others than themselves. Its basically like children who dont want to get punished for something they did. Theyll try and use every little excuse they can find to hopefully get out of it.
I think people blame them because they will report that person and nothing will happen.
Toxic behaviour in League can be attributed to only a few factors:
-
The game is free* - this means players' initial investment is not a financial commitment of ownership. That which is given freely, has no value. Some players just flat out don't care about the state of their account, MMR, etc because they can just create another account for free and they never paid for the one they have.
-
Demographics - The game is populated by a majority of young players. Before you grab grandma and provide anecdotal evidence to the contrary, just consider that the gateway of payment restricts young players from playing some games without say...getting parents/guardians to pay for it. This means League is populated by players who are literally immature. Attitudes are not set in stone, however being young means the average League player has less years of life experience with gameplay realities like losing, teammates you cannot control, mistakes, etc. Frustration is exactly that, but a young person just has less experience with knowing how to cope. Lashing out at teammates, blaming, pouting and sitting at the fountain because the enemy jungler stole your blue...these are all signs of someone whose coping mechanisms just aren't developed. This is also relevant to communication skills. "Don't feed" is not helpful communication. "If you're under tower and having trouble trading, ping and I'll roam from my lane" is far more helpful. Taking responsibility for your own mistakes, keeping a positive mindset...these things typically come with experience, and a little maturity.
-
The culture of "win" - People like to win, duh. Games require a multitude of things to get the reward of winning. JRPGs for example typically require time. You grind your level past the adequate level, and you can stomp anything. League requires a few variables to be in your favor to assure victory, and many of them are RNG or luck of the draw. You can pick your teammates perhaps, but you can't cherry-pick your opponents. You also cannot directly control all the decisions your own team makes. Just because you say "fall back!" doesn't mean a teammate might see an opportunity you don't, and go for it. All this factors into people getting frustrated when they are not winning. Winning seems to be the only value some players see in playing League at all. Forget that you could be learning how to farm better under tower, how to play against a really good Zed player and not feed, or how to manage lane momentum because you've got a jungler who ignores the lanes to farm. If things aren't going ideally, it doesn't mean you can't win, and if you can't win it doesn't necessarily mean the game is a waste of your time. The most common misconception I've observed is that many League players have the delusion they know everything about League, and therefore a game that is not snowballing towards a fast victory (for them) is a waste. If you want to play League, just enjoy the fact that you're playing! Winning is always better than losing, but commit to playing first, then actively seek out ways to make victory happen. If you committed to queue up, you should be prepared to fight for victory, not throw in the towel because you might actually have to work collaboratively with 4 other players to win as a team.
-
League/MOBA culture - When someone makes a dingbat play and dies, someone types out "why?" in teamchat. That behaviour came from somewhere. That specific phrase is deemed relevant to the situation because of MOBA culture, not because the English language has constructed it that way. A small part of toxicity is due to MOBA culture influencing players to be toxic. Imagine if you just didn't know what it meant to "feed". You know all the League mechanics, just not that specific term. It doesn't make you a bad League player...knowing the ins and outs of the jargon, jokes, insults etc will technically not make you a better (mechanically speaking) League player, but it will absolutely make you more effective at being toxic.
-
Riot's game mechanics - The other 4 points feed into this one, but Riot does hold some responsibility for toxic behaviour in League. This shows up in things like the nature of farm and gold accumulation. League is a team game, yet you can actually end up competing with your own team for gold. The fact that you can actually "steal" farm from a teammate is not an accident, it's just a gameplay rule that Riot has in place with (unforeseen?) consequences. Other MOBAs have found ways around gold competition by making it collectively shared across the team. I'm not saying the other games are better, but there are certain aspects of League that do not necessarily promote teamwork. Another example is Ranked play and how it is set up. Once a player hits level 30, they can jump right into ranked with incomplete rune pages and exactly zero games played at level 30. Sure, they grinded up to 30 in Normal queue just like everybody else, but they haven't sat at level 30 and played at that level necessarily. Riot allows players who are ill prepared for ranked to just dive right in. This is frustrating for both experienced players, and the new players who don't understand how ranked is different. Some MOBAs require a minimum number of games to be played before ranked opens up, and for the most part those games have to be played with the full set of features. The leveling system incrementally introduces game systems to the player, but it also is a terrible system for preparing a player for high MMR play, or ranked play. The fact that a player is prevented from draft play if they have fewer than 12 champions makes sense. Why is there no check to see that a player has a complete rune page, or at least enough runes in their inventory to complete one? Why is there not a cap of 'games played at level 30' of 50/100/250 before ranked opens up? These are decisions Riot made, and they do influence player behaviour, although not as much as the previous 4.
I wanna some form of Tribunal come back.
Riot has the means and money to change any aspect of their game they see fit, including their matchmaking and the way reported people are handled, instead they choose to make aesthetic updates and new champions, not even new features. It's all for the sake of making more money because if they actually dumped money into a think tank that could code up a proper matchmaking (that takes in account, reports AND stats) for the first ever seriously taken E-Sport, it would stop a majority of the toxicity, but the money gained from perma-banned people rebuying skins is extra change in their pocket.
Riot enables toxicity on a complex scale, therefore they should be blamed.
It isn't riot, it is the individual player that is the cause. Shame on the person for how they act, not Riot. Riot can't control people. The people control themselves.
Its not just ppl but a community
Ok boys i know what to do.. as soon as someone starts btchin in chat there is a little window that pops up and shows 2 games ago when they fed there dick off and got carried for all the team to see so they can stay quiet and continue the game in peace with out fear of them tilting your teammate who is already playing poorly lol.
I've never heard someone blame Riot for the toxicity, tbh.
riot rewards players who troll by allowing them to ban players who call them out in game. this encourages people to act like jackasses and riot rewards them and punishes players who take ranked seriously.
Same reason why people blame riot for "elo hell" teammates. As if Riot can somehow predict the future to find feeders/afks to place on the same team as those whiny idiots
I disagree. Riot can control the way people act. If a person is toxic through chat, they can get a chat restriction. If a person is toxic through gameplay they can also receive punitive measures such as bans from gameplay. The rate of punishments being dealt is completely in Riot's control. Therefore Riot can control a player's behavior in game.
They leave no room for reform sooo yeah riots fault on both ends. And new players wonder why its so toxic and nasty. I know why, it's because rito banned someones account and now they grinding to hit that 30 again. They need a reform system not a 2 week perma ban system lol.
I agree there's a growing lack of self control and respect for fellow players. However there was a system in place called the 'tribunal' that had each repeated report case voted on by several players to judge whether or not the abuse was cruel & deliberate or not. But riot removed this system entirely in favor of some vaguely articulated ai, that's supposed to do the same thing; however since it became behind the scenes, it appears to have negligible impact since players no longer can even view the cases.
Because this game is designed in such way that it encourages toxic behavior. It frustrates the player on so many levels
I can understand why someone would be wanting to blame Riot. This game gets away with not explaining much of anything. You have to go out and look up how to play this game. It feels a little unfair, and I get that. A lot of people don't know when they make a mistake, so when they get punished for it, they get angry and frustrated.
However, you are 100% right. I said I understand, not that I agree.
Riot doesn't make you go in all chat and call your ADC a number of unsavory names in all chat. These people that get toxic have an attitude problem, plain and simple. It's attractive to blame something. If you're not toxic, and you're sick toxic people ruining your game, you want a reason. You want something that you can point at and ask to improve. Instead of pointing at individuals, it's easier to yell at Riot without getting yourself reported and it all ties up into a neat solution, "Riot, do your job and control your player base." For the people that are toxic and don't want to take responsibility, Riot is easy to blame. Why are you toxic? Because you're angry. Why are you angry? Because this game is frustrating, I keep losing lp to x y and z, etc. etc. If you ask them, they blame something else, even thought they actually have an attitude problem.
The only blame I see is in how they are handling it.
No, LoL is a competitive game where Riot doesn't teach people how to play. It's a classic forcing people to reinvent the wheel problem where too many people build square wheels.
Winning is fun. Playing with people who cause you to lose is not fun.
I don't blame Riot so much as I blame the players. We've already got the mute button which is all we need to keep toxic comments away from our chat box, people just dont like to use it. Dont know why, but I think players just like the idea of keeping the 'toxic' player talking so that when the end of the game comes around they can "Get back" at them. In short, we already have the medication but noone's taking it.
Dont know if you're including the afk/feeding aspect of it but those are things that players can do and actually ruin games by doing so. I've already made several suggestions as how to combat it (Which blizzard already did with their game and pretty much took away any power afkers and feeders had) but as always it was swamped by players who do nothing but downvote and call me stupid for suggestings things that have already been applied and work.
If you don't want afkers to be a threat, make it so a bot can take over champ until champ returns. If you don't want feeders to feed enemy team, make it so early game kills are worth less to the point that you have to stay in game for x amount of time before kills are paramount to the game.
Do these two things and feeders/afkers have no power. You quite literally take away any threat they have made against you.