Boards›Player Behavior

Is it just me or are most players overly sensitive?

I may afk·3/10/2017, 1:20:47 PM·4 votes·3,194 views

Any avid gamer can tell you that every game is going to come with negative people, and you're not going to like what a lot of those people have to say. I feel like the line between negative, as well as toxic, have become blurred as far as most league players are concerned. Basically anything from constructive criticism to acting a bit dismayed or frustrated will quickly be misconstrued as "toxic" and you will be intimidated and threatened with "reported" or "report".... oh and btw they never say it just once. I find this extremely ironic because trying to threaten or intimidate someone using the report system is the de facto definition of what toxic is.

Toxicity in itself can take many definite forms:

  1. Hate speech(racism, misogyny, xenophobia)
  2. Threats or verbal intimidation(Physical threats, death threats, hacking threats, speaking in any extremely intimidating way)
  3. Trolling games(Int feeding etc)
  4. General verbal abuse

It doesn't serve the community well, when a simple smiley face in chat will tilt some people on your team so hard that people threaten to report you... and believe me a smiley face will tilt your team. Even typing lol in chat is sometimes enough for someone to get tilted and start calling you toxic, while threatening to report.

I have been gaming for a long time, and I have frankly never seen such sensitivity from a gaming community in my life. Gamers generally have thick skin, and can take a little sassiness and trash talking, but I almost feel like I am in 3rd grade in league with people threatening to report. It simply blurs the lines between what's really toxic, and what might simply annoy one player. Keep in mind that throughout all of this you have the option to mute... and if you spam "reported" 5 times in 20 seconds believe me I will mute you no questions asked.

24 Comments

Oleandervine3/10/2017, 1:28:54 PM3 votes

If someone says "Dude, play safe" and the response from who they are speaking to is "Lol" or ";)" that can be considered trolling, especially if their behavior continues. This has happened in the past, I'm sure we all know the infamous "Hehe xd" which isn't in itself toxic, but it was the manner in which it was used. So there's a quite a lot of gray area here, because unless it's overtly terrible, general language needs to be judged on a case by case basis.

ValyrianBlade3/10/2017, 1:39:10 PM2 votes

There are too many childish people on this game. It's probably also developed from how the entire ranked system works - I haven't played many other similar games to be fair, but the entire promotion system seems like it would contribute to putting people on edge.

There's also the style of league's gameplay. In most other styles of games, you either don't have teammates (so anything against you is your own fault) or your teammates put you in to a harder situation but you're not at a disadvantage relative to your enemies (e.g. in a first person shooter you're in a 1v2 or something but those enemies aren't "fed". In something like Smash Bros. your ally may die or be at a high percent but again that doesn't make your opponents any better at killing you). The saltiness in league stems largely from the fact that your ally dying isn't only putting him behind/out, it's putting your enemy ahead and if your ally is dying repeatedly it puts an enemy ahead to the point that you can't beat them even with hugely superior play.

It's very tilting to be 3/0/0 and able to win a fight 1v1 against someone that's 12/1/0 and up two levels on you because you're definitely the better player, but lose the game anyways because the guy who fed that dude 12 kills also fed their jungler 8 kills and you can't beat them both. Once someone has one of those games, thrown in with the reactions they've received from truly toxic players, leads a lot of this community to begin freaking out as soon as an ally dies (and begin treating it as an ally freaking out as soon as they die and they immediately jump to defend themselves that they aren't about to go on a feeding rampage and just got unlucky). Add promo series to the equation and you've got people flipping out as soon as someone misses a skillshot or takes a bad trade. The question mark pings I've gotten when an enemy got away from me with <10hp and I didn't chase further (because first she was more mobile than me and second I noticed my lane opponent enter a bush to intercept me from so I'd have just died anyways) is pretty ridiculous. Or the spam in chat when your lane opponent ganks someone 30 seconds after you did a missing ping on your lane then in the river towards their lane (i.e. you knew which way she was going). People are so fast to blame their mistakes on others (they likely feel like if they don't they'll be blamed themselves).

It is also a bit of an elo thing though. People who are comfortable with where they're at are typically a lot less toxic. It's mostly bronze/silver players who want gold so badly (and most of them are just too bad to get there) that are the most toxic, followed by plat players who think they're amazing and much better than everyone around and should be diamond/challenger (but they're really not any better than golds). I see relatively fewer toxic gold and diamond players (to be fair the diamond guys are often just carrying and not worried about their allies, and the gold guys are probably just happy they're in the tier for season rewards and don't care for now, and I definitely do still see toxic gold players just not as much. It may be because I am gold myself, so gold players in my games feel like they're in the right spot so they're less toxic than the plat players in my games are).

Maximum Morde3/10/2017, 1:39:14 PM2 votes

Nah, it's just the vocal ones that are snowflakes. Most of us don't give a shit one way or the other. That's why it's safe to just ignore the whiners

LoveLlamas3/10/2017, 2:02:44 PM2 votes

so you report people in league for interacting in a game with you not being toxic at all.....makes sense.

LoveLlamas3/10/2017, 1:39:22 PM1 votes

or just learn not to get offended......really whats wrong with criticism or pointing something out, just don't be toxic about it........oh that's called humility. learn. don't be a douche about it.

Ward Baron3/10/2017, 6:50:26 PM1 votes

They are overly sensitive millennials but Riot encourages you to be a future cuck so they run with it.

MrBootycrank9/2/2017, 8:46:32 AM1 votes

yes most (99%) of the players are sensitive crybaby weebs, however thats what you can expect from a game like this lmao, just ignore them.

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