Toxicity and Pressure

I just want to point out a problem that has been really irking me for a while now. One of the things that I feel really needs to be addressed by both Riot and the community itself is the pressure and the toxicity that forms because of this pressure.

I finally decided to try and discuss this due to a game where I just had where I finally snapped due to the pressure the team was placing on me and ran it down mid because I wanted to get out of that game as quickly as possible. (putting marks around this if you don't wish to read this part)

So to clarify what happened that game, I'm currently learning jungle, not great at it right now as I only have about 10 games in total so obviously I'm going to make mistakes and I wont be able to carry the game. Now, in champion select the bot duo posts a link to discord asking us to join, now this is a normal game. I understand people want to win and etc but it's not ranked, it's more for learning and unlike blind, it isn't a complete and utter mess.

So game starts, I'm playing warwick jungle. Helped with red buff and bot goes bottom, the usual stuff but then it starts. Both midlane, shaco and aatrox (this is important for later) and bot lane start spamming for ganks. Okay, go to gank bot lane first since that is more beneficial and easier to gank. I go in, they don't initiate at all and because of that and the lack of them using their wards to get sight of their adc who ran into bush and the lack of them using any of their cc (we had lulu support who should of been able to slow, hard cc and give true sight) and because of that the enemy bot gets away and guess who gets spam pinged 8 times by the botlane duo. Instant mute, not putting up with that but I feel the pressure already.

Shaco then starts flaming me for not ganking midlane. Take in mind this is ap shaco and aatrox, this guy knowingly picked shaco into the aatrox and is losing hard and has also fed the jungle pantheon 2 kills, putting me behind and putting me in a position where it's hard to 1v1 aatrox which is essentially what I'm doing since shaco can't seem to do anything against aatrox. Try to gank once, waited for him to push and while he was pushed just outside the range of our tower I engaged, shaco had enough time to prepare and get his cooldowns and had mana. Go to engage and shaco does there doing nothing and aatrox runs away. Then once again I get flamed and because of this player I just lost it and snapped.

I'm trying my best just to try and stay relevant and this guy blames me for him feeding, for me not babysitting his lane only for him to fall off hard af as soon as it hits late game. I mean, at least pantheon can do something late but ap shaco which relies on boxes should be useless when they get instantly destroyed late when an enemy so much as looks at them. This just causes me to lose it and I admit it, I start running it down. This is the first time I've done this and I feel like this has happened to many others who run it down due to snapping because of the pressure the team puts on them. I did happen to also mute all my team excluding my friend who played pyke top for the second time and well, was probably doing the second worst in the team after the shaco. I'm guessing my team were saying things to the enemy team but to put it simply, the one time I decided to look at chat logs the enemy aatrox said something along the lines of "no you're the toxic one" to one of my team, no idea who.

So game ended early due to my inting, about 18-20 minutes, not entirely sure. In all truth I do regret running it down and know I shouldn't of done it but again, the pressure people put on you for no reason in a normal eventually makes you snap. So after the game the botlane duo invites me to a group and asks me why I did it and asks for an apology, I explain and apologise, they seemed to be doing fairly well as we surrendered though were pretty much neutral the entire time and deserved the apology.

All fine and good, until that person then starts to harass me through the voice coms in the group slurring insults at me, calling me the typical things like lowlife scum and etc. Then says he reported me and I should "get punishment that degenerates like you deserve" or something along those lines, at that point I stopped caring and honestly started laughing at the irony of him calling me worse than trash as a human while he invited me to the party to try and verbally abuse me.

Honestly, I do deserved to be punished and hopefully I am since it's been nearly 2 hours and no punishment yet, I intentionally ran it down but that guy shouldn't have done that, asking for an apology and an explanation fine, fair enough, but then trying to harass me and insult me is something I'm not going to stand for and put a ticket in to hopefully see that he gets punished as well as myself.

This whole thing was mainly caused by the pressure that was exerted on me by the team and I know for a fact many other people have probably inted or griefed a game due to the constant harassment by their teams and that's what I want to bring attention to and help share my experience so other people don't go through the same thing. Sometimes if one of your team is struggling try to offer a helping hand to them, even simple things such as maybe buying a control ward and warding pixel can help to see enemy positions and help to reduce pressure.

It's something that's very easy to find as well. All you need to do is create a new account and you will see countless new players bend under the pressure of extremely toxic players on smurfs for not being to do things properly. This is not a problem that riot can easily sort out, all they can do is to help improve reporting systems and maybe add in mechanics to reduce stress but this nearly all down to the league community to help reduce the stress. It seems stupid in a competitive game but when you are not under extreme stress, at least I find that I perform a lot better and enjoy things more and increasing the level of performance in a ranked game would be beneficial for all people as it even serves for a better learning experience for a losing team.

Sorry if the first part sounds like a rant but I needed to get my point across what stress does and the toxic environment it can create for people. Just trying to get this idea across to hopefully improve at least a couple of people's games. Don't expect this post to do well and probably expect quite a few downvotes but oh well*[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]*