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Players with fragile egos.

Dr40UR·6/10/2019, 2:31:04 AM·4 votes·4,072 views

Now, let me preface this by saying I do not promote toxicity. There are ways to convey criticism without being toxic. For example: "I don't think you should build a ZZRot portal on Sivir." vs "What kind of idiot builds a ZZRot on Sivir?".

Now, going on with my post, players have a very bad habit of responding to even light criticism with extreme toxicity. Just because I'm trying to criticize you and give you advice does not mean I think you're a bad player. I don't think you're an idiot. Ignorance is much different than stupidity. Good players, and smart people, can still make mistakes, because we're humans.

However, people seem to jump immediately to being hostile upon being criticized. Here are some examples I've dealt with lately.

Story 1: Had a Twitch ADC. Everytime he would ult, he would flash TOWARDS the people he was ulting. Every time. After the third time I watched him flash into melee range of a Mordekaiser, I told him he doesn't have to flash towards the Mordekaiser. I said, specifically, "You don't have to flash towards people, especially when using your ult Twitch." He became hostile, immediately telling me "Oh, so now you're harassing me? What the hell is wrong with you?" He then proceeded to call me an "idiot" multiple times and claimed he never flashed into the enemy team. He threatened to report me for name calling, which I said was hypocritical, and I never called him any names. I asked him to state what name I called him, and he said (and I quote) "You implied it by telling me I didn't have to flash. Don't you know you don't have to call someone a name to call someone something?" That, to me, is logical gymnastics at it's finest.

Story 2: I was playing top lane Aatrox. I managed to get my lane in a perfect position to freeze it near my tower. I had a good wave built up, and was zoning the enemy Jarvan perfectly. I was about 20 CS ahead, when my jungler came top. Their jungler was also top, so nothing really happened. Their jungler left to clear more jungle or something, and my Shaco stayed top. He then proceeded to hard shove my lane. Boxes, smites, his E, he was using everything to push my lane as hard as he could and take as much CS as he could. He did this for 2 whole waves, shoving it all towards Jarvan and completely destroying my lane control. I was pretty upset about this. Anyone who plays top lane knows how hard that can mess up your lane, and could turn a winning lane into a losing one. I called him out, saying "You messed up my freeze by shoving it towards him. You really fucked up my lane dude." to which he became hostile, telling me "It doesn't matter, shut up. You suck anyways." I tried to enlighten him to why lane control was important, and how freezing works. He responding "I don't care, shut up. I wanted level 6." We ended up winning, because I dove the Jarvan at 6 and proceeded to dumpster him in lane, but if we were two players on even footing, I easily could've gotten counter-frozen and just been zoned out of the game by J4.

Story 3: I'm playing Aatrox again, this time in ARAM because I'm playing with some friends. Game is looking kinda dodgy, Sivir is heavily behind (she was 5/11) and I'm one of the only ones doing well (9/4). A 4v5 broke out because the enemy Rammus engaged on our Karma. I went in, diving for their backrow. I got two of them, and died. The rest of my team got rolled over. Sivir came much later, and got dove and died. I tried to give advice, saying "Hey guys, buy magic resist. They have no physical damage." and Sivir replied "Can't you fucking wait before you engage?" Being a bit cheeky, but also just stating a fact, I said "Waiting for a 5/11 Sivir wouldn't have much impact on the fight, and I counter engaged." She said, "Okay, enjoy the 4v5 then" and threatened to AFK because I had "attacked" her. I simply stated her score. After the game (which we won, she got off her ass after we won a 4v5 teamfight.) she proceeded to call me iron garbage, tell me to kill myself, and to uninstall the game because I'm garbage and will never be good. I outdamaged her, had more assists, more kills, less deaths, more gold, and was the main tank in every teamfight.

Moral of the story, take criticism with a grain of salt. If someone is trying to help you improve, they're not calling you bad. They're trying to teach you, so that you can learn from your mistakes. If you think everything is the game's fault, and won't take someone else's point of view in what you're doing wrong, you will never improve.

21 Comments

Dr40UR6/10/2019, 4:08:02 AM3 votes

Overall, I'm certainly not tiptoeing that hard. I have good intentions, to teach people what they should be doing instead when I see glaring mistakes, or just telling them the truth. It's how I improved at the game, and still am to this day.

I guess I'm just old school, back in Season 2, you made a mistake, and people were right on you for it. It felt bad, yeah. But overall I learned a lot from my teammates being hard on me.

Shadowbyte6/10/2019, 3:05:07 AM2 votes

It's the way riot punishes people. Riot considers a lot of things as toxic behaviour, here's one from game 3.

Waiting for a 5/11 Sivir wouldn't have much impact on the fight, and I counter engaged

IFS might pick this up as toxic too

you messed up my freeze by shoving it towards him. You really fucked up my lane dude.

They know riot will punish people for saying the smallest thing so any critique gets reported whether it breaks the rules or not. It's pretty toxic behavior but that's what riot supposedly wants or doesn't care enough about it to fix.

Phieldworker6/10/2019, 3:40:04 AM2 votes

I agree to an extent. Where I disagree is most people’s upbringing didn’t help them learn to deal with feedback aka criticism. They automatically think someone telling me what to do equals them calling me dumb.

I’ve had to go the extra mile and instead of saying “well bot lane fed” I say “we need to focus enemy bot lane” or “let’s pull back and farm until next objective is up”

MagicFlyingLlama6/10/2019, 2:33:41 AM2 votes

Insecure trash does insecure trash things, you cant win.

They know exactly what they are doing wrong, but stopping it would mean admitting to themselves that it is a mistake and not the fault of circumstance. You speaking up just gives them an excuse to latch on to (their toxic teammate made them feed!)

Kalienor6/10/2019, 4:04:13 AM1 votes

I prefer making it sound like a collective mistake. For example, instead of asking for Twitch to not flash into them, I'd say something like: "We should keep our distance from them, they're better than us up close".

Overall, it's well accepted this way.

Luther King Jr V6/11/2019, 6:04:56 AM1 votes

what's the point of criticism inside a match you are trying to win, u are risking them getting tilted cuz u imply they are bad which is demoralizing enough there's a time and a place for everything

RobShizzle6/11/2019, 8:58:31 PM1 votes

tl:dr

Hopefully I got the gist of your post from a quick skim.

No one is going to listen to you, no matter how nicely you say something. Just stop talking. The average league player is so used to dealing with toxic shitbags day after day, month after month, nonstop, that anything you say is going to immediately put them in a combative mental state. Whether or not you like this doesn't change the fact that it's reality. Just don't talk.

Also, they don't really have any incentive to listen you in the first place. You're all the same rank, hence why you're playing together. No one really wants to listen to some "league superstar" doling out "advice" all game long when they're obviously (statistically) not any better than anyone else currently in the match -- unless you're one of these people who's convinced they are somehow better, and it's all their teammate's fault they're stuck in whatever division they're in. If the latter is the case, they have even less incentive to listen to you.