The Toxic Players In-Game

KGbreaker·12/15/2018, 2:37:24 AM·1 votes·3,243 views

Hello Riot, I've come to ask a really important question about not really the state of the game but the player community instead. So many people or generally some in different games we play tend to use the term of a person being toxic out of hand, and I wanted to ask for your personal opinion on this. Based on this and multiple encounters I wanted to ask what are the real rules and actually times a person can say that the other is toxic, because I'm not sure if a easy going bm is one or not like people in games say that I was toxic for just saying "Anivia is that all you got ?". And this concerns me because I don't know if people can mass report one person just giving them the penalty unless they actually did something wrong. So please take your time to explain what is toxic for a person and what is not. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

9 Comments

Silent Gravity12/15/2018, 3:12:56 AM3 votes

If you saying things playfully, like you're flirting with a waitress, it's fine. That's banter.

"Anivia is that all you got?" sounds like banter to me. It's not putting them down, not insulting.

If it's something you'd say to your friends, you should remember that the people you're playing with are not your friends.

"bro, you suck" would be fine to say if you're watching your friend play Dark Souls, or if you defeated them in ping-pong or whatever the hell you'd like, but it's not fine to say to people who aren't your friends. If you're playing with your friends and you want to taunt them, use the whisper function, voice, or an outside communication program. If it's in a public channel, like teamchat, then it will be moderated as if it was spoken to someone who is not your friend if it is reported.

If it's something you'd say to that annoying jackass your friend knows, then you shouldn't say it in League.

YerroFever12/15/2018, 3:57:29 PM2 votes
  1. "Anivia is that all you got ?" So the quote above to me is considered "trash talk" as it's adversarial but not hostile. The devs have talked about this and they have said that "trash talk" by itself isn't punishable, BUT if it turns into harassment, YES IT CAN BE PUNISHED. What a lot of people don't understand is that what they consider "trash talk" isn't the same as what the devs consider "trash talk" and some people think that calling someone a "n-----r" or "f----t" is "trash talk" because they just don't understand the difference between "trash talk" and harassment... or try to claim it's "trash talk" just to get out of a ban.

It's enough of a problem that the EUNE site had to put up an explanation so you can read it here: https://eune.leagueoflegends.com/en/page/trash-talk

There are always pros and cons of it, but IMO, trash talk is stupid because it's not about being a better player, it's about trying to tilt the enemy team through your words. So when players trash talk, it shows me that they're so bad that the only way they can win games is by insulting and taunting the enemy. Sure it's a viable tactic, but to me it just shows that you're worse at the game than the person of an equal rank that doesn't trash talk.

  1. "mass report" You are concerned about mass reporting, however, Tantram, the dev who wrote the code for the new report system, has stated it's boolean. 1 report triggers reviews, so it actually doesn't matter if 9 people report you in 1 game or if 1 person reports you in 1 game. That game is going to get reviewed.

Now if 9 people report you in 9 separate games, that's a different story. You're getting mass reported through multiple games and that's not the same as 9 people reporting you in that single game. Based on what Tantram has stated about the reporting code and in general, it's much worse to have a pattern of 9 games of toxic behavior than 1 game of 9 people reporting you for an isolated incident.

ChaosReyn12/15/2018, 3:37:09 PM1 votes

Couple things:

  1. Yes, from what I've experienced, people can absolutely stack reports on you for the punish, and Riot can deny that all they'd like but hear me out. The first few punishments are definitely bot-issued, and you can tell the bot issues them when they pop up your restrictions while you're waiting in the lobby for the next game, talking about the game you just played like 30 seconds ago. Riot doesn't respond that fast. Those are the ones where stacking will get you chat restricted, Low-Queued, or 1-3 day banned for being "toxic" to the poor 4 man squad that can't handle being told that blaming their rando for everything doesn't mean they're actually better than their rando in any way whatsoever. From there, I think only the 14-day and perma bans are actually manual...but if the bot pings you a bunch of times, I don't think they really look into it fully: they see that during that game, more than likely after a few other bad games in a row dealing with ridiculous things, you said "f*** off" to the guy tearing you up in chat, and that F-bomb is all they care to see in order to throw you the banhammer, regardless of context, generally. My main got perma'd from it. To be fair, My main got perma'd from it because I'm not exactly the nicest person in the world when 2-4 people are all trying to pin the loss on me at 5-7 minutes in, with a better score than half of them, before the game's even CLOSE to being won or lost yet, and I'm not one to roll over and play dead for morons...but for all intents and purposes, my main was perma'd from stackers. Your best bet to counter that is usually to try and dispute it with Riot's support staff...or so I'd like to say, but to be real, the Reds in charge of these boards are 1000% more likely to actually look into things and attempt to work with you properly than the support staff are, or about 40% of the people who get perma'd probably wouldn't even be perma'd. >.>

  2. That all being said: don't be like me. If people seem to be stacking on you, the best thing you can do is legit mute everyone. If they start spam pinging you and being nuisances, mute the pings too. At that point you're not really playing League of Legends, you're playing "don't lose my account's honor, or my actual account, to a bunch of die hard pleb monkies wanting an e-peen contest." The moment you realize how the situation is, turn off all their input and play your own game. Don't say anything, don't try to play around them if you think what they're doing is stupid, if they've been trying to bait you and run, just switch to splitpushing and staying as far removed from them as possible if you have to, but give them nothing to use against you. Don't take that to mean not to play with them at all - if they're actually trying, try with them...but if they're trolling you, just remove yourself from them, accept the LP loss if you're not able to solo carry them, report them all, and move on.

I had my main from season 1...when at first that perma happened, it was a pretty big hit. I had every single Cait and Nami skin to date at that time, Hextech Annie...a lot of stuff. I really don't care enough to dispute it with Riot, as it's far too much effort, and as I said, I will own the parts where I fight fire with fire in the chat, which is by far more than enough for Riot to say I earned it. Believe me, I am NOT nice once I get going...and as much as I'd love all my skins and champs and most importantly all the time I put into my main back, I can't be upset at Riot for taking it away by making a nuclear chat offense my defensive strategy. Honestly, it'll be a matter of time...maybe another 6 seasons or so, before they perma this one. I'm not going to apologize for what I've said to those people, even if I acknowledge that it went way too far, because those people earned every word of it...I'll take the punishment from it, and hope those jerks get theirs along with me. Either way, bottom line is: if you value your account's well-being, just take my word for it, mute f-ing everyone, and try your best to clutch out the 1v9.

Now, in regards to your original question, the line for "competitive BM" is basically anything that directly calls out a player in a degrading way. "Anivia, is that all you got?" isn't really degrading. That's more like a challenge than a put-down. Something like "Anivia, you deal less damage than your support, lel" is considered degrading most times...even if it's factual. :P

Word choice is the key, basically.

lDarkmatterl12/15/2018, 8:08:57 PM1 votes

maybe im just crazy maybe toxicity should be kept to racism and death threats. i dont think smack talk should be punished... its an online game thats the whole point of the fucking game...neither should constructive criticism like if you really cant handle it you should stick to playing bots or games where you never interact with another human person because its literally human nature