Blind rage, upset and angry players detremental to motivation

Ophasus·8/20/2018, 1:00:15 AM·2 votes·2,964 views

I'm posting this because I honestly feel like toxicity, negativity and anger are a real problem in players playing League of Legends. (Duhh) Also, I'm not posting a TL:DR because I feel if something iss to be done they should read and support this textwall to understand exactly why I think this way.

A little pre-info about me. I've been playing LoL on and off for quite some time now. I've tried most game modes and seen and/or played most champions once or twice. Sometimes via the use of a friends account etc. I enjoy the meta quite a lot now since there are so many beautifull ways to build champions and better the way I play.

I've recently started playing in the new season of ranked games again. Placed myself in silver 2 and silver 3 for flex and solo/duo queue respectively. I've played enough games, in my opinion, in the past and the now to at least share my observations and conclusions.

The game is ofcourse not a or the problem in any way. It is a false claim that a piece of software screwed you over. The problem and responsibility lies with the players alone. Important to note here is that I'm using the plural sense of the word player. LoL is a team game, the end result is accomplished by everyone in your team and on the other side of the spectrum by the opposing team.

This is where the problem lies. People that are mostly considered "toxic" aren't playing for or with a team, they play to win, as we all do. However their mindset is different.
They believe or unknowingly feel they are forced to play with their teammates. Essentially this type of player will get incredibly angry if things don't go their preffered way. That anger clouds their judgement and in turn will most likely tilt said player, snowballing into something worse. As a player who has seen this and been this person at times it is almost a Sisyphean task to rise above this anger and controll it. They feel alone on their island of superiority. Forgetting the main principle that the game they are playing is in fact a team game. I think proof for this is seen in pro-games. When looking at pro-teams you instantly see:

  1. they don't type nasty words
  2. they play as a team
  3. they never get angry during a game

Another thing people fail to understand is that in the end a team wins but more importantly a team loses. Going into a game you willingly accept the chance of the latter occuring. However when looking at players' behavior, they don't. Or at least blame something else. "I won my lane, it's not my fault bot fed", "jungler fed my lane, couldn't do anything" some classics.

Practically, when something as I described above happens, this means 1-2 players in your team will start to feed under a banner of "trying". All the while pinging and furiously mashing their keyboard. They start to flame because they need to vent their anger. The venting is basically what kills any motivation. Personally I think it is best to ask for them to calm down and keep a positive attitude which is usually answered with a "stfu" or "$^&% you" after which I find it wise to mute all but pinging communication with them.

Something I've noticed above everything else is that once a team start argueing, they are touching their mouses less and keys, other that QWER-DF, more. This might sounds obvious but I need to point it out because essentially you stop playing the particular game of summoners rift for a full 1-4 sentences. All the while the opposing team is clicking away and taking the objectives, essentially playing the game, right?

I'll write a small example of a game I played recently with a friend who wasn't doing a good job at jungling. I was in adc position myself.

Game starts, friend goes into the jungle, all goes well he's farming and does a lvl3 gank in toplane, doesnt result in a kill but the enemy toplaner flashed, he proceeds to farm some more and base. This process repeats till about 7-10 minutes into the game. During which top and midlane are pinging "assist-me". He couldnt really split off into two so he proceeds to gank either of the two, I don't remember exactly, and got counter-ganked and killed. A flurry of yellow questionmarks fills the onsight of his champions corpse. The same thing happens once or twice more and by now he's tilted. They start to complain that he never ganks or just feeds in all-chat and start asking the opposing team to report him. Game is ruined. In my opinion he messed up, sure. As far as I can tell he misjudged or didn't anticipate the rival jungler to be present. Now that might be his fault, you can call it sloppy or bad. But I think most people can concur that this is a normal thing that happens in LoL. It shouldnt be met with an onslaught of verbal abuse.

The two teammates flaming my friend and teammate are angry that their lanes aren't going as well as they wanted it to go and blame someone else for it. Debating what went wrong in their lane is impossible and unimportant to the discussion, it is what they do afterwards what is the subject of the discussion. Now before everyone says, he should git-gud, I'm not saying he did well, in fact I kind off wanted to tell him to get his #@$* together. I'm saying this teammate was now demotivated to try anything, only focused on the shitstream of bm coming his way instead of focussing on objectives, kills, supporting lanes, ganking, getting back in the game, protecting turrets, basically anything of value to attain a wining position in the game. Words affect people in their respective sense or meaning. Using words as "fucking" or "idiot" in a sentence will make it considerably more stronger than a sentence not using them. Not using them has the advantage that it leaves the intention or interpretation of your sentence in the dark. It is up to the person being asked the question to either interprete it in a negative or positive way or neither for that matter. If anything you can still clarify you didn't mean to piss someone off if they do interprete it in a negative way.

Example:

  1. That was fucking stupid, idiot.
  2. That wasn't good, unfortunate.

I told him to mute them and we got back into the game but we where behind by quite a bit and lost eventually. It is important to note that I firmly believe that if an event as described above means your rival top-laner is now 2/0 ahead of your 0/1 and you already give up, you are not showing any character or strenght. The game isn't over you have at worst just lost your lane, calm yourself down and find a way to get back. If it doesn't work out, at least you didn't give up. On to the next.

This type of behavior is not at all punished enough. Too many angry players still remain untouched, ruining games in their wake. I understand that sifting through enormous piles of games with reports and punishing every single player is impossible. And don't get me wrong, I think chat-bans are a great way to punish someone who bm's. But it is not a serious enough consequence apparantly to stop people from flaming. Something as small as saying "EZ" after a 50 minute game can be incredibly frustrating, they know this and thats why they say it. Making someone unmotivated on purpose is revolting to see. To quote Coldplay: "nobody said it was easy".

That's all there is folks, I also came here to vent and I did. I don't have a goal for this, I just hope that someone reads it at thinks, yeah we need to change something and help these people out.

1 Comments

HavokDash8/20/2018, 1:31:47 PM3 votes

People sign onto a 5v5 TEAM oriented, OBJECTIVE based game They sign onto a 5v5 Match They treat it like a 1v1 free for all Brag about thier SOLO kills (Just got out of a game with a 20/X Kda Udyr who refused to touch towers. But Blamed Bot lane for being lost because Enemy WW camped) Then they act suprised when they LOSE the match because they saw everyone else on thier team as "beneath" them. And Start Blaming winnable lanes for being lost because of a "Not my lane, not my problem" attitude. And even as the team loses. They will turn around and brag "I got most kills, ur just trash at the game"