Boards›Player Behavior

Why League of Legends will Fail

syndicate gospel·1/17/2017, 5:37:29 AM·3 votes·1,437 views

Every game that has ever been connected to the internet has always had a particular element to it. The "Trash talk".. don't worry there is a valid viewpoint in this post and if you give it a read You might just find yourself agreeing. First, I am not justifying being toxic in this assertion, but I am being realistic in that there will never be a world where people are always nice all the time. I know that riot hopes that players will be on their best behavior all the time, but in reality people will always be people, and people will always become salty when things don't go their way; therefore I really do believe the reporting for (verbal abuse) should be removed from the game all together because let's be honest. If someone feeds 9 deaths before the first 15 minutes of the game, they're going to upset some people and naturally those people are going to have a few choice words for them. But of course, Riots response is (Oh well the team mates should encourage the player that's 0/9 instead of beating them up for it). In a perfect world okay maybe?? because words of encouragement is the most realistic response of someone having the game of their life but are about to lose because one teammate is throwing the game!! (intentionally or unintentionally). Furthermore, gamers are passionate about playing their games and most gamers are not always calm and collective when it comes to winning or losing a match. Yes at times people are toxic, and at other times people are friendly, and I think we can all agree that it's better to uplift rather than criticize, but to police the words that we use because they are unsavory is something you read in some book about a dystopian society that bans certain words because of the feelings they arouse.... ahem riot sure sounds like you've read (The Giver) once or twice. Thirdly, id like to acknowledge the elephant in the cyber room and talk about one major thing. -The Mute Option- Now I would understand if there were absolutely no way to escape the harassment from teammates or opponents and rheee was a concern for options, that would be an entirely different conversation. But!...and this a huge but!... since league of legends has ALWAYS given players the choice to mute everyone in the game, I find it appalling and down right idiotic that riot would dish out punishments to gamers who take part in a very common occurring element in the realm of gaming. Trash talking your team or opponents is nothing new and it's not disappearing anytime soon. I'll admit, if a player is threatening physical harm or violence to another person I absolutely understand punishing that player! personals threats have no place in any form of social interaction even in gaming. Lastly, For me, if someone acts "toxic" in any game I play, 9 times out of 10 I don't care ... but once in a while when I feel frustrated (I just mute them). But I guess somewhere along the line, riot decided that my feelings were just too important to let other people exercise their first amendment right. Ladies and gentlemen, This is what will be the downfall of league of legends. A system that constantly punishes those exercising their right to be normal passionate gamers will only drive its gamers away.

I firmly believe that as long as theres an option to mute other players readily available at any point, there shouldn't be punishments thrown at those who are passionate about playing league and type out their frustrations. This will be true so long as the ability for players to /mute or /mute all exists as a barrier for those more sensitive to words.

Anyways. I doubt riot would ever give this a thought, probably sitting a little too high on their high horse to actually think about what they are doing to their player base.

26 Comments

Deep Terror Nami1/17/2017, 5:44:58 AM14 votes

Wait, was this whole post about how you think Riot is wrong to not allow you to harass the other players? Nobody wants to put up with that shit, and the Mute function is not an excuse to be toxic; by the time they are forced to use it, you've likely already become a problem. It shouldn't be up to the other players to control your behavior!

This Is Your Dad1/17/2017, 6:08:55 AM7 votes

Too bad I can't just tell my boss to mute me at work when I call him a ******** *** ***** **** and tell him to ***** ****** with his *** in my ****. I just get fired.

deathgod51/17/2017, 12:10:11 PM3 votes

riot decided that my feelings were just too important to let other people exercise their first amendment right.

the actual first amendment

The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed. The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable. The people shall not be restrained from peaceably assembling and consulting for their common good; nor from applying to the Legislature by petitions, or remonstrances, for redress of their grievances.

This is the first amendment. It allows you to say and write everything you want, yes. It however is limited on quite a few things you say here. Companies don't have to allow freedom of speech on their pages. Riot games is privately owned, not a message board and not a forum. They do not limit freedom of speech since they do not block you from writing whatever you want. They just disallow it on their own private owned servers. Which is within their rights

The best metaphors I can think of is you working for a newspaper and one day just add an extra news page into the newspaper with your own personal views of the world without the papers permission. You will be fired then, this is not covered by freedom of speech. You broke company policy and the company is allow to disallow you access.

The other metaphor is to compare toxicity to a guy walking into your house and starting to preach about how what you are doing is wrong. Calling the cops on him and having him removed is not illegal. In fact, what he did was against the rules.

Saying that leagues anti toxicity is a breach of the first amendment is like saying that banning feeders is breaching the freedom of expression. It is not true and thinking it is true sets a dangerous precedent.

So now that i got that tidbit out of the way lets discuss why League bans toxic players.

League discovered that a vast majority of their player base hated to play with toxic players. They are bad because, even if you mute them, you must hope your entire team does so and that nobody else starts playing worse because of them. They also make the community more toxic, causing an increase in leavers, flamers and feeders. League players also didn't like being insulted and hated flamers overall. Flamers are generally considered within the top 3 worst types of players to meet together with the inter and the leaver.

So league, not wanting to lose players, implements a system to punish out toxic players. To make sure this is legally possible they have a ToS that states that they can ban your account whenever the fuck they wanted even if they had NO REASON. They however assured players that you will only be banned if you break the summoners code and that bad bans can be reversed if needed.

They have no legal reason to unban a toxic player. Their reputation improves by not unbanning toxic players. They are actually quite lenient with toxic players informing them 3 times before the final ban(which usually covers up to 9 games till permanent ban while knowing that being toxic can get you banned). There is no reason to be toxic and everybody knows

Ark Sorcerer1/17/2017, 5:59:35 AM3 votes

I would like to address your post in full one day but as it is 12 in the morning (why am I still on boards?) I will mention one thing that caught my attention: Exercising your first amendment right. In public places, tis true. Online, not so much. Because so many emotionally and mentally weak people, probably teens, have committed suicide over this right, there are regulations to it. The regulation, and thus exception, is in certain locations. Like yelling "Bomb!" in a air port. Expect to be in jail. Hey America, 9/11. No? While you may not be going to jail on the terms of yelling bomb, you are in disturbing the peace or something along those lines. Or another example is in school. A LOT of rules are placed in schools that otherwise Americans have the right to. Like freedom of the press. There is no such thing as writing whatever you want in a school news paper nor wearing whatever you want to wear at school because freedom of symbolic speech. On that note of dress, work places can fire someone if you refuse to wear proper attire. (I should mention that my previous points were all done so by The Supreme Court of the good U.S. while this point is more of contract agreement). And for sexual harassment (Supreme Court Decision).

Most Americans think that their Amendment rights are above everything but they only go so far. Riot has the ability (and probably the responsibility) to censor words and punish those that take use of that.

The last thing Riot needs is a law suit against them for someone committing suicide.... wait... terms agreement. Never mind.

swordofsun1/17/2017, 8:20:24 PM3 votes

  1. Please actually learn something about the 1st Amendment and why it doesn't apply to private companies.

  2. The community has decided that they don't want toxic people in their games. If they did, no one would ever get reported or banned. Clearly the majority of people would prefer to not have toxic people in their games.

  3. Having watched the gaming community over the past few decades I can say for sure that it has slowly, but surely, been moving away from "trash talk" and toxicity. Because the more welcome people feel in the community the more people play.

  4. Mute is not a magic button. Just because I mute the toxic person doesn't mean the other people in my game do. This rarely ends well as people end up fighting with each other and sometimes bringing in the opposing team. The mute button a band-aid for the immediate future, not a cure-all solution.

End of the day the game should be enjoyable for the largest amount of people possible not just the people who think it's okay to harass the other 9 people in their games.

FurriesAreHot1/17/2017, 7:48:27 PM2 votes

Yup. Those rising player counts are definitely showing us the game is failing. Also, private companies can censor whatever they damn please.

Fattei 1/17/2017, 5:48:47 AM2 votes

well, your'e completely and utterly wrong. letting people be toxic without consequences is in no way shape or form a solution or help to the problem. if there were no consequences to actively hurting your team mates the game would become a festering pit of malicious nasty people and couldn't be fun anymore. if you could not report someone for verbal abuse, they could freely verbally abuse. the mute option is a last resort if you cannot tolerate someone, if you mute them you wont be able to talk to them, and that worsens your ability to communicate and win.

Magical Player1/17/2017, 5:49:25 AM1 votes

You sold me at "game of my life" Riot doesn't ban people for a few games of trash talking they ban people because they have a clear history of harassment Trash talk and harassment are not the same thing

KYS and fuck you're bad are not the same thing And that is what people seem to forget

Your 1st amendment means little to riot, why because riot owns the game, the servers, Riot is not America, you are playing inside of riot. Follow riots rules. Make sense, any developer of any game has the choice to filter the content of what users say. As most do to some extent.

I am passionate about typing....... no you enjoy harassing.

"normal gamers" guess im part of some cult of gamers. Because you're normal gamer sounds alot like the stereotype of the xbox community(13 year old who learned how to say fuck)

MTT Gnar1/17/2017, 1:25:03 PM1 votes

To be honest, this whole "toxic" situation is not RIOT's fault. It's the actual players. Why blame it on RIOT when it's mainly the PLAYER who's causing the toxicity in-game? That's ridiculous of you to say that it's RIOT's fault. RIOT does not let players be toxic, hence why they BAN them. Hypothetically, even if you act innocent while being toxic, saying that you "didn't do it", yet they have proof of you doing it (even if you post a chat log of what you said), doesn't make you innocent and they will ban you from like a 14 day to even a perma-ban if it continues.

So no, it's not RIOT. It's the players. I'm sick and tired of people bashing RIOT because of their "ban system".