Boards›Player Behavior

Riots perpetual failure to adequately deal with the *actual cause* of toxicity in their community.

slowfiveoh·3/26/2016, 5:37:02 PM·5 votes·1,928 views

Hello! Long time scrub here, with an extensive Information Technology, Psychology, and Philosophy background. I am also retired military. (Yep, I'm very old. However, if you continue reading, you will learn a few things, I promise.)

How are you guys?

Good?

That's great!

First, a bit of background:

  • I have played this game, fairly casually, since 2009. The concept is good. The art is good. It has a great overall feel for a Moba.
  • I don't tend to follow the meta sometimes, and often dominate in the process. (Sometimes not, but typically it works out. Peep my Galio jungle as an example.)
  • I have been here since the very beginning, and privy to the ever-present community toxicity, gameplay changes, map changes, etc.

With all of this being said, I am reaching out to said community to point out significant issues that have been philosophically considered, and mulled over with psychological and sociological emphasis. I do not consider myself a "god" of this game, in any way. However, I have enormous experience in the game, and a very in depth understanding of its mechanics, tactics, and structure.

So far, here are the issues:

#1. You cannot make a community derived game that emphasizes teamwork and communication without exposing said community to a variety of immature, and/or egotistical, individuals.

The Fix: Turn off in-game and lobby chat. Simply turn it off, as other Mobas have done to great success. Force the egotistical individuals to deal with their frustration, or whatever fantasy they have drummed up in their heads, by themselves. No more, "Gee I know everything and am a god, simply stuck in Bronze/Silver/Low Gold, and my opinion on builds/objectives/teamfights are totally infallible." Instead, let there be committed gameplay, and silence, outside of pings.

#2. You cannot then make it so that the more mature, and/or less egocentric, individuals bear the brunt of communication, failure in said communications, and terrible gameplay and teamwork (lack of) that emerges. This is not only an unreasonable request, but an indignant mandate. (No matter how many of you attempt to shift responsibility and response to the more mature person, you may not do so. They are not responsible for the actions, comments, or behavior of others.)

#3. This game is full of elitists with false, preconceived notions. A great example of this is, in fact, my Galio jungle. It is wholly viable, at any tier (I have a low Plat account with way less wins than this one, which I consider my eternally damned, albeit original, account.), and tends to do well. Not a single game goes by where I am not flamed and raged at in lobby, then raged at again in match, do extremely well, and then are told again, after a bevy of level 6+ ganks resulting in multi-kills, that my champ is the reason "x" is struggling. This goes back to ego, and the quoted commentary under #1.

So, Mr. Scrubfiveoh, what exactly is your point?

Well, do you want to see something silly?

This is for you troll types out there:

All you have to do, to completely break this game, is the following -

-Pretend to try. -Smile, and be nice in chat, while pretending to try.

  • Don't suck so bad you feed, but act like you generally don't understand what they wanted. When they start raging, report them, and say, "That's not very nice. I tried very hard. I'm sorry you are mad at my efforts, but you should be nicer!", then return to said lackluster effort.
  • Wash, rinse, repeat, and this game would be literally trolled into the ground.

Riot cannot quantify/identify:

A.) Actual effort. B.) Faux sincerity.

There is literally no way for them to identify this metrically. It is impossible.

Now, I uh...you know, don't advocate this. I just thought it should be brought to your attention, so that you can have a better understanding of the game.

Really, that's all it is. I just wanted to show you some things you may not know. Other than that, I guess I don't have much else to say. To be honest, I am sure this won't be well received.

I did try though. So you can't say I didn't.

Change is hard. Of that, we can be certain. Maybe. Maybe not. Unless you don't want to? Need you to be clear on this. It's essential that you do. So, please try. Thanks.

So there, we have it. How can I say any more? It's as clear as can be... Thanks for your time!

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/chinas-nightmarish-citizen-scores-are-warning-americans http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304811904579587691270500118

44 Comments

disregardable3/26/2016, 8:13:15 PM4 votes

The thing is, no one wants the chat to be deleted. People like the chat. If you don't like the chat, there's nothing from stopping you from /mute all at the start of every game, but you can't force everyone else to do that.

Daen3/27/2016, 6:22:38 PM1 votes

{quoted}

  1. You cannot make a community derived game that emphasizes teamwork and communication without exposing said community to a variety of immature, and/or egotistical, individuals.

Is there a reason this is a problem, at its basest level? Any activity that involves any level of teamwork, whether it be a video game or a high powered business project, can be exposed to immaturity or egos; it's basically part of humanity that teamwork is never perfect, since we're all very different people.

The Fix: Turn off in-game and lobby chat. Simply turn it off, as other Mobas have done to great success. Instead, let there be committed gameplay, and silence, outside of pings.

I really like being able to chat with my allies and enemies, it makes the players feel like other people rather than bots. The game would be a lot less satisfying for me without the ability to meet new people and hang out, and I'm just not convinced a strategy like this would fit the game. Riot expects that we can be adults (for the most part), and it's why they don't put a blanket censor on in-game chat.

  1. You cannot then make it so that the more mature, and/or less egocentric, individuals bear the brunt of communication, failure in said communications, and terrible gameplay and teamwork (lack of) that emerges. This is not only an unreasonable request, but an indignant mandate.

This is a strange point. When have the more mature players ever been expected to carry all the communication for the team? Teamwork is a team effort, if one person is doing all the work it isn't really teamwork at all.

#3. This game is full of elitists with false, preconceived notions. A great example of this is, in fact, my Galio jungle. It is wholly viable, at any tier, and tends to do well.

You're welcome to play Galio jungle, but if your entire team feels strongly that they don't want you doing it in that particular game it can end up being a bit disrespectful to play it anyway. I'm not saying you're breaking any rules or anything, but I can kind of understand your allies' frustrations if they are very against a particular champion/role combo and it's done anyway.

70640285DEL13/27/2016, 9:20:48 PM1 votes

This might be the most reasonable, well-thought out post on the subject on all the boards. The fact that it has been driven into the ground with downvotes proves that people are simply not willing to entertain the notion that "toxicity" is worse in the context of ones ACTIONS rather than ones WORDS. Thanks for posting!