League Games are getting so Toxic that I'm Considering Quitting. [Civil Feedback, I promise.]

To get it out of the way, I believe I've been here since before Season 1. I Duo with one specific person on regular basis. I'm pretty casual at this game; I'm normally in bot but regularly watch videos on specific champions to improve and expand my champion pool. I keep up with patch notes, I lurk the boards. I'm not amazing but I mostly know how to decision-make (ex: when to not run into the enemy's jungle, warding constantly, etc). I admit when I make mistakes proactively and congratulate my teammates for what they accomplish. I play normals only atm, but it's because I want to be good enough and feel confident for my ranked teams when I get there. I do my best to cooperate with everyone. My duo and I equally value treating people with respect; we refuse to knowingly queue with people who are dicks, because we don't want to encourage that behavior by accepting it, so to say.

Yet every other game, I'm making reports. People who whine and say "ff" at 9 minutes and go afk when you don't surrender, top laners/mid laners who feed top and then colorfully blame bot for losing the game...

Every other match. Every other match. Every other match.

I'm not exaggerating. If Riot has the tools, they can look at my report history and the average will be close.

Look guys, losing can be fun. I remember I once lost bot lane hard as Varus, so my support Braum said "Pft I'll carry" and he went Titanic Hydra while I became "support" and I bought supporty items, etc. In that game, other lanes weren't doing well that game either, but they ended up having something akin to an improv comedy sketch with the enemy team; not one of them bashed anyone else for doing poorly and pretty much everyone came out of that one laughing.

Keep in mind that I'm not the kind of person who calls somebody making mistakes "toxic." My basic expectation (which anyone can meet) is that you treat others with respect when trying to communicate with them and don't be passive aggressive when you don't win lane like you wanted. It'd be great if everyone simply tries their best/learns and doesn't treat advice like Anthrax by going batshit ballistic when somebody else points out "buy executioner's calling vs the regentank."

Speaking of going ballistic, here are some examples of what I'm talking about:

Somebody asked what to do against the fizz they had fed midlane, and we answered "buy MR" as politely as a quickly typed message in league can get (they had 4-5 deaths). The others in their premade started bashing us for answering him; it didn't matter when we said "sorry, we didn't mean offense, it's just hard to type much in the middle of a game" and were just trying to answer the mid's question. They were losing and wanted to see the world burn. Then there's the time a Malz wanted to FF almost immediately because he did poorly in his lane when the rest of us were doing alright; when the vote was declined, he kept running into the enemy 1 v 3+. Another time, somebody started cussing everyone else out because "it's my birthday, I can do whatever I want." Even better, I got a Jax that once told a teammate "Like I care, Riot does shit about reports" after an escalation from him responding like an arse to a polite request that he "hold the wave" at tower so bot could back because they had low health and needed items after an enemy had ganked them. (He instead jumped into the 2 v 1 alone, then cussed the low-health bot out when they reiterated that they didn't want him to go in - just hold the tower.)

Look...Every time I've been encountering bad situations, I have attempted to be a positive force and have not to my memory ever started firing back at these people. I even found people react better when they are told "Don't be that person that yells ff the moment the game doesn't go how you want" or "If you snap at people trying to cooperate with you, you won't improve and will find yourself in this situation again in the future." One time in champ select somebody locked in JG despite knowing they had top (like an asshole), so literally everyone in our team took smite (including me as Braum) and proceeded to actually faceroll the unprepared enemy team; the insta-locker was a good sport about it as well, and everyone came out of that grinning/laughing their asses off.

But in the larger experience, being "positive", having a good sense of humor, or generally being nice to people doesn't matter. The few times it works doesn't offset the wave after wave of dickery I get every game, and it will happen regardless of how well I'm doing. There is nothing I can do but mute everyone at the start of the game to avoid it, but some of the best moments I've had in league have come from talking with my team and cracking jokes. In reality, muting everyone would make the game more dull for me, since I like social interaction and when people aren't being asshats it's great and is a part of why I like League. But the fact I would have to resort to insta-muting in the non-competitive level of league just to not want to tear my hair out means something in the Player & Moderation system is failing for us positive players. We're still being force to take the brunt of it. Again, being "positive" or nice to people doesn't matter, because in my cases it seems like the people being toxic get offended at basic requests or feel that they are/should be entitled to be upset at others with no consequences.

Ultimately, to me having fun in League means that it is more important how the game plays out than if it is won or lost. A toxic teammate in the middle of the game, even if you're face-rolling, makes the win soured even if it was an exciting match. A toxic teammate in the middle of a losing game just leaves this heavy bitter taste in your mouth. A toxic teammate that decides to throw the game in the middle of things out of misplaced/unfair spite, especially when you could have won anyway, literally ruins it. A toxic person on the enemy team just makes me feel bad for them; if the toxic enemy is feeding, it sours the win. Having a person who just plays poorly and loses a game is fine. Having a team that plays poorly but responds hilariously can be fun. Having a person who plays well but insults everyone else makes League in general lose its luster.

In_ normals,_ I'd rather lose more and have good company doing it than win most of the time with a bunch of asshats. The wins/losses in normals literally should not matter aside from what you learn/experience in them and who you meet. So when what I experience/who I meet in normals is the equivalent to a dick ocean and the only thing I really learn is "that person was a dick," I just leave the situation(s) angry and with another report under my belt, trying to "stay positive" for the next time that inevitably happens...which will be very soon. I hope you can see why this would wear down on a person overall. I doubt I'm alone either.

Rito Plz, I'm not saying this out of rage like so much of the other forums. I know that game management, especially MMOs, is a nuanced domino effect with multiple branches containing more dominos. I also know that trying to effectively "control" human behavior is essentially witchcraft.

Really, if anything, I'm saying this because I want to stay here, yet I can feel the negativity creeping up on me and can do nothing about it. I love this game, it's been important to my friends and I. I'm not expecting a totally clean game, that's impossible. I'm not a PC-nazi either, so I'm not offended by curses/slurs if they aren't directed at anyone hatefully. But if I experience assholes every other game, the game starts being as appealing as an asshole. This is a huge issue for me, hence this novel of the post, so let me get it out of the way:** I like this game a ton, mistakes/flaws/updates/improvements/meta changes and all**. I get a huge kick out of playing it. But the community on top of the game being reliant on the team is making me flinch preemptively whenever I queue up.

Duo partner: "Should we leave it at that?" Me: "Yeah, let's not do another match. Last game was fine, let's not risk leaving on a bad note. We only have time for one more game."

It's to a point that we're preemptively not playing "one more game" because we know how likely it is that we'll get some lameass in it that leaves a bad taste in our mouth vs. what is supped to be the "usual" game where people have neutral behavior.

Reporting people isn't helping either; they just disappear in my life (I have no idea if anything was done about those people) and the next game or so I'm queued up with somebody just as bad. Therefore, reporting feels pointless and isn't, say, cathartic in any way, since I don't know what happened in the past and my future is still filled with previously mentioned beach named "ocean of dicks." What a crappy tourist spot...like imagine the beach is really great, but every other day at an unpredictable time, the ocean turns into a dickfest. The Dick-cific ocean. That's League right now.

In a recent patch or Q+A, you said you didn't want people to feel chased out of a game due to its toxicity. I am. It's just sucking the fun out of it for me. I hope I was able to explain why; I don't have any hard answers aside from most toxic situations being a result of the other person having a huge pride/ego problem. Either way something in the system is failing us.

I don't even know what portion of the playerbase I represent. Am I a large majority of more "quiet" casuals that chill out in normals, or maybe something else? You have the stats, not me. I just hope you can use this feedback to your advantage, and for the benefit of the game. Please help players like us, who just want to help and encourage people.

Thanks for your notice, Z3bra.