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On the Subject of Dealing with Toxicity

UF Dan·8/25/2018, 6:26:58 PM·1 votes·2,748 views

So I've been thinking about this for a while and I finally had a chance to collect my thoughts and replied to a post on Player Behavior. I thought that my comment should be a new discussion on its own since it goes out of the bounds of the discussion as a reply. May post on Reddit as well. so here it is:

My main problem with people that complain about toxicity, Riot's Stance on it, and this community as a whole, is that everyone's just virtue signaling the topic to death. Everyone's so keen on proving how toxic one another and this whole community is to try to eliminate them that everyone misses the point. What's funny is at the end of the day, those same people who love to call out everyone in the community for being toxic just end up getting mad and slipping up in a game anyway. Everyone's just a hypocrite hear and calling out toxic players and insulting the community for having to many of them is toxic in itself. In my ideal world, getting banned for toxicity would be incredibly hard like you'd have to go full racism/threats for you to be punished. These days it seems like Riot and everyone in boards just want people to get banned. There's no need for this, people have put some hefty sums of money into the game to get banned for something 90% of players do.

Why do players insist on grabbing their pitchforks when a streamer says some stupid shit in chat to try to get them banned when everyone knows muting exists? Why must Riot dish out ban after ban and support this blatant hypocrisy when they can instead just encourage the mute button and stop alienating players who have sunk hours of gameplay and shitloads of money into their game? A prime example of the consequences of this dumb policy is Videogamedunkey's video where he explained why he left League. The guy got banned for talking shit to some dude who was literally inting his game. And guess what? I bet that inter probably didn't even get a single punishment, because Riot insists on prioritizing the banning of shit talkers who can easily be countered via the mute button, instead of Inters, who ruin the game for 9 other players and force 4 other players to continue playing a losing game and end up losing lp anyway even though it was out of their power to win. And guess what? the people that have to deal with inters don't get a mute button, they just have to sit through that shit. I don't get very many inters in my games at all so I'm biased when I say Inting isn't a problem in this game so I'm not really advocating for some new/better system to punish inters- i'm just saying that our priorities are incredibly wrong.

Imagine a world where the second someone starts being toxic, the whole team mutes him and it ends there. The guy isn't being listened to so he eventually stops talking and focuses on the game and the toxic guy doesn't get punished and is instead discouraged from continuing to be toxic because the accomplishes nothing with it. In the real world you know what happens? Player A talks shit to Player B then Player B starts talking shit back. So who do you ban Player A or both players? The community seems to want both players banned. But what's funny is getting banned either has no effect on the player's behavior, or in Dunkey's case the player is alienated and Riot loses income. I mean seriously compare this game to a game like COD where people just nonstop shit talk all day. Often times it actually contributes to the player's experience in a positive way - who doesn't enjoy some competition? What do you do when the player is just annoying? Everyone mutes him, done. No one gets banned in COD for toxicity and guess what with all this shit talk the COD community has, League is still considered a more toxic game. Maybe it's because COD games last 10 minutes and League games last 30 - but that's all the more reason to encourage the mute button. I mean you're stuck with the player anyways right he's not gonna get banned in game, mute him and focus on winning. But no. Instead we have a boards group solely focused on naming players to ban, and a company that seemingly wants to ban as many players as possible.

What's great about Freedom of Speech is that it doesn't include the Right to being heard. Just like it should be, in real life you don't sit around listening to someone you don't want to listen to and wait around until the authorities punish him. Instead you walkaway and if you can't walkaway you just ignore them. Why can't it be like that ingame. Why must you be banned for toxicity when the muting exists? Is the mute button broken or do you really care so much that you feel the need to report some random ass dude in a game because he's typing words. To me it seems like this community just gets a high off of banning players. And Riot seems to support this behavior since everywhere you go they seem to encourage you to send a support ticket on a specific player when you have a problem with one, to get them banned instead of insisting that you mute next time.

And that I feel is what makes this community "the most toxic", why everyone seems to be getting banned, and why everyone flips their shit when a streamer loses control of what they say in chat. Everyone, including Riot's priorities aren't where they should be. And in my opinion I feel like there's a simple solution: Make being banned for toxicity harder, and change the community's attitude so people talk more about the mute button and talk less about getting others banned.

3 Comments

Kei1438/25/2018, 6:38:44 PM1 votes

An analogy to the "why ban when you can mute" arguement:

If everyone can put on a bullet proof vest, doesn't mean you have the right to shoot someone, especially when they do something that pisses you off.

Imperial Pandaa8/25/2018, 6:59:35 PM1 votes

Riot doesn't prioritize banning people who talk like shit, but it is so much easier to detect and handle verbal/text cases. Where as gameplay offenses need to be verified of game toxicity (i.e. inting, griefing, etc). It is easier to make a system to handle verbal cases because gameplay can have a wide ass spectrum of skill.

Know another difference between CoD and LoL? I am free to drop in and out of matches as I please. Doing so from the "competetive" mode may put you on a cd from the playlist. But anyways, the ability to jump in and drop out of matches is important. While CoD specifically may not punishb the hosting platform might. I destroyed a FFA match on map Fuel back in MW2. Dude got pissed and called me a cheater before calling me some colorful names in German, one of which included insulting the fact I am a Jew. How did he know? Because my motto on Xbox Live was "I'm the mother effin Bear Jew" (reference to Inglorious Bastards). 48 hour ban from Xbox Live. Meaning no online games.

Unless they used hate speech or are a repeat offender, they probably aren't getting a ban. Usually, well last Riot mentioned at least, a majority of players who get a chat restrict never get another punishment.

Freedom of speech applies mainly to the Government, but to entertain you I will add this: Freedom of Speech does not give Freedom of Consequence.

Lorantil8/25/2018, 8:18:59 PM1 votes

You don't know who to mute before being insulted. Noone likes being insulted and people prefer to rather react than ignore. If someone was insulting you in a room (in real life) what would you do: respond or leave the room to avoid hearing the insults? Would you expect anything different in the game chat?