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Why League Has Trolls and Ragers (Real Reason)

Artist Bogrim·1/5/2016, 6:41:09 AM·9 votes·1,625 views

Back in Warcraft 3, the predecessor to League of Legends, bad teammates was never an issue because of two things that were different. First of all, you weren't obliged to stay in the game. You could leave the second you thought victory couldn't be achieved anymore. Secondly, there wasn't anything incentivizing you to work together besides winning the game. Friendly fire was possible, and no report system to ban players for doing so.

To understand what this means, imagine you have a troll on your team. He's angry and he's letting his rage out on you for no good reason. How would you respond? You would literally destroy him. Raze his base to the ground, kill his units and then leave the game. Sounds horrible, but in reality it meant you had to earn your spot on your team. You had to make your allies want to play with you. Because if you identified yourself as a troll, there was nothing forcing your allies to play with you.

This is what's different in League of Legends. Someone begins to troll and throw the game, you are bound by the game's policies to stay for the full duration and you aren't even allowed to leave the game unless you succeed a vote that tends to never go through. League has trolls because Riot shackles their players to them.

And in doing so, they take away that important sense of integrity and replaced it with entitlement. Players come into a game and expect their allies to work with them instead of hoping to prove to their team they are worth the effort. Because they know if their allies aren't cooperative no matter how much you ruin their efforts, the system is blind and will treat any violations as a transgression even if you weren't the offender. The system in fact expects you to keep playing by the rules until the end of the game no matter how many of your allies are sitting in the fountain or running into turrets.

Let me take a break here and say I don't look down on Riot's efforts or their report system. A lot of games go really well. Everything has its pros and cons. No system is flawless. League has become a much bigger game than Warcraft ever was, and it's unlikely the same methods would ever work. The point I would like to reach with this topic is the reason for why trolls happen in League, and how the system could be improved to better combat this sort of behavior.

There have been a lot of suggestions over the years on how to stop players from trolling. Some have suggested a vote kick feature, which would only add bullying to the game. Others have suggested harsher penalties, which would only delegate them on to new players through smurfs. You can't stop trolling. If you could, Riot would have done so already.

As long as you have a system that forces players to stay in the game, there will always be trolls. The definition of a troll is someone who is deliberately provocative for the sake of attention. What I believe could be improved on, is the last part. Attention. If you soften up the rules keeping players bound to the troll's game, the act wouldn't have much of an impact. You'd just move on to the next game and forget about that one guy who gave up.

Surrender at 10. 3 out of 5 to surrender. Or even a feature that can identify trolling and allow the teammates to reset or quit the game without penalty. I sincerely believe any changes of this nature would reduce the impact trolling has on the game.

But what I worry is that Riot values the competitive aspect of their game more than their players. The mentality that every game should be played out fully to give players the best possible chance of winning the game. To not let the system be the reason they lost an otherwise won game. The percentage of games surrendered games could have been won is fairly low and would only increase if you made it easier to stop a game in progress. So this begs the question, what is more important---trying to win as hard as you can or letting players skip bad games more easily?

Let me know your opinion below.

20 Comments

SSJTribe1/5/2016, 7:03:52 AM3 votes

I really think a system that shaves a minute off of the surrender vote for each difference in deaths would work. So a game where the score is 10-0 you could surrender by ten minutes. However 10-9 would only cut off one minute, so basically nothing.

I feel it would solve intentional feeding, and those common snowball games where the enemy is clearly ahead but can't quite push your base yet. If you have a troll, or an AFK just die a few times and get the game over with so you can move onto the next one.

Yamato San1/5/2016, 6:52:57 AM2 votes

I just thought this was funny. I posted a similar thread a few minutes before.

Sythriel Draken1/5/2016, 7:09:10 AM2 votes

I agree that Leaverbuster is the reason for all the trolls.

Riot basically gives them total control to hijack your game, mainly ranked where their failed mmr system needs work, and you are forced to sit there and hope that they even agree with the surrender. Either that or you are forced to leave the game, where it triggers a leaver buster, and you are forced to sit in a queue before you can play the game. Again, this means the trolls won because they are still griefing you after the games over.

What makes things worse is that these trolls can get around riots punishment system but being very toxic on an alternative account, and if that account gets permabanned, they just hop on another.

Troll Armada1/5/2016, 7:09:52 AM2 votes

I think I agree with some of what you are saying, although I'm not convinced as to the conclusions you make.

League has trolls because Riot shackles their players to them...

And in doing so, they take away that important sense of integrity and replaced it with entitlement.

See this is where I'm losing you. I agree that part of the problem is being stuck in these games

(...with someone you know is trolling, has told you they are trolling, and yet you are powerless to do anything which will convince your subconscious that something has been actually done, i.e. immediate gratification. Then, often if a troll is just an early game troll, people on the rest of the team usual forget about anything early game and if you're say adc, you become the villain now, "why did you build shoes fisrt?! why don't you have damage!?" ...but i digress)

...but how does being stuck in these create a sense of entitlement.

Actually, after re-reading, aside from this I agree with most of what you're saying here. **In my view, the ability to surrender is what has led to a lack of integrity, once someone votes to surrender, most of the time you CANNOT expect that player to then play his/her best in good faith. It literally poisons the game for everyone at that point. **

Furthermore, it's my own belief, that pure recreational trolling, is not the what makes up the majority of trolled matches. Many of these trolled games have an agenda, the players are seemingly in a big hurry, on the clock almost to grind through games. That's where I think your premise breaks down.

And although I happy riot does try to do things to support a happy non-toxic community, this "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy in regards to rigging matchmaker and throwing matches only serves to keep most players ignorant as to the fact that they are being scammed by a pre-made group of con artists. Similar to when Google release Microsoft exploits to the public, since it knew Microsoft would never get off of its ass and do something until there was public pressure.

Only thing surrender vote will do is give mmr boosters extra income, since they will now be able to turn around more fake thrown games in less time.

alasarcher1/5/2016, 9:09:14 AM2 votes

About warcraft part. Remember one thing. Every game was CUSTOM GAME. Even here you can leave custom games at any point. Also if u talk about DOTA, there were platforms that banned leavers like Garena, eurobattlenet and few others. Also they DID have alot of ragers and trolls. Not to mention worst plague of them all: Maphackers and gold trade hackers.

xReadyPlayerOnex1/5/2016, 9:18:00 AM1 votes

Good points. Well said. And it will be completely ignored by RIOT.