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Adding voice chat will lower toxicity (story inside)

NotAnADC·3/15/2016, 12:44:35 AM·2 votes·1,238 views

We all know League can be an incredibly toxic environment, and that not enough has been done to change that.

I play LoL with a college buddy of mine. We skype and hit the rift almost every day. He has other friends that he plays with and communicates with them over teamspeak. He used to have me on one line, and them on the other going at the same time while we all played.

Here is the thing though, I hated these other guys. They were better than I was, and they were obnoxious about it. We would be toxic to each other in chat and playing wasn't much fun with them. Till one day I joined their teamspeak. They were still better than me, but they could make call outs and give suggestions on the fly. Suddenly I found myself learning from them and the toxicity ended. Now we regularly play together and for the first time I carried a game they did poorly in.

The point is, when you can just type awful things it detaches you from the words. Nothing will be as good as having players sitting next to each other, but voice chat will be a big step. Please Riot, work on implementing VC for your player base.

As a side note, I can find no conceivable reason to have ALLCHAT in game. The only thing it does is cause players to tilt and rage and die while talking to the enemy team. If you need to report someone, mention it post game.

16 Comments

Trashlord Kayden3/15/2016, 12:58:58 AM6 votes

actually integrating voice chat would make toxicity rise. you think riot is gonna hire people to listen to all the recordings to try to figure out who said what toxic thing? and do you think they can prove 100% who said what? no. people will abuse this feature so hard. it's sad but true. you can't report people for saying something through voice comm bc there is no track or log of them doing so. riot only punishes toxic players for things they can see in black and white. this is why curse, teamspeak, and skype exist.

Icy Hot Shoto3/15/2016, 1:26:01 AM4 votes

Riot has actually stated they will not and will never add voice chat. Like Drunkestpotato14 said, it'll make toxicity rise.

And don't say, "then add something that'll show who's speaking." Adding such a thing wont help because even if Riot hired, say, 10 people to sit there for 20+ minutes listening to game chats they STILL wouldn't get through them all. After all, you have those who only play ranked, those who only play normal or just normal draft then those who only play ARAM or customs.

That would be well over, maybe 500 games a day from ONE server. NA also isn't the only server. There's also EUW, Oceanic and Korean server and others. And not everyone on NA speaks English. I've gotten a few games with people who only spoke French or Spanish the whole game making team work impossible all together because I only know simple Spanish and very little French.

Not only that, but some people have speech disorders. I don't have my front teeth due to an incident that happened, so I sound rather weird. I can no longer pronounce F's and V's like I used to. Others have it worse and can barely be understood. How do you think they'd feel if they said "hi" then got made fun of for something they can't control? They'd feel pretty bad and play terribly imo, I know I would.

And then there's those few people who freak out over finding out someone's a female. They will either freak out on you and say only guys are meant to play games or be complete perverts to you. And yes, I have experienced both they do exist in this game even if they are few and far between.

With all that, it's safer to keep League where it is in terms of communicating and use an outside source that Riot approves of such as Skype, TeamSpeak or Curse as, again, Drunkestpotato14 mentioned when with friends. If someone is being toxic, ignore mute and report.

Nik Nikerson3/15/2016, 1:41:29 AM1 votes

Yeah, it was awesome back when I played CoD, and after a month just kept mute on permanently because I couldn't put up with the garbage everyone spewed. I'm as white as a sheet, and I can only take being called the n-word so many times before I'm just done.

Kaitri3/15/2016, 2:54:19 AM1 votes

tl:dr? i bet the story is "typing isnt as personal and therefore flaming in chat is easier than flaming in voice chat" am i right?

Rabblerouser3/15/2016, 12:06:20 PM1 votes

Well... yes... and no.

I'm going to say this, flaming in voice chat will be MUCH HARDER, IF NOT IMPOSSIBLE TO MODERATE. At least with text chat, it can be proven. Text is more easily stored and used for proof of breach of terms.

Voice is sound and requires more storage space for proof of toxicity. So... no. While it would help teamwork immensely I would never agree to it being a part of the game.

Randomonium3/15/2016, 12:48:30 AM1 votes

Well not only that but tone and inflection is such a huge part of human understanding. When you are typing it always seems like things come off harsher than you intend. Have you ever tried to write an email with constructive criticism? 9 times out of 10 you wind up sounding like an asshole even if that's not your intent.

TheLiteKnight3/15/2016, 12:51:03 PM1 votes

Proposal add the voice chat but if your team is toxic have the ability to mute them that way if you have a team that flaming and you don't want that you can block them out and not have to worry about them.

No flash no life3/15/2016, 1:30:58 AM1 votes

Saw the title and immediately agreed before even entering the room. Trolls will suddenly act all friendly and willingly sacrifice themselves for your well being when they hear this cute young anime-seiyuu girl's voice sounding like a hopeless lost sheep as soon as they enter the room.