Player Toxicity

YanatDeGurechaff·4/16/2017, 9:51:13 PM·1 votes·757 views

Hello, I am a Student at Stuy High school who decided to write about gaming toxicity and how someone can reform from it for my free research paper and I have some questions concerning these topics that I hope a rioter can answer for me (thanks in advance). Some questions I have for this interview are:

How is toxicity originated?
How can someone reform from toxicity?
What does riot do to the toxic community and do they try to give them a chance to reform?
Why is league known for its toxicity? Also if you can include some personal stories or opinions that would be great.

17 Comments

dYW7w6mjp14/16/2017, 11:17:37 PM2 votes

1.) I got banned for two negative games and one game in which I threatened to afk if the players on my team didn't change their attitudes. 2.) In one game I lost it after a huge losing streak with 3 games out of my control and flamed a player consistently for not playing correctly. Another game had be irritated in the same loss streak with a player who took my main position and played horribly, losing us the game. And the last "straw" was threatening to afk when players were being toxic towards me. I lasted almost 3 years before getting permanently banned, Riot did give me warnings but I have a feeling the tier system they used broke because over 6 months of non-toxic behavior and no punishments I was escalated to the final tier which led to my ban.

dYW7w6mjp14/16/2017, 10:24:36 PM1 votes

I am not from Riot, but I hope the information given can help.

1.) Toxicity is just there, it's when a player can not excuse them self or have respect for other players in the game. This often ends with players acting negatively 2.) The player has to learn to respect others in the community, and not react so negatively to negative situations 3.) Riot has their post-lobby report system, if a player is consistently tagged as negative Riot's system will show that player a warning. After that warning the the behavior does not change they will receive a two week ban, following the two week ban, if the player still does not reform after their temporary ban the player will be permanently banned. 4.) There are quite a few reasons why League of Legends is known for it's toxicity. Most of it comes for players misunderstanding others or having very low patience. That's my opinion though.

BTW, I am permanently banned due to Toxicity if you need to or would like to interview a player that has been permanently banned for your research paper I'd be willing to give my input. Thanks!

YerroFever4/18/2017, 6:08:18 PM1 votes

{quoted}

Hello, I am a Student at Stuy High school who decided to write about gaming toxicity and how someone can reform from it for my free research paper and I have some questions concerning these topics that I hope a rioter can answer for me (thanks in advance). Some questions I have for this interview are:

How is toxicity originated?

How can someone reform from toxicity?

What does riot do to the toxic community and do they try to give them a chance to reform?

Why is league known for its toxicity? Also if you can include some personal stories or opinions that would be great.

I'm not a riot employee or representative but I can share my examples with you

How is toxicity originated? My own toxicity originates from frustration. When you're getting ganked non stop or you're out matched or whatever, there's so much frustration that happens that you sometimes lash out, especially when a teammate would intentionally feed or go AFK in base but still be typing to all of us. I've personally learned more restraint in how I talk to people because it ultimately isn't worth the hassle. One frustrated comment just leads to a downward spiral of negativity because people will start either blaming everyone else or just insult for the sake of trying to get under your skin because you put a spot light on their downfall.

I had a friend who had been chat banned and temp banned and we would also talk on VOIP and he would type out his frustrations a lot at randoms. It got so bad that he was chat banned and then temp banned. I suggested he just talk his frustrations out over Curse and it worked sometimes but other times, he just wanted the person to feel bad because they ruined his game. There really was nothing I could do to stop it but for the most part he contained his in game message rage. He ultimately ended up quitting league because his game experience was so easily affected by 1 bad lane that he just needed a game that was more self reliant.

There was also a friend of my friend who played with me and my friend while he was teaching me how to play the game and literally in my first game, he was trashing me because I was so bad at league and missing last hits and just non stop ragging. There was no need for it at all, however, he never typed it out because he was on Curse with us and would just non stop berate me for being so bad in my first game. His toxicity, to this day is still through the roof over VOIP but he doesn't type it out. I just don't play with him because he's such a jerk and so that's how I handled his toxicity. However, people tell me they never join games with him anymore so I presume everyone else he used to play with feels the same way I do.

Can toxicity be reformed? Yes I strongly believe so. It's a matter of self control and coping mechanisms. If you have enough self control to not type out your frustrations that's a big step towards reforming. The other is coping mechanisms. I've had to readjust my outlook on a game that goes poorly to not quit this game. I love playing league, but if I didn't start looking at games that were going poorly as learning experiences to help me improve my gameplay in games that I do win, then I'd be a stagnant player and I'd also probably be a much angrier player. It sucks that you lose but it happens. You can't win all the time.
What does riot do to the toxic community and do they try to give them a chance to reform? Riot def. gives people chances to reform, in the form of chat bans, low priority queues, and temp bans.
Why is league known for its toxicity? Competitive games in general can produce toxic atmospheres because of sore losers and non gracious winners. Going up against someone who spams something is annoying in general. League has so many options available for obnoxious sounds that you can't mute it actually interferes with your gameplay. Many people have requested that when you mute a player you can mute their character sounds. Many people have requested that you have the ability to mute your teammate's pings.

League also started with not being able to pre-pick your roles. People argued A LOT in pregame chat. I want mid! I called it first! I saw your game history and you suck as mid! etc... You saw that all the time. People would do everything they could to get the role they wanted and it wasn't about being a team player. This has gotten a lot better since draft was revamped to add character roles. Sometimes you get people asking for a specific lane even though they were put in a different role during draft and now I try to do my best to accommodate them just to reduce the chance of in game toxicity from a teammate. I've had people say "if you gave me X lane, i wouldn't have lost my lane so badly" and things like that because although in draft they no longer say "X or feed" they just feed.

League is also the largest MOBA in the world and so you'll have a large player base and quite a number of toxic players in that base. Because not only do you have the largest MOBA title, you get more people running into toxic players. The chances are that you will have toxic people game after game after game due to the sheer volume of players of this game.

League is also a cooperative game which requires so many people working together and also the champ design makes it so that certain people have greater impacts on games than others and so sometimes, depending on your team comp and the enemy team comp, one losing lane loses the whole game. These champs are what people call "hyper carries." One person wins the laning phase and the rest of the game is basically over.

Ganking and roaming also aspects that cause frustration in games. I mainly play lux mid and I intentionally roam and gank other lanes for the sake of snowballing my team's lanes. Just by going halfway down the river, I can start denying my enemy team CS because they're afraid of a gank from me and/or my jungler. As a long range champ, i can still hit them under and behind their towers so they're still not safe. This also means that the lane can focus more on warding the river instead of warding the lane and river and it makes the enemy team have to work harder to compensate for two gankers and can frustrate the whole team and turn on their jungler or turn on whichever lanes are losing. It's demoralizing in nature and unfortunately, that's part of the game.

Team fights are also a problem if your team doesn't really wombo as much as the enemy team's combo. Some team comps work better than others and sometimes your play style doesn't match theirs and people sometimes will target you because 4 champs work really well one way and yours doesn't and you should have picked a different champ.

Because there are so many opportunities for frustration to come out, it can come out a lot more. However, as I've played more the higher ELO I get the less toxic it is. I found that in my experience I encountered the most toxicity in bronze and silver and the least in unranked and gold and above.

YerroFever4/20/2017, 5:59:02 PM1 votes

My first name is Dan