League of Legends Community in General

Hi there fellow summoners! within all honesty I'm not much of a message board dweller, but honestly after today i came to a certain opinion that i just felt like i needed to share and hopefully i can see some constructive input, please by all means if you feel that I'm wrong in any way feel free to correct me.

Now every so often i would come back to League of Legends for one of three reasons, Number 1 being it's a great game, i honestly never seen the appeal in MOBA's until I've started getting into League thanks to a certain cousin of mine who is a Total League-o-maniac, and he's all around a great guy, (I guess that covers Reason 2.) Reason 3 being literally everyone else i know plays it and constantly pulls my arm over it, which i can't blame them because in my opinion LoL is among the many greats in PC Gaming in general, I mean heck even the championships held for League of Legends are more interesting than the Superbowl nowadays. (Subjective opinion there, but I've stopped following NFL for a while anyway.)

But enough about Football, Let's focus on the main issue I'm having.

Overall, League is a great game, but there was always something keeping me away for a while and steering clear, Granted my skill level is low, but i have my good days and I'm still able to have fun, Win or Loose i manage to be a good sport. I'm not even that high of a summoner level as of yet, and realistically i don't plan on playing ranked games very often in the future.

But the that thing though, that X-Factor, (If you may call it that.) Is the ever growing toxicity within the game's community.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa... Don't go thinking "Hey, this guy hates everyone who plays league by default" That's not necessarily true. Granted 40% of the people I've come across were very kind, upstanding people of the game's community and was never afraid to lend a hand or show me a thing or two. As a matter of fact I'm willing to bet there's a bunch of kind hearted folks around here on the message boards.

But that other 60% though... [Leans back in desk chair with the weirdest 'What 'chu talkin' bout Willis' expression]

The toxicity is real, man! I've been coming back and fourth to League since it was still a reasonably new game and ever since it's been getting worse.

Recently, game after game after game, you would always get one, two, sometimes even a whole team of toxic individuals.

(By the way, I'm pretty sure most of you are aware of the term 'Toxic' but for those who aren't, in a nutshell it's just classifying people as very mean, hateful, and extremely egotistical. There's probably more to the meaning than that but that's the best i could personally explain it.)

And honestly, man... The growing rate of Toxic individuals are skyrocketing and it's killing the community, and i also dare say, sometimes it just makes me want to stop playing the game all together, toxic individuals really take the fun out of the game, and just for being there witnessing it I'd get randomly reported by trolls.

It's really killing the overall experience I'm having with the game, In a team-based strategy game such as this the community plays a very BIG part, and if it's uncooperative, if it's unfriendly, if it's just generally displeasing it completely ruins the game for me.

Let me fill you in a little bit about me so i can elaborate a following comparison.

I've started on gaming in general since a baby and I'm pushing 25 years of age right now, and back then it was a golden age for the industry, i grew up on NES, All things Sega, and later on in the year 1996 I've got my first computer as a gift, a Windows 95 machine pre-loaded with Quake and Doom.

At the age of only five, I was introduced into the glorious PC Master Race, then from there on i continued onto games like Command and Conquer Generals, The original Fallout, Oddworld, and i even went back and revised my consoles and started collecting. (I'm just gonna take this moment to mention the N64 and the Dreamcast... Absolutely amazing time in gaming for me right there.)

So, y'know, by default I've came across every single type of gaming community out there, my taste in video games in general is vastly diverse.

Everything from the Atari 2600, and on. SO, The vast majority's of Online Gaming communities I've come across in my experiance all had their good times and bad.

But the worst online communities I've come across just for their sheer toxicity, trolling and flaming were all the Call of Duty games from CoD4 on up, And in a close tie, World of Warcraft.

But, you wanna know who's slowly taking the cake? and I'm really sad that i have to say this in all honesty. It's League of Legends.

Comparing League to those Online Communities is saying a lot, i know, but most of you might just agree in some cases.

Something really does need to be done, Because if a team based strategy game such as this that Relies on Teamwork, Communication, Focus and Friendliness has none of these things, The game in general will slowly get killed off by the community eventually becoming just 100% toxic (God Forbid.) and nobody with good intentions playing it anymore.

I really don't want to see this happen to this game, and another thing is this, whenever me and my buddies DO come across flamers, trolls or overall just silly people, we get punished for it because they abuse the reporting system. (Granted, knowing this we have to utilize it, too.)

But usually we just get reported and punish for no reason, and y'know, that gives me slight anxiety whenever i play this game online, or any game for that matter that has people abusing the report system in such a way.

Realistically, i just want to see the community get better and become less toxic, because the game overall in itself is a great game, it's just a shame to see it brought down sometimes by shady and iffy people.

If anyone has any similar stories they would like to share, feel free too by all means, i feel if we just encourage people to actually remain friendly and not be toxic in general it would make the game's overall experience SO MUCH BETTER.

I'm probably not the first to say this, but i felt like it needed to be said. If you took the time reading through this i want to thank you in advance.

Happy Gaming guys, Not Toxic Gaming.