The biggest deciding factor in this game is teamwork. It's a 5-person team of intelligent gamers, and unfortunately 1 or 2 really negative comments can ruin a game. Like other people have posted, it's pretty common on every loss to see people abusing the report system. They don't like what someone built, they feel someone didn't fill their role, etc. I call it scapegoat herding, and when it happens in a close match, it really affects teamwork because morale is important. We like the game to be competitive, but not if it means every loss is a test of your patience and communication skills. It seems to me that alot of the time this would be real easy to catch with an automated system, but there are still more players like this so it must not be working very well. All mobas I have played have this problem, at pretty much all levels of play, and in my opinion, it makes skill in the game less meaningful. The team without haters wins. The team without afk wins. Those count as losses. It builds frustration, and eventually a player can't keep a positive attitude, desperate that skill ranking is putting them on teams with "bad" players and they demand everyone report that one guy for our loss. Because surely it was all Shen's fault. :P
We all start somewhere, and the general knowledge of the roles and builds changes depending on the champions, our skill, and the gameplay. One of the reasons I like this game is some of the unexpected playstyles, which means that players will sometimes do things that don't best suit their team.
It is part of the game.
Some games are lost, and in competitive matches, a good player will win just over 50% of them.
I love this game, and I think I have reasonable expectations. Pretty simple: I intend to play a whole match, sometimes up to an hour long. I intend to try my best and if that doesn't seem to work, to communicate and try something else. I intend for the match to be fair, and for the community of serious players to protect the integrity of the community by trying to remain positive and focus on the game no matter what the outcome. I've been honored a few times now for defending someone on my team from angry chat during a loss, myself or others, and it just doesn't satisfy like it used to.
For now, I try to be helpful and never say anything unless people get abusive. But... chat must be searchable? Surely it would be easy to look through times the word "retard" was used and find countless examples of some pretty harsh harassment? Imean, there are children that play this game. In a sport, that kind of conduct gets you thrown out in order to protect the integrity of the sport.
It could be easier and more attractive to get into MOBA's in general if these problems had better, more reliable solutions. Maybe some kind of captcha system where if a player is reported, other players on your team are offered a range of options describing that player's behavior specifically enough to tell the difference between 4 players calling 1 a scapegoat and 1 player harassing/coercing their teammates.
For now, I take solace in the fact that these boards are here, and in the knowledge that there is usually at least one other social justice defender in any group of 10 people.
