Anyone who has played league for more than a day knows the community is overwhelmingly toxic. Even many people who don't play league know it as one of the most toxic online games. Why is this? I think it is because riot does not have/enforce adequate punishments for toxic behavior. The new report system where you get told your recent report resulted in action is cute but for all I know they just give you that message every once in a while after you report a toxic player. Why do I say this? I have been playing league since season 3 because some college friends said it was fun and they played quite a bit. When I started, league was toxic and they were working to change it, it has been 5 years and they are still "working to change it", I put quotations because you can do a lot in a month, change your life in a year, and become an entirely new person in 5. If anything it has stayed the same or gotten worse.
I do think the overly toxic comments and players have calmed down a bit (comments about race, disability, etc.), but these players were not all that common to start and is not the reason the community is known as toxic. It's the players who flame a teammate at 2 min (or before the game even gets out of champ select) because they made a simple mistake or chose a champion the player doesn't like, who say lol, lel, kek, ez, after every kill in all chat, spam their mastery and emotes after every kill, say gg ez at the end of every won game, or simply insult the other team the entire game when they have a good game and get fed. As far as I can tell these players receive little to no punishment that means anything. Removing end of season rewards or honor progression is not a punishment, it's putting a band-aid on an amputated leg. Sure it means they miss out on some cool stuff riot teams work very hard on but it doesn't affect their current behavior and since it's not considered "overly toxic" the punishment stops there and they continue with their small time toxicity. Even some big toxicity is completely ignored, I saw a video online of a master yi who had almost 300 wins and 0 losses but was silver because he had an equal amount of trolling losses with tahm kench. How did they even get to 20 games of obvious trolling (he would swallow teammates and spit them to tower with an anivia premade who walled them off). This is 200 hours of pure in game time if all the games were only 20 min. It took 600 plus games to ban him for obviously toxic behavior. I think players who display even minorly toxic behavior in 3 or 4 games (even the mastery spamming, loling, gg ez players) should get a 7-14 day ban and if the behavior continues after the ban for 3-4 games more they get a permanent ban.
Riot needs to stop being the parent who says don't do that or we will punish you by putting you in your room with your computer and gaming systems for an hour and be the parent who says don't do that or we are disconnecting the wifi and taking all your gaming systems for a week and if the behavior continues for a year. Which one will get the job done? I like many other players are coming to the end not because the game isn't fun, but because the toxicity definitely isn't. I know I can mute all the pings and chat but I actually enjoy talking to my team and using helpful communication and pings to boost morale and win games. If Riot continues to ignore problems they will become the next blockbuster, "too big to fail" has proved false over and over again in history. I know there are many wonderful people working at Riot and they work hard to make a fun, interesting game, and in their interest as well as the players I think we need a radical change.
