Open Letter to Riot

I have played this game for quite awhile now because it can be very fun, it's free to play, has great visuals, and doesn't require an expensive gaming pc to run at decent graphics settings. There are many things I love about the game, but also some which bother me greatly. Other players on the boards and I have made post after post about things we like, don't like, and things that are funny. Yet, little attention seems to be paid to them - even the ones with merit. Hide behind "you're not plat+, your opinion doesn't matter" "you don't understand anything about the game" or whatever excuse - they are not valid. Well over half the players are lower than plat. By sheer weight, that makes their/our opinions matter... or should. Faker, the unkillable demon king himself, said that low elo players are more likely to discover new meta builds because they are more willing to risk their elo than high rank players. So there is yet another reason opinions of lower elo players can matter; some do understand the game... in great depth.

Today I want to talk about one particular sore area: what deserves warnings/punishments/bans

I play league to have fun and try my best. I stick mostly to ranked because I want a challenge and to know where I stack up. That's what ranked is SUPPOSED to be. People are SUPPOSED to be grouped based on skill level. Thus, since I have weaker mechanics than someone like Bjergsen, I'm not in challenger. While at the same time, I might have better macro than a bronze player, so I'm in a higher elo than them. Yet every day, players around the globe experience playing with teammates who are nowhere near their proper elo and it makes the game disgustingly 1-sided.

Let me describe a few instances of this type of play to begin with. You see the enemy team has a ton of hard engage and burst damage as well as sustained damage. So... you last pick lux support. You have 0 skill with the champ, being unable to land more than 2 q's the entire game, missing ults on cc'd targets, and position to get hit by every enemy cc possible as though you are a melee champ. You don't build sightstone and don't use your trinket to ward... beyond it's initial use at level 1.

You're playing adc and you aren't the best at it, so... you lock in vayne. You die once in lane and decide you need to immediately make the enemy pay for that, so you all-in them again and give the enemy another double kill. After this, you auto shove the lane and try to duel the enemy all of laning phase. You never ward, so feed the enemy jungler too whenever he leaves from camping your toplaner non-stop for 15 min straight. You flame your jungler for not ganking for you enough. You tell your toplaner he's garbage for being 1/3/0 and up 20 cs while being 2v1'd every time he leaves tower; he's obviously stupid for asking you to play safe and farm at tower. You end up going 1/7/0 in lane, being down 50 cs and 2 levels, and refuse to listen to your teammates about anything. They can 3v4 try to stall the enemies you fed; you gotta get some farm and bot outer tower even if it costs your mid inhib tower.

You are winning early game bot lane, and forced the enemy adc to run to other lanes and soak xp and cs. They make your midlaner and toplaner fall behind due to being in a 1v2 lane and being ganked by jungle. Meanwhile, you slow push your lane, trade farm with the enemy support despite being 2v1, and don't try to kill tower either. When your mid and top ask you to push or rotate to counter the enemy adc ganking their lanes non-stop from stealth, you tell them they are just bad and shut the f up.

You are playing jungle. Your toplaner is winning his lane despite a rough matchup and the enemy having ignite and the enemy jungler repeat ganking and blowing flash several times to try to kill him. All other lanes are losing. You haven't ganked for anyone except two ganks bot. You've solo killed people a few times; usually people who overstay at low hp after killing their lane opponent or people barely escaping your toplaner. The two of you essentially 2v5 stall out 3 fed enemies for about 15 min, but your bot and mid are still useless and inting at every opportunity. So what do you do? Flame your toplaner for building damage instead of full tank because obviously going full tank so he would lose lane is going to help so much vs a 15/4/7 vayne. If only he didn't build to combo with you and 1-shot vayne, you would certainly have won teamfights with only jg yi as a damage source lol.

You fed bot lane, but thanks to your mid having decent damage and your fed toplaner (got fed despite no help from team), you manage to "ks" some enemies in teamfights. Your toplaner throws away his perfect kda to die every teamfight because that's the only way your team can shut down the enemy adc and jg who are fed. You just do the last 10% of damage and hide behind his peeling. Then you get a potential game-winning baron. Since you've caught up, your toplaner splits and promises to tp when minions hit inhib and join you to break the base. He ends up getting 3-manned by the enemy adc, jg, and toplaner as he is pushing. But he keeps baiting them. He ends up killing 2 and then dying. Meanwhile you 4v2 push mid, kill the inhib, and win the game. You then tell him he's welcome for you carrying his worthless ass all game. After all, you ended the game 14/7/2 while he ended the game with only 6 kills and 7 deaths (6/7/31 - despite having to tank several fed enemies and still provide 60% of the damage in mid game fights). Obviously he's a noob.

Your jungler camps for you bot. After trading 1 for 1 and 2 for 2 many times, eventually you get a lead and start snowballing. After killing the enemy tower though, it takes another 10min before you listen to your toplaner and rotate that to pressure anything on the map instead of just trading farm with your lane opponent after you got your lead. Meanwhile, he's gone 1/5/0 by 25 min into game while being camped by an ignite ww jungle and laning against a garen. And... he builds bork. Naturally, your support tells the idiot what's what. Let him know he's an idiot because bork is "worthless and troll" on renekton, that you will report him for building bork, and that he can rot - you'll rotate and pressure the map when you're good and ready. You carry teamfight after teamfight. Meanwhile your toplaner hugs tower, wards, pings out enemy roams, and just farms. He comes to fights and peels for you, but he can't really kill anyone. WW follows him everywhere and ults him on cd, so at least he's serving a purpose. By mid/late game, he's reasonably tanky, playing as smart as he can with your team not warding very well and only having 2 wards of his own, and can 1v1 garen or warwick. He ends game with a pathetic 8/7/14 kda while you end game with a 21/3/4 kda. You remember to tell him he's a useless noob, he's getting reported for trolling and building bork, and he's stupid for saying he needs counter-ganks early game when being camped non-stop. After all, renekton can basically 1v5 with no skill for the first 8 levels of the game right?

That's about the average level of my teammates in gold. If I were to play with their attitude, their macro play, and their skill level; I'd be bronze within a week. But even if I report for something like the above happening - even if they literally type in-game that they are playing on a friend's/sibling's account (and don't have the skill to be at this elo; essentially elo boosted) - they are 99.999% likely to face no negative consequences. They will stay at their elo, keep their account, and go on to make the game less fun for others and myself.

Yet... I cannot tell someone that they are an idiot. Let me break down the situation and give a comparison. If I feed a darius 4 kills in lane and I'm 0/4/0, I should be hugging my tower, asking for help (maybe; depends on scenario), and sacrificing cs to soak xp. If I instead auto-shove lane, refuse to ward, and continue trying to 1v1 darius or even dive in 1v2 if their jg ganks; I will be called an idiot. And for good reason. I would be ruining everyone else's game. Making my opponent impossibly fed so that it doesn't matter how well my teammates are doing because their opponents are playing smart/playing safe. If I'm then 1/10/0 and blaming my team for not ganking as I continue to try to duel darius. I refuse to ever group up. I steal all solo lane xp and cs as much as possible. I ignore repeated pings and vision from wards warning me when I'm about to get flanked and killed and just keep solo pushing at cost of my adc and mid losing their advantages they earned 1v1 and 2v2 because they are stuck trying to 4v5 or 3v5 all game after laning phase. If I keep doing this all game and tell my team they are being toxic to me because they say that my play is retarded, I am being an idiot. Sub in adc or another role in place of toplane and this is what I see way too often from my teammates - just with the roles reversed; I'm screaming at them to not run down mid farming minions because there's 4 enemies we all saw at our red buff and they're going to kill our adc for solo pushing like that. I'm a patient man, but if you ignore teammates for over 10 min straight of them giving encouraging/helpful, non-negative advice and info and keep making the game more difficult to win; at some point people get sick of it. After so many games in a row of the same selfish, blind, intentional feeding plays happening; I can't be expected to sit silently or be nice about it; especially when they go unpunished post-game despite such behavior being reported.

If I can be flamed for a legitimate build when I'm the only one on the team who didn't feed and those who flame and harass me go unpunished... If I can be camped, still win lane over 50% of the time despite no help from team while my teammate(s) refuse to play safe 1v1 or 2v2 and just scale up so we can win a teamfight and they go unpunished for running it down lane all game... If I can be called an idiot or retarded or sometimes essentially the same but without those exact words so the system doesn't see it as toxic and those doing this go unpunished despite being reported... But I get punished for telling someone they're an idiot after they run in and start a 4v5 or 3v5 with no wards while I'm halfway across the map and they don't give me a single place to tp to... while my teammates fed all laning phase and refused to play safe after starting 0/4/0... while I go 2/3/0 and am up 35 cs despite being camped... while my jungler refuses to tower dive an enemy toplaner at 10%hp but will run all the way to bot lane (doing nothing in between after grabbing red buff) to trade 1 for 2 for our feeding bot lane... I could go on... but the point is... your system is flawed and needs a major tuneup. There is no way that such play should go unpunished - let alone that I should regularly have such poor teammate(s) dragging the rest of our team down - while I can be punished because I tell someone to stop being an idiot after they've inted for over a dozen times that game (and I asked nicely the first 7 times).

So, as I've posted before - I CHALLENGE any Riot employee to either follow my games for a week and see how messed up ranked is or to vod review some of these matches where "I've been toxic without reason". Because in my book and in the book of most people on the boards, inting and flaming teammates without cause is no better than calling someone an idiot or telling them to "stop making retarded engages" after they've fed over half a dozen kills and refuse to play safe or heed warnings of teammates. Start weeding these intentional feeders and needlessly toxic (but avoid the taboo words like idiot or retarded) out. Chat restrict THEM, ban THEM, or demote THEM to their proper elo. Stop giving such players a pass. Look back at the examples I've posted. Tell me, would you like to play in a game with them? How about have such people in over 50% of your games easily. Have them make games literally impossible to win - their opponents can 2v5 - when all it would take was playing safe, playing smart and the game was EASILY winnable. Would you like such players in your game? Would you like them ignoring easy plays that could be made to get you snowballing? Would you like them flaming you when you are literally the only reason your team is still IN the game and has a CHANCE to win? No???? I didn't think so. Well neither do I.