It's Riot's game, and they've decided that they don't want toxicity to be a part of it. And do you honestly believe that other people don't deserve to be treated with respect and dignity just because you are playing a game?
It's Riot's game, but without players it's nothing. Do you know how many surveys and other crap they send to my e-mail? They're always essentially begging me for advice and money. But then when I need something, they tell me to eat a dick. Riot uses its players, it doesn't care about helping them in the least. They'll take care of minor problems, but anything major and you're on your own.
It's not that I don't think people should be treated well, it's that I understand where I am. It's like going to a strip club and being offended for seeing naked women. "Oh my god, do you walk around like that in public? Cover up please!" If you were at work, or you were out to eat, or you were at Starbucks, then yeah, I'd say treating people with dignity and respect was a pretty expected thing to do. But this is essentially like a football field where the whole team just chanted "tear 'em up, tear 'em up!" It's not the same thing. You're not asking them to "politely pass the toast". "Excuse me, kind Mundo sir, but would you please refrain from chasing the singed into the enemy jungle? You have died 9 times already and I would surely hate for your continued ineptitude to cost us lovely gents from winning this rousing good game." [Mundo reports you for using the word 'ineptitude' in reference to him].
No, what you say in games like this is much different. There's also a difference between saying something like, "you're trash" to the ezreal who is 0/5, and stealing your jungler's blue and telling him to "go eff himself". In the case of the ezreal it's probably true--at least in this particular game--but in the other scenario, you're just being a jerk for no reason. I feel like the main problem with this game is there are people who want to be able to throw every game, perform poorly, not pay attention, afk to feed their child, pick a champ they've got no idea how to play in ranked, and just generally do whatever they want without having anyone say anything derogatory towards them about it. Riot has convinced you that this behavior system is there so that chat in game reflects real life, but what's going on doesn't reflect real life at all. If someone on your soccer team is constantly not where he should be, sucks at his position, keeps getting handballs, doesn't pass when he should, and won't listen to criticism, then you're probably going to say some pretty nasty things to him at some point, because he actually deserves it.
Riot has convinced you that at no point do people deserve any harsh words.
I feel the opposite way. The thing that everyone really wants should be the thing that is harder to get. Make people work for it, so the achievement is that much sweeter!
So even if this "thing" that everyone wants contributes to more people being toxic you're okay with it. Yet you want less toxicity in game. You want everything. That's the problem.
I sincerely doubt this. People who become toxic over a mere skin will become toxic over all sorts of trivial things, and appeasing them would be counterproductive if the overall goal is to clean up League's community.
How's that 'cleaning up the league community' working for you? Season 6 is fast approaching and people are still as toxic as ever. Don't you get by now that what Riot's doing does not work? They keep dumping all of their eggs into the wrong basket. They're using band-aids to fight viruses.
I do think people become toxic over a mere skin. It's not just the fact that it's a free skin, but the fact that you have to get to GOLD to get it. It's everything involved. Yeah, some people just want to rank up, but a lot of the reason is for that new skin and to be viewed as a competent player. By Riot giving the skin to gold+ players, they are basically saying that anything below gold isn't respectable; it's trash. So you have over half of Riot's community thinking they're trash (because of standards that Riot has set themselves); trying to fight tooth-and-nail to get somewhere respectable so that they don't have to endure the shame from their community. From what I've noticed, bronze people really are either terrible at the game, or just very casual players. Silver players, on the other hand, can range anywhere from terrible to 'holy crap, what's this guy doing in silver--is he a smurf?' So yeah, I think Silver shouldn't be regarded in the way that it is. There are actually some really good players there. I actually think more silver players should be in bronze, because there's a huge skill discrepancy in that bracket. There are too many really bad players who got lucky in their placements, or who manage to get carried every game simply because they don't explicitly feed. So I feel that the ranking system itself and the way Riot presents tiers contributes to toxicity.
Now am I saying that ranked is the sole reason people are toxic? No. I think there are many reasons, including ones that you can't know about or fix, because they have to do with the person themselves and what's going on in their life. However, if you can fix even one thing that contributes to toxicity, why wouldn't you? You seem to have this mindset that people who are toxic should be burned at the stake. We shouldn't try to figure out why it happens or make decisions that might cause them to be less toxic; we should just seek them out and destroy them! But the problem with that is "toxic" isn't a disease. It's not like aids where you either have it or you don't. "Toxicity" is a state of mind; a way of acting. Anyone can do something toxic at some point. So why not try and eliminate those things that cause people to fall into toxicity rather than assuming that anyone who has ever been toxic is evil?
