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Lets Discuss A Way to Kill Leagues Toxicity at it's core

HellionX2·10/2/2018, 9:19:37 PM·4 votes·4,627 views

So I'd like to point something out about league and ranked games. One of the main reasons people lose in league of legends is Tilt, and one of the main causes of tilt is other players chatting.

In league of legends we have a full blow un-restricted chat system with no wait timer between messages. The chat is primarily used for a few things in ranked games

  • shot calling (which can be argued apon)
  • arguing for the sake of fighting
  • fighting over mistakes that were made
  • and rarely constructive critique - However There's an Issue here: the issue with criticism is people in league are very sensitive and egotistical (mostly in ranked). For the most part people are doing their best to win and make loads of mistakes that is the nature of the game. So when someone tries to sometimes even give a useful tip or suggest a change in strategy people are easily offended - which again can lead to a fight in chat.
  • begging for reports (which is a form of arguing and toxicity)

In my eyes the common issue and theme here is CHAT. Chat can quickly take a competitive ranked game to fiesta in chat crying for reports in all chat. - but wait I know what you're going to say: you can just mute them! However! even if you mute them there is still a very good chance other players will continue to argue in chat which will result in loss of focus and a loss for your whole team. Nobody likes losing games... and muting doesn't prevent the tilt and arguing taking place in chat among team mates. We all know that you can't control what team mates you get... so why should we have to control their tempers?

There are a few issues with this

  1. On average chat is leading to games being lost by it and not won
  2. This takes away from the competitiveness of the game since valuable communication is not taking place rather distracting argueing is
  3. people get easily offended and will use chat to fight until the end of time, even if a messages intention is good people will find a way to be offended by it, Example: "Hey we need to back up and not get caught when we see we are being ganked" player replies "don't tell me how to play you suck and have been hit by 5 blitz hooks already ? and you flame me?" This is a very typical thing in solo que proving that people cant communicate nicely and be constructive.
  4. Fighting leads to more games lost - which leads to people having less fun - and leading to losses being less fun due to the stress of dealing with flame and others tilt
  5. Fighting in chat can lead to people giving up, afk , and trollling when they wouldn't have given up otherwise if they hadn't been flamed when they were already feeling down

I got some advice from a riot support member about how to use chat.

"Yeeeeeah I feel you there, but if you are worried about it while you are trying to honor climb you can keep all constructive criticism out just in case, though if you are attaching possitivity to it like "next time you should do XXXXX :D" that could work

or just not use chat at all

excpet for "gj"

Even the support members recommend hardly using chat to avoid a negative experience. So whats the solution? Since we Know that voice chat would not work well in league and people are heavily against it, I suggest something else.

  • I suggest heavily limiting chat in ranked league of legends games. A chat where you can only use preset lines, much like pings.
  • these presets could consist of things like, Nice job!, Nice Gank!, Setup vision here (followed by a ping), Lets Group, Lets baron, Lets Take Dragon, We should team fight. These obviously aren't the exact ones we need, but this is where riot would need to take the idea in their hands and find the best possible and necessary text lines needed and implement them.

This would do many things for the game

  1. There would be no fighting in chat.. it's impossible (people would only be able to fight with pings and trolling which is already happening extremely often as a result of chat) therefore i believe having no chat would actually relieve some of the trolling and afking, however it will never truly go away. Riot would have to find a way to crack down on in game trolling and worry less about chatting punishment (since it will be gone).
  2. People will win more games and have a more positive experience due to lack of stress from team mates arguing in chat or being flamed. Meaning more players will be honorable and will make the honor system more relevant
  3. Less people would be getting punished and more players would be considered honorable In league making even the toxic part of the community happier with the game leading to less players quitting etc.
  4. Racism and Sexism will be completely eliminated from chat
  5. Ranked will become more competitive because people will focus more on the game rather than fighting with others
  6. Players don't have to worry about muting all to avoid tilt at the beginning of every game
  7. People could still mute pings so ping flaming wont be effective
  8. This ones huge - People will be able to have more fun in league of legends even when losing, because people will be able to focus on improvement and themselves rather than arguing with others in chat with every loss. This also means the entire player base could potentially improve.
  9. Lastly people rarely type anyways to effectively communicate as of now and solo que players are constantly already trying to guess what their team is thinking. A ping / Preset system that alerts your team exactly what you want to do will avoid confusion, harassment, accidental offense taking place, flaming, racism, sexism, begging for reports, and so many more issues that make league a game that is hard to enjoy especially when losing in a ranked environment.

I think we can all agree flaming and chatting is one of the most negative experiences in league of legends ranked play. I hope we can explore this or other solutions.

I think normal chat could remain in aram, rotating games, and normal games since it's a less hostile high strung environment.

Thanks for reading let me know what you think in the comments and lets discuss solutions to the issue with chat. If you don't play a lot of ranked I ask you don't weigh in on the discussion because It can be hard to grasp this concept without a lot of ranked experience.

24 Comments

Excellent Era10/3/2018, 1:11:01 AM3 votes
  1. People will win more games and have a more positive experience due to lack of stress from team mates arguing in chat or being flamed. Meaning more players will be honorable and will make the honor system more relevant

how do you win more games if your opponents are also winning more games..? XD

  1. This ones huge - People will be able to have more fun in league of legends even when losing, because people will be able to focus on improvement and themselves rather than arguing with others in chat with every loss. This also means the entire player base could potentially improve.

I wouldn't say focusing on improvement is "fun" I really think professional/best leauge players who are constantly challenger have less fun than your average player. uh.. good example right now would be hashinshin, he was stuck in diamond, as soon as Iwilldominate called him out he climbed to masters in ONE DAY, which leads me to believe he didn't want to try hard to get to challenger/masters because it wasn't as fun as being diamond

also chat can be really fun. just think of all the people who are honor level 5, they clearly give their team mates a positive experience thru chat, you can banter

overall I agree with this if only for the sole fact that It means I won't get banned for typing anymore

Just the Lip10/2/2018, 10:04:45 PM2 votes

I've been asking for chat to be eliminated from the game since season 5.

This would get rid of all the ppl flame warring in game, and less people would be banned for "typing"

when the real BIG problem with ranked play is trolls and intentionally losing players.

Shleelpboy10/3/2018, 2:54:38 AM1 votes

U can't kill the unkillable.

AugustHeatHaze10/3/2018, 3:28:41 AM1 votes

honestly league community will still be incredibly toxic as long as the gamer community is incredibly toxic, immature, sexist, etc, but taking away the ability to be toxic in game would help

JayceGatsby10/3/2018, 12:24:18 PM1 votes

I have a perfect way to kill league toxicity. Write /fullmute all in every game. Have /all chat disabled. You still have to manually mute your teammates emotes so it has a flaw but works 100% of the time.

mlm olo mlm10/3/2018, 3:50:39 PM1 votes

I'm worried about game play greifing increasing. Riot already has some data.

The difference though, is Riot didn't remove everyones chat. Troll the game and you aren't getting any feedback. Hard to tell if other people are getting mad or not.

I would bet that things stay about the same.

I think the big issue is convincing Riot to remove a feature because some players are immature.

failuretopwn10/3/2018, 9:30:06 PM1 votes

You set forth some very interesting ideas on how to limit toxicity in ranked games. I feel though if a player wants to be toxic and they don't have the chat platform to troll they will just int instead. Toxic players will be toxic players, and although removing or limiting chat will impact some toxic players it won't stop many who will use some other form of trolling to continue to be toxic.

LeftyRaydy10/3/2018, 11:59:40 PM1 votes

When I started playing League a long time ago I learned a lot from chat. Way back when I picked "support" Sona but I was still CSing and they ADC let me know STOP TAKING MY FARM to which I relized I was doing something wrong. you cannot put that in a ping. long story short I learned some things that I did not know before.

hex ghost10/3/2018, 12:00:13 AM1 votes

I think all chat is the problem here, that's just my opinion. I don't know though