Boards›Player Behavior

Dear Riot: My experiences within the game

Vape Nathe·5/28/2017, 5:02:59 AM·3 votes·458 views

Hello Riot support, or whoever is reading this. My name is Nathan, I am a casual gamer who enjoys the challenge of competitive environments both in video game sand in real life. I am contacting you today, not with a question, but with an observation. I do not claim to be good at your game, mediocre at best. I started this season placing in Bronze 4 and climbed to silver 1. During this time I have played a lot of games and experienced a lot of things. The most prevalent of all is the overwhelmingly negative attitude of low elo players, and it only gets worse as you climb. I know this is no fault of yours and I am sure it is not something you are unaware of but to be honest with you, I feel that almost all of your efforts to persuade people away from being hostile towards each other is focused on the top 1% of players. While, if I was in the same position I would probably do the same thing, the top 1% make you your money and market your game. Sorry, I tend to ramble some times. My point is that I know I am not the only one who feels beaten down and abused by other people in this game. While I am typing this a player from a game I just played went our of his way to friend me and look up my stats online so he could tell me how horrible I am and how I should commit suicide because I am the reason my team loses games and even though I reported him, I know nothing is going to happen to him. I know nothing is going to change in the future. This is not the first time this has happened to me and I know it wont be the last. I am not asking anything of you, I know it is too much to ask you to do something about everyone that is toxic in a video game. I just wanted to give you my opinion and experiences in your game. I don't like to quit things, I never have, but when I play your game and things like this happen it truly hurts me and doesn't make me want to play any more. This, like any other video game is supposed to be fun. I haven't had fun playing your game in a very long time.

4 Comments

youthere5/28/2017, 6:53:13 AM1 votes

I think Riot could do a lot more to prevent the negative attitude of many of its players.

Often people lash out because they are frustrated; they are frustrated because they feel helpless in a game that could last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. That's actually a pretty large time commitment, not a simple 5 minute game like OverWatch or FPSs that you can easily brush off an awful experience. Obviously this doesn't justify raging at someone, but it is a large part of the mindset behind it.

Reporting often feels hopeless. Even if it works as it should; there's no loss (or partial loss) forgiveness or anything to actually make you feel vindicated.

Lack of voice chat adds to frustration. It's difficult to coordinate the kind of strategies a game like this needs via pings and text. It's hard to give advice. If you're typing, you're not playing, falling further behind hindering your ability to catch up more.

Riot practically forces us into games we know are toxic; someone already tilted in pregame? terrible team comp? You're punished for queue dodging. I don't typically dodge (twice this season), I don't leave games, and as far as I know I don't get reported; we should be given the benefit of the doubt if we consistently demonstrate good behavior, allow us to earn free queue dodges to avoid toxic games.

Autofill shouldn't exist. We should rank our roles from most preferred to least, and ideally no one gets stuck playing their least. How often does the autofill support end up being cancerous to a game?

There's always going to be trolls, and it's near impossible to do anything about them. But there is a lot of negativity that could be eliminated with better communication tools and giving the player a bit more control.

ModKnightsKemplar5/28/2017, 7:39:23 AM1 votes

Okay, couple of things here.

First of all, Riot doesn't make that much money from the top players. They make their money from microtransactions, which means that they need a lot of people playing (and some of those spending money) in order to make a lot of money. So your premise there is flawed.

Second, don't accept friend requests from people that are flaming you. If someone on your friend's list starts talking shit, block them. You can control that.

Third, reporting people DOES do something. Riot does review those cases, and people do get banned. If you don't believe that, spend some time on this very forum; the player behavior and moderation forum is FULL of people complaining about their bans and punishments.

Fourth, this game might not be for you. Yeah, you kind of need a thick skin to play it. It's pretty competitive, and a lot of people are jerks. You don't have to play, though, and that's okay. It's not that big a shame, and Riot doesn't have to be sorry for losing you. They've always said that they are trying to appeal to "core gamers," not people who are looking for a fun, casual experience. This game was never intended for that, and that's unlikely to change. Ever. The guys at the top don't want that to change. That was their primary mission statement.

In conclusion, I feel you. I get that it's not fun to deal with other people's baggage and vitriol. That's why there's a mute button, though. You can use it and keep trying to have fun, or you can move on. Either way, don't act like reporting doesn't do anything and Riot doesn't care about low elo players. Neither of those things are true, and that should be obvious to anyone who has paid even the slightest bit of real attention to their priorities.

Frightning5/28/2017, 7:51:39 AM1 votes

I think when they finally get around to revamping the honor system into something actually meaningful, that you might see player behavior, on the average, improve quite a bit. But until then, LoL is going to continue to have it's famously toxic community.