Trolling in League of Legends: Common Triggers & Types.

I know this might get removed or ignored. This is not a critique or dig at Riot Games it is a paper in which I am trying to get feedback from Riot and the community.

Sidenote: I am bronze 4 and proud.

For a fieldwork project I decided to observe trolling in the online game League of Legends. Trolling is the act of making rude comments targeting an individual in an attempt to provoke a response. It can also be flaming; which is an attempt to enrage a person by attacking them or their play for no reason. League of legends was released approximately seven years ago by riot games and has since grown into a behemoth; last year over 338 million people viewed the four week championship. League of legends has also become well-known for something far more sinister; its’ toxic community. The problem became so bad that riot implemented something known as the tribunal which is a system to punish or ban the worst trolls. For my observation, I will focus on the acts that trigger trolling. Doing so could lead to a guide that would advise players how to act in-game so that they can have a pleasant game.

What is League?

League of legends is a multiplayer online battle arena style game. In the game two opposing teams made of five champions battle it out.

Lanes: There are five roles in league of legends; support, adc, mid, jg and top. The goal of the support is to defend the adc while they do ranged damage. Supports usually come equipped with crowd control, utility, and sometimes damage. The goal of mid is to kill other carries such as the adc, or opposing mid champions. Mid characters are usually assassins or mages; the job of an assassin is to instakill an opposing champ, Mages can either slowly kill the opposing team or instakill depends on their kit. Top does it all but mostly farms minions and crowd controls the enemy carries. Top champions can either build damage or build tank. Adcs are usually ranged marksmen such as a character with a gun or bow etc. Their job is to build straight dmg and do gobs of damage in teamfights. Junglers can be any build and any type of champion. Their goal is to invade a lane and force a 1v2, 2v3, etc. in hopes of securing a kill.

Goal: Destroy the nexus. To do this players must destroy the two nexus towers by destroying towers and inhibitors until the nexus is able to be attacked. To achieve the destruction of towers players usually have to beat their lane opponents.

Causes

Feeding: Feeding is the act of making your lane opponent stronger by dying multiple times. Feeding can make a champion extremely strong or “unkillable” and usually determines the course of a game. Within the general community the consensus is that dying three or more times to your laner without a kill constitutes feeding. This is probably the most common cause of trolling in the game because people perceive that it makes the game harder to win.

Elo Hell: In league of legends there are divisions that rank players from the worst to the pros and is often referred to as elo. In order from worst to best these divisions are; Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, and Challenger. The belief of many low elo players is as follows; “I’m not a bad player I just get stuck with afks, trolls, and feeders. This mentality leads to a toxic environment in many divisions, but is most prominent in bronze. This type of trolling usually occurs mid to post game chat and involves downing either the whole team or individual players that did not perform well.

Placements: League of legends has seasons for pro play and ranked, last season ran from January to November. At the end of each season a person’s elo rank does a soft-reset, their wins, losses reset to zero, and the player is now unranked. When the new season starts (usually January) players compete in 10 games to assess their skills against other players, once they have completed them they get an elo. Placements can elicit trolling and toxicity as some players fall from grace, new players play ranked, etc. Since the game is also becoming more and more competitive as new people arrive people often don’t get the elo they want and they lash out.

AFKS: AFK is an acronym for away from keyboard. It is usually used to describe a person who is absent from the game; common reasons being failure to load or loss of internet while in-game. The act of being afk often ruins the game because the result is a four vs five person matchup in which the team affected cannot group and fight the other team effectively. This can be exacerbated by the enemy team, which when given the chance will flame the losing side by calling people names, or in a sign of disrespect will still say good game contrary to fact. Trolling can also occur in the post-game. Usually it is customary to report afks as an option after the game, however some will take the opportunity to point out they will not report to enrage the losing side.

Types

Name calling/Flaming: Name-calling and flaming occur commonly during the game. Flaming occurs when a player turns an otherwise civil discussion into a cursing contest. Once the flame has begun it usually lasts all game. The players involved will start slurring one and other using hate speech related to homophobia, racism, and sometimes suicide. The people that engage in flaming are widespread in League of Legends and exist at all elos. According to the community, the most toxic elo is not bronze. It is actually platinum, the reason being that in. As such players regularly blame others for their mistakes

Intentional feeding: This type of trolling occurs when a player intentionally feeds a lane. It can occur for various reasons and usually has an end goal in mind. Some do it after their champion gets banned by a fellow teammate, some do it for a reward; players will honor or give skins to those who intentionally feed and give them the win, others are just triggered by lack of ganks or bad mouthing.

General Trolling: This type of trolling occurs commonly, people engaging in this type of trolling often flame, feed, or “steal” lanes. This type of trolling does not necessarily have an end goal. The trolling player does this mainly to get a rise out of people and in the case of some notorious trollers it is done to gain notoriety or streamers, which can lead to a steady stream of income.

Examples

In-game (Me Observing):

Intentional Feeding

As described above intentional feeding is the act of feeding a lane. I encountered a troll going by the in-game name of *. This particular individual was playing the champion Annie and had selected the top lane. Upon entering the game we headed to our individual lanes, upon minions spawning she went to the mid lane and ran into the tower giving the opposing mid a kill. There was no communication whatsoever for the rest of the game she repeatedly ran into the towers making sure to feed every lane equally so that the other team would win. Upon entering the after-game chat, a player on the other team wrote that he would be gifting Annie a skin. In this case, it appears that * encountered a friend and decided to throw the game under some prearranged pact they had made.

Flaming

As previously mentioned flaming is the act of targeting an individual with vitrol and can occur for a variety of reasons. In this case a Rammus with the in-game name * decided to spew vitrol at a fellow teammate playing Kog Maw during a ranked game. The KogMaw had chosen the top lane, * viewed this as a “troll” pick. Throughout the game he encouraged the killing of the Kog Maw saying to our team “gj Darius” and “kill him more plz” and alluded to a lesson being taught; do not play non-meta champs in ranked.

Gathered examples:

Flaming Example taken from League of legends forum; Player Lerana. “I have never done it so far, and I didn't do it now but there was a minute where I just wanted to punch my screen and go do something more productive..So I just had the worst game of my LoL-time. I called jungler, I picked Shaco as he's my favorite and I have the easier time racking up wins with him (had 72% wins with him or something over 120 games) However our Jax apparently found me to be a troll picker and started flaming immediately. In game he did the standard "9x troll nab shaco"... I can laugh at that simply because it can't be easy tying your own shoes with a limited intellect...At blue buff in the start he just stood there and when there was just a sliver left he jumped and grabbed it. So I thought, alright, I'll go grab red since I have Smite left. Well, he follows me there and since I used Smite to lure Lizard to the bushes where Jacks were, he nailed it again at low health. He then followed me around every camp.. When I tried to gank he would tell the enemy where I was going. Now the thing that actually confuses me is the fact that he, in his mind, felt like I was trolling. He kept spamming "riot ban tihs nab 9x fuuu fk trolls" et cetera...So. What incentive is there to waste 30 minutes of one’s extremely precious free time in a match like this?”

General Trolling

Report from Kotaku. There have been reports that Riot permanently banned a major streamer with the summoner name Tyler1. He was just a “troll” player, he would do any of the previously mentioned methods and he gained streamers for it. The message he found upon login stated in part, “You are amoung 0.006% of League players egregiously negative enough to be permanently banned”. Riot banned his account swiftly as various pro players voiced their concern for the image of the game he promoted through his stream; Riot has battled for years to get rid of the negative image surrounding its’ game.

Conclusion

Trolling in league of legends can be set off by many different behaviors. Some trollers think that they are social justice warriors in the case of * who sought to reinforce the social norm of being a meta champ in ranked. Others do it for currency as is the case of Tyler1 and *. Trolling for currency usually results in a permaban as it is akin to rigging a game. The previous two reasons for trolling however are wholly uncommon. In my experience playing League of Legends the most common reason has been frustration. Stress and rage commonly occur as a player loses an important game, has lost many times in a row, or views the loss as another’s fault. There is no “cure” for trolling at large, sore losers are a constant throughout history and will continue to exist. However, riot can moderate trolling by introducing automatic permabans for anyone caught abusing the system for currency consisting of in-game items or real world cash.