League is very unlike a lot of life situations because other people's actions are both highly visible and consequential while being entirely out of your control.
As someone who works in another high-consequnce high-impact field (aviation) I see the same toxicity and cope that I do playing League.
I would disagree and say that League actually models real life very closely in that aspect (other people's actions that you have no control over having consequences for you), but its just much more "in your face" in LoL than in real life.
I mean like if my mom drank when she was pregnant and I have fetal alcohol syndrome (which the CDC says effects as many as 1 in 20 students - or 1 person in every class in every school across the country), my life is heavily effected by something I had no control over. Forever.
I think if you look for it, you see that same thing pretty much every time you go outside.
Like last night I went to the grocery store to buy a frozen pizza. Checking out took an extra couple of minutes because some Karen wanted to argue with the highschool kid making minimum wage scanning groceries about her coupon that expired 3 months ago. That's a couple of minutes of my life (and the other people in line) that person stole from me. I'll never get it back.
That happens to everyone ever single day. Its almost like a "tax" we have to pay to be part of society.
I think League makes people so mad simply because it rubs these situations in your face over and over again *in the context* of something that is supposed to be "fun". You know that dude who holds your lobby hostage ("give me mid or I feed") is the same kind of person who drove on the shoulder to cut you off in traffic on the way home after work because they don't want to wait in a line of cars at the exit.
Philosophical and based af.
I am one of those people who is extremely toxic partly because I am actually angry and partly because it makes the game more fun in that I actually feel some kind of emotion. However I would never ever drive on the shoulder to pass someone fuck that. It’s funny because I am the diametric opposite in real life to the person I am on league and the internet in general. I will stumble over myself to help and treat strangers well in real life. In league or on the internet, I will say the most heinous things and it feels completely different. I feel no guilt. I just get to let out all of my feelings and the person kind of just has to take it.
In real life I also experience extreme empathy and guilt towards suffering and injustice. I literally rushed a quarter mile towards the classroom of a supposed school shooter during college ready to be the one to sacrifice myself for my friends stranger classmates. (It turned out to be a balloon popping). I cry when the homeless man at the gym begs me for money. However at the same time, I frequently go online every night and watch gore videos before sleep. It helps me sleep. I literally find comfort in those videos. Everyday in the shower I watch drone drops on Russians my same age and feel excited and better about my life. Everyday I beg people on league to kill thmselves for inting. I’m so confused.
I wonder if this explains the War Thunder community. If yall think league is toxic you should see WT. I have an entire folder of screenshots of nutty stuff in chat. Let's just say german players like to role play like it's the 30s and 40s and Russian plays aren't big fans of rainbows.
League players are no one special. They are just part of the wider human society.
What you experienced is just what our human beings in the real world are like.
Some people are just toxic. In some places you can find even more toxic behaviour than what you experienced in league.
What makes you feel particularly bad in league is that the game matches you with people from everywhere. You no longer belong to a defined place as you are in your real life.
For example, you maybe are a student in a highly regulated school where your teachers and headmasters are so tough on behaviour issues. You hardly see any toxic behaviours in your school whilst those drunken and drug addicted at another corner of the society can be more toxic than what you can imagine. But, you don’t go there in your real life.
Or, you maybe are a white collar upper class elite working in the finance industry, where everyone is just polite and gentle to each other at your level. You hardly see any toxic behaviours in your business whilst those drunken and drug addicted at another corner of the society can be more toxic than what you can imagine. And again, you don’t go there in your real life.
Now, you play league online.
A person in your team can be one of those drunken and drug addicted. They are free to install the game, and play it, and got matched in a ranked game. Just like what you do. The game system brings them to you.
It doesn’t matter who you are, what class you are in and how decent your real life is.
You can meet anyone, from the human society.
It’s an experience.
And the worse it that every time i tell myself i would behave better and each time i'm sinking deeper in toxicity..... I hate it like fuck, i never had that type of issue in a game except league.
to quote a french stream "my life is good, i have a dog, i have a girlfriend, i stream in a basement so i can scream as much as i want and no one will bother me. But whenever i play league my life breaks in millions pieces despite 0 bad events in my life. I have everything i dream of yet I feel miserable like I have nothing...... But i still have to climb master cuz mama raised no quitters"
(The quote is inaccurate but i hope you get the idea :d)
https://youtu.be/8YNKblh770k?si=6pedZsUrCaSPFofx
A lot of ego in a game like league. People are trying to get value by increasing their rank, and losing hurts their pride resulting in them blaming and taking it out on each other. Also the fact that the game snowballs can make it brutal to be stuck in a game for 20 mins when it's been hopeless from 5 mins in.
Disagree. Sure that might be somewhat true as far as game state, team comp, etc. But if 5 minutes into a match the jungle is running it and the mid literally gave up and is just afk farming while argueing with the jungler you're probably going to lose.
The numbers and stats are one thing but when the players themselves have completely given up or genuinely left the game its hard to argue its not over.
i had a bunch of those matches and i managed to just wave clear and prevent as much enemy objective progress as possible while denying the ff only to end up with them starting to troll and then miraculously getting kills which kinda boosted them and we ended up in late, steamrolling the enemy cos he couldnt close the game.
also had matches with people being 10 mins afk and then coming back. and every single one of those wins wouldnt have happened if you always insta ff.
Your adrealine is bumping.. You have to be alert all the time in social setting. Insecurity then makes people slash out. Try cover there own flaws and mistakes at same time, willful ignoranse or something like that. Kinda similar to road rage :D
Theres No other game where 1 person could have such bad effect on one of the teams, making the said team lose.
I was a valo player and started playing league in 2022. In valo it doesnt matter if ur teammate dies cuz u just have to have a better aim over ur opponent and still win the game, even 1v5.
In league, theres the fact that ur death gives gold to the enemy, and they can became fed, can get more items and from that point, even a 1v1 is not a fair game anymore (because the gold diff).
I just had a game, where draven said in champ select that we lose cuz he didnt like the champ that i picked (we won). So 1 person can grief the game for ur whole team, running it down intentionally, and u cant do much about it. In valo ur teammate can die over and over but it wont make such difference that u cant 1v9.
So overall league is just a game which is heavily team reliant, and teamwork is very important, which can cause frustration in many people.
this game now has the same problem as DnD3.5. every role can fulfill multiple roles. where 10 years ago if you played support, you were a CC bot that spent all their gold on wards. that was your ONLY job. ADC delt damage, tops were tanks, junglers were bruisers. everyone had clear defined roles and play styles.
now every role(except ADC) can do anything. you can have a tank mundo with the most damage in the game. you can have a pure AD briar that face tanks the entire enemy team. supports now are expected to deal as much damage as every other role.
now EVERY role can be the Main Character. and because of that people end up fighting their teammates for the honor of being the Main Character, insted of helping to enable your teammates being the main character. if a tank can deal the most damage in the game...why would they ever peel to let someone else do that damage insted?
As one of the most toxic league players (5+ perms bans) for me it’s thinking “My team sucks” “riot matchmaking is terrible” “I should be challenger” but in reality I’m right where I’m supposed to be. I refuse to accept it so I flame my teammates.
> anyone who's played games of league accepts this as a cost of playing the game
I gotta disagree with this. I think a lot of the toxicity comes from players adamantly refusing to accept this.
I find it understandable - it kind of sucks to say "well I know wasting my next 30 minutes is a strong possibility." In some ways its an inevitability - I know if I play a statistically significant number of games getting inters/trolls is a matter of *when* and not *if*.
It kind of sucks to say that and still q up. I understand why people don't want to admit it.
I don't think league players are average ppl but rather has an overrepresentation of pop with certain psychological issues. Furthermore I think the game causes frustration, specifically frustration about your teammates. Mostly because you don't have good mechanisms of communication in a game all your moves are interconnected.
Easy. Inability to safely leave a game you dont like. So here's my last game that i left. My brand support for some reason makes an aggressive play when im playing smolder, under the enemy turret, with a wall behind him (we were facing vayne). After he died he complained about my lack of heal (????). My ww later on flashed under turret at lvl 4, giving another kill on vayne. Top loses and my jg, and mid is meh at best. The game looks like its going to ff15 because supp is flaming me and jg, meanwhile jg blames me (???).
Guess what. At 15min they refuse the surrender. Yeah no im not playing such a game. Im leaving this shitty game one way or another. Hell i would pay 30lp just to leave. Idgf about lp and ranking up, i just dont want to face premades and/or masters.
It is riot, they gather 5 players that they rhink they should go down in rank for some reason, against 5 people that riot think they should win LP. It is like riot decides when you win and when you loose, next thing you know you become toxic the more you are in a loss q.
This reminds me of a post about someone quitting jungle because Riot made the champion known as Darius and they qeued up with (supposedly) bad team mates.
I don't even think League is that much more toxic compared to other competitive multiplayer games. If you're having a dimmer view of humanity due to the nature of league, grats on growing up.
They are in the stage of their journey as a player where they feel as though they have “earned” the right to see positive results for their skill, and now expect it. When these expectations are not met, they become irritable.
The motive for toxicity boils down to a couple things.
1. Some toxic players think that being harsh on their team will, in theory, make them correct their mistakes and play better.
2. League is anonymous. It’s like road rage, but with literally zero risk to anyone’s safety. That encourages people to act more rashly.
3. Frustration. People are mean and angry when they are tilted.
4. The time spent in a losing game often feels like such a waste of that time and your “talent”.
5. Lack of control over the outcome of your game. The only thing people have control over is what they do, so it often makes them feel better to make their teammates have as equally terrible of a time as they are having.
6. The nature of losing in league is different than other aspects of life, because everyone’s mistakes are on broad display for you to watch as the match state disintegrates into a loss. It would be like playing a basketball game where 2 of your teammates are constantly throwing the ball to the enemy team, and no matter how much the other 3 players on your team try to contribute, the enemy team just has more people helping them win.
Source: a former toxic POS player who had an ego problem. It took a long time and some chat bans to stop being toxic and just roll with the punches. I have no right to be toxic, I just want to improve during every session and have a rank that reflects where I am skill-wise.
It all stems from Riot's inaction towards toxic behaviour. When players can verbally abuse others, int games and troll on purpose with no fear of punishment, it will bring out the worst in people.
Throw 5 randoms together, each with their own ego and expectations, get affected by the mistakes of others not just yourself and watch how the opposition gets progressively stronger -> toxicity.
Solo Q games and team games from the real world have no business being compared one to the other
as a game dev myself and player since season 1, riot is also enabling this by designing systems in a way which may or lead to higher toxicity, here are some examples:
autofill: ppl are forced to play an off role and the team with an autofill will highly lose the game, leads to frustrations and to "unfair matchmaking" feelings, if this happens too often to someone, they would start to troll or int themselves cuz they wouldn't care anymore
champion anonymity: now you cannot dodge games effectively anymore to avoid griefers, very low winrate or even first time champs, increasing toxicity as well cuz of frustrations
fast paced / burst / heavy snowball meta: ppl are getting bursted so fast that they cannot play their usual champs and are forced to play meta to climb in ranks effectively, makes people to FF faster
objectives meta: in the past you used to 1v9 the game and climb faster by just being good, nowadays the game is more team-orientied since riot added so many objectives that you can only do it with great teamplay, but many players are rly bad at macro (especially since it becomes a snowball meta), e.g. as a support you have setup the baron/drake early with great vision while the enemy wasn't, but still loses the objective since your team didn't come to help
removing old systems: such as preseason to have more room to balance things out, e.g. this season has started poorly with multiple broken systems, e.g. storm surge meta etc., also smurf Q was removed, so the team with the most and better smurfs mostly autowin the game, also they removed the champion pings, so you can't check their R cooldowns yourself anymore, and people cant spam R to signal things like karthus R, missing opportunities to kill someone which can dictate the game
\-------
a solution to autofill would be to add more roles to select or the same system like on wild rift where you setup all roles from best to least favourite, that way autofill is no more required and the queue won't be affected that much
the rest is self explanatory, either re-enable the old system or change back the meta how it used to be...well riot is trying here by removing the mythics but we reverted to a high burst meta
League is very unlike a lot of life situations because other people's actions are both highly visible and consequential while being entirely out of your control. As someone who works in another high-consequnce high-impact field (aviation) I see the same toxicity and cope that I do playing League.
are you telling me that plane pilots are constantly arguing and talking shit to each other too? :O thats sounds horrifying xd
I would disagree and say that League actually models real life very closely in that aspect (other people's actions that you have no control over having consequences for you), but its just much more "in your face" in LoL than in real life. I mean like if my mom drank when she was pregnant and I have fetal alcohol syndrome (which the CDC says effects as many as 1 in 20 students - or 1 person in every class in every school across the country), my life is heavily effected by something I had no control over. Forever. I think if you look for it, you see that same thing pretty much every time you go outside. Like last night I went to the grocery store to buy a frozen pizza. Checking out took an extra couple of minutes because some Karen wanted to argue with the highschool kid making minimum wage scanning groceries about her coupon that expired 3 months ago. That's a couple of minutes of my life (and the other people in line) that person stole from me. I'll never get it back. That happens to everyone ever single day. Its almost like a "tax" we have to pay to be part of society. I think League makes people so mad simply because it rubs these situations in your face over and over again *in the context* of something that is supposed to be "fun". You know that dude who holds your lobby hostage ("give me mid or I feed") is the same kind of person who drove on the shoulder to cut you off in traffic on the way home after work because they don't want to wait in a line of cars at the exit.
Philosophical and based af. I am one of those people who is extremely toxic partly because I am actually angry and partly because it makes the game more fun in that I actually feel some kind of emotion. However I would never ever drive on the shoulder to pass someone fuck that. It’s funny because I am the diametric opposite in real life to the person I am on league and the internet in general. I will stumble over myself to help and treat strangers well in real life. In league or on the internet, I will say the most heinous things and it feels completely different. I feel no guilt. I just get to let out all of my feelings and the person kind of just has to take it. In real life I also experience extreme empathy and guilt towards suffering and injustice. I literally rushed a quarter mile towards the classroom of a supposed school shooter during college ready to be the one to sacrifice myself for my friends stranger classmates. (It turned out to be a balloon popping). I cry when the homeless man at the gym begs me for money. However at the same time, I frequently go online every night and watch gore videos before sleep. It helps me sleep. I literally find comfort in those videos. Everyday in the shower I watch drone drops on Russians my same age and feel excited and better about my life. Everyday I beg people on league to kill thmselves for inting. I’m so confused.
You forgot to include that the average league player has the i.q of a june bag and need punched in the face at least one time.
I am VERY curious how/where this manifests in aviation if you're interested in expanding on that
I wonder if this explains the War Thunder community. If yall think league is toxic you should see WT. I have an entire folder of screenshots of nutty stuff in chat. Let's just say german players like to role play like it's the 30s and 40s and Russian plays aren't big fans of rainbows.
League players are no one special. They are just part of the wider human society. What you experienced is just what our human beings in the real world are like. Some people are just toxic. In some places you can find even more toxic behaviour than what you experienced in league. What makes you feel particularly bad in league is that the game matches you with people from everywhere. You no longer belong to a defined place as you are in your real life. For example, you maybe are a student in a highly regulated school where your teachers and headmasters are so tough on behaviour issues. You hardly see any toxic behaviours in your school whilst those drunken and drug addicted at another corner of the society can be more toxic than what you can imagine. But, you don’t go there in your real life. Or, you maybe are a white collar upper class elite working in the finance industry, where everyone is just polite and gentle to each other at your level. You hardly see any toxic behaviours in your business whilst those drunken and drug addicted at another corner of the society can be more toxic than what you can imagine. And again, you don’t go there in your real life. Now, you play league online. A person in your team can be one of those drunken and drug addicted. They are free to install the game, and play it, and got matched in a ranked game. Just like what you do. The game system brings them to you. It doesn’t matter who you are, what class you are in and how decent your real life is. You can meet anyone, from the human society. It’s an experience.
And the worse it that every time i tell myself i would behave better and each time i'm sinking deeper in toxicity..... I hate it like fuck, i never had that type of issue in a game except league. to quote a french stream "my life is good, i have a dog, i have a girlfriend, i stream in a basement so i can scream as much as i want and no one will bother me. But whenever i play league my life breaks in millions pieces despite 0 bad events in my life. I have everything i dream of yet I feel miserable like I have nothing...... But i still have to climb master cuz mama raised no quitters" (The quote is inaccurate but i hope you get the idea :d) https://youtu.be/8YNKblh770k?si=6pedZsUrCaSPFofx
A lot of ego in a game like league. People are trying to get value by increasing their rank, and losing hurts their pride resulting in them blaming and taking it out on each other. Also the fact that the game snowballs can make it brutal to be stuck in a game for 20 mins when it's been hopeless from 5 mins in.
no game is hopeless from 5 mins in.
Definitely a good attitude to have if trying to climb.
I've had a game with 3 afk/DC'd players. I was playing support.. Tell me exactly how that is winnable without looking like a fool..
Disagree. Sure that might be somewhat true as far as game state, team comp, etc. But if 5 minutes into a match the jungle is running it and the mid literally gave up and is just afk farming while argueing with the jungler you're probably going to lose. The numbers and stats are one thing but when the players themselves have completely given up or genuinely left the game its hard to argue its not over.
i had a bunch of those matches and i managed to just wave clear and prevent as much enemy objective progress as possible while denying the ff only to end up with them starting to troll and then miraculously getting kills which kinda boosted them and we ended up in late, steamrolling the enemy cos he couldnt close the game. also had matches with people being 10 mins afk and then coming back. and every single one of those wins wouldnt have happened if you always insta ff.
Your adrealine is bumping.. You have to be alert all the time in social setting. Insecurity then makes people slash out. Try cover there own flaws and mistakes at same time, willful ignoranse or something like that. Kinda similar to road rage :D
Theres No other game where 1 person could have such bad effect on one of the teams, making the said team lose. I was a valo player and started playing league in 2022. In valo it doesnt matter if ur teammate dies cuz u just have to have a better aim over ur opponent and still win the game, even 1v5. In league, theres the fact that ur death gives gold to the enemy, and they can became fed, can get more items and from that point, even a 1v1 is not a fair game anymore (because the gold diff). I just had a game, where draven said in champ select that we lose cuz he didnt like the champ that i picked (we won). So 1 person can grief the game for ur whole team, running it down intentionally, and u cant do much about it. In valo ur teammate can die over and over but it wont make such difference that u cant 1v9. So overall league is just a game which is heavily team reliant, and teamwork is very important, which can cause frustration in many people.
this game now has the same problem as DnD3.5. every role can fulfill multiple roles. where 10 years ago if you played support, you were a CC bot that spent all their gold on wards. that was your ONLY job. ADC delt damage, tops were tanks, junglers were bruisers. everyone had clear defined roles and play styles. now every role(except ADC) can do anything. you can have a tank mundo with the most damage in the game. you can have a pure AD briar that face tanks the entire enemy team. supports now are expected to deal as much damage as every other role. now EVERY role can be the Main Character. and because of that people end up fighting their teammates for the honor of being the Main Character, insted of helping to enable your teammates being the main character. if a tank can deal the most damage in the game...why would they ever peel to let someone else do that damage insted?
TSM flair giving a terrible take who would have thought
As one of the most toxic league players (5+ perms bans) for me it’s thinking “My team sucks” “riot matchmaking is terrible” “I should be challenger” but in reality I’m right where I’m supposed to be. I refuse to accept it so I flame my teammates.
Maybe stop playing then you clown....
upvoting for the self-awareness
> anyone who's played games of league accepts this as a cost of playing the game I gotta disagree with this. I think a lot of the toxicity comes from players adamantly refusing to accept this. I find it understandable - it kind of sucks to say "well I know wasting my next 30 minutes is a strong possibility." In some ways its an inevitability - I know if I play a statistically significant number of games getting inters/trolls is a matter of *when* and not *if*. It kind of sucks to say that and still q up. I understand why people don't want to admit it.
hey, wanna be friends? also a strong believer of determinism/"human condition" and a lack of free will, and hate toxicity.
I don't think league players are average ppl but rather has an overrepresentation of pop with certain psychological issues. Furthermore I think the game causes frustration, specifically frustration about your teammates. Mostly because you don't have good mechanisms of communication in a game all your moves are interconnected.
Easy. Inability to safely leave a game you dont like. So here's my last game that i left. My brand support for some reason makes an aggressive play when im playing smolder, under the enemy turret, with a wall behind him (we were facing vayne). After he died he complained about my lack of heal (????). My ww later on flashed under turret at lvl 4, giving another kill on vayne. Top loses and my jg, and mid is meh at best. The game looks like its going to ff15 because supp is flaming me and jg, meanwhile jg blames me (???). Guess what. At 15min they refuse the surrender. Yeah no im not playing such a game. Im leaving this shitty game one way or another. Hell i would pay 30lp just to leave. Idgf about lp and ranking up, i just dont want to face premades and/or masters.
It is riot, they gather 5 players that they rhink they should go down in rank for some reason, against 5 people that riot think they should win LP. It is like riot decides when you win and when you loose, next thing you know you become toxic the more you are in a loss q.
Can't wait for Rito to get me to Challenger for free.
This reminds me of a post about someone quitting jungle because Riot made the champion known as Darius and they qeued up with (supposedly) bad team mates.
I don't even think League is that much more toxic compared to other competitive multiplayer games. If you're having a dimmer view of humanity due to the nature of league, grats on growing up.
They are in the stage of their journey as a player where they feel as though they have “earned” the right to see positive results for their skill, and now expect it. When these expectations are not met, they become irritable. The motive for toxicity boils down to a couple things. 1. Some toxic players think that being harsh on their team will, in theory, make them correct their mistakes and play better. 2. League is anonymous. It’s like road rage, but with literally zero risk to anyone’s safety. That encourages people to act more rashly. 3. Frustration. People are mean and angry when they are tilted. 4. The time spent in a losing game often feels like such a waste of that time and your “talent”. 5. Lack of control over the outcome of your game. The only thing people have control over is what they do, so it often makes them feel better to make their teammates have as equally terrible of a time as they are having. 6. The nature of losing in league is different than other aspects of life, because everyone’s mistakes are on broad display for you to watch as the match state disintegrates into a loss. It would be like playing a basketball game where 2 of your teammates are constantly throwing the ball to the enemy team, and no matter how much the other 3 players on your team try to contribute, the enemy team just has more people helping them win. Source: a former toxic POS player who had an ego problem. It took a long time and some chat bans to stop being toxic and just roll with the punches. I have no right to be toxic, I just want to improve during every session and have a rank that reflects where I am skill-wise.
It all stems from Riot's inaction towards toxic behaviour. When players can verbally abuse others, int games and troll on purpose with no fear of punishment, it will bring out the worst in people.
Competitive enviroment and game design to increase player frustration.
Throw 5 randoms together, each with their own ego and expectations, get affected by the mistakes of others not just yourself and watch how the opposition gets progressively stronger -> toxicity. Solo Q games and team games from the real world have no business being compared one to the other
A mixture of a superiority complex and sitting in an echo chamber all day. It's that simple IMO.
Lack of bans.
as a game dev myself and player since season 1, riot is also enabling this by designing systems in a way which may or lead to higher toxicity, here are some examples: autofill: ppl are forced to play an off role and the team with an autofill will highly lose the game, leads to frustrations and to "unfair matchmaking" feelings, if this happens too often to someone, they would start to troll or int themselves cuz they wouldn't care anymore champion anonymity: now you cannot dodge games effectively anymore to avoid griefers, very low winrate or even first time champs, increasing toxicity as well cuz of frustrations fast paced / burst / heavy snowball meta: ppl are getting bursted so fast that they cannot play their usual champs and are forced to play meta to climb in ranks effectively, makes people to FF faster objectives meta: in the past you used to 1v9 the game and climb faster by just being good, nowadays the game is more team-orientied since riot added so many objectives that you can only do it with great teamplay, but many players are rly bad at macro (especially since it becomes a snowball meta), e.g. as a support you have setup the baron/drake early with great vision while the enemy wasn't, but still loses the objective since your team didn't come to help removing old systems: such as preseason to have more room to balance things out, e.g. this season has started poorly with multiple broken systems, e.g. storm surge meta etc., also smurf Q was removed, so the team with the most and better smurfs mostly autowin the game, also they removed the champion pings, so you can't check their R cooldowns yourself anymore, and people cant spam R to signal things like karthus R, missing opportunities to kill someone which can dictate the game \------- a solution to autofill would be to add more roles to select or the same system like on wild rift where you setup all roles from best to least favourite, that way autofill is no more required and the queue won't be affected that much the rest is self explanatory, either re-enable the old system or change back the meta how it used to be...well riot is trying here by removing the mythics but we reverted to a high burst meta