Is Riot handling community in a toxic way?

The purpose of the article is not to hate/bully anyone, just constructve critique and an opening for a discussion.

From time to time Riot proves to us all, that people involved in making most crucial decisions arent even playing the game on a regular basis. They keep changing the game and ruling over playes basing on the image of the game created by their minds. Unfortunetely after having 2 years experience with the game in all divisions (from bronze to finally high diamond, uhm yeah i boosted a lot) I can state a thesis: this image is either completely delusional in some areas and close to reality in others or Rioters are incompetent.

What made me write this article is another funny statement made by the only sword of justice Riot Lyte. Obviosuly 10000 of his studies will disprove everything I say, what a pity that:

• Noone is able to have insight on them :/

• He never gives any pivotal information for a scientific research (how big was the sample, which server, what divisions etc).

• We all know that reaserch on toxicity would most propably show different result amongst people of low elo and high elo, different servers

• Typical Lyte: ‘A few years ago,we did a few research stuedies showing …’, who fails to recognize that a few mythical studies made a few years ago may  not actually be a good scientifiv prove for anything.

Moreover Lyte starightly lied numerous times on his ask.fm (for example when he talked about Lol clients for Mac and Linux, which was noticed and pointed out by redditors). All of this leads rational people like me to a simple conslusion: most of the Riots work might be based on their delusional feeling that they always know better which is supported by thousands of research studies conducted somwhere, some time ago.

However there is one aspect of the activity of Lyte and company that shocks me the most and proves how far from the reality they are. First of all, straight toxicity when people enter game and wish others cancer just because is a rare thing among higher elo, although very common in lower elo. This people usually use simple neoanderthalic phrases like: ‘studid noobs stop me mid u fuckingg cancer’, ‘stfu noob fu’ etc. Thats the toxicity that Lyte extrapolates over whole ‘toxic’ community. The truth is that toxicity is mostly reactive. Top is feeding and flaming jungle? Jungler replies, bot and mid add sth else and it starts, cause this is their excuse for losing the game (‘top fed to hard as reason, not I didnt have enaugh skill to carry’). You see that pattern.

Unfortunetely the ultimate reason creating toxicity is hidden deeper than that. In most cases it will not be ‘report jungler noob 0 gank’ (or gang on EUNE), because as I said its more common in lower elo. In gold/platinum and higher the toxicity emerges many times thanks to other players , who arent writing anything. Lets call it a crybaby syndrome.

Huge ego players (most of plat/diamond/master/chall) suffer from thic crybaby syndrome really hard. We all know and saw this enaugh times to even write more about it. Lets give you an example. It seems Rioters have never experieced situation when high diamond elo adc keeps intentionally feeding by risking death just because he wants to afk farm bot, regardless of map situation , 100 pings spammed on his head etc. Its obvious that he knows he is going to die most probably and reporting him wont have any effect at all. The funniest thing is that if you asked that player to stop doing this and adviced to do sth else not in a tone of determined sweetness but just like people in sports do: ‘wtf are u doing , stop troling and grp we can win’, it is considered more toxic by current system then what the trolling player is doing (which isnt straight trolling, but still it is). Obviously we all can provide thousands examples of such crybabys, who non-verbally start the chain of toxicity, but you know what? They have never suffered any restriction from Riot because of this particualar behaviour and if you just lost your calm and flamed such people …….. you can continue on your own, come on. Some people on Riot surely understand it, everyone who watched Krepo stream before he became Riots angel knows that he is typical reactive toxic player.

So instead of new skins, bannning verbally toxic people, working on Linux and Mac Clients, I would play the game more comfortably If I felt that there is any tool to deal with all of those non-straight trolls, crybabies. Ive been playing League since s3 and I have to admit , playing the game is giving me less and less satisfaction, cause people know that for many toxic behaviour like coming to1 mid as a jungler and smiting cannon minion isnt really punished by riot, cause unless they wished me cancer, the great system will not catch it. I still really like watching and analysing pro play, but playing has become really unpleasent. Riot created atmosphere where constructive critique during game is flaming (cause 15 years old pussies with god ego’s cant stand it), while ingame trolling and toxicity ( like intentionally ignoring 100 pings, not trying to win a game ‘idc attitude’ etc( is nowhere near to be punished or even considered as heavily toxic behaviour.

Anyway Rioters are showing recently very bad symptoms. They are always right for reasons we dont understand (hidden research studies or sophisticated maths, that make them buff Elise and then nerf her next patch). On the other hand, they think they reply to the needs and suggestions of community, because of sth simple like adding patch number during LCS streams (yeah Reddit we did it omg, so happy, so much wow).

• Sandbox mode? Naah we dont like grinding, but we will give you useless champion mastery grind. That seems legit.

• We want toxic players to reform! Naah, let’s tell them, that they can’t get any season reward anymore, now they will surely improve.

• Replays? Yhh Nope (I am sure that they have studies showing that replay mode isnt desired by the community , studies from a few years ago of course).

• Challenger scene is not paid enaugh and not given enaugh attention which creates a huge gap between LCS and CS? Lets waste time on random bans with random duration (competetive integrity).

• Literally there is no way to live from lol besides LCS player position? There is no talent in EU and NA, so why would we be interested in challenger/master tier elo.

There is so much more I could have added, but lets say stop to whining here. I believe that Riots intentions are most probalby clean and good, but from the outside it looks like a typical company who got struck by the success to easily and they cant handle it anymore. Everything is in a huge mess, community is perceived as the most toxic and unpleasent, no server for Japan etc. Please just drop this ‘we know everything beter’ attitude and try to reconsider some stuff. Otherwise League is going to be replaced by another moba in few years, then just crush and burn.

All the arguments lead me to a simple conclusion: holy sh*t Riot, your are a toxic company.