Toxicity: Villainizing Frustration in LoL

What is Toxicity?

Well, the word itself is defined by the degree of which a substance can damage an organism. Toxic Behavior is defined by behavior in which a specific player or act can harm the overall experience of another player. The biggest example of toxicity is “scripting” or “hacking” in a game: things like aim-bots, wall-hacks and spin-bots are 3 common examples of this in FPS games, whereas in games like League of Legends, Zoom hacks, skill-shot assistance and vision assistance are more common names. “Griefing” is another form of Toxicity, in FPS games, things like corner-trapping, blocking, attacking team-mates etc. are all characterized as griefing, but in games that snowball like MOBA’s, the consequences can be more drastic and influential to the outcome of the game. Things like intentional feeding, afk-farming, stealing resources and assisting the enemy team via chat is characterized as griefing. Finally, the 3rd leg of the toxic-tripod: Flaming. The act of insulting, harassing or taunting a team-mate or opponent. Simply: being a douche in chat.

How does toxicity affect the game.

To me personally and to many others, cheating in an online game is the worst possible act of toxicity. It renders the person at the end of the needlessly large and overpower stick helpless. Simply: it ruins the game for them. There is nothing that can be done, in free-to-play games cheaters effectively lose nothing other than their time, which they planned on wasting anyway, but they waste up to 9 other players time without any regard for that. In League of Legends, there is no report option for this. To me I will always stand that this is Riot’s biggest flaw, their arrogance to accept that their game isn’t perfect and that some people, quite simply: are smarter than them. There are report options for the other 2 forms of toxicity, which is pretty explanatory but Riot’s entire focus seems on flaming and that is a massive problem. Someone flaming in chat? mute them. It’s not a hard thing to ask a player. Sure when someone starts trolling or feeding, sure they absolutely 100% deserve punishment, but imagine your opponents name is ‘Faker’ for a moment. You have nothing to lose and everything to prove, but you want to prove yourself. Now imagine that your jungler, takes 3 jungle camps, shows up to your lane with 1/4 HP and dies to Faker effectively crippling your lane and losing you the game. In the heat of the moment and frustration you type: “you fucking retard.” Right there and then, you went from a normal player, to a toxic player and potentially face a ban. For being angry, but here’s the thing: the game is going to be frustrating, people are going to get angry and they are expected to not react. So now imagine you’re not on the Korea server and this ‘faker’ guy is a scripter trying to tarnish the name of: ???. Not only are you the victim of the most toxic act in the game, but you are also the villain. This scripter doesn’t even have a button dedicated to reporting him. There is no potential way of notifying the devs that he potentially cheats. Simply, he gets away with it.

This is killing League of Legends.

So today the YouTuber known as videogamedunkey, arguably the biggest name in the League of Legends community made a video explaining why he was done with League of Legends. When a person who has made his career around League of Legends throws in the towel because of Riot’s arrogant attempt at “curing” the game of toxicity, you know something is wrong. When Konstantinos “FORG1VEN” Tzortziou, one of League of Legends brightest stars and one of the best Western ADCarries to have ever graced the game throws in the towel because Riot thinks him calling a bad player as such is worse than people who intentionally feed, or cheat. You know something is wrong. “Pornstar Zilean”, a player who created an entire community around “Disco Nunu”, the act of taking clarity and clairvoyance  on Nunu, walking into a lane and dancing, activating the summoners and waiting to die faces less punishment that 2 people who’s careers at some point or another relies 100% of League of Legends. You know who is wrong.

So what do we want?

Well, a report button for scripters would be a nice start, as well as a proper anti-cheat, but most important of all we want Riot to stop being arrogant. To admit to when they make a mistake instead of pretending it didn’t happen. We want Riot to stop blurring the lines between each level of toxicity, because quite frankly NO, calling someone a cunt is not the same as intentionally feeding. NO, saying “malphite you are a fucking worthless braindead scumfuck bastard pile of trash mental dickface that should be gunned down in the street like the degenerate you are” to the intentionally feeding malphite is not the same as cheating against the best players in the world and getting away with it. You can’t just slap a toxic label on someone and ban them on that grounds without expecting any consequences. I personally feel there should be 3 report options: Griefing, Flaming and Scripting. The description box would maybe have a use this way and reports would not only be more personal but actually mean something other than an automated system of bullshit auto-banning people for typing in chat. For the last while the community adopted the, “it’s riot’s game and if they don’t want you to play it that’s their choice”, but people need to realize, you can’t pick and choose your customers, but when you start biting the hand that feeds you’re going to crash and burn. We want appropriate punishment. Nobody should ever be permanently banned for typing in chat. I mean, a permanent chat-ban(no use of chat allowed whatsoever) is a solution in extreme cases, but permanent bans should be reserved for those who really deserve it.

Anyway, I don’t expect this article to gain a lot of steam, I wanted it off my chest because I fucking love League of Legends and I just feel the entire time I’ve played the game Riot has made bad decision after bad decision.