[LoL] A Bad Sign for the Community

I just finished a game of Dominion and was complimenting the opposing Jax in the chat room afterwards. They lost, but he was top scorer with the best KDA (13-7-8). Given that at least three of us reported one of my teammates for verbal abuse, I can see how he was suspicious about whether I was trying to be sarcastic.

: Zubon

13 thoughts on “[LoL] A Bad Sign for the Community”

  1. Dota, Dota2, HoN, LoL, even Demigod. There’s one thing that ties all these games together, and no – it isn’t the MOBA experience. It’s the shitty, shitty community.

    In not one of these games will you regularly find people who you enjoy playing with and who make your day. You WILL regularly find assholes, trolls, and just plain mean jerks.

    It’s understandable, of course – when games run to 40 minutes, you invest a lot of yourself into it. And one bad player in these games is worse than being down a player. A bad player makes the other team that much better by feeding.

    And so people rage. And names are called, and schoolyard-style fighting ensues, and everyone walks away unhappy. Even the victors.

  2. I wouldn’t point to MOBA, RTS or any other genre specifically for this issue. Whenever you mix lobby-based functionality, random grouping, and a PVP-centric game, you get the horns with the bull. The rotten apple loudmouths jump from lobby to lobby, their attitude fueled by the focus of the game in question: explicit dominance over other players.
    I’ve found the community in LoL to be more inviting than, say, CoD:MW.

  3. I have never experienced a community as bad as the one in LoL before, not that everyone is a jerk, or even a majority, but the bad apples are so toxic… I can’t even put into words how bad it can get.

    I, and others, have been told to commit suicide on numerous occasions and worse. Several times I have been on teams so bad that I have been thanked by opponents at the end of the match for not being a complete tool. Volunteering your time for the Tribunal system is often a journey into the most retched examples of what humanity has to offer.

    Thankfully, things seem to have gotten better for the most part. It would seem that the toxic players get their accounts banned and they have to start over, so once you reach a certain threshold of games played or something you end up leaving them all behind. At least that is my theory.

  4. “Volunteering your time for the Tribunal system is often a journey into the most [w]retched examples of what humanity has to offer.”

    Tell me about it. I hope my team and the enemy team sent one more to the chopping block last night. Playing a ranked game and this guy lets himself get randomed in champ select. He gets Teemo, says he can’t play Teemo, feeds their Sivir 5 easy kills in 15 minutes, and spends most of the game AFK doing homework, because “college studies are more important than video games.” Well then, thanks for queuing ranked, scumbag…

  5. Dominion is my map of choice these days, after my daily ranked. Most people have figured out that it’s LoL’s ‘test’ area, where people play whoever however they want, and due to how the map plays, it really does not matter what your team comp is.

    The tryhards on Dominion are great though, some of the best rage-tears on the Internet.

  6. A MOBA with a zero tolerance policy for noxious “bad apple” players would be rampantly successful. It’s not like the game administrators don’t have chat logs from each game. If someone gets reported they check the logs – if it turns out you’re telling someone to kill themselves over chat or what have you, you get banned. Period. No second chances, no warnings, no “Tribunal” of other players doing the game staff’s job for them, you knew you were behaving inappropriately and chose to do so anyway so you’re done.

    This wouldn’t happen in LOL because Riot wouldn’t harm the revenue stream by banning potential sources of RP income. But a monthly fee based MOBA that strictly enforced good sportsmanship and community would do well, thanks in no small part to how it would attract players turned off by the horrendous communities in it’s contemporaries.

    1. Take a guess how many people it would take to review the game logs of every report that came in for a game with 15m+ players playing god knows how many games per day?

      It has nothing to do with revenue. Riot would make MORE money if everyone acted nice and they could accurately ban all the bad apples. It’s just not possible.

  7. First commentor nailed it… 40+minute games are horrible for the soul. I’m serious, if the longest games were 20min long tops what would there be to get so mad about that you had to lash out?

    1. My example was Dominion, the 20-minute long game. The fellow I mentioned starting telling me that I was the worst Rammus ever after the first fight. Every time he died, someone was worthless, trash, standing around while he died, the worst player ever, needed to be reported, etc. If he killed someone first, the commentary might switch to how horrible the other fellow was.

      People filled with bile usually start spilling it within the first five minutes. Any death (theirs, teammates’, the other team’s) is enough prod, as might be … anything.

  8. In LoL I wish I could ignore people while playing in a match. I do ignore every jerk and tool after the match has ended though.

    1. Is there anything preventing you from ignoring the second it’s evident attitudes are at play? Sure, the immediate game, but if you got a bad apple they’ll throw it anyway.

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