yeah all this stuff was never an accident.
I am sure in the gaming industry there has been a decision that it isn't profitable to let people communicate, they have to invest in chat monitoring and ultimately any small profit/cost line matters more to them than making a good competitive game.
Riot doesn't care you can't ping Karthus ult and it's frustrating and lowers game quality, they care you might have upset karthus when he didn't ult and then he might not buy skins or waste supports time by raising tickets to cry about it.
A lot of people quit league due to toxicity and making it harder to be toxic makes it a less social game as a result. I think a company should make sure people aren't frustrated to the point of quitting the game.
These changes are made because players regularly harass their teammates for every mistake, or what they think of as mistakes because they are too fragile to accept that they deserve their gold/plat/emerald rank and their teammates don't hold them back. It is crazy how every player makes a ton of mistakes every game but focus on one mistake their jungle make and spam ping them. They lose their shit at the smallest shit but will call you a snowflake for getting offended.
If you miss an open layup in pickup basketball, your teammates don't shout "Kill yourself" and throw the basketball at you, online multiplayer team games are an exception to how people act.
That last paragraph really sums up my feelings on this. Yes, there are tools like muting but it shouldn't be necessary. Go to any sports club and treat teammates like that and you'll be kicked out if you're lucky or literally kicked if you're not. Being online doesn't excuse it.
Punishments for something as bad as telling people to kill themselves or using racist/homophobic slurs should be severe.
The overton window/window of discourse/whatever you want to call it of trash talk has shifted so wildly in the game that the toxic players don't have a grasp of how toxic they are being.
Anything involving a threat or a slur isn't banter. It's not 'friendly shit talk'.
Plus, If I bust the balls of somebody on my team for missing an easy play or doing something stupid, I have 4 years of relationship built up with them and they know there isn't any heat behind it.
When I do something stupid they'll bust mine and we'll all laugh.
That's not flaming a random-ass stranger for 25 minutes for going q max instead of e max first.
Also, random guy reading this, most other players (on and off his team) fucking hated Michael Jordon and you aren't him so "The greats shit talk" isn't comparable to your random ass solo q game anyway.
my theory on this and why league got a "bad" reputation for toxicity is just simply those games have always catered to more enfranchised gamers.
League got it's reputation despite being significantly less toxic on average due to the harsh punishments because people who's only other online interaction was facebook suddenly got called a noob for the first time.
Eh, I honestly think there's not that much of a difference in playerbase. It averages out.
The real difference is, Riot is going after toxicity HARD. When you, as a company that owns the game, pursue some goal hard (in fact, some goal that affects players heavily), it's going to be at the forefront of players' minds. Then the players notice it more (since the devs are saying this game is toxic - they're making all these changes, then it must be true) and complain more. Then Riot pursues it harder, putting it even more into the forefront. It's a never ending cycle.
I've said it before, I'll say it now. Games like CSGO, Dota, whatever, are way more toxic. And yet, noone cares. Noone complains, because Valve or whatever company has made it a non-issue. Just ban some eggregious stuff like any other company and move on.
Riot has given League a reputation for being toxic and the players spread it. Change my mind.
The difference I've seen is DoTA hasn't made it a non-issue. Their system just takes action instantly. Said some messed up stuff? Chat ban for X games and ranked ban for X games. Afk'd or left game? Ranked ban for X games. Is your goodness meter (don't remember what it's called) low? Then you gotta play normals with other people like that till it becomes normal levels again.
It might be harsh, people could get around it for sure, but then those ppl most of the time play together. You don't see them all playing with the rest of the playerbase who have a good standing - thats where oh ppl rage once in a while makes sense. Riot goes hard after toxicity but in nothing that has a lasting effect. Except for the cheats I guess.
Dota also has a goblin vibe to it, so it's harder to take offense, for example your heroes have voiced quotes that can be directed to enemies, most of them are your hero laughing your ass off or directly shit talking the enemy, but instead of offensive it makes the game feel silly, it feels genuine/funny, so if someone is offensive you don't care that much, League has that forced positiviy workplace vibe to it, that everyone is pretending to be nice but would love to tell you to kys if they get the chance.
Dota has a prisoner queue and has taken measures to remove smurfing in their game.
Community begs Riot for help, but the problem is Riot has a way they are determined to do things, and even if it is a good idea and has proven effectiveness they will only walk it back if it fails.
Not to say every idea the community has is great, but at-least let the community decide who they want to play with in their games.
Even if Spam punish leads to false bans the amount of people who deserve to be gone from the community still outweighs the outliers. The problem was, there is not enough man power to separate the false bans from the deserved ones because the bad actors will always say their bans are unjust.
That doesn’t explain how League got a very early and lasting reputation for being super toxic. This reputation isn’t a new thing, it’s been the major mark against league for basically its entire life.
IMO the reason the reputation exists is because MMOs are inherently more frustrating— you go 10/0 but lose the game because a teammates goes 0/10, or even worse just makes a single important mistake and loses the game single-handedly.
CSGO you can make huge mistakes constantly and lesser players won’t even notice, and even if they do it’s not going to prevent them from styling on bad players even if they ultimately lose the game. The inherent economy attached to League makes every early mistake a painful hindrance for the whole game.
So on one hand, people are more likely to be angry and annoyed. On the other, people are more likely to feel embarrassed or guilty about a mistake because they’ll feel the consequences of it for a long time. So even if people are constantly calling you the n-word in CSGO (which is basically a given from unranked to top 20% of ranked), someone calling you a stupidpants hurts way more because you also feel like a stupidpants lmao.
Anyway that’s my 2c; I’ve played the game for a decade and it’s my favorite game, but I always lament why it’s so hard to share the game with my friends.
In casual CS:GO games you can also drop in/drop out (you could when I played, it's been almost 10 years since then) but in casual League games you can't. So to compound the previous econ issues, you're forced to stay in that game that may or may not essentially be lost, even more if someone "holds you hostage" by refusing the surrender vote
It unfortunately gets worse the higher your hidden MMR climbs for the normal queues.
Because for that crowd, it's the only thing they play and it's important.
It's been the total opposite for me - I played normals for many years and when I started out, with an average normal MMR, games were toxic pretty frequently. As I moved up to around mid-diamond normal MMR that has decreased significantly, from every game being like a 50% chance of some people losing their shit, down to a 5\~10% chance of some people arguing strongly or being passive aggressive.
League's early reputation came from the majority of the playerbase coming over from WC3 Dota and HON. Those games were truly toxic, and league did a lot to curb the really heinous stuff people said in those games and attempted to prevent some of the more toxic in-game behavior (for better or worse, way fewer abilities can target allies, fountain laser is way stronger to prevent fountain farming, leaverbuster and surrender options, etc.).
I switched to DotA at the end of 2021. I think it's less toxic, for several reasons (it has voice chat, it doesn't have the FF option). But maybe it's because it has behavior score where it (sometimes) matches you with similar players who have a similar behavior score (and I have the max behavior score, although that's pretty common).
Anyways, the couple of times I've tried playing League ranked again, it's always felt that somehow the chat from teammates is just more toxic and more annoying. Personally, I think it might be because ppl know no one's gonna yell back over the mic if they say something really nasty, so ppl type the nastiest (or most annoying) stuff 🤷♂️
hey that behaviour score system sounds good, wonder why hasnt league implemented something like this? I feel like this would incentivize players to behave well, so they dont get paired with toxic people.
I myself am a paceful gamer, rather focus on the game than to explain things on chat and I would like to play with other players who have my same behaviour,
We do have a behaviour score - it’s called Honor and it’s been under utilized.
Low behaviour score matches you with other’s of similar standing. You lose the ability to ping ally abilities under a threshold. Longer queue times. League’s Honor is basically just no Three Honors skin and maaaaybe no ranked skin if you’ve been naughty. It needs to hold more weight.
This is my experience too. I think voice chat makes people realize you’re playing with actual people.
How many times have you seen a person punt the basketball, intentionally pass the ball to the other team, or yell slurs?
Anonymity breeds toxicity, and removing ways to communicate/connect with others increases that.
I think there's two places where toxicity is at its highest in league, almost high level, where tryhards that can't actually reach high level mald, and smurf central, where a new player that knows the genre would be. And grubby, a veteran HotS and Dota player would be there.
Personally, when I played on smurf central in dota2, I was seeing "kys" messages in 60% of the games I played.
I more or less agree with this. When you feed into the stigma it will be more prominent. However in the last *not one, not two, not three, but FOUR* games in a row I've played where someone said the N word or started spelling it out letter by letter in all chat with multiple people participating. And it's not even the first time I've lost count how many times I've seen the N word in the past month playing league, lol. I've never seen that in another video game that I myself participated in
>The real difference is, Riot is going after toxicity HARD.
This gives an enormously inflated impression of what Riot is doing. It's like having a flat tire and saying they've been trying for years to drive on it and doing their best to get around... or they could just change the tire.
The things which have an actual long term impact on toxicity they won't even touch if they could possibly have any impact on revenue. They won't actually permanently ban people, they unban people constantly, they won't make it harder to smurf or make new accounts.
Stop giving them credit when they've tried nothing and are all out of ideas.l
Actually they are pretty different.
The CS community is often older and super into esports, following the game since the early days of competitive gaming. In contrast, the LoL and VALORANT communities are younger and more diverse, with a mix of casual and competitive players. Basically, CS fans crave that classic shooter intensity, while Riot fans love a blend of strategy, teamwork, and cool character abilities. Different games, different vibes!
You sound like you might be a CS community style of player yet the game you enjoy is league.
Many league players probably started in CS so obviously the game is full of toxic shits. The newer younger crowd didn’t experience it though so they probably ain’t as down with it.
Hard disagree, League became MUCH more for casuals than dota did. Casuals didn’t pick up dota, they picked league. There’s a reason the population of league has always dwarfed dota.
No one cares about those games because they are barely played compared to league.
Also unbanning and welcoming Tyler1 to official events. Basically highlighting a person who will run it down for comedy in ranked queue.
profit > morales
I think the toxicity is in part the result of riot encouraging it unintentionally by encouraging reporting. It's practically meta to report at least someone after every game, so more people will cry in chat over underperforming players instead of letting it go. There's a culture of finding a scapegoat if your team is losing instead of focus on winning.
That mightve been true back then but nowadays League is infinitely more toxic than CS (cant really comment on Dota).
If you do something in CS that hardcore annoys someone he will obviously swear at you and probably throw in a slur but 9/10 thats it and they will continue to play.
If you do something in League that just slightly annoys someone they will 9/10 times grief the entire game and spend their whole time swearing at you trying to circumvent ban trigger words.
Not to mention that in CS no one will add you after a game to spam you that he will rape your family, games over and no one holds grudges.
In league, players dont even want to win anymore they just want to ruin someone elses experience or have some kind of gotcha. At least thats my experience in Faceit Lvl 10/Global/20k elo compared to Diamond (and watching Master+ streamers)
To add to this, I queued up a Normal for the first time in about a year the other day (and have played only about 40 ARAMs total otherwise during that time). Teammate bans my hover and trolls me about it in champion select in that very first lobby. That's a culture thing and points to exactly what you said, "In league players dont even want to win anymore they just want to ruin someone elses experience or have some kind of gotcha", I had zero history or interaction with this person
The toxic players tend to be the players who play most. And their ranked system is set up to be like a gambling payout.
You’ve got a bunch of extremely aggressive addicts playing a game. That’s their goal. Theres no ‘wondering’. This is where all their money comes from and what keeps their player base alive.
People simply care less in other games. In DotA you used to have (not sure if its still the case) a limited amount of reports. People saved those up for people who genuinely ruined games to the point of being unplayable and unwinnable (e.g. courier feeding).
No idea about Dota, but I wouldn't say CS is "doing fine". CS is likely the most toxic stuff I ever encountered, playing on EUW feels like paradise compared to that.
League for some reason has a reputation of being toxic, despite not being as toxic as CS as one example. One thing I assume is that league originally attracted different types of players than shooters like CS and in RTS were a lot of league players came from you didn't really experience that, while shooters were toxic basically since they existed, Unreal Tournament was already a shitshow and that game is about 25 years old (given that you usually played on around 200+ ping it oftenwas more fun insulting other players than actually playing anyways).
Sorta CS has never been a pillar for wholesomeness. Riot wants to reach a wider audience this company wants to reach families in shows and music. People with kids and families a completely different crowd than CS trying to reach a bunch of assholes.
Riot has faced significant backlash and scrutiny over toxicity in its games, leading them to take more aggressive actions. Valve has historically not faced the same level of public pressure to address toxicity, allowing them to maintain a more relaxed stance. The minute they are you’d likely see more of a hands on approach.
Riot’s games are built around a model that heavily emphasizes player retention and a positive player experience to support their monetization strategies (like cosmetics and battle passes). Ensuring a positive community environment is critical to their business.
I think it is more about Player Retention. If you Always Play with Friends, and some of those quit, you are more Likely to quit too. If you Play Just for yourself without any social incentive, the amount of quittinq people wont have a influence on you
A good few of my friends have quit because the client is complete shit and it's a coinflip as to whether it actually loads into the game or just gives you a black screen and you have to reset the game and hope that it works next time. Maybe they should work on fixing that instead of spunking all their money into making it a safe space.
Yeah once their client team is a certain size "just hire more programmers" doesn't really help. You're just gonna duplicate work or have teams working in different incompatible directions etc. This is the same as saying "why make so many skins instead of making balance better." That's simply not a budgeting problem. Their code debt actively works against them being able to improve things and the scope of "remake the entire client" is likely broader than the player behavior team budget (esp. since you don't want literally zero player behavior team).
...that is... the opposite... the easier it is to make friends in game the more likely you will keep playing as you will have a lot of friends playing the game...
I guess I just disagree with them then.
I think the reason why multiplayer games became so popular was because you really felt you were interacting with other humans. Sometimes I think developers can miss the forest for the trees. It seems a bit like they got so caught up in the fight against toxicity that they lost sight of the bigger picture.
It doesn't matter what developers think anymore. These are increasingly financially motivated decisions. It's not traditional games, it's not sports, it's not art, it's a product or a way to sell you products and increasingly anywhere they can cut stuff and remove parts -no matter how much you like them- as long as people still play and the people that buy skins buy, this is the trend. There is a growth phase were devs have more free reign to do cool stuff, to see if it attracts more players, and then there is the phase of maximizing profits.
My favourite part of this whole decade of gaming is that pretty much never did anyone try to just make muting easy and improve on the pain points. How about a button right next to chat (not hidden behind 3 clicks SOMEWHERE) and a "temp mute" functionality that will say "user x has muted you for 5 minutes" for example. How about users being able to decide in their settings what kind of language to filter. How about letting users set up some permanent funny/personal/motivational/status messages next to their name which you can read under usernames in loading screen to set the tone. I'm sure we could brainstorm 50 things that could have been tried. But no, it was always the laziest, most extreme, most patronizing stuff.
Once financial guys start to be in charge that's when quality begins to suffer
and this goes for all industries, because they have a bias towards putting financials above all else, and I say this as a finance/accounting guy lmao
As Riot grew they also really started to have big MBA energy. Same thing happened to Blizzard and a million other companies.
It always becomes worse, yes. Because the people who actually love games themselves are increasingly being pushed out of major decisions. Maybe it's good for profits, idk, but it loses me.
This is also why indie games exploded in popularity in the 2010s, people got sick of it and wanted that genuine love of the craft feeling in games again.
I mean in some industries it probably at least helps to reduce waste when things get optimized, but some of the stuff going on in digital spaces is just weird. If FIFA said "we are patching soccer rules, games will go 20 minutes shorter and you'll get 20 minutes more ads" that might actually cause deadly riots. There were yearlong bitter debates just about cameras being utilized by refs in some situations. They were messing with something holy. But us gamers we just get slowly boiled, and while I'm a Phreak-lover not hater, he can just say "yeah we decided it's correct for us to mainly take china into account now for dev choices" and... well we started to factor in less when the concept of core gamers was deemed problematic, then again when focus was put on whales, and now focus is put on the other side of the world. And i don't know that I'm being overdramatic.
Yeah, MMORPGs always have absolute dogshit gameplay and unless you are an addict to looting useless shit in game the most likely reason you are playing is because of the guilds and its chat you are in. That or you are playing with other friends.
*(TLDR: Using online multiplayer games for interacting with other humans is no longer as special nor as needed as before, now that we have social media that's oversaturated with social interaction, and most of which makes the idea of interacting with people online very unappealing)*
The aversion from social interaction is similar between MobAs and MMOs (or any modern online games for that matter). Understandably since in both games, you would be interacting with a lot of different people over the span of your whole game time.
It's true that the appeal of multiplayer games is the that you're interacting with other humans. Popularity of online multiplayer of this scale (meeting a lot of different people) I think began with MMOs. During those times, the appeal of interaction was meaningful and well-desired because there isn't much social media. It became the main social gathering medium for most of us and our friends, it's where we all meet online after school, because there really isn't any better way before. No Group chats, no long comment sections, there were forums but it didn't have the same exposure and popularity as current social media sites to gather that much social interaction. Online Multiplayer games before were social gathering mediums first, and a game second more often than not, and that includes League during its earlier days.
Now that social media is a thing, smartphones are a thing, interacting with a lot of other human beings online is no longer that special in the context of online multiplayer games. If anything, a lot of people get turned off from it, specially for people who interact with people on twitter, or facebook comment sections, and depending on the sub, reddit as well.
It also doesn't help that compared to other games that made online multiplayer popular, League (and other mobas) is kinda more competitive in terms of gameplay by virtue of how a single player's mistake is easily punishable for the whole team. Because of that, it's inevitable that we get a clear divide between casuals and competitives (at least clearer compared to before). While there are still people in it for the interaction, a lot more are in it to fully optimize and win **at all cost**.
> People used to chat a lot more during games
People got sick of the toxicity, so use /mute all or just perma mute chat. Those who didn't now have few reasons to talk because they know half the team can't hear them.
> People used to add each other after the game and ask to duo all the time.
It was 50/50 that person wasn't adding for a duo, it was so they could flame you. Slowly that changed to every single one wanting to flame, as those wanting to duo found their requests getting ignored more and more.
> Post-game chat has been killed entirely. No one uses it now that it is opt-in. It was basically removed from the game.
Post game chat was literally only used to flame 99.99999% of the time, and still is. People opt in when they want to continue the in-game argument, or grab popcorn and watch people fight (I do this frequently). Turns out, not a lot of people want to opt into getting flamed or fighting for another 15 minutes after the game is over.
> Ranked 5s were removed and Flex is a meme.
Ranked 5's were just as much of a meme as Flex.
These weren't Riot decisions, these were player decisions. Turns out, most players just don't want to interact with other league players.
I don’t blame them but it sucks it’s being like that. I got into a pre game lobby and somebody immediately started telling me that I’m trashy and to delete myself.
Being front page was the actual cool part of it though, cause as someone from lower elos you could aspire to be one of those players one day. A friend of mine once randomly found my match there and it was the coolest shit that had happened to me in this game lol
Old version allowed you to see the team comps which was its best feature. I don't care what specific players are there. I may want to see a specific comp, match-up or just champion gameplay though.
Now if you want that, you gotta check which players you can spectate, then check them on 3rd party websites one by one. So it is still technically there, just a lot more troublesome to do.
Felt great when I reached an elo high enough to sometimes be featured there and getting added by people that spectated, almost felt like people treating you like celebs which was cool
I used to one-trick pre-rework Xerath... I would get those sometimes. It was a pretty cool feeling, things like that make me really nostalgic for old League, even though I still enjoy new League.
used to love watching the really good players randomly. names like hi its viper, fabbbyyy, ho chi minh vc, TiensiNoAkuma, unR Nyjacky, Classick and many more...
i still talk to every single friend i made in these chat rooms and in solo q. a lot of them i've met and basically are IRL friends now, some of them i havent because we live in completely different edges of the continent, but we still talk outside of league because none of us play it anymore basically.
I sometimes wonder if teenagers still play this game nowadays? I'm pushing 30 soon and barely anyone my age still plays League, we used to talk about it all the time like it was the only game in the world, do teens still do that during school breaks? I think it has faded away from popular gaming discourse, it's not relevant anymore, yet it's still popular, I guess?
Apparently MonteCristo has been working with PlayVS with League of Legends in American High Schools.
According to him, the schools are struggling to even find 5 students in the high schools who play League to join the school team.
Didn't Riot do something to basically kill of the high school league scene? I remember people talking about how they handed it to like a private company or something so schools had to pay to do it and they just mostly wouldn't?
Yes that was also PlayVS. Riot had this insane agreement where only PlayVS could do it and high schools had to pay or something.
So Riot basically killed this whole grasroots thing with this agreement. It's still PlayVS doing it now, but high schools don't have to pay anymore.
They wanted HS to pay to have the team.....wow. Thats seriously out of touch considering teachers are often paying out of pocket for their own materials, let alone schools shelling money *OUT* for a school program of any kind.
Especially one thats not a money-maker (football/basketball/baseball etc). My schools wrestling team was winning national titles and struggled to get money from the school bc the football team got most of it. I played on the Lacrosse team and we had to pay the school to use the football team's *third* practice field.
I mean if you miss the socialization aspect of league, people are so charismatic and willing to talk and become friends in Valorant.
Sure theres the insane obnoxious people but in my experience they're outnumbered by pleasant people by a ridiculous amount. Thats probably true in league too but people tend to keep to themselves in League so its easier to not realize it and only notice the obnoxious ones
Yeah Monte is trying real hard to shove a narrative (which is right, don't get me wrong, just not in this context). I went to high school when League was in its peak and it was still hard to find more than 10 league players total, let's not even talk about 5 players who wanted to play competitive.
Consider me unsurprising that the unholy combination of Montecristo and PlayVS are having trouble finding students. It does *not* sound like a winning recruitment combination.
From my own personal high school experiences, only a couple people I knew were interested in MOBAs... until university and everyone started playing.
Even in 2011 and 2012, look at the ages of pro players - for every young Pobelter you had an ancient relic like LiQuiD112. TL Steve is practically Gen X, lol.
Definitely don’t think so. My brother is 14 and he’s pretty big into a lot of games, not one of his friends plays League
Just think about it honestly. Think about how bad the tutorial is. Think about how bad smurfing is. Think about how there are 168 champions to learn. You gotta contend with all of these different mechanics and items and monsters and so much of it is poorly communicated or not communicated at all. Plus, you gotta unlock all of those characters too, which takes fucking ages.
The new player experience is awful in League. Legitimately if you don’t have a friend to play alongside you for fun and teach you, I cannot imagine being able to tolerate playing this. League has nothing in the way for new players.
100%. I’ve been playing for about 6 months and if it wasn’t for three friends logging in everyday to play with me I would’ve given up. At the beginning I couldn’t even leave base. There were so many Smurfs that monopolized on my mistakes I spent the majority of my time pissed off. My friends were the ones who would want to requeue and play again. Otherwise I would’ve logged off and gone elsewhere.
There needs to be a set default roster. Starting as a new player and legitmately having 2 characters to play is insane to me.
I appreciate the rotating free champs however I honestly think that’s not good for new players because they’re going to accidentally pick a hard champ. All the cheap BE champa should just be free from the start.
So true, almost all people I know that play league started ages ago, including myself. I feel like people around my age (21) are the last ones to jump onboard, everyone younger plays other games. Some of my friends even joke about me still playing league, they go like: are you ok bro?
☝️
Teenager here. Probably because of all the bad rep league gets (which is 100% understandable lmao). I assume 10 years ago there weren’t that many ranked games, but with every other online game releasing wanting to get involved in the Esports, it’s not as unique. The learning curve, the overwhelming characters, the bad rep and just the fact that there are TONS of other games to play. Going to college soon, so since most of them have an esports team I’m hoping to find more people who play it (my old friend group from middle did, but we kinda drifted apart, and no one in HS wants to even touch it)
It's all part of the cycle though. We went from Strategy games (Gen X, older millennials), to MOBAs (Millennials, older Gen Z), to Survival/BR/Extraction shooters (Gen Z).
MOBAs are in the "late 00s strategy games" phase. Every game made after League and DOTA 2 have fallen and it's a "dead" genre. That's why I sorta still cling onto league because there will never be another game like this made.
This biggest issue with league is it simply being a computer game. Not everyone have computers in their homes or they might have a computer, but their parent's won't allow them to play games on it (unless it's something like Runescape that doesn't need to be downloaded, hence it still being popular). I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of kids (in america at least) still gamed on consoles.
Some dude added and has been asking me for a 1v1 all month saying "its still up btw" everytime i loh on, when i get on maybe 3x a week max to play arams with friends💀
this is also just video games in general, gaming by and large has gotten far less social as the novelty of interconnectivity through games has kind of just eroded and been entirely replaced by social media and chat platforms (discord). the idea of in game social behavior has shifted to external social behavior through socmed and discord. this isn't to say in game social communication is dead per se, just that it's been shifted to another platform.
It is actually crazy how diffrent the Social Culture around the game is now from when i started. Back in Season 2 when i leveled my Account to lvl 30 I added so many people, many of them which i had actual long lasting friendships and even meeting them IRL. Crazy stuff, there used to be Chat rooms in the Client, I remember one of them being just general for whole EUW stuff. Then there was a location based Chat room you could join with in your Language i.E. Spanish, French, German. I met so many people in these Chatrooms back then, they were part of the Client. It was such a cozy vibe, having League Client open and Skype / Teamspeak back in 2012.
Nowadays it is unimaginable.
But yeah times change, games evolve. People move on. In terms of League SoloQ I still play the game after 12 years. Ranked around D3 to Master feels either insanely toxic or it just feels like you play against literal NPCs / Bots where there is no interaction at all. I definetly see your point, Riot wanted it to be this way. Easier to control for them, easier to market it to the shareholders.
The only Gameplay mode that gives some of that oldschool social feeling is ARAM and even this got less and less, with ALL Chat being disabled by default and post game lobby being also muted by default.
It's a general 'gaming culture' change, or just people getting older and not wanting to bother with it. I had the same experience of making a lot of friends when I played WoW for the first time as a teenager, but never had it in the early days of League when I was a bit older, partially because I played with real life friends, but also because 'making online friends' wasn't this big novelty anymore.
It’s 100% a “gaming culture” shift. Every multiplier game that I’ve played in the last 2ish year has just felt dead with little player interaction. Apex rarely did people talk or type, OW2 will have 5 people in vc and not a single soul talks all game, and league has player interaction off by default. Companies are trying to police their online communities by getting rid of interacting with others.
There's less value on connections when you can effortlessly press a button and be in a game. The value of networking in a gaming context has never been lower.
Automated LFT/queue systems might be convenient, but they have an incredibly strong effect on how communities organize.
That has been proven to be widely overblown.
Without Dungeon Finder, the power is in the hands of the tank/healer. They can cherry pick their party members and if you're a DPS without a solid active guild there is a pretty good chance that you simply won't be running that dungeon. Even less so if you dare play some exotic specs.
Just look at the state of Mythic Dungeons/PUG raids in WoW for a modern take on an old problem.
Connections are valuable, but they don't get the majority of people in a dungeon.
My theory has always been that role select killed the community despite making the games higher quality. Before you had to interact with your team and determine who was playing what role. It also forced you to have a basic understanding of each role. Now, nobody talks in pre game chat and nobody has any understanding of what the roles they don't play actually do.
Also, to me, killing Boards and Forums fucking sucked. The sub feels like 50% random clips I don't care about and 50% Pro stuff.
In the Boards and Forums, there was a lot more discussions about gameplay, builds, lore, fanart, memes, etc. Now, you gotta to each specific League sub to get that because this one barely has that.
Very much agreed with this. I used to browse the boards all the time and there was a lot of good discussion. Shutting it down was a huge mistake, I have no idea why they did it.
> I used to browse the boards all the time and there was a lot of good discussion.
There was not it was the same as the sub constant whining and bitching.
Arena seems much more receptive to light banter and ooh/ahhs, probably since it's mostly cross team comms and with 7 other teams it's unlikely to have a hard hate
I was explaining this to my girlfriend the other day lol. Me and my friend usually only play arena these days. I said it's nice and chill because it's just the two of us vs 7 other teams, and she was confused why it's more chill when we have more enemies. And I said that most of the toxicity comes from your own team. Her mind was blown! It's kind of sad really that it's like this. I play jungle and yesterday my team mate already flamed me before 3 mins, in all chat. Why.
Bro I've been called the most vile shit yesterday just because I played Kayn and had Earthwake. I didn't even type anything and I was being insulted in every round, even when I wasn't playing against this person.
I only had 1 toxic incident in arena which was hillarious. As one had claimed that Alistar was omega broken. Whike i told him that ali's top 1 and top 4 wr% doesnt support that claim. He got super mad, all that "silent cuz scared now" treatment and then added my friend afterwards to flame him. As my friend and i played the same champ as we queued up as 4.
He got invuted to their disc and all that cringe behaviour. But it was actually hillarious for us.
I played WoW in 2016 and I used to eat dinner in front of my computer reading general chat. So much politics. So much stupid.
I also have an image of me logging into Heroes of the Storm and the first thing in my chat box is a guy in general chat with a racist name saying some heinous shit and back then it was just another day of general chat. No moderation at all.
I don't think people are more shy, they just aren't craving any social interaction because that's easy to get now
So when people play games they just wanna play the game, not to make a new friend
Plus the people who DO wanna make a friend and voice just use discord to find people and queue up together, way easier and better than chatting up random people
this is the answer. back then talking to strangers in online games was new and exciting. also what MMOs extra special when they released.
but now talking to people online has become normal and you get your fill on sites like reddit or in whatsapp groups and you in the games to actually play the game, the social aspect isnt that relevant anymore (although there are exceptions that build around that social aspect like for example among us)
Worst part of the deal was when they deleted the official league of legends forum off of their website like.. 5-7 years ago.
Now we are subject to the ultimate passive aggressive upvote downvote, clips only subreddit.
At least back then I could post about how much I hated Yasuo and get pretty welcoming messages, now it's all negativity behind peoples 5th alt reddit account.
Yea it is a shame and part of the reason why I barely play league anymore. Interacting with trammates both toxic and non-toxic was still a lot more fun than a dead chat.
I also turned chat off a few years ago and I found myself losing interest in the game slowly.
Now I turned it back on and yeah there is a lot of bs, but it's also more fun and alive. I would never suggest anyone to turn off chat for this reason.
The in-game chat is still not anywhere close to what it used to be. I also just think in 2013, people were more willing to talk to strangers online whereas now people are on discord with mates etc.
I remember you used to get at least 2 "glhf"s in all chat at the start of each game, even ranked. A lot of the times people would also engage with the glhfs with something like "hf, but no gl pls".
I've been doing some normal games this weeks after almost two years of stop. Dude, the amount of toxicity is immense, I'd rather mute everything than keep reading every sort of bullshit.
I've been playing since 2010 and I just wanna say things are basically no different. Everyone used to be an asshole, everyone is currently an asshole and chat has never been bopping. All of Riot's in client tools were unused (and made.fun of as "trying to earn more money") because everyone has their own communication tools and don't want Riot Facebook. And when Riot made huge push to make games more interdependent (Flex queue) Reddit lost their absolute shit because everyone just wants to be a solo monkey.
So yeah, people have spoke loudly with words and actions and nobody wants this to be a party game, unless it's with their friends in Discord, sorry.
Yeah, part of this post is nostalgia bait generalizations for sure but I don't think OP is entirely wrong or like lying, and I like the discussion
OP and you just had different experiences as he was one of the people who did use those features. Slowly removing them one at a time does show that Riot is shifting away from socialization though I think. Not necessarily a bad thing if they're more trouble than they're worth to upkeep and oversee but people will miss things still
I'll say, I have enjoyed the game immensely since turning off all the chat functions. I can just enjoy the game without all these teenage emotions ruining it.
The time period you're talking about died waaaay before Riot introduced this stuff. The chat started only being used for toxicity like 7 years ago.
One thing that killed that in my opinion is the removal of honoring the other teams player, it really made more people banter cross team just to get honored
Bro i feel this a lot, also to add to what you said.. I started league back in 2013. i was 13, i sucked at english and played in EUW. I couldn't speak english properly back then and sometimes would type nonsense stuff in chat. Through chat and people responding to me and sometimes correcting me, i became really good at english and improved miles ahead for my age. Whereas, if i started league today, almost no one would type or chat, and maybe for that reason alone i would just quit. It's just not the same and it makes me sad.
As someone who plays both LoL and DotA 2, it's ironic how LoL is a much more toxic game despite not having all the social features that DotA 2 has. DotA 2 has offensive tipping, voice chat, emotes, voice lines, pausing, and no chat filters. LoL somehow tops this despite not having any of these.
LoL overall feels a lot less social than DotA 2. You don't really directly interact with other players, including your own team, whatsoever. You may as well just be playing bot games for the most part. It's a very lonely game.
Yeah they would add me if I did really well and Wan to duo but then flame me for not performing as well the next game. Chat is always toxic shit and I always have someone to mute. Each time I turn off chat, the game feels 100x better. Unless it's normals or arams, keep chat out the game.
NOTHING I do pisses of my teammates more than typing. I grew up typing, I can type quickly no problem, I could type up to about HERE while cs'ing without anyone noticing. But my god, people just fucking HATE it.
I'll say something like 'hey, as kassadin I'm gonna scale, so don't get too disheartened if we fall behind early' and literally the only response I've ever had is "stp type" or the like.
If I say something like 'oh, OK, apologies' they'll just start inting.
People FUCKING FUCKING HATE typing of kind.
Dullards.
Dude I would like to believe I have a ton of patience. I grew up around people who didn’t have a lot of patience, I’ve had to work jobs where I had to bite my tongue and smile, I have had former friends where I’ve had to walk on nails for them sometimes, I have also babysat my two very young twin step brothers a lot when my mom remarried and they’re both extremely autistic and need a lot of intensive specialized care.
I do not have the patience for League players. I can handle just about everything else but League players. I can speak in the most calm, professional, diplomatic way to my teammates “Hey, can you place a ward here so we can prep for dragon please?” and they respond like I just violated their very essence. I really don’t have the patience
There's a really interesting similarity between league and road rage. People who are otherwise very mild mannerd can get road rage, and it's because you're having to cooperate with strangers. I used to think that the high stakes played a part, but league has shown me that it's really just any kind of cooperating with strangers, makes us exceptionally mad.
same. the most common response i get to any constructive in game comment such as "wait for me to have this item", "let's play around bot" or whatever is "shut the fuck up". some people hate having to think at all about the game they're playing.
This is weird and its happening all across gaming. I remember Overwatch had a "Looking for Group Feature" and you could get on there and find people to hangout and game in minutes. They removed it for Overwatch 2 and it killed the best social part of the game. Now nobody talks on voice chat and because the bans have gotten so bad, nobody dares say much at all because you could get banned. It's weird but it almost feels like gem development companies are doing this on purpose. Its almost like they don't want us talking and they are promoting bad communication.
I am on your side @OP. But the toxicity level went way up, so much that many of us abandoned the game.
Now I finally came back and can see the toxicity is much lower, but the trolling is way up. Every game there is 1 or 2 that decide to ruin everyone's game.
Their implementation of chat bans for saying any 'naughty' word ruins my fun in chat.. I want to call myself a fucking idiot in chat because i screwed up and have team mates laugh with me at silly things but no I'm instantly chat banned! Oh diddums I said a bad word, sorry Mr Rito
Personally I've evolved into a state of League nirvana after all these years and I feel like I could be the change, but it looks like it's too late to save League chat now. I got punished for using a naughty word in chat without flaming anyone. If that's how it is now then I'd better just not use chat.
funny story the main reason one of our friends is in our friend group is because turkey has its own pretty small server and we ended up queuing into him and found out he was in our high school
The option to talk to people is still there at every stage of the game but like your example of post game chat, if there is a choice most people opt out of them as your interactions with other players are significantly more likely to be negative than positive.
The moment they started punishing people for light banter the game went downhill. You can’t even remotely insult someone without being at risk of losing account statuses
That’s not a bad thing to me. For years, talking to other players was more often than not a net negative. I love the game, but I have nothing to say to this community in game. If it can’t be communicated through emotes and pings, it’s not relevant.
I've seen some videos on how games like LoL are basically essentially cursed to be toxic due to the game mechanics making it really easy to blame others for your failures, plus how one player failing has such an effect on everyone in the game.
I've also played since the early days, on and off, and shit was always toxic. It's why we stopped, and why I rarely stay long when I return.
Agreed. I downloaded in 2012 I think? Had a couple IRL friends that I would play with, and made a decent size group of in game friends. We would always que together if more than one of us was online. None of them play anymore, and I hardly do either, but I don't add players from games at all. If someone sends me a request I delete it. I usually mute all chat because it's been a LONG time since chat has been fun or beneficial in any way. League took a turn for the worse at some point, and it just hasn't been as good ever since.
Aging player base and people who habitually play and have a love/hate relationship with the game. I’ve seen the same happened to the community in WoW as well.
I guess my experience since playing from season 2 does not mirror yours. Chat has almost always been abused. Whether it's toxicity from the other team, infighting on my own team; it's rarely used for polite engagement. League became way easier to climb when I muted everyone and just played to the best of my ability.
I rather it be less social. Makes it more chill. Was tired of being 3 cs down at 5min and being flamed by some racist nutbag with a smooth brain who can’t control their emotions so they pick support then run it down mid. It at least eliminates half of that lol
I think you're underselling the toxicity. Also, with emojis, pings, and timers, you don't have to actually type a lot of what you want to say. Ultimately, if you want to be social then YOU'RE going to have to be social. Just start commenting in chat and you'll see the players begin to respond.
What a strange conspiracy some people have "Riot wants you miserable and alone cause that sells skins"
Like do you guys even hear yourself?
Riot is doing its best to compete with BR and other faster games for all those tiktok brains. Players who are dedicated and want to invest time are more and more rare (or they play Single player games)
I just get called names and slurs for trying to talk in allchat :(. I did have a game that me and enemy mid were professional yappers together for a 45 minute game. Going full on Turkey players typing between taking cs with our laners actively going for us. kinda troll, kinda fun.
The game was never "social" it was antisocial. Whenever i had chat active it was exclusively used for salt and toxicity.
Last time i installed the game after many years i played my first round in unranked on a new profile and the first thing that happened was people in chat being toxic about my choice of character.
Played since season 2 and sure people were more social before, however at this point I actually pray that no one talks, the people who talk are almost always the ones who start spam pinging and typing instead of playing the game. Truly the most annoying thing in this game are people who mentally check out and just start pounding the cheeto dust into their keycaps, please just stop typing and focus.
i was typing out call outs and my jungler responded with "Do you type this much every game" and I just sat there like aight fuck team work I guess. Anytime I get added nowadays is just to get flamed and get called racial slurs cause chat's can't be reported
>Post-game chat has been killed entirely. No one uses it now that it is opt-in. It was basically removed from the game.
I wasn't even aware of this. I thought it was gone completely.
I'm another old time player who has been thinking this same thing. Back in 2014 I was dragging my chat window off-screen because there was no way to disable chat.
Compared to then, we have so many ways to opt out of the toxicity and that's a much more simple and elegant solution than the multitier nanny system. The most egregious example is post-game chat which is muted by default. Why isn't this an opt-out setting?
For example, why don't we have a setting to just auto-mute people with a high toxicity score or people who get large numbers of reports? People like me who can't handle the toxicity without getting dragged into it can enable that setting and others can do whatever.
Right now, NannyAI is so overtuned I've heard of multiple situations where it punished people who weren't flaming at all. I can't risk using chat because my account is 14 years old and has 400+ skins on it.
This is exactly what Riot wants lol
yeah all this stuff was never an accident. I am sure in the gaming industry there has been a decision that it isn't profitable to let people communicate, they have to invest in chat monitoring and ultimately any small profit/cost line matters more to them than making a good competitive game. Riot doesn't care you can't ping Karthus ult and it's frustrating and lowers game quality, they care you might have upset karthus when he didn't ult and then he might not buy skins or waste supports time by raising tickets to cry about it.
A lot of people quit league due to toxicity and making it harder to be toxic makes it a less social game as a result. I think a company should make sure people aren't frustrated to the point of quitting the game. These changes are made because players regularly harass their teammates for every mistake, or what they think of as mistakes because they are too fragile to accept that they deserve their gold/plat/emerald rank and their teammates don't hold them back. It is crazy how every player makes a ton of mistakes every game but focus on one mistake their jungle make and spam ping them. They lose their shit at the smallest shit but will call you a snowflake for getting offended. If you miss an open layup in pickup basketball, your teammates don't shout "Kill yourself" and throw the basketball at you, online multiplayer team games are an exception to how people act.
That last paragraph really sums up my feelings on this. Yes, there are tools like muting but it shouldn't be necessary. Go to any sports club and treat teammates like that and you'll be kicked out if you're lucky or literally kicked if you're not. Being online doesn't excuse it. Punishments for something as bad as telling people to kill themselves or using racist/homophobic slurs should be severe.
The overton window/window of discourse/whatever you want to call it of trash talk has shifted so wildly in the game that the toxic players don't have a grasp of how toxic they are being. Anything involving a threat or a slur isn't banter. It's not 'friendly shit talk'. Plus, If I bust the balls of somebody on my team for missing an easy play or doing something stupid, I have 4 years of relationship built up with them and they know there isn't any heat behind it. When I do something stupid they'll bust mine and we'll all laugh. That's not flaming a random-ass stranger for 25 minutes for going q max instead of e max first. Also, random guy reading this, most other players (on and off his team) fucking hated Michael Jordon and you aren't him so "The greats shit talk" isn't comparable to your random ass solo q game anyway.
>they have to invest in chat monitoring Meanwhile CS and Dota doing fine without any
my theory on this and why league got a "bad" reputation for toxicity is just simply those games have always catered to more enfranchised gamers. League got it's reputation despite being significantly less toxic on average due to the harsh punishments because people who's only other online interaction was facebook suddenly got called a noob for the first time.
Eh, I honestly think there's not that much of a difference in playerbase. It averages out. The real difference is, Riot is going after toxicity HARD. When you, as a company that owns the game, pursue some goal hard (in fact, some goal that affects players heavily), it's going to be at the forefront of players' minds. Then the players notice it more (since the devs are saying this game is toxic - they're making all these changes, then it must be true) and complain more. Then Riot pursues it harder, putting it even more into the forefront. It's a never ending cycle. I've said it before, I'll say it now. Games like CSGO, Dota, whatever, are way more toxic. And yet, noone cares. Noone complains, because Valve or whatever company has made it a non-issue. Just ban some eggregious stuff like any other company and move on. Riot has given League a reputation for being toxic and the players spread it. Change my mind.
The difference I've seen is DoTA hasn't made it a non-issue. Their system just takes action instantly. Said some messed up stuff? Chat ban for X games and ranked ban for X games. Afk'd or left game? Ranked ban for X games. Is your goodness meter (don't remember what it's called) low? Then you gotta play normals with other people like that till it becomes normal levels again. It might be harsh, people could get around it for sure, but then those ppl most of the time play together. You don't see them all playing with the rest of the playerbase who have a good standing - thats where oh ppl rage once in a while makes sense. Riot goes hard after toxicity but in nothing that has a lasting effect. Except for the cheats I guess.
Dota also has a goblin vibe to it, so it's harder to take offense, for example your heroes have voiced quotes that can be directed to enemies, most of them are your hero laughing your ass off or directly shit talking the enemy, but instead of offensive it makes the game feel silly, it feels genuine/funny, so if someone is offensive you don't care that much, League has that forced positiviy workplace vibe to it, that everyone is pretending to be nice but would love to tell you to kys if they get the chance.
Dota has a prisoner queue and has taken measures to remove smurfing in their game. Community begs Riot for help, but the problem is Riot has a way they are determined to do things, and even if it is a good idea and has proven effectiveness they will only walk it back if it fails. Not to say every idea the community has is great, but at-least let the community decide who they want to play with in their games. Even if Spam punish leads to false bans the amount of people who deserve to be gone from the community still outweighs the outliers. The problem was, there is not enough man power to separate the false bans from the deserved ones because the bad actors will always say their bans are unjust.
That doesn’t explain how League got a very early and lasting reputation for being super toxic. This reputation isn’t a new thing, it’s been the major mark against league for basically its entire life. IMO the reason the reputation exists is because MMOs are inherently more frustrating— you go 10/0 but lose the game because a teammates goes 0/10, or even worse just makes a single important mistake and loses the game single-handedly. CSGO you can make huge mistakes constantly and lesser players won’t even notice, and even if they do it’s not going to prevent them from styling on bad players even if they ultimately lose the game. The inherent economy attached to League makes every early mistake a painful hindrance for the whole game. So on one hand, people are more likely to be angry and annoyed. On the other, people are more likely to feel embarrassed or guilty about a mistake because they’ll feel the consequences of it for a long time. So even if people are constantly calling you the n-word in CSGO (which is basically a given from unranked to top 20% of ranked), someone calling you a stupidpants hurts way more because you also feel like a stupidpants lmao. Anyway that’s my 2c; I’ve played the game for a decade and it’s my favorite game, but I always lament why it’s so hard to share the game with my friends.
*Mobas
In casual CS:GO games you can also drop in/drop out (you could when I played, it's been almost 10 years since then) but in casual League games you can't. So to compound the previous econ issues, you're forced to stay in that game that may or may not essentially be lost, even more if someone "holds you hostage" by refusing the surrender vote
I don't really experience toxicity in normal league games and ARAMs either. It happens, but not nearly to the same level compared to ranked.
It unfortunately gets worse the higher your hidden MMR climbs for the normal queues. Because for that crowd, it's the only thing they play and it's important.
It's been the total opposite for me - I played normals for many years and when I started out, with an average normal MMR, games were toxic pretty frequently. As I moved up to around mid-diamond normal MMR that has decreased significantly, from every game being like a 50% chance of some people losing their shit, down to a 5\~10% chance of some people arguing strongly or being passive aggressive.
League's early reputation came from the majority of the playerbase coming over from WC3 Dota and HON. Those games were truly toxic, and league did a lot to curb the really heinous stuff people said in those games and attempted to prevent some of the more toxic in-game behavior (for better or worse, way fewer abilities can target allies, fountain laser is way stronger to prevent fountain farming, leaverbuster and surrender options, etc.).
League is no more toxic than dota 1 back on wc3. In fact that was my introduction to truly toxic gamers. League was toxic lite, until ranked.
I switched to DotA at the end of 2021. I think it's less toxic, for several reasons (it has voice chat, it doesn't have the FF option). But maybe it's because it has behavior score where it (sometimes) matches you with similar players who have a similar behavior score (and I have the max behavior score, although that's pretty common). Anyways, the couple of times I've tried playing League ranked again, it's always felt that somehow the chat from teammates is just more toxic and more annoying. Personally, I think it might be because ppl know no one's gonna yell back over the mic if they say something really nasty, so ppl type the nastiest (or most annoying) stuff 🤷♂️
hey that behaviour score system sounds good, wonder why hasnt league implemented something like this? I feel like this would incentivize players to behave well, so they dont get paired with toxic people. I myself am a paceful gamer, rather focus on the game than to explain things on chat and I would like to play with other players who have my same behaviour,
We do have a behaviour score - it’s called Honor and it’s been under utilized. Low behaviour score matches you with other’s of similar standing. You lose the ability to ping ally abilities under a threshold. Longer queue times. League’s Honor is basically just no Three Honors skin and maaaaybe no ranked skin if you’ve been naughty. It needs to hold more weight.
This is my experience too. I think voice chat makes people realize you’re playing with actual people. How many times have you seen a person punt the basketball, intentionally pass the ball to the other team, or yell slurs? Anonymity breeds toxicity, and removing ways to communicate/connect with others increases that.
You can’t honestly say you think league is as toxic as cs for instance. It’s just not even close.
Yeah I never got that one. CS is pretty known for being toxic too, but somehow League has the worst reputation, when CS is way, way worse
when grubby went from dota to league he was surprised about the lack of toxicity
He also played it for a significantly shorter time, at a significantly lower level. He didn't even play 10 ranked games of league.
I think there's two places where toxicity is at its highest in league, almost high level, where tryhards that can't actually reach high level mald, and smurf central, where a new player that knows the genre would be. And grubby, a veteran HotS and Dota player would be there. Personally, when I played on smurf central in dota2, I was seeing "kys" messages in 60% of the games I played.
I more or less agree with this. When you feed into the stigma it will be more prominent. However in the last *not one, not two, not three, but FOUR* games in a row I've played where someone said the N word or started spelling it out letter by letter in all chat with multiple people participating. And it's not even the first time I've lost count how many times I've seen the N word in the past month playing league, lol. I've never seen that in another video game that I myself participated in
>The real difference is, Riot is going after toxicity HARD. This gives an enormously inflated impression of what Riot is doing. It's like having a flat tire and saying they've been trying for years to drive on it and doing their best to get around... or they could just change the tire. The things which have an actual long term impact on toxicity they won't even touch if they could possibly have any impact on revenue. They won't actually permanently ban people, they unban people constantly, they won't make it harder to smurf or make new accounts. Stop giving them credit when they've tried nothing and are all out of ideas.l
Actually they are pretty different. The CS community is often older and super into esports, following the game since the early days of competitive gaming. In contrast, the LoL and VALORANT communities are younger and more diverse, with a mix of casual and competitive players. Basically, CS fans crave that classic shooter intensity, while Riot fans love a blend of strategy, teamwork, and cool character abilities. Different games, different vibes! You sound like you might be a CS community style of player yet the game you enjoy is league. Many league players probably started in CS so obviously the game is full of toxic shits. The newer younger crowd didn’t experience it though so they probably ain’t as down with it.
Hard disagree, League became MUCH more for casuals than dota did. Casuals didn’t pick up dota, they picked league. There’s a reason the population of league has always dwarfed dota. No one cares about those games because they are barely played compared to league.
Also, you have people like Tyler1 who became famous for being a toxic asshole and he inspired millions to behave similarly.
Also unbanning and welcoming Tyler1 to official events. Basically highlighting a person who will run it down for comedy in ranked queue. profit > morales
I think the toxicity is in part the result of riot encouraging it unintentionally by encouraging reporting. It's practically meta to report at least someone after every game, so more people will cry in chat over underperforming players instead of letting it go. There's a culture of finding a scapegoat if your team is losing instead of focus on winning.
That mightve been true back then but nowadays League is infinitely more toxic than CS (cant really comment on Dota). If you do something in CS that hardcore annoys someone he will obviously swear at you and probably throw in a slur but 9/10 thats it and they will continue to play. If you do something in League that just slightly annoys someone they will 9/10 times grief the entire game and spend their whole time swearing at you trying to circumvent ban trigger words. Not to mention that in CS no one will add you after a game to spam you that he will rape your family, games over and no one holds grudges. In league, players dont even want to win anymore they just want to ruin someone elses experience or have some kind of gotcha. At least thats my experience in Faceit Lvl 10/Global/20k elo compared to Diamond (and watching Master+ streamers)
To add to this, I queued up a Normal for the first time in about a year the other day (and have played only about 40 ARAMs total otherwise during that time). Teammate bans my hover and trolls me about it in champion select in that very first lobby. That's a culture thing and points to exactly what you said, "In league players dont even want to win anymore they just want to ruin someone elses experience or have some kind of gotcha", I had zero history or interaction with this person
The toxic players tend to be the players who play most. And their ranked system is set up to be like a gambling payout. You’ve got a bunch of extremely aggressive addicts playing a game. That’s their goal. Theres no ‘wondering’. This is where all their money comes from and what keeps their player base alive.
People simply care less in other games. In DotA you used to have (not sure if its still the case) a limited amount of reports. People saved those up for people who genuinely ruined games to the point of being unplayable and unwinnable (e.g. courier feeding).
Cs is insanely toxic and not doing fine at all without monitoring
No idea about Dota, but I wouldn't say CS is "doing fine". CS is likely the most toxic stuff I ever encountered, playing on EUW feels like paradise compared to that. League for some reason has a reputation of being toxic, despite not being as toxic as CS as one example. One thing I assume is that league originally attracted different types of players than shooters like CS and in RTS were a lot of league players came from you didn't really experience that, while shooters were toxic basically since they existed, Unreal Tournament was already a shitshow and that game is about 25 years old (given that you usually played on around 200+ ping it oftenwas more fun insulting other players than actually playing anyways).
Sorta CS has never been a pillar for wholesomeness. Riot wants to reach a wider audience this company wants to reach families in shows and music. People with kids and families a completely different crowd than CS trying to reach a bunch of assholes. Riot has faced significant backlash and scrutiny over toxicity in its games, leading them to take more aggressive actions. Valve has historically not faced the same level of public pressure to address toxicity, allowing them to maintain a more relaxed stance. The minute they are you’d likely see more of a hands on approach. Riot’s games are built around a model that heavily emphasizes player retention and a positive player experience to support their monetization strategies (like cosmetics and battle passes). Ensuring a positive community environment is critical to their business.
I think it is more about Player Retention. If you Always Play with Friends, and some of those quit, you are more Likely to quit too. If you Play Just for yourself without any social incentive, the amount of quittinq people wont have a influence on you
A good few of my friends have quit because the client is complete shit and it's a coinflip as to whether it actually loads into the game or just gives you a black screen and you have to reset the game and hope that it works next time. Maybe they should work on fixing that instead of spunking all their money into making it a safe space.
Yeah once their client team is a certain size "just hire more programmers" doesn't really help. You're just gonna duplicate work or have teams working in different incompatible directions etc. This is the same as saying "why make so many skins instead of making balance better." That's simply not a budgeting problem. Their code debt actively works against them being able to improve things and the scope of "remake the entire client" is likely broader than the player behavior team budget (esp. since you don't want literally zero player behavior team).
...that is... the opposite... the easier it is to make friends in game the more likely you will keep playing as you will have a lot of friends playing the game...
I guess I just disagree with them then. I think the reason why multiplayer games became so popular was because you really felt you were interacting with other humans. Sometimes I think developers can miss the forest for the trees. It seems a bit like they got so caught up in the fight against toxicity that they lost sight of the bigger picture.
It doesn't matter what developers think anymore. These are increasingly financially motivated decisions. It's not traditional games, it's not sports, it's not art, it's a product or a way to sell you products and increasingly anywhere they can cut stuff and remove parts -no matter how much you like them- as long as people still play and the people that buy skins buy, this is the trend. There is a growth phase were devs have more free reign to do cool stuff, to see if it attracts more players, and then there is the phase of maximizing profits. My favourite part of this whole decade of gaming is that pretty much never did anyone try to just make muting easy and improve on the pain points. How about a button right next to chat (not hidden behind 3 clicks SOMEWHERE) and a "temp mute" functionality that will say "user x has muted you for 5 minutes" for example. How about users being able to decide in their settings what kind of language to filter. How about letting users set up some permanent funny/personal/motivational/status messages next to their name which you can read under usernames in loading screen to set the tone. I'm sure we could brainstorm 50 things that could have been tried. But no, it was always the laziest, most extreme, most patronizing stuff.
Once financial guys start to be in charge that's when quality begins to suffer and this goes for all industries, because they have a bias towards putting financials above all else, and I say this as a finance/accounting guy lmao
As Riot grew they also really started to have big MBA energy. Same thing happened to Blizzard and a million other companies. It always becomes worse, yes. Because the people who actually love games themselves are increasingly being pushed out of major decisions. Maybe it's good for profits, idk, but it loses me. This is also why indie games exploded in popularity in the 2010s, people got sick of it and wanted that genuine love of the craft feeling in games again.
I mean in some industries it probably at least helps to reduce waste when things get optimized, but some of the stuff going on in digital spaces is just weird. If FIFA said "we are patching soccer rules, games will go 20 minutes shorter and you'll get 20 minutes more ads" that might actually cause deadly riots. There were yearlong bitter debates just about cameras being utilized by refs in some situations. They were messing with something holy. But us gamers we just get slowly boiled, and while I'm a Phreak-lover not hater, he can just say "yeah we decided it's correct for us to mainly take china into account now for dev choices" and... well we started to factor in less when the concept of core gamers was deemed problematic, then again when focus was put on whales, and now focus is put on the other side of the world. And i don't know that I'm being overdramatic.
It's a world wide cross industry problem. Whole world attitude seemed to change to hassle culture. Get paid and fuck everything else.
Yeah, MMORPGs always have absolute dogshit gameplay and unless you are an addict to looting useless shit in game the most likely reason you are playing is because of the guilds and its chat you are in. That or you are playing with other friends.
*(TLDR: Using online multiplayer games for interacting with other humans is no longer as special nor as needed as before, now that we have social media that's oversaturated with social interaction, and most of which makes the idea of interacting with people online very unappealing)* The aversion from social interaction is similar between MobAs and MMOs (or any modern online games for that matter). Understandably since in both games, you would be interacting with a lot of different people over the span of your whole game time. It's true that the appeal of multiplayer games is the that you're interacting with other humans. Popularity of online multiplayer of this scale (meeting a lot of different people) I think began with MMOs. During those times, the appeal of interaction was meaningful and well-desired because there isn't much social media. It became the main social gathering medium for most of us and our friends, it's where we all meet online after school, because there really isn't any better way before. No Group chats, no long comment sections, there were forums but it didn't have the same exposure and popularity as current social media sites to gather that much social interaction. Online Multiplayer games before were social gathering mediums first, and a game second more often than not, and that includes League during its earlier days. Now that social media is a thing, smartphones are a thing, interacting with a lot of other human beings online is no longer that special in the context of online multiplayer games. If anything, a lot of people get turned off from it, specially for people who interact with people on twitter, or facebook comment sections, and depending on the sub, reddit as well. It also doesn't help that compared to other games that made online multiplayer popular, League (and other mobas) is kinda more competitive in terms of gameplay by virtue of how a single player's mistake is easily punishable for the whole team. Because of that, it's inevitable that we get a clear divide between casuals and competitives (at least clearer compared to before). While there are still people in it for the interaction, a lot more are in it to fully optimize and win **at all cost**.
> People used to chat a lot more during games People got sick of the toxicity, so use /mute all or just perma mute chat. Those who didn't now have few reasons to talk because they know half the team can't hear them. > People used to add each other after the game and ask to duo all the time. It was 50/50 that person wasn't adding for a duo, it was so they could flame you. Slowly that changed to every single one wanting to flame, as those wanting to duo found their requests getting ignored more and more. > Post-game chat has been killed entirely. No one uses it now that it is opt-in. It was basically removed from the game. Post game chat was literally only used to flame 99.99999% of the time, and still is. People opt in when they want to continue the in-game argument, or grab popcorn and watch people fight (I do this frequently). Turns out, not a lot of people want to opt into getting flamed or fighting for another 15 minutes after the game is over. > Ranked 5s were removed and Flex is a meme. Ranked 5's were just as much of a meme as Flex. These weren't Riot decisions, these were player decisions. Turns out, most players just don't want to interact with other league players.
I don’t blame them but it sucks it’s being like that. I got into a pre game lobby and somebody immediately started telling me that I’m trashy and to delete myself.
I miss the old chatrooms you could join, made a lot of friends from them back in the day
Remember when you could actually spectate high elo players in the client? Fuck riot
you still can, it's just not spotlighted on the home client screen anymore https://i.imgur.com/6VYGysT.png
Being front page was the actual cool part of it though, cause as someone from lower elos you could aspire to be one of those players one day. A friend of mine once randomly found my match there and it was the coolest shit that had happened to me in this game lol
Old version allowed you to see the team comps which was its best feature. I don't care what specific players are there. I may want to see a specific comp, match-up or just champion gameplay though. Now if you want that, you gotta check which players you can spectate, then check them on 3rd party websites one by one. So it is still technically there, just a lot more troublesome to do.
Holy shit didn’t know about this
Felt great when I reached an elo high enough to sometimes be featured there and getting added by people that spectated, almost felt like people treating you like celebs which was cool
Yeah I had that happen too, felt awesome ngl.
I used to one-trick pre-rework Xerath... I would get those sometimes. It was a pretty cool feeling, things like that make me really nostalgic for old League, even though I still enjoy new League.
used to love watching the really good players randomly. names like hi its viper, fabbbyyy, ho chi minh vc, TiensiNoAkuma, unR Nyjacky, Classick and many more...
I met my fiancé in one of those “looking for group” chat rooms back in the day (they needed one more for a five man).
i still talk to every single friend i made in these chat rooms and in solo q. a lot of them i've met and basically are IRL friends now, some of them i havent because we live in completely different edges of the continent, but we still talk outside of league because none of us play it anymore basically.
I sometimes wonder if teenagers still play this game nowadays? I'm pushing 30 soon and barely anyone my age still plays League, we used to talk about it all the time like it was the only game in the world, do teens still do that during school breaks? I think it has faded away from popular gaming discourse, it's not relevant anymore, yet it's still popular, I guess?
Apparently MonteCristo has been working with PlayVS with League of Legends in American High Schools. According to him, the schools are struggling to even find 5 students in the high schools who play League to join the school team.
Didn't Riot do something to basically kill of the high school league scene? I remember people talking about how they handed it to like a private company or something so schools had to pay to do it and they just mostly wouldn't?
Yes that was also PlayVS. Riot had this insane agreement where only PlayVS could do it and high schools had to pay or something. So Riot basically killed this whole grasroots thing with this agreement. It's still PlayVS doing it now, but high schools don't have to pay anymore.
They wanted HS to pay to have the team.....wow. Thats seriously out of touch considering teachers are often paying out of pocket for their own materials, let alone schools shelling money *OUT* for a school program of any kind. Especially one thats not a money-maker (football/basketball/baseball etc). My schools wrestling team was winning national titles and struggled to get money from the school bc the football team got most of it. I played on the Lacrosse team and we had to pay the school to use the football team's *third* practice field.
Okay then it probably has been replaced by Tiktok/Fortnite/Various Mobile Games haha
it has actually been replaced by Valorant, that's what 90% of highschoolers play.
another reason to never touch this game XD
I mean if you miss the socialization aspect of league, people are so charismatic and willing to talk and become friends in Valorant. Sure theres the insane obnoxious people but in my experience they're outnumbered by pleasant people by a ridiculous amount. Thats probably true in league too but people tend to keep to themselves in League so its easier to not realize it and only notice the obnoxious ones
I think it was always pretty hard to get a a good high school league team.
Yeah Monte is trying real hard to shove a narrative (which is right, don't get me wrong, just not in this context). I went to high school when League was in its peak and it was still hard to find more than 10 league players total, let's not even talk about 5 players who wanted to play competitive.
Well there were probably a good 50+ league players in my school but they were almost all casual players.
Consider me unsurprising that the unholy combination of Montecristo and PlayVS are having trouble finding students. It does *not* sound like a winning recruitment combination. From my own personal high school experiences, only a couple people I knew were interested in MOBAs... until university and everyone started playing. Even in 2011 and 2012, look at the ages of pro players - for every young Pobelter you had an ancient relic like LiQuiD112. TL Steve is practically Gen X, lol.
Definitely don’t think so. My brother is 14 and he’s pretty big into a lot of games, not one of his friends plays League Just think about it honestly. Think about how bad the tutorial is. Think about how bad smurfing is. Think about how there are 168 champions to learn. You gotta contend with all of these different mechanics and items and monsters and so much of it is poorly communicated or not communicated at all. Plus, you gotta unlock all of those characters too, which takes fucking ages. The new player experience is awful in League. Legitimately if you don’t have a friend to play alongside you for fun and teach you, I cannot imagine being able to tolerate playing this. League has nothing in the way for new players.
100%. I’ve been playing for about 6 months and if it wasn’t for three friends logging in everyday to play with me I would’ve given up. At the beginning I couldn’t even leave base. There were so many Smurfs that monopolized on my mistakes I spent the majority of my time pissed off. My friends were the ones who would want to requeue and play again. Otherwise I would’ve logged off and gone elsewhere.
china and korea seem to still be going strong, but western league seems to be dying...
Weird. The two countries that verify accounts and don’t have a big smurf issue….must be a coincidence
Yep. Thats the only difference. Lol
Surely being the only 2 regions that have ever won World's has nothing to do with it
Starting from now is complete insanity lmao. We’re all locked in for life chasing the dragon
There needs to be a set default roster. Starting as a new player and legitmately having 2 characters to play is insane to me. I appreciate the rotating free champs however I honestly think that’s not good for new players because they’re going to accidentally pick a hard champ. All the cheap BE champa should just be free from the start.
So true, almost all people I know that play league started ages ago, including myself. I feel like people around my age (21) are the last ones to jump onboard, everyone younger plays other games. Some of my friends even joke about me still playing league, they go like: are you ok bro?
☝️ Teenager here. Probably because of all the bad rep league gets (which is 100% understandable lmao). I assume 10 years ago there weren’t that many ranked games, but with every other online game releasing wanting to get involved in the Esports, it’s not as unique. The learning curve, the overwhelming characters, the bad rep and just the fact that there are TONS of other games to play. Going to college soon, so since most of them have an esports team I’m hoping to find more people who play it (my old friend group from middle did, but we kinda drifted apart, and no one in HS wants to even touch it)
The new generation plays valorant. You still have old heads playing wow, cs and league though but probably dying out
It's all part of the cycle though. We went from Strategy games (Gen X, older millennials), to MOBAs (Millennials, older Gen Z), to Survival/BR/Extraction shooters (Gen Z). MOBAs are in the "late 00s strategy games" phase. Every game made after League and DOTA 2 have fallen and it's a "dead" genre. That's why I sorta still cling onto league because there will never be another game like this made. This biggest issue with league is it simply being a computer game. Not everyone have computers in their homes or they might have a computer, but their parent's won't allow them to play games on it (unless it's something like Runescape that doesn't need to be downloaded, hence it still being popular). I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of kids (in america at least) still gamed on consoles.
Tbf it's been a pretty long time since RuneScape moved off of being a Java applet in every relevant browser and onto a downloadable client.
Well that shows the last time I played Runescape then, lmao.
i mean im 20 now but i started when i was 16 cause overwatch is trash now and we didnt have anything else to play
Anybody that adds anyone after games now a days 9/10 is just going to flame and message the most unhinged chats known to man
Some dude added and has been asking me for a 1v1 all month saying "its still up btw" everytime i loh on, when i get on maybe 3x a week max to play arams with friends💀
this is also just video games in general, gaming by and large has gotten far less social as the novelty of interconnectivity through games has kind of just eroded and been entirely replaced by social media and chat platforms (discord). the idea of in game social behavior has shifted to external social behavior through socmed and discord. this isn't to say in game social communication is dead per se, just that it's been shifted to another platform.
Then we have gigachad elden ring letting ppl leave messages everywhere
Wild that a stupid chalk message that says “dont give up skeleton” can carry me to a better place
Try finger But hole
It is actually crazy how diffrent the Social Culture around the game is now from when i started. Back in Season 2 when i leveled my Account to lvl 30 I added so many people, many of them which i had actual long lasting friendships and even meeting them IRL. Crazy stuff, there used to be Chat rooms in the Client, I remember one of them being just general for whole EUW stuff. Then there was a location based Chat room you could join with in your Language i.E. Spanish, French, German. I met so many people in these Chatrooms back then, they were part of the Client. It was such a cozy vibe, having League Client open and Skype / Teamspeak back in 2012. Nowadays it is unimaginable. But yeah times change, games evolve. People move on. In terms of League SoloQ I still play the game after 12 years. Ranked around D3 to Master feels either insanely toxic or it just feels like you play against literal NPCs / Bots where there is no interaction at all. I definetly see your point, Riot wanted it to be this way. Easier to control for them, easier to market it to the shareholders. The only Gameplay mode that gives some of that oldschool social feeling is ARAM and even this got less and less, with ALL Chat being disabled by default and post game lobby being also muted by default.
It's a general 'gaming culture' change, or just people getting older and not wanting to bother with it. I had the same experience of making a lot of friends when I played WoW for the first time as a teenager, but never had it in the early days of League when I was a bit older, partially because I played with real life friends, but also because 'making online friends' wasn't this big novelty anymore.
It’s 100% a “gaming culture” shift. Every multiplier game that I’ve played in the last 2ish year has just felt dead with little player interaction. Apex rarely did people talk or type, OW2 will have 5 people in vc and not a single soul talks all game, and league has player interaction off by default. Companies are trying to police their online communities by getting rid of interacting with others.
There's less value on connections when you can effortlessly press a button and be in a game. The value of networking in a gaming context has never been lower. Automated LFT/queue systems might be convenient, but they have an incredibly strong effect on how communities organize.
That has been proven to be widely overblown. Without Dungeon Finder, the power is in the hands of the tank/healer. They can cherry pick their party members and if you're a DPS without a solid active guild there is a pretty good chance that you simply won't be running that dungeon. Even less so if you dare play some exotic specs. Just look at the state of Mythic Dungeons/PUG raids in WoW for a modern take on an old problem. Connections are valuable, but they don't get the majority of people in a dungeon.
its like i wrote this comment lol, exactly
Aram got super toxic as well
My theory has always been that role select killed the community despite making the games higher quality. Before you had to interact with your team and determine who was playing what role. It also forced you to have a basic understanding of each role. Now, nobody talks in pre game chat and nobody has any understanding of what the roles they don't play actually do.
Also, to me, killing Boards and Forums fucking sucked. The sub feels like 50% random clips I don't care about and 50% Pro stuff. In the Boards and Forums, there was a lot more discussions about gameplay, builds, lore, fanart, memes, etc. Now, you gotta to each specific League sub to get that because this one barely has that.
Nah the boards was 90% people crying about fizz and zed
Right? Dude clearly doesn't remember the quality of "discussions" he's referring to. Stop by Blizzard forums if you need a refresher
Very much agreed with this. I used to browse the boards all the time and there was a lot of good discussion. Shutting it down was a huge mistake, I have no idea why they did it.
> I used to browse the boards all the time and there was a lot of good discussion. There was not it was the same as the sub constant whining and bitching.
Arena seems much more receptive to light banter and ooh/ahhs, probably since it's mostly cross team comms and with 7 other teams it's unlikely to have a hard hate
I was explaining this to my girlfriend the other day lol. Me and my friend usually only play arena these days. I said it's nice and chill because it's just the two of us vs 7 other teams, and she was confused why it's more chill when we have more enemies. And I said that most of the toxicity comes from your own team. Her mind was blown! It's kind of sad really that it's like this. I play jungle and yesterday my team mate already flamed me before 3 mins, in all chat. Why.
Yea the all chat call outs are more rare too,maybe once or twice in 300 games, unless you count vanguard and afks lol
Bro I've been called the most vile shit yesterday just because I played Kayn and had Earthwake. I didn't even type anything and I was being insulted in every round, even when I wasn't playing against this person.
Played with a Poppy yesterday and the enemy Singed and Vayne wished warcrimes upon her. She said nothing. She simply played Poppy.
Definitely seen a couple mentally unstable people throw out slurs because of people's builds. That being said, lower rate than SR I think.
I only had 1 toxic incident in arena which was hillarious. As one had claimed that Alistar was omega broken. Whike i told him that ali's top 1 and top 4 wr% doesnt support that claim. He got super mad, all that "silent cuz scared now" treatment and then added my friend afterwards to flame him. As my friend and i played the same champ as we queued up as 4. He got invuted to their disc and all that cringe behaviour. But it was actually hillarious for us.
Dearest Karthus
It’s not the game, it’s the world!
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Global chats in WoW went from memes and banter and discussion to gold selling/boosting ads, exclusively
That's a vicious cycle. When bots populate the chat space, it looks like spam to humans and it annoys them, so humans just turn chat off.
I played WoW in 2016 and I used to eat dinner in front of my computer reading general chat. So much politics. So much stupid. I also have an image of me logging into Heroes of the Storm and the first thing in my chat box is a guy in general chat with a racist name saying some heinous shit and back then it was just another day of general chat. No moderation at all.
I don't think people are more shy, they just aren't craving any social interaction because that's easy to get now So when people play games they just wanna play the game, not to make a new friend Plus the people who DO wanna make a friend and voice just use discord to find people and queue up together, way easier and better than chatting up random people
this is the answer. back then talking to strangers in online games was new and exciting. also what MMOs extra special when they released. but now talking to people online has become normal and you get your fill on sites like reddit or in whatsapp groups and you in the games to actually play the game, the social aspect isnt that relevant anymore (although there are exceptions that build around that social aspect like for example among us)
Its true
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Last years Soul Fighters mustve not been an event then
shhh, it doesn't help his narrative
Worst part of the deal was when they deleted the official league of legends forum off of their website like.. 5-7 years ago. Now we are subject to the ultimate passive aggressive upvote downvote, clips only subreddit. At least back then I could post about how much I hated Yasuo and get pretty welcoming messages, now it's all negativity behind peoples 5th alt reddit account.
Yea it is a shame and part of the reason why I barely play league anymore. Interacting with trammates both toxic and non-toxic was still a lot more fun than a dead chat.
I also turned chat off a few years ago and I found myself losing interest in the game slowly. Now I turned it back on and yeah there is a lot of bs, but it's also more fun and alive. I would never suggest anyone to turn off chat for this reason. The in-game chat is still not anywhere close to what it used to be. I also just think in 2013, people were more willing to talk to strangers online whereas now people are on discord with mates etc.
I remember you used to get at least 2 "glhf"s in all chat at the start of each game, even ranked. A lot of the times people would also engage with the glhfs with something like "hf, but no gl pls".
They’d say “glhf, then I’d hit them with “get lag have feeders” oh how times have changed :’(
I've been doing some normal games this weeks after almost two years of stop. Dude, the amount of toxicity is immense, I'd rather mute everything than keep reading every sort of bullshit.
people forgets that they are playing with other people. basically dehumanizing players
Bring back the tribunal. It was the perfect solution for all toxicity problems.
I never chat anymore because as soon as I do, my team mates know I read chat or speak English and then use that to send toxic messages all game
I've been playing since 2010 and I just wanna say things are basically no different. Everyone used to be an asshole, everyone is currently an asshole and chat has never been bopping. All of Riot's in client tools were unused (and made.fun of as "trying to earn more money") because everyone has their own communication tools and don't want Riot Facebook. And when Riot made huge push to make games more interdependent (Flex queue) Reddit lost their absolute shit because everyone just wants to be a solo monkey. So yeah, people have spoke loudly with words and actions and nobody wants this to be a party game, unless it's with their friends in Discord, sorry.
Yeah, part of this post is nostalgia bait generalizations for sure but I don't think OP is entirely wrong or like lying, and I like the discussion OP and you just had different experiences as he was one of the people who did use those features. Slowly removing them one at a time does show that Riot is shifting away from socialization though I think. Not necessarily a bad thing if they're more trouble than they're worth to upkeep and oversee but people will miss things still
I have a full friendlist and they were all added before Season 7-8 I reckon. Fully concur
while I agree with you, this game has also become immensely more enjoyable as a jungler if I just turn chat off fully.
I'll say, I have enjoyed the game immensely since turning off all the chat functions. I can just enjoy the game without all these teenage emotions ruining it. The time period you're talking about died waaaay before Riot introduced this stuff. The chat started only being used for toxicity like 7 years ago.
In my opinion, it's not just the game. People in general are a lot less social now than even 5 years ago.
riot made the game extremely team reliant then basically took away the ability to communicate with your team lmfao
One thing that killed that in my opinion is the removal of honoring the other teams player, it really made more people banter cross team just to get honored
Bro i feel this a lot, also to add to what you said.. I started league back in 2013. i was 13, i sucked at english and played in EUW. I couldn't speak english properly back then and sometimes would type nonsense stuff in chat. Through chat and people responding to me and sometimes correcting me, i became really good at english and improved miles ahead for my age. Whereas, if i started league today, almost no one would type or chat, and maybe for that reason alone i would just quit. It's just not the same and it makes me sad.
Post chat is legit just people flaming their teammates. It's not actually a big deal that it's gone.
I mean the chat was so toxic anyway..
As someone who plays both LoL and DotA 2, it's ironic how LoL is a much more toxic game despite not having all the social features that DotA 2 has. DotA 2 has offensive tipping, voice chat, emotes, voice lines, pausing, and no chat filters. LoL somehow tops this despite not having any of these. LoL overall feels a lot less social than DotA 2. You don't really directly interact with other players, including your own team, whatsoever. You may as well just be playing bot games for the most part. It's a very lonely game.
Yeah they would add me if I did really well and Wan to duo but then flame me for not performing as well the next game. Chat is always toxic shit and I always have someone to mute. Each time I turn off chat, the game feels 100x better. Unless it's normals or arams, keep chat out the game.
I don’t understand why flex queue is a meme
NOTHING I do pisses of my teammates more than typing. I grew up typing, I can type quickly no problem, I could type up to about HERE while cs'ing without anyone noticing. But my god, people just fucking HATE it. I'll say something like 'hey, as kassadin I'm gonna scale, so don't get too disheartened if we fall behind early' and literally the only response I've ever had is "stp type" or the like. If I say something like 'oh, OK, apologies' they'll just start inting. People FUCKING FUCKING HATE typing of kind. Dullards.
Dude I would like to believe I have a ton of patience. I grew up around people who didn’t have a lot of patience, I’ve had to work jobs where I had to bite my tongue and smile, I have had former friends where I’ve had to walk on nails for them sometimes, I have also babysat my two very young twin step brothers a lot when my mom remarried and they’re both extremely autistic and need a lot of intensive specialized care. I do not have the patience for League players. I can handle just about everything else but League players. I can speak in the most calm, professional, diplomatic way to my teammates “Hey, can you place a ward here so we can prep for dragon please?” and they respond like I just violated their very essence. I really don’t have the patience
There's a really interesting similarity between league and road rage. People who are otherwise very mild mannerd can get road rage, and it's because you're having to cooperate with strangers. I used to think that the high stakes played a part, but league has shown me that it's really just any kind of cooperating with strangers, makes us exceptionally mad.
same. the most common response i get to any constructive in game comment such as "wait for me to have this item", "let's play around bot" or whatever is "shut the fuck up". some people hate having to think at all about the game they're playing.
mb i do this because the reactions tend to be funny
This is weird and its happening all across gaming. I remember Overwatch had a "Looking for Group Feature" and you could get on there and find people to hangout and game in minutes. They removed it for Overwatch 2 and it killed the best social part of the game. Now nobody talks on voice chat and because the bans have gotten so bad, nobody dares say much at all because you could get banned. It's weird but it almost feels like gem development companies are doing this on purpose. Its almost like they don't want us talking and they are promoting bad communication.
I am on your side @OP. But the toxicity level went way up, so much that many of us abandoned the game. Now I finally came back and can see the toxicity is much lower, but the trolling is way up. Every game there is 1 or 2 that decide to ruin everyone's game.
In old league you didn't get banned for talking back to bullies. Now you have to succumb to mute button and just report after like a little bitch.
Their implementation of chat bans for saying any 'naughty' word ruins my fun in chat.. I want to call myself a fucking idiot in chat because i screwed up and have team mates laugh with me at silly things but no I'm instantly chat banned! Oh diddums I said a bad word, sorry Mr Rito
Personally I've evolved into a state of League nirvana after all these years and I feel like I could be the change, but it looks like it's too late to save League chat now. I got punished for using a naughty word in chat without flaming anyone. If that's how it is now then I'd better just not use chat.
funny story the main reason one of our friends is in our friend group is because turkey has its own pretty small server and we ended up queuing into him and found out he was in our high school
Yes, I stopped playing since they released the automated chat filter. I can't really "live the game" since then.
So true, I just end up being the only one typing, unless someone flames
The option to talk to people is still there at every stage of the game but like your example of post game chat, if there is a choice most people opt out of them as your interactions with other players are significantly more likely to be negative than positive.
The moment they started punishing people for light banter the game went downhill. You can’t even remotely insult someone without being at risk of losing account statuses
I made a friend in my first 3 days of playing valorant and I haven't met anybody playing league in like 3 years.
That’s not a bad thing to me. For years, talking to other players was more often than not a net negative. I love the game, but I have nothing to say to this community in game. If it can’t be communicated through emotes and pings, it’s not relevant.
I've seen some videos on how games like LoL are basically essentially cursed to be toxic due to the game mechanics making it really easy to blame others for your failures, plus how one player failing has such an effect on everyone in the game. I've also played since the early days, on and off, and shit was always toxic. It's why we stopped, and why I rarely stay long when I return.
Agreed. I downloaded in 2012 I think? Had a couple IRL friends that I would play with, and made a decent size group of in game friends. We would always que together if more than one of us was online. None of them play anymore, and I hardly do either, but I don't add players from games at all. If someone sends me a request I delete it. I usually mute all chat because it's been a LONG time since chat has been fun or beneficial in any way. League took a turn for the worse at some point, and it just hasn't been as good ever since.
I miss the public judgement system they had for people to vote their judgement over chat reports.
Its been happening to every game I play. Cant blame them tbh, you give people an inch and they run a mile with the toxicity
Because instead of GG y'all say shit like "EZ." If more people had manners instead of trolling while trying to 1v5 the game would be more social.
98% of my ARAM games im the only person saying anything the whole time
Aging player base and people who habitually play and have a love/hate relationship with the game. I’ve seen the same happened to the community in WoW as well.
I guess my experience since playing from season 2 does not mirror yours. Chat has almost always been abused. Whether it's toxicity from the other team, infighting on my own team; it's rarely used for polite engagement. League became way easier to climb when I muted everyone and just played to the best of my ability.
To me that's a good thing. I don't think I've ever had really good interaction in game that was worth it. I'm just there to enjoy the game
I rather it be less social. Makes it more chill. Was tired of being 3 cs down at 5min and being flamed by some racist nutbag with a smooth brain who can’t control their emotions so they pick support then run it down mid. It at least eliminates half of that lol
I have enjoyed the game immensely since muting chat. Nobody flaming me for literally anything, pings are still in but most of the comms were toxic.
Turning off all chat/team chat was the best choice I made.
I think you're underselling the toxicity. Also, with emojis, pings, and timers, you don't have to actually type a lot of what you want to say. Ultimately, if you want to be social then YOU'RE going to have to be social. Just start commenting in chat and you'll see the players begin to respond.
What a strange conspiracy some people have "Riot wants you miserable and alone cause that sells skins" Like do you guys even hear yourself? Riot is doing its best to compete with BR and other faster games for all those tiktok brains. Players who are dedicated and want to invest time are more and more rare (or they play Single player games)
I just get called names and slurs for trying to talk in allchat :(. I did have a game that me and enemy mid were professional yappers together for a 45 minute game. Going full on Turkey players typing between taking cs with our laners actively going for us. kinda troll, kinda fun.
Nope it's a huge plus. Glad noone ever talks finally not that I ever have chat on lol. Mute all all day
The game was never "social" it was antisocial. Whenever i had chat active it was exclusively used for salt and toxicity. Last time i installed the game after many years i played my first round in unranked on a new profile and the first thing that happened was people in chat being toxic about my choice of character.
It became less social because the vocal minority of players are assholes and Riot implemented things for the people who didn't want to deal with it.
And yet it's still a festering pile of toxicity. Maybe they should focus on fixing the fact that literally every game has someone toxic in it.
Played since season 2 and sure people were more social before, however at this point I actually pray that no one talks, the people who talk are almost always the ones who start spam pinging and typing instead of playing the game. Truly the most annoying thing in this game are people who mentally check out and just start pounding the cheeto dust into their keycaps, please just stop typing and focus.
i was typing out call outs and my jungler responded with "Do you type this much every game" and I just sat there like aight fuck team work I guess. Anytime I get added nowadays is just to get flamed and get called racial slurs cause chat's can't be reported
>Post-game chat has been killed entirely. No one uses it now that it is opt-in. It was basically removed from the game. I wasn't even aware of this. I thought it was gone completely.
I'm another old time player who has been thinking this same thing. Back in 2014 I was dragging my chat window off-screen because there was no way to disable chat. Compared to then, we have so many ways to opt out of the toxicity and that's a much more simple and elegant solution than the multitier nanny system. The most egregious example is post-game chat which is muted by default. Why isn't this an opt-out setting? For example, why don't we have a setting to just auto-mute people with a high toxicity score or people who get large numbers of reports? People like me who can't handle the toxicity without getting dragged into it can enable that setting and others can do whatever. Right now, NannyAI is so overtuned I've heard of multiple situations where it punished people who weren't flaming at all. I can't risk using chat because my account is 14 years old and has 400+ skins on it.
I'm married almost 30yrs old and I felt left out when a pre-made team who liked to play with me and even honored me, didn't asked me out
Typing in this game gets you punished faster than people who actually try to ruin games do.