Despite the sensationalist title, this is designed to be a calm and objective look at things.
Most of us here are gamers. We've played many games. And most of us probably haven't been banned in every game we play, nor are we deeply disturbed individuals in need of anger management.
However, League of Legends is built in such a way that it brings out the anger in us. Firstly, Riot gives us no way of legitimately calling a role in champ select. Imagine if, every time you queue'd for a dungeon in WoW, they randomly assigned you to a team and you spent your first 10 minutes arguing over which of you had to heal and who got to DPS. Toxic behavior would ensue, as it does in League of Legends. This is not a downfall of the League of Legends community; rather it's that any 5 random people in this circumstance would tend to get on-edge from time to time and react verbally.
Secondly, this is one of few games where one player's poor performance has a profound effect on your personal performance. In Call of Duty, if your teammate sucks you might lose the match. But, you can still show off some personal skill and at least end the match knowing you had a great score. Meanwhile in League of Legends, a top lane can feed 3-5 times and the enemy can go on to kill every other lane. So more than simply losing the match, you're now personally outmatched by this enemy from the very first time you fight him. Snowballing begats toxicity.
I'm telling you things you already know, but arranging it from a different point of view. I'm tired of Lyte telling us how toxic our behavior is, when really the problem is the game is structured in a toxic way. There's so much riding on a game (Because it's the next 40 minutes of your playing experience) that we tend to speak harshly on early mistakes. Riot has allowed a game with multiple points of instigated toxicity, and decides we need a player behavior team to correct our attitudes. The real problems are the game mechanics which simply bring out the worst in players.
I've been banned multiple times by the Tribunal. I am trying as hard as I can to reform my behavior. And every time I log into the game, I'm greeted with data points about how much worse my games will be if I'm toxic, and how I represent the bottom x % of players, etc. But you know what? I'm not some raging lunatic. I have a great job, good family life, and I"m happy. I also don't get banned in any other video game I play.
So Riot, throw us a bone here. Admit that your game is conducive to toxicity and that you're trying to improve the game itself, not just the way we perceive it. I'm not suggesting a fix here, but I think it's about time we stop pretending this community has insane psychotic rage-a-holics and start recognizing that the game itself is guilty of much of our behavior.
Despite the sensationalist title, this is designed to be a calm and objective look at things.
Most of us here are gamers. We've played many games. And most of us probably haven't been banned in every game we play, nor are we deeply disturbed individuals in need of anger management.
However, League of Legends is built in such a way that it brings out the anger in us. Firstly, Riot gives us no way of legitimately calling a role in champ select. Imagine if, every time you queue'd for a dungeon in WoW, they randomly assigned you to a team and you spent your first 10 minutes arguing over which of you had to heal and who got to DPS. Toxic behavior would ensue, as it does in League of Legends. This is not a downfall of the League of Legends community; rather it's that any 5 random people in this circumstance would tend to get on-edge from time to time and react verbally.
Secondly, this is one of few games where one player's poor performance has a profound effect on your personal performance. In Call of Duty, if your teammate sucks you might lose the match. But, you can still show off some personal skill and at least end the match knowing you had a great score. Meanwhile in League of Legends, a top lane can feed 3-5 times and the enemy can go on to kill every other lane. So more than simply losing the match, you're now personally outmatched by this enemy from the very first time you fight him. Snowballing begats toxicity.
I'm telling you things you already know, but arranging it from a different point of view. I'm tired of Lyte telling us how toxic our behavior is, when really the problem is the game is structured in a toxic way. There's so much riding on a game (Because it's the next 40 minutes of your playing experience) that we tend to speak harshly on early mistakes. Riot has allowed a game with multiple points of instigated toxicity, and decides we need a player behavior team to correct our attitudes. The real problems are the game mechanics which simply bring out the worst in players.
I've been banned multiple times by the Tribunal. I am trying as hard as I can to reform my behavior. And every time I log into the game, I'm greeted with data points about how much worse my games will be if I'm toxic, and how I represent the bottom x % of players, etc. But you know what? I'm not some raging lunatic. I have a great job, good family life, and I"m happy. I also don't get banned in any other video game I play.
So Riot, throw us a bone here. Admit that your game is conducive to toxicity and that you're trying to improve the game itself, not just the way we perceive it. I'm not suggesting a fix here, but I think it's about time we stop pretending this community has insane psychotic rage-a-holics and start recognizing that the game itself is guilty of much of our behavior.
I agree with a lot of what you are saying, in particular, the idea that the things that make LoL fun also cause friction between teammates that result in player behavior problems. I think that any game that has team PVP where you heavily depend upon your team for execution (e.g. teamwork is highly encouraged), there will also be anger when things don't go well. What I don't agree on is that it's Riot's fault. It's actually OUR responsibility -- meaning you the player, and we the developer, to improve player behavior. Riot certainly bears responsibility for improving it, but I think that it's important that players also feel they are responsible for improving it too.
That being said -- I agree with you that a lot of the better player behavior fixes need to be oriented around identifying areas that cause tension and friction between teammates, and smooth them out (to the degree that we don't hurt the game play).
But, we also do need to be banning players who are really toxic, or chronically leave, or whatever.
We need all of the above. I believe that over 2013, we will see more action towards reducing friction between teammates though. So, I agree with you that it's worth investing in.
I really appreciate the reply, Zileas. I've got a lot of respect for you and Morello and the way you look at this game. I'm trying my very, very best to be a better player but can't help feeling like Riot is more concerned with HOW a player deals with anger than with minimizing the anger we feel.
<3
The proof of how important we think this is comes in the form that Lyte and his team are specifically focused on fixing exactly this problem. As Zileas mentioned, the things that cause the friction are the things that make League engaging. I want to talk about that for a second;
It's of my belief that games, generally, are moving in a direction of eliminating impact and consequence overall. The problem with this is as you ease everything up, you start cutting too close to the bone when it comes to strategy and depth. Our decisions for League have been optimized around making sure this is retained, while making things more clear (I could do a whole series of writing on why clarity allows for depth) - and this comes with the known problems of "people will get mad at each other." I honestly miss how much I'm motivated to win when I go play hot-join games publicly. Essentially, we're giving every player a "scrim" experience in every game - and that has a ton of benefits from an engagement standpoint, even if it has other things to clean up.
The reason, I believe, that we choose to work on behavior so directly is because it's necessary to our game. I'd hate to remove the elements of the game that make it engaging so people fight less, instead, I'd rather deal with the behavior problem.
So is it Riot's "fault"? Sure, I guess from a strict standpoint, we chose to go in a different direction than most of the game industry and have a game with consequences and teamwork, but I think our commitment to dealing with it only shows that we think it's important. I prefer that trade off any day of the week. People aren't really more toxic in League than anything else (play an FPS and read the chat/listen to voice recently?), but their impact over you is greater because of the consequences built-in to the game design.
I've played team PvP for tens of years in all sorts of games.
Never have I seen people act like they do here.
They do - it's especially gotten worse as the internet has gotten older. The difference is you have to try to work with those people in League. In other games, ignoring is much easier.
You know, we're people too (well... most of the time) and we want to do what we can to help. However, personal responsibility is the best solution - and it can start working RIGHT NOW.
Even I will admit that I have periods of time where I'm like, "I want to do THIS" and games where I can't do that are frustrating.
I think and hope we're talking about two different things here. I believe you're saying you'd never want to sacrifice some of the game's funfactor (getting fed, snowballing) just to keep people from trolling. I could not agree more; that's the NECESSARY element of conflict that brings us all to the game.
However, when we talk about people trolling in ranked and champ select, and to a lesser extent the way your elo fluctuates so much because of your relatively small influence over a game, those are things which can potentially be fixed. I don't think you mean to say "We like that everyone has to fight over positions in champ select and we think it's good for the game". I'm pretty sure you'd implement a form of role-calling if the ideal solution were staring you in the face.
So yes, at a point you can reduce conflict such that it becomes a carebear game and I don't even want to get NEAR that idea. I'm simply saying that some of the most toxic game experiences stem from the "setup" in champ select. If you figure out a better way to group players based on the roles they want to play, I think you will see a tremendous decrease in game toxicity. After all, players, how many games are you sitting at the loading screen thinking "Ugh, I almost want these guys to lose because of their behavior in champ select".
I don't work on the team, so my opinion is less important on this front, but I don't think I'm up for role-calling. It enforces staleness of compositions (a quality of human behavior instead of actual optimization), and reduces the ability to actually have cooperation and form strategies. Maybe Lyte has different ideas here, but I think it should be possible to enact things, in champion select, that discourage people from being dicks.
Let's say you call and lock mid. Someone else does too. You're both acting in a selfish manner in a team game - either of these people could make a decision to be cooperative two people chose to have a conflict. No one is "entitled" - just don't be a dick. I don't think this should be that hard for anyone who actually believes in cooperating (as opposed to "I'm more important than the other guy and am entitled to play what I want). A person who holds themselves over others will cause conflict. I tend to sidestep this in a vast majority of my games, (on smurfs), by fostering some cooperation.
I'm not saying there's no problem of course, but what of the costs of role-calling? You think people don't want to see off-builds now, imagine when you have to pre-determine your comp. Can you counter-comp or strategize at all now? Just costs to think about.
So what? They shouldn't be labeling players at all if they truly believed in this freedom of position.
You're splitting hairs. Alternate comps are also possible and used occasionally - we're not going to tell you how to play, but when a player says "I play Top," we're going to give you that information.
It seems to me that MOBAs make up the most teamwork-intensive PvP video game genre to ever achieve popularity. Popular team PvP games up to this point have been composed of either first person shooters or MMOs, and neither of these really require teamwork to be fun:
1) FPS matches last 2-5 minutes and, except at the professional level, players don't base their fun on whether they win or lose a match, but their actions within the game itself. Losses are instantly forgotten the moment a new match starts. Be any class you want, play however you want, and chances are your teammates won't even notice.
2) MMO pvp is generally either free-flowing open world combat with no concrete sense of winning or losing, or use a Battlegrounds style that grants rewards to your character whether you win or lose, and these rewards give you a sense that your character is getting stronger.
MOBA pvp is a different animal. Once you sit down, you're in it for 20-60 minutes, and you and your teammates absolutely have to agree on a gameplan before the game starts, whether you're in a pro match or just picking up the game for the first time. Throughout the match, you need to watch your teammates' actions just as carefully as you watch your own. The better coordinated team constantly holds an enormous advantage and usually ends up winning.
In my opinion, given the relatively recent explosion in the popularity of the MOBA genre, gamers just aren't yet accustomed to the level of teamwork that's needed to be successful in it. We've been conditioned to treat teammates as nothing more than slightly more intelligent AI, and it's a humbling experience to be challenged by the requirement of a skill set (team communication) that up to this point has been unnecessary for full enjoyment of a game.
So to speak to the OP's point, I wouldn't blame the developer, but the genre of the game itself. What we're seeing right now with the MOBA is a convention breaking structure that is achieving widespread appeal -- it's falling into the hands of gamers who've never seen anything like it. For this reason I believe it's natural for there to be struggle as people get used to it. At the same time, it's our duty to make the process better, and I can tell you with the utmost confidence that player experience is at the forefront of everyone's mind here at Riot in every single project that we work on.
This is a point that's been made before, but I'm going to try to make it more civilly than most people have:
The trouble with this is that it means dicks get to enjoy the game and considerate players do not. Unless you literally do not care about your role (which is not the case for most people), you are sacrificing your fun for the sake of team cohesion while the more insistent player sacrifices nothing. After a while, it kind of raises the question of why you're playing the game a game where you spend most your time enabling ugly people to have fun instead of having fun yourself. It might indeed be true that you maximize your chances of winning by filling a role, but is that worth it if you don't like what you're doing to win?
So in the end, you create a sort of Prisoner's Dilemma, where you can cooperate by offering to take a role you do not enjoy or betray by trying to force a role you prefer. And just like in the one-round form of the Prisoner's Dilemma, betraying is the dominant strategy (because cooperating opens you up to getting screwed over a lot more than betraying does).
(For the record, I don't have this problem, as I have some champion I enjoy in pretty much any role, so I can almost always fill whatever's needed. But I understand that not everybody is so easy to please, and they're not wrong for having more discriminating tastes.)
Another interesting dilemma is that Ranked should maximize enjoyment (getting to play what you want) also that Ranked is for trying your hardest to win. I think there's a natural misalignment there.
Again, I'm not saying there's not an issue here for us to work on (and we're not ignoring it), but I think the expectations of Ranked need to be realistic as well.
After this post I quit this game. How many times have we all entered a game only to be stressed out when we leave? This has got to be the most stupid Red post I have ever seen in my life. This actually irritates me to no end how stupid and irrelevant your post is. Why don't you guys just ****ing do something about it. You're the god damn game developers! Riot NEVER listens to the important things that the community wants except for champion balance changes.
I'm getting sick and tired of waiting for you guys to come through with what we need rather than what you guys want to give us and what you think we need.
Again, we are working on things to make Champion select better. Part of it is your own expectations as well, though. As we're not Lyte, though, we're talking personally here mostly. We reserve our right to have a view on this, though we should (myself included_ be clear this isn't our area of expertise.
Expectations are a weird thing here; they wildly differ (how many people are complaining about "trolls" when they see an off-build, while simultaneously that person complains about not being able to have an environment they can have control over their decision-making) depending on the person who has them. These are all important to balance, and it's what makes this kind of thing much more nuanced than is being spoken about here.
We have a responsibility to deal with things like this that clearly stress people out. But I do think players have a responsibility to each other if they want to have a successful Ranked experience. Additionally, a behavior is something we can change immediately, and I don't think is replaced by developer-driven efforts (hopefully, it's enhanced).
Toxic Behavior is RIOT's Fault
Most of us here are gamers. We've played many games. And most of us probably haven't been banned in every game we play, nor are we deeply disturbed individuals in need of anger management.
However, League of Legends is built in such a way that it brings out the anger in us. Firstly, Riot gives us no way of legitimately calling a role in champ select. Imagine if, every time you queue'd for a dungeon in WoW, they randomly assigned you to a team and you spent your first 10 minutes arguing over which of you had to heal and who got to DPS. Toxic behavior would ensue, as it does in League of Legends. This is not a downfall of the League of Legends community; rather it's that any 5 random people in this circumstance would tend to get on-edge from time to time and react verbally.
Secondly, this is one of few games where one player's poor performance has a profound effect on your personal performance. In Call of Duty, if your teammate sucks you might lose the match. But, you can still show off some personal skill and at least end the match knowing you had a great score. Meanwhile in League of Legends, a top lane can feed 3-5 times and the enemy can go on to kill every other lane. So more than simply losing the match, you're now personally outmatched by this enemy from the very first time you fight him. Snowballing begats toxicity.
I'm telling you things you already know, but arranging it from a different point of view. I'm tired of Lyte telling us how toxic our behavior is, when really the problem is the game is structured in a toxic way. There's so much riding on a game (Because it's the next 40 minutes of your playing experience) that we tend to speak harshly on early mistakes. Riot has allowed a game with multiple points of instigated toxicity, and decides we need a player behavior team to correct our attitudes. The real problems are the game mechanics which simply bring out the worst in players.
I've been banned multiple times by the Tribunal. I am trying as hard as I can to reform my behavior. And every time I log into the game, I'm greeted with data points about how much worse my games will be if I'm toxic, and how I represent the bottom x % of players, etc. But you know what? I'm not some raging lunatic. I have a great job, good family life, and I"m happy. I also don't get banned in any other video game I play.
So Riot, throw us a bone here. Admit that your game is conducive to toxicity and that you're trying to improve the game itself, not just the way we perceive it. I'm not suggesting a fix here, but I think it's about time we stop pretending this community has insane psychotic rage-a-holics and start recognizing that the game itself is guilty of much of our behavior.
Most of us here are gamers. We've played many games. And most of us probably haven't been banned in every game we play, nor are we deeply disturbed individuals in need of anger management.
However, League of Legends is built in such a way that it brings out the anger in us. Firstly, Riot gives us no way of legitimately calling a role in champ select. Imagine if, every time you queue'd for a dungeon in WoW, they randomly assigned you to a team and you spent your first 10 minutes arguing over which of you had to heal and who got to DPS. Toxic behavior would ensue, as it does in League of Legends. This is not a downfall of the League of Legends community; rather it's that any 5 random people in this circumstance would tend to get on-edge from time to time and react verbally.
Secondly, this is one of few games where one player's poor performance has a profound effect on your personal performance. In Call of Duty, if your teammate sucks you might lose the match. But, you can still show off some personal skill and at least end the match knowing you had a great score. Meanwhile in League of Legends, a top lane can feed 3-5 times and the enemy can go on to kill every other lane. So more than simply losing the match, you're now personally outmatched by this enemy from the very first time you fight him. Snowballing begats toxicity.
I'm telling you things you already know, but arranging it from a different point of view. I'm tired of Lyte telling us how toxic our behavior is, when really the problem is the game is structured in a toxic way. There's so much riding on a game (Because it's the next 40 minutes of your playing experience) that we tend to speak harshly on early mistakes. Riot has allowed a game with multiple points of instigated toxicity, and decides we need a player behavior team to correct our attitudes. The real problems are the game mechanics which simply bring out the worst in players.
I've been banned multiple times by the Tribunal. I am trying as hard as I can to reform my behavior. And every time I log into the game, I'm greeted with data points about how much worse my games will be if I'm toxic, and how I represent the bottom x % of players, etc. But you know what? I'm not some raging lunatic. I have a great job, good family life, and I"m happy. I also don't get banned in any other video game I play.
So Riot, throw us a bone here. Admit that your game is conducive to toxicity and that you're trying to improve the game itself, not just the way we perceive it. I'm not suggesting a fix here, but I think it's about time we stop pretending this community has insane psychotic rage-a-holics and start recognizing that the game itself is guilty of much of our behavior.
That being said -- I agree with you that a lot of the better player behavior fixes need to be oriented around identifying areas that cause tension and friction between teammates, and smooth them out (to the degree that we don't hurt the game play).
But, we also do need to be banning players who are really toxic, or chronically leave, or whatever.
We need all of the above. I believe that over 2013, we will see more action towards reducing friction between teammates though. So, I agree with you that it's worth investing in.
- Zileas
The proof of how important we think this is comes in the form that Lyte and his team are specifically focused on fixing exactly this problem. As Zileas mentioned, the things that cause the friction are the things that make League engaging. I want to talk about that for a second;
It's of my belief that games, generally, are moving in a direction of eliminating impact and consequence overall. The problem with this is as you ease everything up, you start cutting too close to the bone when it comes to strategy and depth. Our decisions for League have been optimized around making sure this is retained, while making things more clear (I could do a whole series of writing on why clarity allows for depth) - and this comes with the known problems of "people will get mad at each other." I honestly miss how much I'm motivated to win when I go play hot-join games publicly. Essentially, we're giving every player a "scrim" experience in every game - and that has a ton of benefits from an engagement standpoint, even if it has other things to clean up.
The reason, I believe, that we choose to work on behavior so directly is because it's necessary to our game. I'd hate to remove the elements of the game that make it engaging so people fight less, instead, I'd rather deal with the behavior problem.
So is it Riot's "fault"? Sure, I guess from a strict standpoint, we chose to go in a different direction than most of the game industry and have a game with consequences and teamwork, but I think our commitment to dealing with it only shows that we think it's important. I prefer that trade off any day of the week. People aren't really more toxic in League than anything else (play an FPS and read the chat/listen to voice recently?), but their impact over you is greater because of the consequences built-in to the game design.
No. No.
No. No.
No. And No.
I've played team PvP for tens of years in all sorts of games.
Never have I seen people act like they do here.
Even I will admit that I have periods of time where I'm like, "I want to do THIS" and games where I can't do that are frustrating.
However, when we talk about people trolling in ranked and champ select, and to a lesser extent the way your elo fluctuates so much because of your relatively small influence over a game, those are things which can potentially be fixed. I don't think you mean to say "We like that everyone has to fight over positions in champ select and we think it's good for the game". I'm pretty sure you'd implement a form of role-calling if the ideal solution were staring you in the face.
So yes, at a point you can reduce conflict such that it becomes a carebear game and I don't even want to get NEAR that idea. I'm simply saying that some of the most toxic game experiences stem from the "setup" in champ select. If you figure out a better way to group players based on the roles they want to play, I think you will see a tremendous decrease in game toxicity. After all, players, how many games are you sitting at the loading screen thinking "Ugh, I almost want these guys to lose because of their behavior in champ select".
Let's say you call and lock mid. Someone else does too. You're both acting in a selfish manner in a team game - either of these people could make a decision to be cooperative two people chose to have a conflict. No one is "entitled" - just don't be a dick. I don't think this should be that hard for anyone who actually believes in cooperating (as opposed to "I'm more important than the other guy and am entitled to play what I want). A person who holds themselves over others will cause conflict. I tend to sidestep this in a vast majority of my games, (on smurfs), by fostering some cooperation.
I'm not saying there's no problem of course, but what of the costs of role-calling? You think people don't want to see off-builds now, imagine when you have to pre-determine your comp. Can you counter-comp or strategize at all now? Just costs to think about.
1) FPS matches last 2-5 minutes and, except at the professional level, players don't base their fun on whether they win or lose a match, but their actions within the game itself. Losses are instantly forgotten the moment a new match starts. Be any class you want, play however you want, and chances are your teammates won't even notice.
2) MMO pvp is generally either free-flowing open world combat with no concrete sense of winning or losing, or use a Battlegrounds style that grants rewards to your character whether you win or lose, and these rewards give you a sense that your character is getting stronger.
MOBA pvp is a different animal. Once you sit down, you're in it for 20-60 minutes, and you and your teammates absolutely have to agree on a gameplan before the game starts, whether you're in a pro match or just picking up the game for the first time. Throughout the match, you need to watch your teammates' actions just as carefully as you watch your own. The better coordinated team constantly holds an enormous advantage and usually ends up winning.
In my opinion, given the relatively recent explosion in the popularity of the MOBA genre, gamers just aren't yet accustomed to the level of teamwork that's needed to be successful in it. We've been conditioned to treat teammates as nothing more than slightly more intelligent AI, and it's a humbling experience to be challenged by the requirement of a skill set (team communication) that up to this point has been unnecessary for full enjoyment of a game.
So to speak to the OP's point, I wouldn't blame the developer, but the genre of the game itself. What we're seeing right now with the MOBA is a convention breaking structure that is achieving widespread appeal -- it's falling into the hands of gamers who've never seen anything like it. For this reason I believe it's natural for there to be struggle as people get used to it. At the same time, it's our duty to make the process better, and I can tell you with the utmost confidence that player experience is at the forefront of everyone's mind here at Riot in every single project that we work on.
The trouble with this is that it means dicks get to enjoy the game and considerate players do not. Unless you literally do not care about your role (which is not the case for most people), you are sacrificing your fun for the sake of team cohesion while the more insistent player sacrifices nothing. After a while, it kind of raises the question of why you're playing the game a game where you spend most your time enabling ugly people to have fun instead of having fun yourself. It might indeed be true that you maximize your chances of winning by filling a role, but is that worth it if you don't like what you're doing to win?
So in the end, you create a sort of Prisoner's Dilemma, where you can cooperate by offering to take a role you do not enjoy or betray by trying to force a role you prefer. And just like in the one-round form of the Prisoner's Dilemma, betraying is the dominant strategy (because cooperating opens you up to getting screwed over a lot more than betraying does).
(For the record, I don't have this problem, as I have some champion I enjoy in pretty much any role, so I can almost always fill whatever's needed. But I understand that not everybody is so easy to please, and they're not wrong for having more discriminating tastes.)
Again, I'm not saying there's not an issue here for us to work on (and we're not ignoring it), but I think the expectations of Ranked need to be realistic as well.
I'm getting sick and tired of waiting for you guys to come through with what we need rather than what you guys want to give us and what you think we need.
Expectations are a weird thing here; they wildly differ (how many people are complaining about "trolls" when they see an off-build, while simultaneously that person complains about not being able to have an environment they can have control over their decision-making) depending on the person who has them. These are all important to balance, and it's what makes this kind of thing much more nuanced than is being spoken about here.
We have a responsibility to deal with things like this that clearly stress people out. But I do think players have a responsibility to each other if they want to have a successful Ranked experience. Additionally, a behavior is something we can change immediately, and I don't think is replaced by developer-driven efforts (hopefully, it's enhanced).