A new study has found that 70 percent of gamers avoid certain games because of ‘toxic communities’.
Absolutely. I enjoyed playing a bit of Smite at one point in time (mostly that big open area map) and some Heroes of the Storm, but I’m not a big MOBA guy. Decided one day to give League of Legends a try, why the hell not ya know?
I have never been called a ‘fucking fag’ and been told to kill myself more times in a 5 minutes period of time in the entirety of my 40 years on this flying shitball of a planet. Not in public school, not on Xbox Live while playing Halo, not from my abusive family, never.
Uninstalled that shit 10 mins later and went back to TF2 where I get called that only once an hour.
That’s why I liked hots, the capability to block chat from the start and for everyone.
It’s not really a problem in non-competitive modes, as people usually just use on-map alerts.
I enjoy League mechanically, played a lot, but it just got to be such a net negative that I can’t do it anymore. I enjoy trying my best to win and I adore that feeling of a team coming together, but the toxicity was just too much.
Yeah, I don’t know what it is about the League community, but they are some of the worst people I’ve interacted with in games. I’ve heard that apparently Riot has cleaned up their community a bit since the early days, but first impressions are tough to overcome.
I have the misfortune of being a woman, so I play absolutely zero things with voice. And when I was younger, I’d pick the most ‘bro’ username possible just to avoid the bullshit.
Now that I’m older I just refuse to play competitive games at all. Life is too short to be constantly insulted. (Like the above user, I played LoL maybe twice before uninstalling.)
I identify with this almost exactly except for the fact I played league for a few years rather than a few times. I’d say you chose the better route.
League had a brief moment kinda from season 3 to 5 that had quite a female playerbase but they lost Lyte the guy who handled community systems and all went to shit. Throw it in the mountain of bad decisions they did. They were on the road of something good and they lost it. It’s sad to see now, they have the worst image possible the por scene collapsed, their numbers are pulled up from China and Korea.
I’m very sad to think it was a good game and I’m so very sorry for the way they treated us.
That’s funny because I think that was around when I played. I only ever played with at least a duo though. I’d almost never play on my own. Not because I couldn’t play well enough, but because I didn’t want to have to deal with people alone.
I enjoyed my time (not all of it but some) and watching Arcane made me miss it. But I don’t think I’d go back to league. Maybe tft and we’ll see how the mmo does.
Before the internet was mainstream, I dreamt that online games would be amazing, civilized activities. Now I want nothing to do with what it became, and this is coming from a guy. It’s like being a gamer became an identity, people take playing games too serious and there’s virtually no punishment for being a dick. I’ve seen more mature 12 year-olds than some of these adults.
I think you hit the nail on the head. There is almost no recourse for anyone being a dick, and some people consider it part of their “strategy” to get under people’s skin.
I avoid online games all together for this reason
Rocket League is alright so long as you can manage getting spammed WHAT A SAVE repeatedly after getting scored on.
They need to run peoples text through a sentiment analyzer and categorize players based on toxicity and group tiers of toxicity together. Maybe include tips on how to be a better human.
Ultimately, this is one of those things that needs subjective judgment and community ambassadors to be handled effectively. That requires human labor with high turnover.
I’m sure at some point one of the big players in the especially bad spaces (like MOBAs) will figure out how to do it on the cheap and create a market efficiency. But until then, all the profit chasers are allergic to creating actual jobs to solve the problem.
Big part of the reason why I enjoy cooperative games nowadays like Risk of Rain 2, Helldivers, Deep Rock Galactic, etc.
You can occasionally come across a toxic person, but the broader communities in said games are amazing on the whole.
Deep Rock Galactic is better than most in this department. (I haven’t played the others you mentioned.) I like how it supports only predefined shouts. “Morkite here.” “Rock and Stone!”
Unfortunately, griefers still managed to ruin my night more than a few times. (And I couldn’t report them, because for some reason, all of their usernames were in Chinese, which I can’t read.)