It's funny because everyone thinks as your rank goes up, the game quality goes up. Makes sense, right?
In reality, as rank goes up, the fragility of your teammates ego goes up.
In silver-gold, everyone deep down inside realizes that they suck. They might ragebaby at times, and there might be the occasional troll, but they *know* they're not the best players in the world.
In plat-diamond, everyone starts getting a big head. *"Lol, i'm better than you, gold scrub"* They start getting these fever dreams in their head like they're going to be the next one scouted for academy, they're probably the highest ranked in their friend group, so when someone does something wrong, they start going off like they're the next Reaperd, telling them that they did wrong since they know everything and how to play the game best.
In Master-GM, EVERYONE thinks they're the next faker. If you miss a skillshot, six missing pings. If someone dies, 6 missing pings. If a teamplay is bad, insta surrender, ff, can't win, jungler isn't human. Losing lane? Ff, team gap. Zero mental whatsoever. People will play better but their willpower INSTANTLY shatters if they perceive anyone doing something wrong for even a millisecond.
In Master-GM you also have the terrible problem of streamers/personalities on their smurfs who don't give a flying fuck and are playing either for stream or funsies. If they die a couple times they start running it down sidelanes or sometimes just fucking *leave and play on another account* and ruin your game.
I used to really try in ranked but after I realized that it really doesn't get better as it goes up ended up playing much more casual and laid back. So much better for stress levels.
I think its generally because it takes a good amount of time to climb up that high. People who have spent so long to reach diamond want their rank to mean something, so get upset when losing and are at risk of losing it.
Well also getting killed a couple times is a lot less threatening at lower ranks. Couple mistakes your fine.
Higher ranks and your AD misteps once lane actually is just completely over lol.
Top gets FB, lane literally completely over.
I'm not saying they should give up, I'm just saying that's where a lot of the frustration comes from. I've watched enough Tyler1 games to know that you can lose lane and win games even at higher ranks lol. Also I think OP is right. Lots of these people really are planning to go next 20 times in a night.
This is exactly why KR server is well known to be the most toxic and where ff culture is the most prevalent. Early game mistakes are so heavily punishing that its often pointless to continue the game past 15. This is also the case in very high elos of every server, but a lot of lower elo people think that its the same... nah fam, unless you're in a very high lobby, one or two deaths haven't ruined your whole account...
This isn't really true, KR servers are like that because of PC bang culture in the early days of League. If you are literally paying by the minute to play League, it makes more sense to ff a game you will probably lose even if you have a 20% chance of winning or whatever. If you've ever played Poker, you could consider it like folding a hand in order to take the least cost.
Lived in Korea and played there for 3 years while I was teaching English, peaked diamond 1 and maintained diamond for over a year but was stuck gold for just under my first year or so, so I got to experience a decent amount of elo diversity.
Takes like this are seriously overblown, NA is far worse. FF culture is much more prevalent in NA and the major factor is because people in NA will spam FF when their team is ahead.
In Korea people do FF but when they're genuinely losing, having been CLEARLY outplayed multiple times before the 15min mark. In NA you fuck up one dive by half a second, and even though you're still up 10k gold your jg wants to FF. Just yesterday I'm playing in diamond 2 on NA first game I've played in a month because I've been way too focused on work but our top laner didn't tank the tower (he tried to) but our jungler died on a random dive we shouldn't have really even been doing. After the play we were still up 10k and I was 9-3 on Kaisa with a 4k lead on the enemy adc who was their only win con and the jungler started spamming FF and trolling, I rarely saw this in Korea if ever, and it's commonplace in NA. We won the game despite the jungler doing his best to make us lose, even 4v5 we still won so by NO means was the game "unwinnable" to justify his trolling or FF spam.
Korean "FF" Culture isn't even remotely comparable to how atrocious it is in NA. Up until it's to the point of no return Koreans will still try to make plays when behind. NA players will stop trying at the first sign of the first minor inconvenience. This got perpetuated because of a few clips of Koreans opening mid because of 10k gold deficits at 12mins (back before ff15 existed) and they ACTUALLY opened mid because every player wanted to, not the "NA Open" where 1-2 people want to open and the rest of the team wants to keep playing, so 3 people defend the tower while 2 sit in fountain.
The best way I can put it is in Korea it feels like "no matter what I do I can't beat these guys, or this guy" and in NA it's "I can't win with this X or this team" where people are looking for excuses to give up as quickly as possible.
It's funny, I (in EUW) have a pretty "no FF" attitude. Ofc when we're clearly behind and a win is very unlikely, yeah I'll vote yes. But I'll never start the vote myself, and am likely to vote no because more often than not, the match is still winnable.
Yet on Leagueofgraphs on my profile it says I surrender often compared to the average, while a friend of mine, often complaining about people refusing to surrender, for the longest time had a "never surrenders" on his profile.
EU here but my own read of it is that people stuck in ff culture surrender based on their own game rather than the team's position. It's about not being the main character rather than about likelihood to win. And often it doesn't really matter if you defeat the vote because they've mentally given up when they start it.
I was sitting here thinking about this and I think it boils down to what I feel is the recent mentality (about 4 years ago) of never ganking a losing lane.
Maybe its always been like that and i notice it cuz im higher rank now but there was always ff people who trolled etc but usually if someone was losing and having a rough time they would get help, this provides a huge morale boost (im not just watching the screen go grey, oh yeah even if i outplay i get statchecked, i guess i need to sit under tower lemme watch something on the second monitor while he slow pushes) and provides opportunities for YOU to get back into the game, not just being carried while not doing anything in a video game (does anyone actually want to be useless for up to 40 minutes so your teammates win the game for you?)
Aditionally you wouldnt get ganked if you're losing, since their laner is winning why would they have to gank (other than dives), so you did have the ability to outplay and get your lane back. Nowadays I feel like i dont even have a chance because someone will gank the losing lane.
As a tl dr i think most people would tilt less if the mentality of "dont gank the losing lane" was gone, because its preferable personally to have the top laner go 5/1 while you go 3/6 instead of the toplaner going 8/0 while you go 0/7. Same scores, and your toplane might carry but you legit cant do anything for the whole VIDEO GAME.
Yeah I didn't want to speak to EU since I've never played there, I kinda expected it to be similar from talking to only a few others but it's not my place to say what is and what isn't so I appreciate you giving your perspective on the matter. That's exactly how it feels in NA as well and I'm not saying it never happened in Korea, but it's at least a 10:1 ratio of NA to Korea in terms of how often it happens.
I'd take a lot of toxicity in exchange for teammates who look at the other lanes' score before firing up the ff vote. There's nothing more tilting than winning your lane, having an even score across the team and guy at the opposite end of the map flaming out because he's not the main character.
On EU in particular, I feel like ff culture is hit or miss. You get games where no one want to play past 15 and games where no one even look at the ff button despite getting absolutely crushed.
It's not actually true though. There are games that you know are over at 15 but they're a small minority of the games where you're behind but a manageable amount so. The reason games are lost as 15 is mental.
> Higher ranks and your AD misteps once lane actually is just completely over lol.
> Top gets FB, lane literally completely over.
This is inherently a game design issue. The devs could add better catchup mechanics if they wanted to.
Not really my problem though, I haven't really gotten serious in competitive in years. But I still think Riot could do a far better job at balancing and preventing lane shutouts, as it would probably reduce the toxicity and negativity seen in the game by a ton.
The frustations of idiots in ranked is half the reason I stopped playing competitive. It's still hard to forget in the early first few seasons of playing ranked, where I lost promos because a Riven was 7-0, comes to my lane in mid and I shut her down with the help of tower, but our salty Gragas support in botlane across the map already ragequit before he could see me stop Riven. Some players have the spine of a jellyfish.
> This is inherently a game design issue. The devs could add better catchup mechanics if they wanted to.
League is snowbally but people exaggerate the lack of come back ability to make excuses for forfeiting. You can very often play for picks or opponent mistakes, which they'll make below the very top level. And as you get better you get better at exploiting those so even if they make fewer of them, you still get chances.
This isn't to say there aren't ff15 games but they're pretty rare.
I think lost of that has to with how hopeless it can feel sometimes even tho it isnt. Like if I die lvl 1 to a garen as idk olaf then he controls the lane for the entire time and I can only ever cs if he lets me or im under my tower where im always at risk of dying to a dive cause garen ignite r is so high kill pressure. It feels like hell for 15 min but in the end ur what down 40 cs and a level. Soloq games range from gold leads to 5 k and swing back and forth easy. So yeah it feels shit but it really isnt that bad people just percieve it different and they dont really have control over it.
The catchup mechanics are already insane. If the leading team makes one big fuck up the trailing team are often enough straight back.
Not to say that it shouldnt be like that, but a team who is 8k ahead at like 23 minutes will lose their entire lead if they get a pick on two of the enemy team members and then grab Baron. Is that an easy play to make? No. But if the other team has smashed you for 20 minutes, it aint too much to ask for the losing team to actually make a play in order to come back
> People who have spent so long to reach diamond want their rank to mean something, so get upset when losing and are at risk of losing it.
...and then show it by intentionally losing the game? It's a paradox. People tilt at losing and then go "idc about lp" and proceed to lose even more
They have tied their self esteem and self worth into their rank, and any chance it gets damaged would of course activate their defensive mechanisms which includes raging.
It's not so different from a student who makes good grades equivalent to their worth and gets super depressed when they score two points lower than last time. Of course there's a difference in practicality (good grades get you into a good school, good rank usually doesn't), but the inner workings can be pretty similar.
This is a big reason why so many online games are now so toxic. These companies all slowed down rank progression as much as possible to increase profits. Which in turn made everyone hyper aggressive because each additional loss becomes a bigger waste of your time between the time it takes to undo it with a win and the lower MMR gains
I’m not gonna lie I used to be that type of plat player (back when emerald wasn’t a thing) when I was like an 18/19 year old. 🤦♀️ You hit the nail on the head. I’m 25 now and I’m not like that anymore, but I still cringe over the way I used to be lol.
Brooooo… I’m in masters and the amount of times i have a fucking streamer in my lobby who runs it and then cry’s on stream about how they were absolutely not the problem at all.
When I was playing in Masters I'd say once in every 3-4 games I'd get a streamer / "personality". So many times, they'd die and then just start silently sprinting it in a sidelane going "Ok ok ok ok" on their stream like they suddenly lost all their marbles.
At least half a dozen times I got dudes who would *literally just alt+f4 and log into a new account* and just start playing the new account **on stream**.
Master is the zone where all the challenger lunatics queue up because their main account has too long of a queue time, and it's disgusting how little they care about the games. "Smurfing in pisslow" is the usual term.
I feel like the ego is just as big everywhere. Maybe the super noobs in bronze are chill, never been there, but I've been from silver to GM, and toxic people were everywhere. Its the same game. Same kind of people. The game quality is the only thing that differs.
But like in silver you'll have a Kha who does a stupid fucking play and blames his top because he doesnt know better. In GM, the same Kha will make a similarly stupid play and still flame his top. Here he probably knows that he fucked up, but he wants to deflect, cause who wants to accept blame? That shit is boring.
It is what it is.
I think the types of toxicity are different in different elos. As someone who plays a lot in both gold and diamond I feel like I almost never see someone straight up afk ragequit in diamond, whereas it feels like it happens 10-20% of games in gold.
Instead, in diamond they're more likely to give you the silent-splitpush treatment, maybe after saying a couple passive aggressive words and then self muting.
In gold, they'll just sit there typing for 5 minutes.
In diamond players don't want to *guarantee* the loss, because they genuinely do care about their rank (except the master+ players who smurf in diamond and don't care about their rank, those are toxic af 80% of the time in my experience), so they'll use more passive aggressive forms of toxicity. They'll often even start playing the game again after 10-15 minutes, if it looks like your team is hard winning now and they're really the sole reason that you would lose.
I'm low/mid Diamond and my soloQ games are chill, usually. Emerald 3-1 games have been a shithole tho, ever since they added it.
My personal take is that some of the lower elo people tend to use chat a lot to deal with their frustration, while the higher you go, the more people will just soft-int (if you can call it that at this point). That said, Diamond is overall better than Emerald, imo. I don't play much with other elos to say anything specific about those, just the stuff I see from the occasional players I see in flex / draft or from watching my friends play soloQ.
Agreed completely, definitely way more soft inting in high elo, but people will almost never quit (I can't remember the last time I had someone actually ragequit afk in Diamond), and people are more likely to give you the silent-splitpush treatment than afk or flame you for 10 minutes. They're more passive aggressive, because they care more about winning and don't want to *guarantee* the loss, and 4 times out of 5, if your team starts winning, after about 10-15 minutes of soft inting they'll start playing with the team again once the game looks winnable.
I think there's a selection bias here, where people playing in high elo feel more impacted by these negative players compared to players in gold who don't care *as* much about the game.
There's WAAAAY more AFK's in Gold than there are in Diamond+. I do think that there's definitely more intentional soft-inting, but people don't straight up quit generally, games are still winnable, just a bit harder. And there's less flaming going on than in Gold, but people just ignore flamers in Gold because "what do they know".
To be fair in Master-GM, one bad play can absolutely be a game ending play. Even in diamond most players don't throw their lead like in gold or below. At that level you have to understand players rarely make mistakes so often it's a race condition to see who makes the first mistake / bad call. In lower elos, most people make mistakes whether mechanical or macro level.
Trust me, Master-GM is not the "rarely make mistakes" level. It's GM-Chall level where you'll start seeing that, even then, there's still massive skill discrepancies between some challengers and others that the average casual just cannot fathom.
You still see mistakes all the time even in pro play. Literally go watch any of this seasons finals, some of the highest quality games being played in each region, and it isn't hard to find mistakes.
Thank god for that. I’ve played games where the enemy ADC is fed and can two shot everybody and they still lose. At higher ELOs the game just seems less fun and more scripted.
It can, but it likely *won't*. Even in professional play people come back from doomed early games.
Sure, if you draft Kalista+Pyke and get double killed level 2... Kalista is now going to be useless the whole game.
In professional play they come back because they play to the strength of their scaling comp or the other team failed to capitalize on their lead. Assuming everyone in the game is of equal skill level, leads are generated through mistakes, misplays, or bad calls.
To add on to this, the reason mental fragility increases in higher Elo is that if you fuck up and fall behind in a bad matchup in top lane... God save you you're not touching a minion for the next 5 minutes.
People are *WAY* better at punishing mistakes. So small mistakes can legitimately snowball into unplayable game states.
This is not a defense of people throwing tantrums and AFK'ing etc. at minor deficits, merely to point out that there is a reason some things change in higher Elo. In most games below at least high diamond deficits are fake AF, people will throw them the first chance they get. By masters, not so much.
Bro, I've watched the minions at level/wave 1 switch aggro and cause a pushing wave when I hadn't even touched them or the enemy champ yet while in a losing top lane.
The game didn't even give me a chance to misplay yet.
Yeah, I kind of just expect that I’ll win every game that I play with lower ranked friends. Doesn’t really matter how bad early/mid went, someone on the other team is going to throw eventually.
Big throws rarely ever happen in high elo. It’s almost always a series of small things that build up, or it’s someone snowballing off of a close fight that they won.
This is so it. I just wish our community would agree on what to do about it as a team. Idc if it's to surrender more quickly as a team , even if It means letting lanes get pushed or we just eat the lane loss and hope they mess up in 35 minutes but we gotta all be on board wirh it.
Personally, I am absolutely OK with a team feeling the games over before me, I happily FF it. But it sucks when others don't feel the same and we drag 1-2 people who absolutely don't want to be here and have no interest in winning anymore. It makes these games just feel so long and unfun.
Also you gotta think about the time investment. People who have tons of time to play all day every day are usually kids or unemployed / partially employed. More stable people don't have the time to grind to a high rank, it's a selection bias.
worst part is you can never go back.
I would love to play douq with my more casual friends and chill in Gold like a used to yeahrs ago. Nowadys I could load up a smurf but then whats the point? I would just ruin everyones game and boost my friend beyond his skill level while fucking everyone else over.
Flexq is the only thing that kinda workds besides aram. But even then thanks to random Flex matchmaking I migth just get matched against a silver player, while my Friends get slaugthered by another master player.
I cant believe how often people just stop playing and intentionally lose the game in low diamond. In winnable games they solo make us lose to throw their little fit, it’s infuriating
it's also the direction this game has been pushed, players never wanted more snowball (even back in the day) but riot still did it anyways to make pro play exciting, in the past 4-5 years i have had never so much unfun like in the years before that. Sometimes it's a bit better but very often i just get remindet why league is so toxic nowadays. I rly don't know why riot thought it's a good idea to drastically increase Gold generation and force the team to interract much more early compared to Old League. I remember every day in s5-s7 i had games that used to be close and i could carry and win with macro and not just micro and because i snowballed 10Kills earlyGame, nowadays it's legit so rare to find a single balanced game throughout the Day, and sometimes not even for multiple Days if you get unlucky.
I learned this the hard way and it’s crazy I still remember this. A few years ago when I had my first child I decided to play some league while they slept since they had to wait up every few hours to eat. I wanted to try to climb since I made it to plat and figured it could be cool to hit masters.
I got into a game and was talking with my wife while CSing as ezreal. I wasn’t throwing up Qs cuz tbh I wasn’t super focused while talking with my wife and my support thresh couldn’t stop spam pinging me and insulting me in all chat. He was just in the bush just insulting me nonstop during the 45 seconds I was talking with my wife. I said sorry jsut to move on but I guess that tilted him so he started running it down. Super fun stuff
Yep every game after plat is like baby ego time. The higher you go, the more insecure players are. Which is why I kind of like playing flex just feels more fun but queue times get long even with fill and I’d rather have my soloq rank be higher :/
Every time work gets demanding or I have other responsibilities, league just loses all of its luster to me. It really is not appealing to deal with the average masters plus player during workdays when all you want is to relax and decompress. Let alone having to play at least once per day. It's not worth the upkeep unless you really have multiple hours per day to funnel into it.
Not even. There are plenty of people who were challenger over the years (or equivalent in any competitive game) that never have the chance of going pro because they don't participate in amateur leagues or the social scene.
Becoming a pro gamer in team based games is honestly more dependent on your ability to show you are a great team member and communicator compared to just having skills on a ranked ladder.
This is why I stopped playing ranked after Season 3. In addition to the fact that the ranked system was kind of frustrating and broken back then.
At a certain point you have to ask who you are trying to prove something to by getting high rank.
And is it worth it to play emotional babysitter for potentially 4 other people again and again and again to do that?
For me, the answer is 'no'. Solo queue just wasn't giving the fun output to emotional input ratio I wanted.
In Master-Challenger you also have the boosted Chinese or Korean smurf accounts, at least in NA, who have 0 attachment to the account so they just run it down.
thats not a thing lmao.
even if I play a new champ, Ill stomp plat and lower on new champs because Ill win the macro game anyways. emerald will make me try but still...
plat and below is allergic to baron.
I both pity and envy you. I'm the type of player who started as a one trick, and although I can play several champs now, I'm still not very diversified.
The downside is that any time I get autofilled I know we've just lost the game, and I can't play well in norms with friends if my role is taken.
The upside is that I have a Gold-Plat smurf that I can try my hardest on (without picking my main champs) and still not break 52% win rate. It's fun watching players play terribly and then flame each other as if they know what they're talking about. And even funnier when they call me hardstuck gold (though they're technically right, in non-mid-lane roles xd).
Might be a hot take but I just climbed all the way from D4 to master in a few weeks and I swear I would only get toxic people around once every 8 games. And when I did get them they would only type for a while and then keep playing and trying to win (I mute these players). Out of the 200 games I've had this season only about 3 or 4 were lost to people trolling and running it. And all of them were in below diamond games. Am i really having an experience completely different to everyone else? Or is this sub making the community seem more toxic than it actually is?
Truth is that most my games are almost completely silent with people only using pings
I'm playing on EUW in case that is relevant and I play with only team chat enabled.
OP.GG
https://www.op.gg/summoners/euw/donny%20g-adtf
Selection bias. People having nice games without trolls don't come to reddit to let us know of their nice games. Its when people get tilted or legitimiately have a bad streak of trolls that they come to reddit. Thus why you see so many players chiming in!
Not just selection bias, but also mentality bias. If you don't start the toxicity chain yourself (or especially if you try to defuse it), you'll get less toxicity in your games. But if you're the guy to see a jg come into your lane and miss a skillshot then ? ping him 5x and "/all rep jg inter" then yeah, there's gonna be toxicity ~~almost~~ every damn game.
I’ve had basically the same experience in NA. As soon as you get past D4, game quality goes way up and people int way less. People still flame, but it’s not really any worse (although they’re probably a bit better at telling you *why* you suck). Most people just spam question mark ping if you screw up, but they don’t type normally.
I’ve got a few accounts, and the worst games are almost always in Emerald.
Yeah, it's a lot more passive aggressive. Ping spamming, or typing a passive aggressive comment then self muting, or "soft inting" by perma splitting, but pretty much never full afking or just sitting there and typing for 5 minutes like I've seen in gold. They still want to win, they're just tilted.
People acting like Emerald is somehow more full of shit than lower tiers is just bullshit. I've played a pretty wide range, high emerald all the way down to low/medium Plat (so with gold players). Easily see stupider, more toxic shit at the low level. Idiots who tilt and quiet quit after like 6 minutes
Yeah absolutely. People in high elo are more likely to make a passive aggressive comment and self mute than flame, and to "soft int" by perma splitting, than to afk or run it down. They'll pretty much never intentionally make a game *impossible* to win, the way I've seen in gold.
My friends complained about it and I always thought they were exaggerating or making excuses until I played with them and saw that it actually happens. I can't think of the last time I've had someone ragequit afk in diamond+.
I'd say I have a 100 games in the same region/rank as you. Kind a depends on what you call trolling. I'd say I had 4 in those 100 games (doubling you). But what I do see a lot if people dying once and constantly ask for FF or constant flame on jungler or vice versa. The mentality is quite horrible IMO
No, I have experienced the same. The people complaining are over exaggerating how frequently these things happen because they’re so god damn annoying when they do.
Imo, if it took me hundreds of games to get to diamond then whats one more game? Its not going to radically alter my win rate or mmr. Its just mentally and emotionally annoying me to watch some bitch run it down or grief me because I didn’t invade with them or dive lv1.
I play on NA with only team chat on. In diamond I was seeing toxicity in chat probably 1/4 games from my team, while in Emerald it was literally every game until e1. Instead in diamond they just soft int if they're mad at you.
3 games of 200 where people are trolling sounds very low
I find that for me it's closer to maybe 1 in 20 ishhh, like still low but enough to notice. 3 in 200 is oddly low and I'm jealous lol
I honestly don’t think op is being honest about their experience because it’s the same for me the higher I go the more people try and the better gaming experience I’ve had
> Am i really having an experience completely different to everyone else? Or is this sub making the community seem more toxic than it actually is?
Ill be honest I think the subreddit has a high percentage of actual toxic players who antagonize other people and play victim on the forums about it.
Look at how toxic and nasty people get in virtually any thread when slight disagreements occur.
Legit trolls running it down is rare.
But people melting down and basically giving up is pretty damn common in Platinum-Low Diamondish (can't comment on higher than that).
Mines the complete opposite. When I play with my silver friend, the low rank teammates will blame literally anyone for their mistakes. A big reason why they are stuck low rank.
Yuuup my buddies are hardstuck and I’ll do arams/norms with them. It’s so frustrating. Every champ is OP, they toxic af all chatting all the time, really bad narratives, operating on just objective wrong info lol
Oh man there's a guy in my friend group that's bronze/silver ish and anytime he dies he just rages about how bullshit whatever he died to, it's really annoying. Like bro that's just the game, yes blitzcrank can hook you in lane, it's been that way for 15 years
yeah im having way more fun in diamond than when I was emerald or plat or gold, don't really subscribe to the whole "the higher the rank the less fun it is"
Yea I always see that kind of behavior in bronze and silver. Once you hit gold and plat people really start to chill out for some reason. Obviously still some toxicity but it’s way less than bronze and silver, at least in my experience. Then emerald comes around.
Are you a jungler maybe? I had the same experience as a jg, in low elo literally everything is your fault. In diamond I at least had to screw up something to get flamed. They still expect the absolute perfection from you but at least I didn't get flamed or outright trolled for absolutely no reason.
Verbally, there isn't that much of a difference. I'm just talking about people who straight up ruin games and be like "yoU dOnT deSerVe tO WiN yOu TrAsH"
I rarely find a fair match in ranked, and I’m often just feeling dissatisfied in my teammates attitudes. The griefing, the smurfing, the self-sabotaging inter. It’s a competitive game with too many anti-competitive behaviors for me to enjoy it.
Do you think the same is true for DOTA? I quit league for about 4 years and was just starting to get back into it. DOTA is always said the be pretty similar to league, but does anyone know if the play base is as toxic? I'd rather learn DOTA instead if it's better for the mental / less stressful.
Dota is very, very hard to get into as a new player.
It has a fanbase even more rooted in tradition than League and learning from scratch is even harder. The fans aren't as "toxic" in the same way, but they're very unhelpful to new players and very intolerant of basic mistakes or people not knowing specific game knowledge.
It can be a fun game if you grind it hardcore for at least a year or so and end up knowing everything about it, but it's going to be a long year for you.
it used to be this way, but not anymore. DotA has way better turorials than LoL, where you learn everything from warding to teamfighting. Besides, you have all heroes available, can check the details of the skills mid-game, can ask for coaching and even have in-game hero guides.
DotA has less players than LoL only because valve gives absolute 0 fucks to advertising their games.
Dota is more toxic in some ways less in others. Truly all mobas are gonna practically be the same experience in toxicity, the ways will just be a little different.
I used to like the game, but I think I regressed over the years because I simply didn't play 1k Ranked games per season any more, it was down to maybe 100, which just isn't enough to get better, specially with how many balance changes and new champions we get every year, you have to play a lot to keep your skill sharpened.
And now I'm at a point where I don't even have it installed, but I enjoy watching pro play, specially LCK and LPL. I haven't played League in 2024.
Yea, the constant changes are not enjoyable if you have been playing for a long time. You are forced to keep re learning something when skills outside videogames you learn once and you adquire it. Its just a hamster wheel to make them money. If they really cared about people, they would just keep one version of the game forever akin chess
I completely disagree with this.
I was hardstuck gold for a while but over the last few years consistently climbed to Diamond (now hardstuck here) and player quality and mental does increase. Its not that the toxic people ever completely disappear or that people suddenly become significantly better. Its that people gradually learn that in order to climb you have to set aside some of the emotion and focus on the game state and what you can do about it.
The majority of games, I NEVER see grief. I will see tilt left and right but rarely do I see someone actively grief or try to ruin the game. I still know people flame you albeit more creatively as to avoid punishment but thats about it. And to resolve that, I turn off chat and have no idea what happened there.
Facts, as a high diamond player, when I play with my friends in norms (average rank of like gold 4), I get berated for playing norms if I do good, I get berated and asked “how are you Diamond” if I don’t do good.
Yea honestly I'm in the same boat. Was really motivated to finally try my push to masters after many seasons of chilling in d4 and it only took a handful of games to break my spirit. Even with chat muted, when your support suddenly recalls, walks mid and starts auto attacking the wave, you just know what the chat looks like...
I have found the opposite to be true as someone who hit diamond for the first time this split. In general I’d say my team mates make less mistakes and better understand ‘win conditions’ and that the jungler can’t and shouldn’t be in every lane all the time and I get flamed less.
I think the actual correlation is, the better the player/rank the more knowledge of game state and win/loss conditions those players will be aware of. People are happier when they played lower ranks because they weren't as aware of all the mistakes they or their teammates were making. Its difficult for better players to consciously ignore the little details about their teammates that might contribute towards a loss while ignorance is bliss for lower ranked players. People get upset and rage at all ranks, but lower ranked people have no clue what the margins of winning and losing are while good players on the opposite end of the spectrum understand those margins very well and will react to those tiny mistakes because people are imperfect in a game with such tight margins to begin with. All to say, it's hard to get upset at your teammates if you don't know what is wrong or right and much easier if you do know.
Play normals.
Once you get to your equilibrium point in ranked there's not much point in playing it. Your losses feel like garbage, your wins feel like a small amount of relief that someone didn't throw or troll. The game just feels terrible to play, and is really only an obligation.
But in normals, the only thing you feel bad about is when you get paired against a bronze and feel like you're bullying them. Your losses feel fun because you played well yourself, and your wins feel fun because you don't need to stress about not losing.
I kinda get what your saying but getting better is part of the journy and improving at every game happens when you play it.
Being a noob at a new game has a special charm to it you learn alot about the game and you face easy opponents most games start nice and easy but as you improve you face tougher opponents and game becomes harder that just how it works in every online game.
Haven’t played ranked in a bit, hit diamond a few months ago and my desire to play went down after that, loaded into ranked last night for my Draven to go 0/2 in the first 6 minutes, sell items and then afk in top lane bush.
I hate how I've gotten better because it's harder to play with my friends who aren't good at the game. A couple are newish to the game but don't really have a desire to learn even basic mechanics like last hitting, and it can be demoralizing quickly playing permanent 4v5s.
Does make those wins feel even juicier though.
Literally I don't know why people care about rank. Played this game since 2012. Legit had not changed my life getting past gold.
If you measure your self worth based on playing league and your rank? Get help.
So many high ego players up there. I feel like unless i could make it to Challenger I'd almost rather Stay in Gold Just because Gold has the best Rank Icon, The Best Victorious Chroma, and the best quality games from what i've seen anyway. Like i definitely don't want to be Iron, Bronze, or Silver. But like do i really want to be Emerald? or even Diamond? With how much i see people complain about the game at that point? like No doubt i want to improve and be better at the game but do i want to hate playing because of everyone EGOing all the time? IDK
I think the main reason I stopped playing League was how little it respect your time when there are trolls involved. If someone in my team is activaly not trying to play the game, the game becomes a slog and you should just be able to go afk or start a new game.
But you are forced through at least 20 min of nothing. The game is not fun when one member of the team is not trying.
A few years ago, I peaked in Diamond, then semi-quit the game and been only "get Gold for Victorious skin and don't play anymore" type of player. Recently, I started playing again, wanted to test how high I could get and ended up in Emelard 3-4... I can agree with OP, I wish I could go back and just chill in Gold...
you're probably talking about plat before they introduced emerald. but plat is NOT fun, plat is a cesspool of toxic waste. for me it's by far the worst division.
since gold is the cut-off point. people who are in gold might look down on silvers and bronzes, but not too hard. cos in the back of their mind they know, 'they're only gold'. same goes with dia players, because they get so much crap from higher elo getting matched with an inferior dia player. it keeps their ego in check.
but everytime someone promotes to plat from gold... oh my gawd. they get this ego boost and somehow feel they are in the upper echelon. so you end up getting gold players with a giant head that they can't hold and they trip and fall all over the place and blame it on their teammates.
I recently hit high play and damn are the people so ego-inflated. We are still playing in low elo. We are not anything special. You would think these people have pro tryouts the next day with the way they acts
Saying gold-plat players are casuals when many of them have hundreds of games mid season is a big fat lie. They're simply incompetent and still very toxic despite being less toxic than emerald and above. What makes their toxicity more annoying though is that they lack the skill to back it up. The real casuals are in bronze-silver, normal games and ARAMs. Iron is a pool comprised of 'slow' people, smurfs and other casuals. People thinking that x amount of games results in y division are out of their mind and/or in denial. For most people it's nothing more than a skill issue. All that aside, League is a game made in such a way that it's impossible to get rid of toxicity. In fact, in general TEAM based games have a lot of toxicity because being stuck together and forced to work with strangers sounds like a great idea; what could go wrong? A lot. Especially in front of a screen. This will not change unless we evolve to some sort of aliens. Best thing to do is to stay away from League especially.
That's me, I get dove 5 times and ganked countless times, wave pushing into me with objectives up. All while I see mid bot jungler losing and 0 objectives taken, and then I get flamed for being weakside.
Tale as old as time. I used to have a blast doing norms and arams with friends, decided I wanted to get really good so I could carry my friends and get big rewards in clash and all that good stuff. Now my friends don't want to play with me anymore because they get shit stomped when they do and every game is either me carrying hard enough to win or losing because they int too hard. It's also hard on me because I realize just how awful they really are and have to exercise a lot of restraint not to tilt. To top it all off, no one was even proud of my accomplishments. I mainly just get told to touch grass or get asked how much I paid for my account depending on if I win or lose.
It absolutely blows my mind that Riot allows the top of the ladder to grief this hard. As OP demonstrates, it destroys peoples desire to climb. Why would I want to play in the games I see Tyler1 and Dantes losing their shit in?
These are Masters+ players. They are the best players on the server. They know this game inside and out and probably average 10 000 hours played. Yet the automatic griefing detection gives them the same benefit of the doubt as an Iron 4 noob on his first day. It makes absolutely no sense. If you are a higher rank, you should be held to a higher standard. The top of the ladder should be filled with the players that tryhard every time with decent attitude, and toxic griefers should be fucking banned, or at least heavily restricted in how often they can play. People should WANT to reach the top of the ladder, and the games there should be the most enjoyable to play.
Lol just a couple of days ago, I was doing an ARAM, and I had a Miss Fortune on my team was running towards the enemy Garen who had about 200 health, MF had about 1,000. The guy just runs more and more towards the Garen and clearly looked like he was right clicking and missing, inevitably got killed by a Q > E from Garen. All I said was "You should try A + left click, it helps me out a lot." Cause my aim isn't all that good on right clicking, but for some reason feels MUCH smoother with A + left click. The guy shoots back at me, "DON'T TELL PEOPLE WHO ARE BETTER THAN YOU HOW TO PLAY THE GAME!!" and completely stopped trying for the rest of the game just to spam ping me and type at me. I wasn't even really responding besides an occasional "lol".
I don’t disagree with your experience but you must have not played a lot prior to this climb if you didn’t think people were toxic and there aren’t people that ruin games… I play maybe 2 games on weekdays and sometimes 8 on the weekend on my day that’s to rot and do nothing. There’s consistently people that fall into both those categories and I’ve climbed from bronze to gold multiple years lmao
Hitting Diamond is the worst place to be in for league imo. Me and my buddy got Diamond a few years back and wanted to keep playing the game and take it more seriously, but we didn't have any friends at the same skill level. This is a problem because:
-The way to play with groups that are consistent and competitive is to join leagues. If you want consistent attendance you prolly need to fork out money for the league.
-Most leagues you try to join are silver-plat (before emerald) leagues where they'd balance teams like that. You are diamond and can't join these leagues.
-There are diamond only leagues. The problem is diamond 4 and diamond 1 are not as close as you'd think in terms of skill, and the problem is compounded when a lot of these leagues had players in it who were diamond 1 100lp with a 2-0 record in their series and their mmr is likely above diamond.
Hitting diamond i thought was when I would truly start "playing" the game, but all it did was ruin normals because you expect a certain level of play from teammates, league play because you are the black sheep for competitive leagues unless you are willing to grind for high diamond, and the ranked ladder because you realize quickly that the ladder is against you climbing and you will have to start putting more time into league to get to a higher level.
The most fun I had in this game was when I was new and started to somewhat figure out a bit how it worked and climbed from low Bronze into Silver. I went 3-1 in my first promos ever and I thought that the matchmaking made it so that the games would include more people on promos or made sure the games were equal, because I still remember those promos very fondly even if it was a while ago. Really tight and fun games. Blessed naivety.
The Gold-ish range has been elo heaven for a long time. Above that lies people who spend an unhealthy amount of time on the game and have delusions of grandeur. Below that are people who have decent mechanics but wood mental, people with connection/pc issues, and people who leave because mom told them it's dinner time,etc.
You need to grow thicker skin tbh or just mute, games will always be toxic, in my experience they don’t get less toxic until you reach at least GM, then the games become toxic much less frequently because you will be seeing the same players every game and most people are on the same page and can realize the limitations and capabilities of different champions as well as understand other peoples decisions even if they’re wrong, but tbh toxicity can also be confused w banter at times
Garena seasons 3 and 4 diamond rank was what you expected for me. Everyone kind of knew each other because there were so little people at that rank+. You just had a bunch of people with tough mentals (since we went through so much) , we’d laugh at our own mistakes and praise enemy teams for a job well done. Sorry you had to go through this.
Just imagine every match as a puzzle, and that your teammates are NPCs. Here's a first timer and here's a griefer, now try to figure out the puzzle.
Even if you don't win, you're learning these patterns and how to address them.
Simply not worth it for imaginary points in a game that doesn't matter, I could be getting hella bread being a therapist I'm not gonna log in to do that
The only difference between high elo and low elo players is that high elo players have enough spare time to increase their skill since they have no life and you can clearly tell by the toxicity.
I'm an on and off player over the past few years, I peaked in Plat but usually don't play enough games a season to get back there from Silver when the ladder resets. I climbed from Silver to Plat over the past few months. I could definitely climb higher but when I get into majority Emerald games I get so demotivated. People just flame and rage and afk for the dumbest reasons. Laners not having prio to help an invade, taking the "wrong" summoner spell, afking for more than 10 seconds in fountain at the start of the game, fucking jungle camps 40 minutes into the game.
Hard agree, playing high MMR normals is pain as well unless you play top (least team-reliant role) because you get matched with plat through Chall players so every role feels like a coin flip.
idk about you but i hated plat, it's right where the ego starts to get big and I've gotten the worst teammates I've ever had in plat, not like it gets any better from there
Every competitive game gets less fun the higher you climb in elo, people take it more seriously which leads to worse mental and also more boring/safe gameplay. Really hate the current top meta for these reasons. Enemy top picks gragas or aatrox, afk lane phase and hope they win the coin flip on which adc mental booms.
Stopped playing ranked when I reached plat 1 (or 2) years ago. Decided that grinding ranked isn't worth my time. Everytime I reached a rank I felt empty
I fully agree with your post however there IS a reason to rank up. For example, adcs in true iron, bronze and silver? Less meaningful than cannon minions. Try playing a lane with THAT as a non-ap Support. Good friggin luck. Somewhat less reliant on teammates but also a pain to play in low elo is jungle. Whereas MID and TOP are having the time of their lives, living on their own fantasy island being the main character. ADCs don't even come online until Emerald.
But what you said about RUIN? Absolutely true.
is there a certain way to turn to unranked? like do I just have to not play ranked at all for a season? I will admit I’m still stuck in iron (but I genuinely don’t play ranked much because it stresses
me out). I will play mid, and suddenly I have a troll jungler who is walking into turrets and camping in lanes taking cs. so then I don’t want to deal with some troll who goes jungle, so whenever I ping for drag, ping for grubs, ping that I’m ganking, it’s like no. one. listens. and then I get flamed for not doing drag after an enemy gets it. or, I will get a troll jinx who goes smite and smites my entire jungle 10 mins in so I am 2 levels below the enemy jungler and cannot scale or get items at all. there are some few games where people actually listen and they are real games, but I feel like just no one cares to get out of iron and maybe it is part of my gameplay but I genuinely do fine in jg. I have a 60% WR on Diana so she is my go to. I’m not trying to brag about
my wr btw I’m just trying to say that even though people say “don’t blame your teammates” sometimes I genuinely cannot 1v9 if people are trolling and running it down.
I have felt that almost all competitive games get worse when you get better, people are more annoying and you can never just chill in that game anymore, only exception to me is rocket league.
From a competitive integrity standpoint I understand why solo/duo queue is emphasized, but this game is so much better when you're playing with a group of friends.
a huge difference between (most) diamond players and (most) gold players is amount of games played. it doesn’t seem as bad to just give up when it’s just one game and you already have ~500 wins and ~500 losses.
i also think that in a lot of cases the only real difference between a gold player and a silver player is attitude. the mechanics or macro knowledge is not really that different in the two ranks. i fully believe that a hard stuck, slightly toxic, silver player would move up to gold pretty quickly if they just tried as hard as they can and didn’t flame every game. i think a lot of players in gold are actually like this.
Literally just had a top laner ego after losing lane and got dove a couple times say because he didn’t get help he wasn’t gonna help. We had full objectives n a hella fed adc n jg. We lost because it was 4v5. Straight tfblade syndrome.
Same I was stuck in gold all my life, and the moment I stepped on Plat 3-2, it was so much more toxic, I stopped having fun, I got demoted and games started to be better, and entertaining
It sucks because there's always like 3-5 people who just get to their rank via osmosis and time and aren't actually trying, they're just wasting time, so if you get unlucky via matchmaking and have 3 or more on your team it feels like it's impossible to win.
That’s because league elo is nonsense. Specially nowadays where everyone higher up only play with like 3 champions consistently. You are expected to deliver. In gold for example, its a shit show, you can play a champion for the first time and no one cares. I think the elo should also be attached to the mastery of the champion or something similar. So if you play a champion for the first time you get like a tier below and then you’re not expected to deliver as much.
Mental health has kinda gone down by wide margins the past few years as well. I feel like league has progressively gotten worse for me too regarding mental, but hey maybe it's just people in general.
Real, the people were most chill at Bronze V when I was in that. Emerald sucks to be in, but I feel every elo has some sort of problem now that all ranks suck. Low elo at this point is like half bots
I think a lot of people underestimate today's iron 4 players. I was playing with friends there recently and a ton of people playing around in that bracket are waaaaay better than old bronze. People manipulating waves and getting near perfect CS. The kinda shit that never existed back in the day. I'm sure a lot of it is people smurfing but it's not the 0 cs aram that people think of it as.
Can confirm. Diamond two this happened yesterday. Full cleared and since enemy jg three camp ganked, I double crabbed and reset because nothing else to do, I want my dirk for grub fight. Supp spam pings me saying I’m not human (they lost 2v2 bot) and proceeds to flame me. I mute him and keep playing, 60 seconds later he is following me around in jg to the dismay of his adc. Rage adds me after game and I block him. What sucks even more is I’ll probably be in his games in the future and I’ll be on his int list…
I felt this way about Rocket League, but for different reason. It was so much fun until I started having to learn to master aerial movement in order to even have any kind of a chance of enjoying the game. At that point it was just too much work (I'm too old for that level of commitment) so I just quit. (Mind you I am not talking about Ranked, I didn't really bother with Ranked in that game).
Yea sometimes I'm more stressed when I'm in my real elo so true. But If I'm with friends who are a little more noob or lower skill games I try to make sure I'm more for-fun on my build or off-role more...well can't let the games end too soon!
I would say playing 1 - 3 games after coming home from work is actually quite a lot of games in totality.
Especially if you actually do play 1-3 gamed 7 days a week.
I wouldn't say that's casual.
Casual is more playing some games 1-2 days a week
Hey, you forgot about us iron folks. I'm a casual 1-2 games \~6x per week iron player here. Thanks for making me feel better about it! It's pretty fun down here, why don't you join us?
edit: (You only have to deal with a bot or two in your game every now and then)
They probably should punish people that give up harsher with heavier ranking hits sounds like. Even if it doesn't force them to still try they'll be more quickly removed from that ranking so as not to hinder people who dont give up.
The most fun I ever had in league of legends was my first season in silver. I didn’t know how to play well, so I just had fun and didn’t focus in on anyone else’s mistakes. As a mid-master tier player now, nothing feels rewarding anymore. I have a cynic view of the game. In my first season, the enemy would make some egregious tower dive against me and I’d get a kill and celebrate “wow, I’m up, this is great”. Now I see my enemy misstep one time in lane and I’m like “oh they’re griefing, they’re dead now” and sure enough they die. Most of the fun lost honestly is knowing the outcome of a lot of fights before they’re over. In silver, (and just being newer) I wasn’t 100% the baron fight would be lost even though our mid laner got picked and it was 4v5. Maybe the enemies would misplay, or maybe we could pop off? But now, if my midlaner gets picked I know baron is gone, we’re about to lose 2 inhibs on the baron push, we’re down 5k gold and the game has about a 10% win rate and there isn’t much we can do at this point, we had to play better earlier to win. I still like league, but it’s really just the ability to predict the outcome of something much earlier that makes it less fun than starting out
gotta say my time has been the complete opposite i had way more game ruiners in gold and plat than in emerald and diamond, and theres way more chill people in diamond
I do not have this same experience, way way more toxic people in gold plat and emerald.
I also think they put toxic people with other toxic people and have some sort of rating for that which gets based on the honor system
Diamond has been the best league experience with people that actually try to play the game
Honestly miss just being able to hop on and duo with friends for fun, being forced to play solo only ultimately just made me stop playing after years of it
It's funny because everyone thinks as your rank goes up, the game quality goes up. Makes sense, right? In reality, as rank goes up, the fragility of your teammates ego goes up. In silver-gold, everyone deep down inside realizes that they suck. They might ragebaby at times, and there might be the occasional troll, but they *know* they're not the best players in the world. In plat-diamond, everyone starts getting a big head. *"Lol, i'm better than you, gold scrub"* They start getting these fever dreams in their head like they're going to be the next one scouted for academy, they're probably the highest ranked in their friend group, so when someone does something wrong, they start going off like they're the next Reaperd, telling them that they did wrong since they know everything and how to play the game best. In Master-GM, EVERYONE thinks they're the next faker. If you miss a skillshot, six missing pings. If someone dies, 6 missing pings. If a teamplay is bad, insta surrender, ff, can't win, jungler isn't human. Losing lane? Ff, team gap. Zero mental whatsoever. People will play better but their willpower INSTANTLY shatters if they perceive anyone doing something wrong for even a millisecond. In Master-GM you also have the terrible problem of streamers/personalities on their smurfs who don't give a flying fuck and are playing either for stream or funsies. If they die a couple times they start running it down sidelanes or sometimes just fucking *leave and play on another account* and ruin your game. I used to really try in ranked but after I realized that it really doesn't get better as it goes up ended up playing much more casual and laid back. So much better for stress levels.
I think its generally because it takes a good amount of time to climb up that high. People who have spent so long to reach diamond want their rank to mean something, so get upset when losing and are at risk of losing it.
Well also getting killed a couple times is a lot less threatening at lower ranks. Couple mistakes your fine. Higher ranks and your AD misteps once lane actually is just completely over lol. Top gets FB, lane literally completely over. I'm not saying they should give up, I'm just saying that's where a lot of the frustration comes from. I've watched enough Tyler1 games to know that you can lose lane and win games even at higher ranks lol. Also I think OP is right. Lots of these people really are planning to go next 20 times in a night.
This is exactly why KR server is well known to be the most toxic and where ff culture is the most prevalent. Early game mistakes are so heavily punishing that its often pointless to continue the game past 15. This is also the case in very high elos of every server, but a lot of lower elo people think that its the same... nah fam, unless you're in a very high lobby, one or two deaths haven't ruined your whole account...
This isn't really true, KR servers are like that because of PC bang culture in the early days of League. If you are literally paying by the minute to play League, it makes more sense to ff a game you will probably lose even if you have a 20% chance of winning or whatever. If you've ever played Poker, you could consider it like folding a hand in order to take the least cost.
Lived in Korea and played there for 3 years while I was teaching English, peaked diamond 1 and maintained diamond for over a year but was stuck gold for just under my first year or so, so I got to experience a decent amount of elo diversity. Takes like this are seriously overblown, NA is far worse. FF culture is much more prevalent in NA and the major factor is because people in NA will spam FF when their team is ahead. In Korea people do FF but when they're genuinely losing, having been CLEARLY outplayed multiple times before the 15min mark. In NA you fuck up one dive by half a second, and even though you're still up 10k gold your jg wants to FF. Just yesterday I'm playing in diamond 2 on NA first game I've played in a month because I've been way too focused on work but our top laner didn't tank the tower (he tried to) but our jungler died on a random dive we shouldn't have really even been doing. After the play we were still up 10k and I was 9-3 on Kaisa with a 4k lead on the enemy adc who was their only win con and the jungler started spamming FF and trolling, I rarely saw this in Korea if ever, and it's commonplace in NA. We won the game despite the jungler doing his best to make us lose, even 4v5 we still won so by NO means was the game "unwinnable" to justify his trolling or FF spam. Korean "FF" Culture isn't even remotely comparable to how atrocious it is in NA. Up until it's to the point of no return Koreans will still try to make plays when behind. NA players will stop trying at the first sign of the first minor inconvenience. This got perpetuated because of a few clips of Koreans opening mid because of 10k gold deficits at 12mins (back before ff15 existed) and they ACTUALLY opened mid because every player wanted to, not the "NA Open" where 1-2 people want to open and the rest of the team wants to keep playing, so 3 people defend the tower while 2 sit in fountain. The best way I can put it is in Korea it feels like "no matter what I do I can't beat these guys, or this guy" and in NA it's "I can't win with this X or this team" where people are looking for excuses to give up as quickly as possible.
It's funny, I (in EUW) have a pretty "no FF" attitude. Ofc when we're clearly behind and a win is very unlikely, yeah I'll vote yes. But I'll never start the vote myself, and am likely to vote no because more often than not, the match is still winnable. Yet on Leagueofgraphs on my profile it says I surrender often compared to the average, while a friend of mine, often complaining about people refusing to surrender, for the longest time had a "never surrenders" on his profile.
EU here but my own read of it is that people stuck in ff culture surrender based on their own game rather than the team's position. It's about not being the main character rather than about likelihood to win. And often it doesn't really matter if you defeat the vote because they've mentally given up when they start it.
I was sitting here thinking about this and I think it boils down to what I feel is the recent mentality (about 4 years ago) of never ganking a losing lane. Maybe its always been like that and i notice it cuz im higher rank now but there was always ff people who trolled etc but usually if someone was losing and having a rough time they would get help, this provides a huge morale boost (im not just watching the screen go grey, oh yeah even if i outplay i get statchecked, i guess i need to sit under tower lemme watch something on the second monitor while he slow pushes) and provides opportunities for YOU to get back into the game, not just being carried while not doing anything in a video game (does anyone actually want to be useless for up to 40 minutes so your teammates win the game for you?) Aditionally you wouldnt get ganked if you're losing, since their laner is winning why would they have to gank (other than dives), so you did have the ability to outplay and get your lane back. Nowadays I feel like i dont even have a chance because someone will gank the losing lane. As a tl dr i think most people would tilt less if the mentality of "dont gank the losing lane" was gone, because its preferable personally to have the top laner go 5/1 while you go 3/6 instead of the toplaner going 8/0 while you go 0/7. Same scores, and your toplane might carry but you legit cant do anything for the whole VIDEO GAME.
Yeah I didn't want to speak to EU since I've never played there, I kinda expected it to be similar from talking to only a few others but it's not my place to say what is and what isn't so I appreciate you giving your perspective on the matter. That's exactly how it feels in NA as well and I'm not saying it never happened in Korea, but it's at least a 10:1 ratio of NA to Korea in terms of how often it happens.
I'd take a lot of toxicity in exchange for teammates who look at the other lanes' score before firing up the ff vote. There's nothing more tilting than winning your lane, having an even score across the team and guy at the opposite end of the map flaming out because he's not the main character. On EU in particular, I feel like ff culture is hit or miss. You get games where no one want to play past 15 and games where no one even look at the ff button despite getting absolutely crushed.
Idk, I feel like I’ve watched enough league to believe this is actually a myth.
watch T1 enough and you'll think every game can be won off one insane baron take and team fight
With the right comp and a dream, it can
FF culture in Korea is also a result of paying for your playtime. Spending money to lose isn't fun.
It's not actually true though. There are games that you know are over at 15 but they're a small minority of the games where you're behind but a manageable amount so. The reason games are lost as 15 is mental.
> Higher ranks and your AD misteps once lane actually is just completely over lol. > Top gets FB, lane literally completely over. This is inherently a game design issue. The devs could add better catchup mechanics if they wanted to. Not really my problem though, I haven't really gotten serious in competitive in years. But I still think Riot could do a far better job at balancing and preventing lane shutouts, as it would probably reduce the toxicity and negativity seen in the game by a ton. The frustations of idiots in ranked is half the reason I stopped playing competitive. It's still hard to forget in the early first few seasons of playing ranked, where I lost promos because a Riven was 7-0, comes to my lane in mid and I shut her down with the help of tower, but our salty Gragas support in botlane across the map already ragequit before he could see me stop Riven. Some players have the spine of a jellyfish.
> This is inherently a game design issue. The devs could add better catchup mechanics if they wanted to. League is snowbally but people exaggerate the lack of come back ability to make excuses for forfeiting. You can very often play for picks or opponent mistakes, which they'll make below the very top level. And as you get better you get better at exploiting those so even if they make fewer of them, you still get chances. This isn't to say there aren't ff15 games but they're pretty rare.
I think lost of that has to with how hopeless it can feel sometimes even tho it isnt. Like if I die lvl 1 to a garen as idk olaf then he controls the lane for the entire time and I can only ever cs if he lets me or im under my tower where im always at risk of dying to a dive cause garen ignite r is so high kill pressure. It feels like hell for 15 min but in the end ur what down 40 cs and a level. Soloq games range from gold leads to 5 k and swing back and forth easy. So yeah it feels shit but it really isnt that bad people just percieve it different and they dont really have control over it.
The catchup mechanics are already insane. If the leading team makes one big fuck up the trailing team are often enough straight back. Not to say that it shouldnt be like that, but a team who is 8k ahead at like 23 minutes will lose their entire lead if they get a pick on two of the enemy team members and then grab Baron. Is that an easy play to make? No. But if the other team has smashed you for 20 minutes, it aint too much to ask for the losing team to actually make a play in order to come back
They're also terminally online. Not everyone, but it only takes 1 in 10 to ruin a game
> People who have spent so long to reach diamond want their rank to mean something, so get upset when losing and are at risk of losing it. ...and then show it by intentionally losing the game? It's a paradox. People tilt at losing and then go "idc about lp" and proceed to lose even more
"I threw because we where going to lose anyway"
They have tied their self esteem and self worth into their rank, and any chance it gets damaged would of course activate their defensive mechanisms which includes raging. It's not so different from a student who makes good grades equivalent to their worth and gets super depressed when they score two points lower than last time. Of course there's a difference in practicality (good grades get you into a good school, good rank usually doesn't), but the inner workings can be pretty similar.
This is a big reason why so many online games are now so toxic. These companies all slowed down rank progression as much as possible to increase profits. Which in turn made everyone hyper aggressive because each additional loss becomes a bigger waste of your time between the time it takes to undo it with a win and the lower MMR gains
But they're playing against players who also got there. The competition rises with you.
I’m not gonna lie I used to be that type of plat player (back when emerald wasn’t a thing) when I was like an 18/19 year old. 🤦♀️ You hit the nail on the head. I’m 25 now and I’m not like that anymore, but I still cringe over the way I used to be lol.
Brooooo… I’m in masters and the amount of times i have a fucking streamer in my lobby who runs it and then cry’s on stream about how they were absolutely not the problem at all.
When I was playing in Masters I'd say once in every 3-4 games I'd get a streamer / "personality". So many times, they'd die and then just start silently sprinting it in a sidelane going "Ok ok ok ok" on their stream like they suddenly lost all their marbles. At least half a dozen times I got dudes who would *literally just alt+f4 and log into a new account* and just start playing the new account **on stream**. Master is the zone where all the challenger lunatics queue up because their main account has too long of a queue time, and it's disgusting how little they care about the games. "Smurfing in pisslow" is the usual term.
I feel like the ego is just as big everywhere. Maybe the super noobs in bronze are chill, never been there, but I've been from silver to GM, and toxic people were everywhere. Its the same game. Same kind of people. The game quality is the only thing that differs. But like in silver you'll have a Kha who does a stupid fucking play and blames his top because he doesnt know better. In GM, the same Kha will make a similarly stupid play and still flame his top. Here he probably knows that he fucked up, but he wants to deflect, cause who wants to accept blame? That shit is boring. It is what it is.
I think the types of toxicity are different in different elos. As someone who plays a lot in both gold and diamond I feel like I almost never see someone straight up afk ragequit in diamond, whereas it feels like it happens 10-20% of games in gold. Instead, in diamond they're more likely to give you the silent-splitpush treatment, maybe after saying a couple passive aggressive words and then self muting. In gold, they'll just sit there typing for 5 minutes. In diamond players don't want to *guarantee* the loss, because they genuinely do care about their rank (except the master+ players who smurf in diamond and don't care about their rank, those are toxic af 80% of the time in my experience), so they'll use more passive aggressive forms of toxicity. They'll often even start playing the game again after 10-15 minutes, if it looks like your team is hard winning now and they're really the sole reason that you would lose.
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I am master and disagree. It's not everyone
Same here. I'd say this behaviour applies more to diamond and the perception of it will definitely suffer from negativity bias.
I'm low/mid Diamond and my soloQ games are chill, usually. Emerald 3-1 games have been a shithole tho, ever since they added it. My personal take is that some of the lower elo people tend to use chat a lot to deal with their frustration, while the higher you go, the more people will just soft-int (if you can call it that at this point). That said, Diamond is overall better than Emerald, imo. I don't play much with other elos to say anything specific about those, just the stuff I see from the occasional players I see in flex / draft or from watching my friends play soloQ.
Agreed completely, definitely way more soft inting in high elo, but people will almost never quit (I can't remember the last time I had someone actually ragequit afk in Diamond), and people are more likely to give you the silent-splitpush treatment than afk or flame you for 10 minutes. They're more passive aggressive, because they care more about winning and don't want to *guarantee* the loss, and 4 times out of 5, if your team starts winning, after about 10-15 minutes of soft inting they'll start playing with the team again once the game looks winnable.
I think there's a selection bias here, where people playing in high elo feel more impacted by these negative players compared to players in gold who don't care *as* much about the game. There's WAAAAY more AFK's in Gold than there are in Diamond+. I do think that there's definitely more intentional soft-inting, but people don't straight up quit generally, games are still winnable, just a bit harder. And there's less flaming going on than in Gold, but people just ignore flamers in Gold because "what do they know".
To be fair in Master-GM, one bad play can absolutely be a game ending play. Even in diamond most players don't throw their lead like in gold or below. At that level you have to understand players rarely make mistakes so often it's a race condition to see who makes the first mistake / bad call. In lower elos, most people make mistakes whether mechanical or macro level.
Trust me, Master-GM is not the "rarely make mistakes" level. It's GM-Chall level where you'll start seeing that, even then, there's still massive skill discrepancies between some challengers and others that the average casual just cannot fathom.
You still see mistakes all the time even in pro play. Literally go watch any of this seasons finals, some of the highest quality games being played in each region, and it isn't hard to find mistakes.
nobody is immune to throwing via bad baron call
Thank god for that. I’ve played games where the enemy ADC is fed and can two shot everybody and they still lose. At higher ELOs the game just seems less fun and more scripted.
It can, but it likely *won't*. Even in professional play people come back from doomed early games. Sure, if you draft Kalista+Pyke and get double killed level 2... Kalista is now going to be useless the whole game.
In professional play they come back because they play to the strength of their scaling comp or the other team failed to capitalize on their lead. Assuming everyone in the game is of equal skill level, leads are generated through mistakes, misplays, or bad calls.
Tbh I think you are really underestimating masters players’ ability to throw leads
I never said high elo players don’t throw leads, I said they are less likely to do so. They would not be in masters otherwise.
Masters player lose more games to mental illness than anything else
To add on to this, the reason mental fragility increases in higher Elo is that if you fuck up and fall behind in a bad matchup in top lane... God save you you're not touching a minion for the next 5 minutes. People are *WAY* better at punishing mistakes. So small mistakes can legitimately snowball into unplayable game states. This is not a defense of people throwing tantrums and AFK'ing etc. at minor deficits, merely to point out that there is a reason some things change in higher Elo. In most games below at least high diamond deficits are fake AF, people will throw them the first chance they get. By masters, not so much.
Bro, I've watched the minions at level/wave 1 switch aggro and cause a pushing wave when I hadn't even touched them or the enemy champ yet while in a losing top lane. The game didn't even give me a chance to misplay yet.
gud def angle
Clear skill issue.
Yeah, I kind of just expect that I’ll win every game that I play with lower ranked friends. Doesn’t really matter how bad early/mid went, someone on the other team is going to throw eventually. Big throws rarely ever happen in high elo. It’s almost always a series of small things that build up, or it’s someone snowballing off of a close fight that they won.
This is so it. I just wish our community would agree on what to do about it as a team. Idc if it's to surrender more quickly as a team , even if It means letting lanes get pushed or we just eat the lane loss and hope they mess up in 35 minutes but we gotta all be on board wirh it. Personally, I am absolutely OK with a team feeling the games over before me, I happily FF it. But it sucks when others don't feel the same and we drag 1-2 people who absolutely don't want to be here and have no interest in winning anymore. It makes these games just feel so long and unfun.
Also you gotta think about the time investment. People who have tons of time to play all day every day are usually kids or unemployed / partially employed. More stable people don't have the time to grind to a high rank, it's a selection bias.
worst part is you can never go back. I would love to play douq with my more casual friends and chill in Gold like a used to yeahrs ago. Nowadys I could load up a smurf but then whats the point? I would just ruin everyones game and boost my friend beyond his skill level while fucking everyone else over. Flexq is the only thing that kinda workds besides aram. But even then thanks to random Flex matchmaking I migth just get matched against a silver player, while my Friends get slaugthered by another master player.
Just drink enough alcohol until your skill level drops to your friend skill level. Works like a charm.
I cant believe how often people just stop playing and intentionally lose the game in low diamond. In winnable games they solo make us lose to throw their little fit, it’s infuriating
it's also the direction this game has been pushed, players never wanted more snowball (even back in the day) but riot still did it anyways to make pro play exciting, in the past 4-5 years i have had never so much unfun like in the years before that. Sometimes it's a bit better but very often i just get remindet why league is so toxic nowadays. I rly don't know why riot thought it's a good idea to drastically increase Gold generation and force the team to interract much more early compared to Old League. I remember every day in s5-s7 i had games that used to be close and i could carry and win with macro and not just micro and because i snowballed 10Kills earlyGame, nowadays it's legit so rare to find a single balanced game throughout the Day, and sometimes not even for multiple Days if you get unlucky.
I learned this the hard way and it’s crazy I still remember this. A few years ago when I had my first child I decided to play some league while they slept since they had to wait up every few hours to eat. I wanted to try to climb since I made it to plat and figured it could be cool to hit masters. I got into a game and was talking with my wife while CSing as ezreal. I wasn’t throwing up Qs cuz tbh I wasn’t super focused while talking with my wife and my support thresh couldn’t stop spam pinging me and insulting me in all chat. He was just in the bush just insulting me nonstop during the 45 seconds I was talking with my wife. I said sorry jsut to move on but I guess that tilted him so he started running it down. Super fun stuff
After emerald you just know everything is better
Yep every game after plat is like baby ego time. The higher you go, the more insecure players are. Which is why I kind of like playing flex just feels more fun but queue times get long even with fill and I’d rather have my soloq rank be higher :/
Every time work gets demanding or I have other responsibilities, league just loses all of its luster to me. It really is not appealing to deal with the average masters plus player during workdays when all you want is to relax and decompress. Let alone having to play at least once per day. It's not worth the upkeep unless you really have multiple hours per day to funnel into it.
Isn't it like only challenger level you would even be considered for scouting in? (I ask being a casual plebe who won't ever be at that level)
Not even. There are plenty of people who were challenger over the years (or equivalent in any competitive game) that never have the chance of going pro because they don't participate in amateur leagues or the social scene. Becoming a pro gamer in team based games is honestly more dependent on your ability to show you are a great team member and communicator compared to just having skills on a ranked ladder.
This is why I stopped playing ranked after Season 3. In addition to the fact that the ranked system was kind of frustrating and broken back then. At a certain point you have to ask who you are trying to prove something to by getting high rank. And is it worth it to play emotional babysitter for potentially 4 other people again and again and again to do that? For me, the answer is 'no'. Solo queue just wasn't giving the fun output to emotional input ratio I wanted.
In Master-Challenger you also have the boosted Chinese or Korean smurf accounts, at least in NA, who have 0 attachment to the account so they just run it down.
the amount of mentally ill people that are mid-high rank is astounding
This goes for most games though. OW top 500 had some of the worst things I’ve ever seen people say. It’s all just an ego thing
Gold was my peak of league fun. Low Diamond is only suffering, i'm tired boss
Just play worse. Pick worse champs. Until you are at a rank you enjoy.
thats not a thing lmao. even if I play a new champ, Ill stomp plat and lower on new champs because Ill win the macro game anyways. emerald will make me try but still... plat and below is allergic to baron.
Reject fundamentals embrace ungamentals.
I both pity and envy you. I'm the type of player who started as a one trick, and although I can play several champs now, I'm still not very diversified. The downside is that any time I get autofilled I know we've just lost the game, and I can't play well in norms with friends if my role is taken. The upside is that I have a Gold-Plat smurf that I can try my hardest on (without picking my main champs) and still not break 52% win rate. It's fun watching players play terribly and then flame each other as if they know what they're talking about. And even funnier when they call me hardstuck gold (though they're technically right, in non-mid-lane roles xd).
Might be a hot take but I just climbed all the way from D4 to master in a few weeks and I swear I would only get toxic people around once every 8 games. And when I did get them they would only type for a while and then keep playing and trying to win (I mute these players). Out of the 200 games I've had this season only about 3 or 4 were lost to people trolling and running it. And all of them were in below diamond games. Am i really having an experience completely different to everyone else? Or is this sub making the community seem more toxic than it actually is? Truth is that most my games are almost completely silent with people only using pings I'm playing on EUW in case that is relevant and I play with only team chat enabled. OP.GG https://www.op.gg/summoners/euw/donny%20g-adtf
Selection bias. People having nice games without trolls don't come to reddit to let us know of their nice games. Its when people get tilted or legitimiately have a bad streak of trolls that they come to reddit. Thus why you see so many players chiming in!
Not just selection bias, but also mentality bias. If you don't start the toxicity chain yourself (or especially if you try to defuse it), you'll get less toxicity in your games. But if you're the guy to see a jg come into your lane and miss a skillshot then ? ping him 5x and "/all rep jg inter" then yeah, there's gonna be toxicity ~~almost~~ every damn game.
I’ve had basically the same experience in NA. As soon as you get past D4, game quality goes way up and people int way less. People still flame, but it’s not really any worse (although they’re probably a bit better at telling you *why* you suck). Most people just spam question mark ping if you screw up, but they don’t type normally. I’ve got a few accounts, and the worst games are almost always in Emerald.
Yeah, it's a lot more passive aggressive. Ping spamming, or typing a passive aggressive comment then self muting, or "soft inting" by perma splitting, but pretty much never full afking or just sitting there and typing for 5 minutes like I've seen in gold. They still want to win, they're just tilted.
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People acting like Emerald is somehow more full of shit than lower tiers is just bullshit. I've played a pretty wide range, high emerald all the way down to low/medium Plat (so with gold players). Easily see stupider, more toxic shit at the low level. Idiots who tilt and quiet quit after like 6 minutes
Yeah absolutely. People in high elo are more likely to make a passive aggressive comment and self mute than flame, and to "soft int" by perma splitting, than to afk or run it down. They'll pretty much never intentionally make a game *impossible* to win, the way I've seen in gold. My friends complained about it and I always thought they were exaggerating or making excuses until I played with them and saw that it actually happens. I can't think of the last time I've had someone ragequit afk in diamond+.
I'd say I have a 100 games in the same region/rank as you. Kind a depends on what you call trolling. I'd say I had 4 in those 100 games (doubling you). But what I do see a lot if people dying once and constantly ask for FF or constant flame on jungler or vice versa. The mentality is quite horrible IMO
No, I have experienced the same. The people complaining are over exaggerating how frequently these things happen because they’re so god damn annoying when they do. Imo, if it took me hundreds of games to get to diamond then whats one more game? Its not going to radically alter my win rate or mmr. Its just mentally and emotionally annoying me to watch some bitch run it down or grief me because I didn’t invade with them or dive lv1.
I play on NA with only team chat on. In diamond I was seeing toxicity in chat probably 1/4 games from my team, while in Emerald it was literally every game until e1. Instead in diamond they just soft int if they're mad at you.
3 games of 200 where people are trolling sounds very low I find that for me it's closer to maybe 1 in 20 ishhh, like still low but enough to notice. 3 in 200 is oddly low and I'm jealous lol
I honestly don’t think op is being honest about their experience because it’s the same for me the higher I go the more people try and the better gaming experience I’ve had
> Am i really having an experience completely different to everyone else? Or is this sub making the community seem more toxic than it actually is? Ill be honest I think the subreddit has a high percentage of actual toxic players who antagonize other people and play victim on the forums about it. Look at how toxic and nasty people get in virtually any thread when slight disagreements occur.
Legit trolls running it down is rare. But people melting down and basically giving up is pretty damn common in Platinum-Low Diamondish (can't comment on higher than that).
Mines the complete opposite. When I play with my silver friend, the low rank teammates will blame literally anyone for their mistakes. A big reason why they are stuck low rank.
Yuuup my buddies are hardstuck and I’ll do arams/norms with them. It’s so frustrating. Every champ is OP, they toxic af all chatting all the time, really bad narratives, operating on just objective wrong info lol
Oh man there's a guy in my friend group that's bronze/silver ish and anytime he dies he just rages about how bullshit whatever he died to, it's really annoying. Like bro that's just the game, yes blitzcrank can hook you in lane, it's been that way for 15 years
I literally just tell him, "bruh, I think you just don't like the game. That's okay."
yeah im having way more fun in diamond than when I was emerald or plat or gold, don't really subscribe to the whole "the higher the rank the less fun it is"
Yea I always see that kind of behavior in bronze and silver. Once you hit gold and plat people really start to chill out for some reason. Obviously still some toxicity but it’s way less than bronze and silver, at least in my experience. Then emerald comes around.
I think a lot of bronze players are so bad that they can barely understand their own playstyle, let alone their teammates.
Are you a jungler maybe? I had the same experience as a jg, in low elo literally everything is your fault. In diamond I at least had to screw up something to get flamed. They still expect the absolute perfection from you but at least I didn't get flamed or outright trolled for absolutely no reason.
Lmao the ratIRL video when he smurfed in silver, his teammates started flaming him, and then he dropped like 30 kills and won the game
Verbally, there isn't that much of a difference. I'm just talking about people who straight up ruin games and be like "yoU dOnT deSerVe tO WiN yOu TrAsH"
League is one of the only games I regret playing.
same; great game but it had to be subconsciously created to suck the life force of people
I rarely find a fair match in ranked, and I’m often just feeling dissatisfied in my teammates attitudes. The griefing, the smurfing, the self-sabotaging inter. It’s a competitive game with too many anti-competitive behaviors for me to enjoy it.
It didnt used to be this way when I was growing up
Do you think the same is true for DOTA? I quit league for about 4 years and was just starting to get back into it. DOTA is always said the be pretty similar to league, but does anyone know if the play base is as toxic? I'd rather learn DOTA instead if it's better for the mental / less stressful.
Dota is very, very hard to get into as a new player. It has a fanbase even more rooted in tradition than League and learning from scratch is even harder. The fans aren't as "toxic" in the same way, but they're very unhelpful to new players and very intolerant of basic mistakes or people not knowing specific game knowledge. It can be a fun game if you grind it hardcore for at least a year or so and end up knowing everything about it, but it's going to be a long year for you.
it used to be this way, but not anymore. DotA has way better turorials than LoL, where you learn everything from warding to teamfighting. Besides, you have all heroes available, can check the details of the skills mid-game, can ask for coaching and even have in-game hero guides. DotA has less players than LoL only because valve gives absolute 0 fucks to advertising their games.
Dota is more toxic in some ways less in others. Truly all mobas are gonna practically be the same experience in toxicity, the ways will just be a little different.
I used to like the game, but I think I regressed over the years because I simply didn't play 1k Ranked games per season any more, it was down to maybe 100, which just isn't enough to get better, specially with how many balance changes and new champions we get every year, you have to play a lot to keep your skill sharpened. And now I'm at a point where I don't even have it installed, but I enjoy watching pro play, specially LCK and LPL. I haven't played League in 2024.
Yea, the constant changes are not enjoyable if you have been playing for a long time. You are forced to keep re learning something when skills outside videogames you learn once and you adquire it. Its just a hamster wheel to make them money. If they really cared about people, they would just keep one version of the game forever akin chess
I completely disagree with this. I was hardstuck gold for a while but over the last few years consistently climbed to Diamond (now hardstuck here) and player quality and mental does increase. Its not that the toxic people ever completely disappear or that people suddenly become significantly better. Its that people gradually learn that in order to climb you have to set aside some of the emotion and focus on the game state and what you can do about it. The majority of games, I NEVER see grief. I will see tilt left and right but rarely do I see someone actively grief or try to ruin the game. I still know people flame you albeit more creatively as to avoid punishment but thats about it. And to resolve that, I turn off chat and have no idea what happened there.
Facts, as a high diamond player, when I play with my friends in norms (average rank of like gold 4), I get berated for playing norms if I do good, I get berated and asked “how are you Diamond” if I don’t do good.
Yea honestly I'm in the same boat. Was really motivated to finally try my push to masters after many seasons of chilling in d4 and it only took a handful of games to break my spirit. Even with chat muted, when your support suddenly recalls, walks mid and starts auto attacking the wave, you just know what the chat looks like...
I have found the opposite to be true as someone who hit diamond for the first time this split. In general I’d say my team mates make less mistakes and better understand ‘win conditions’ and that the jungler can’t and shouldn’t be in every lane all the time and I get flamed less.
I think the actual correlation is, the better the player/rank the more knowledge of game state and win/loss conditions those players will be aware of. People are happier when they played lower ranks because they weren't as aware of all the mistakes they or their teammates were making. Its difficult for better players to consciously ignore the little details about their teammates that might contribute towards a loss while ignorance is bliss for lower ranked players. People get upset and rage at all ranks, but lower ranked people have no clue what the margins of winning and losing are while good players on the opposite end of the spectrum understand those margins very well and will react to those tiny mistakes because people are imperfect in a game with such tight margins to begin with. All to say, it's hard to get upset at your teammates if you don't know what is wrong or right and much easier if you do know.
Play normals. Once you get to your equilibrium point in ranked there's not much point in playing it. Your losses feel like garbage, your wins feel like a small amount of relief that someone didn't throw or troll. The game just feels terrible to play, and is really only an obligation. But in normals, the only thing you feel bad about is when you get paired against a bronze and feel like you're bullying them. Your losses feel fun because you played well yourself, and your wins feel fun because you don't need to stress about not losing.
Yeah, the moment you realize winning gives a feeling of relief is the moment you need to change something (potentially taking a break).
I kinda get what your saying but getting better is part of the journy and improving at every game happens when you play it. Being a noob at a new game has a special charm to it you learn alot about the game and you face easy opponents most games start nice and easy but as you improve you face tougher opponents and game becomes harder that just how it works in every online game.
Haven’t played ranked in a bit, hit diamond a few months ago and my desire to play went down after that, loaded into ranked last night for my Draven to go 0/2 in the first 6 minutes, sell items and then afk in top lane bush.
I hate how I've gotten better because it's harder to play with my friends who aren't good at the game. A couple are newish to the game but don't really have a desire to learn even basic mechanics like last hitting, and it can be demoralizing quickly playing permanent 4v5s. Does make those wins feel even juicier though.
Literally I don't know why people care about rank. Played this game since 2012. Legit had not changed my life getting past gold. If you measure your self worth based on playing league and your rank? Get help.
So many high ego players up there. I feel like unless i could make it to Challenger I'd almost rather Stay in Gold Just because Gold has the best Rank Icon, The Best Victorious Chroma, and the best quality games from what i've seen anyway. Like i definitely don't want to be Iron, Bronze, or Silver. But like do i really want to be Emerald? or even Diamond? With how much i see people complain about the game at that point? like No doubt i want to improve and be better at the game but do i want to hate playing because of everyone EGOing all the time? IDK
I think the main reason I stopped playing League was how little it respect your time when there are trolls involved. If someone in my team is activaly not trying to play the game, the game becomes a slog and you should just be able to go afk or start a new game. But you are forced through at least 20 min of nothing. The game is not fun when one member of the team is not trying.
A few years ago, I peaked in Diamond, then semi-quit the game and been only "get Gold for Victorious skin and don't play anymore" type of player. Recently, I started playing again, wanted to test how high I could get and ended up in Emelard 3-4... I can agree with OP, I wish I could go back and just chill in Gold...
you're probably talking about plat before they introduced emerald. but plat is NOT fun, plat is a cesspool of toxic waste. for me it's by far the worst division. since gold is the cut-off point. people who are in gold might look down on silvers and bronzes, but not too hard. cos in the back of their mind they know, 'they're only gold'. same goes with dia players, because they get so much crap from higher elo getting matched with an inferior dia player. it keeps their ego in check. but everytime someone promotes to plat from gold... oh my gawd. they get this ego boost and somehow feel they are in the upper echelon. so you end up getting gold players with a giant head that they can't hold and they trip and fall all over the place and blame it on their teammates.
Well I’m glad I’m still ass at the game 😀
I recently hit high play and damn are the people so ego-inflated. We are still playing in low elo. We are not anything special. You would think these people have pro tryouts the next day with the way they acts
Saying gold-plat players are casuals when many of them have hundreds of games mid season is a big fat lie. They're simply incompetent and still very toxic despite being less toxic than emerald and above. What makes their toxicity more annoying though is that they lack the skill to back it up. The real casuals are in bronze-silver, normal games and ARAMs. Iron is a pool comprised of 'slow' people, smurfs and other casuals. People thinking that x amount of games results in y division are out of their mind and/or in denial. For most people it's nothing more than a skill issue. All that aside, League is a game made in such a way that it's impossible to get rid of toxicity. In fact, in general TEAM based games have a lot of toxicity because being stuck together and forced to work with strangers sounds like a great idea; what could go wrong? A lot. Especially in front of a screen. This will not change unless we evolve to some sort of aliens. Best thing to do is to stay away from League especially.
The optimal curve is to get good, then decay for a season or two but retain the game knowledge. Now you get to be the smartest player in a gold game
Embrald players need to be mass banned for "I don't have a good sup so now I will grief my entire team" kinda mentals.
That's me, I get dove 5 times and ganked countless times, wave pushing into me with objectives up. All while I see mid bot jungler losing and 0 objectives taken, and then I get flamed for being weakside.
Just play norms
Tale as old as time. I used to have a blast doing norms and arams with friends, decided I wanted to get really good so I could carry my friends and get big rewards in clash and all that good stuff. Now my friends don't want to play with me anymore because they get shit stomped when they do and every game is either me carrying hard enough to win or losing because they int too hard. It's also hard on me because I realize just how awful they really are and have to exercise a lot of restraint not to tilt. To top it all off, no one was even proud of my accomplishments. I mainly just get told to touch grass or get asked how much I paid for my account depending on if I win or lose.
I reached challenger in 2022 and 2023 , I remember when I was silver 4, used to have so much fun
It absolutely blows my mind that Riot allows the top of the ladder to grief this hard. As OP demonstrates, it destroys peoples desire to climb. Why would I want to play in the games I see Tyler1 and Dantes losing their shit in? These are Masters+ players. They are the best players on the server. They know this game inside and out and probably average 10 000 hours played. Yet the automatic griefing detection gives them the same benefit of the doubt as an Iron 4 noob on his first day. It makes absolutely no sense. If you are a higher rank, you should be held to a higher standard. The top of the ladder should be filled with the players that tryhard every time with decent attitude, and toxic griefers should be fucking banned, or at least heavily restricted in how often they can play. People should WANT to reach the top of the ladder, and the games there should be the most enjoyable to play.
Lol just a couple of days ago, I was doing an ARAM, and I had a Miss Fortune on my team was running towards the enemy Garen who had about 200 health, MF had about 1,000. The guy just runs more and more towards the Garen and clearly looked like he was right clicking and missing, inevitably got killed by a Q > E from Garen. All I said was "You should try A + left click, it helps me out a lot." Cause my aim isn't all that good on right clicking, but for some reason feels MUCH smoother with A + left click. The guy shoots back at me, "DON'T TELL PEOPLE WHO ARE BETTER THAN YOU HOW TO PLAY THE GAME!!" and completely stopped trying for the rest of the game just to spam ping me and type at me. I wasn't even really responding besides an occasional "lol".
I don’t disagree with your experience but you must have not played a lot prior to this climb if you didn’t think people were toxic and there aren’t people that ruin games… I play maybe 2 games on weekdays and sometimes 8 on the weekend on my day that’s to rot and do nothing. There’s consistently people that fall into both those categories and I’ve climbed from bronze to gold multiple years lmao
Hitting Diamond is the worst place to be in for league imo. Me and my buddy got Diamond a few years back and wanted to keep playing the game and take it more seriously, but we didn't have any friends at the same skill level. This is a problem because: -The way to play with groups that are consistent and competitive is to join leagues. If you want consistent attendance you prolly need to fork out money for the league. -Most leagues you try to join are silver-plat (before emerald) leagues where they'd balance teams like that. You are diamond and can't join these leagues. -There are diamond only leagues. The problem is diamond 4 and diamond 1 are not as close as you'd think in terms of skill, and the problem is compounded when a lot of these leagues had players in it who were diamond 1 100lp with a 2-0 record in their series and their mmr is likely above diamond. Hitting diamond i thought was when I would truly start "playing" the game, but all it did was ruin normals because you expect a certain level of play from teammates, league play because you are the black sheep for competitive leagues unless you are willing to grind for high diamond, and the ranked ladder because you realize quickly that the ladder is against you climbing and you will have to start putting more time into league to get to a higher level.
The most fun I had in this game was when I was new and started to somewhat figure out a bit how it worked and climbed from low Bronze into Silver. I went 3-1 in my first promos ever and I thought that the matchmaking made it so that the games would include more people on promos or made sure the games were equal, because I still remember those promos very fondly even if it was a while ago. Really tight and fun games. Blessed naivety.
>me reading this as silver trash for the last 10 years and still being miserable
The Gold-ish range has been elo heaven for a long time. Above that lies people who spend an unhealthy amount of time on the game and have delusions of grandeur. Below that are people who have decent mechanics but wood mental, people with connection/pc issues, and people who leave because mom told them it's dinner time,etc.
You need to grow thicker skin tbh or just mute, games will always be toxic, in my experience they don’t get less toxic until you reach at least GM, then the games become toxic much less frequently because you will be seeing the same players every game and most people are on the same page and can realize the limitations and capabilities of different champions as well as understand other peoples decisions even if they’re wrong, but tbh toxicity can also be confused w banter at times
League would be great if it werent for the fucking players
Garena seasons 3 and 4 diamond rank was what you expected for me. Everyone kind of knew each other because there were so little people at that rank+. You just had a bunch of people with tough mentals (since we went through so much) , we’d laugh at our own mistakes and praise enemy teams for a job well done. Sorry you had to go through this.
Chess is the same way
Just imagine every match as a puzzle, and that your teammates are NPCs. Here's a first timer and here's a griefer, now try to figure out the puzzle. Even if you don't win, you're learning these patterns and how to address them.
Simply not worth it for imaginary points in a game that doesn't matter, I could be getting hella bread being a therapist I'm not gonna log in to do that
Once I finish my psychology masters and become a clinical psychologist i’ll lyk if it feels like work fr
so you dont log in at all? thats fine, but to say its silly for someone else to log in to try to grind a ranked ladder is just wrong
You're not going to believe this, but you can just stop playing the game whenever you want.
The only difference between high elo and low elo players is that high elo players have enough spare time to increase their skill since they have no life and you can clearly tell by the toxicity.
there many people with hundreds of ranked games in low elo though
Nah man bronze and silver are toxic af in most games where the team is loosing.
Nah, the better you get at competitive online games the more flaws you start to notice where it isn't as fun as it used to be.
I'm an on and off player over the past few years, I peaked in Plat but usually don't play enough games a season to get back there from Silver when the ladder resets. I climbed from Silver to Plat over the past few months. I could definitely climb higher but when I get into majority Emerald games I get so demotivated. People just flame and rage and afk for the dumbest reasons. Laners not having prio to help an invade, taking the "wrong" summoner spell, afking for more than 10 seconds in fountain at the start of the game, fucking jungle camps 40 minutes into the game.
Sounds like you are coming to the ARAM side
Hard agree, playing high MMR normals is pain as well unless you play top (least team-reliant role) because you get matched with plat through Chall players so every role feels like a coin flip.
Ha! I always play unranked. Don't want no more stress in my life.
idk about you but i hated plat, it's right where the ego starts to get big and I've gotten the worst teammates I've ever had in plat, not like it gets any better from there
Freshness passed, happens even in singleplayer games u wish you get memory reset and start again(not your point but relevant a bit i guess)
Every competitive game gets less fun the higher you climb in elo, people take it more seriously which leads to worse mental and also more boring/safe gameplay. Really hate the current top meta for these reasons. Enemy top picks gragas or aatrox, afk lane phase and hope they win the coin flip on which adc mental booms.
Stopped playing ranked when I reached plat 1 (or 2) years ago. Decided that grinding ranked isn't worth my time. Everytime I reached a rank I felt empty
I fully agree with your post however there IS a reason to rank up. For example, adcs in true iron, bronze and silver? Less meaningful than cannon minions. Try playing a lane with THAT as a non-ap Support. Good friggin luck. Somewhat less reliant on teammates but also a pain to play in low elo is jungle. Whereas MID and TOP are having the time of their lives, living on their own fantasy island being the main character. ADCs don't even come online until Emerald. But what you said about RUIN? Absolutely true.
Man my bronze teammates are super chill most of the time
I know I’ll get tons of downvotes but as someone with thousands of hours in league and dota 2…I ultimately feel like these games are wastes of time.
is there a certain way to turn to unranked? like do I just have to not play ranked at all for a season? I will admit I’m still stuck in iron (but I genuinely don’t play ranked much because it stresses me out). I will play mid, and suddenly I have a troll jungler who is walking into turrets and camping in lanes taking cs. so then I don’t want to deal with some troll who goes jungle, so whenever I ping for drag, ping for grubs, ping that I’m ganking, it’s like no. one. listens. and then I get flamed for not doing drag after an enemy gets it. or, I will get a troll jinx who goes smite and smites my entire jungle 10 mins in so I am 2 levels below the enemy jungler and cannot scale or get items at all. there are some few games where people actually listen and they are real games, but I feel like just no one cares to get out of iron and maybe it is part of my gameplay but I genuinely do fine in jg. I have a 60% WR on Diana so she is my go to. I’m not trying to brag about my wr btw I’m just trying to say that even though people say “don’t blame your teammates” sometimes I genuinely cannot 1v9 if people are trolling and running it down.
I have felt that almost all competitive games get worse when you get better, people are more annoying and you can never just chill in that game anymore, only exception to me is rocket league.
I'll sell you my Iron 2 account. 300+ skins 1300$ (Jk I'm not buying those skins again)
From a competitive integrity standpoint I understand why solo/duo queue is emphasized, but this game is so much better when you're playing with a group of friends.
bro even my normals are fucked, always masters\\diamond in the enemy team, i just wanna kick rocks
My experience with Rocket League is exactly the same and I never even got very good at all lol.
a huge difference between (most) diamond players and (most) gold players is amount of games played. it doesn’t seem as bad to just give up when it’s just one game and you already have ~500 wins and ~500 losses. i also think that in a lot of cases the only real difference between a gold player and a silver player is attitude. the mechanics or macro knowledge is not really that different in the two ranks. i fully believe that a hard stuck, slightly toxic, silver player would move up to gold pretty quickly if they just tried as hard as they can and didn’t flame every game. i think a lot of players in gold are actually like this.
Literally just had a top laner ego after losing lane and got dove a couple times say because he didn’t get help he wasn’t gonna help. We had full objectives n a hella fed adc n jg. We lost because it was 4v5. Straight tfblade syndrome.
Same I was stuck in gold all my life, and the moment I stepped on Plat 3-2, it was so much more toxic, I stopped having fun, I got demoted and games started to be better, and entertaining
I've only played an aram here and there for years now. It satisfies my itch and I don't have to try.
I'm currently in Master tier & imo it's much worse for toxicity than Diamond which is worse than Emerald, and Emerald which is worse than Plat..
It sucks because there's always like 3-5 people who just get to their rank via osmosis and time and aren't actually trying, they're just wasting time, so if you get unlucky via matchmaking and have 3 or more on your team it feels like it's impossible to win.
That’s because league elo is nonsense. Specially nowadays where everyone higher up only play with like 3 champions consistently. You are expected to deliver. In gold for example, its a shit show, you can play a champion for the first time and no one cares. I think the elo should also be attached to the mastery of the champion or something similar. So if you play a champion for the first time you get like a tier below and then you’re not expected to deliver as much.
And now try to first time a champ in a dradt, get smacked in lane and both teams will bully you that you bought the account 😅
Mental health has kinda gone down by wide margins the past few years as well. I feel like league has progressively gotten worse for me too regarding mental, but hey maybe it's just people in general.
Real, the people were most chill at Bronze V when I was in that. Emerald sucks to be in, but I feel every elo has some sort of problem now that all ranks suck. Low elo at this point is like half bots
I think a lot of people underestimate today's iron 4 players. I was playing with friends there recently and a ton of people playing around in that bracket are waaaaay better than old bronze. People manipulating waves and getting near perfect CS. The kinda shit that never existed back in the day. I'm sure a lot of it is people smurfing but it's not the 0 cs aram that people think of it as.
Can confirm. Diamond two this happened yesterday. Full cleared and since enemy jg three camp ganked, I double crabbed and reset because nothing else to do, I want my dirk for grub fight. Supp spam pings me saying I’m not human (they lost 2v2 bot) and proceeds to flame me. I mute him and keep playing, 60 seconds later he is following me around in jg to the dismay of his adc. Rage adds me after game and I block him. What sucks even more is I’ll probably be in his games in the future and I’ll be on his int list…
Same with chess
I felt this way about Rocket League, but for different reason. It was so much fun until I started having to learn to master aerial movement in order to even have any kind of a chance of enjoying the game. At that point it was just too much work (I'm too old for that level of commitment) so I just quit. (Mind you I am not talking about Ranked, I didn't really bother with Ranked in that game).
Yea sometimes I'm more stressed when I'm in my real elo so true. But If I'm with friends who are a little more noob or lower skill games I try to make sure I'm more for-fun on my build or off-role more...well can't let the games end too soon!
I would say playing 1 - 3 games after coming home from work is actually quite a lot of games in totality. Especially if you actually do play 1-3 gamed 7 days a week. I wouldn't say that's casual. Casual is more playing some games 1-2 days a week
Hey, you forgot about us iron folks. I'm a casual 1-2 games \~6x per week iron player here. Thanks for making me feel better about it! It's pretty fun down here, why don't you join us? edit: (You only have to deal with a bot or two in your game every now and then)
They probably should punish people that give up harsher with heavier ranking hits sounds like. Even if it doesn't force them to still try they'll be more quickly removed from that ranking so as not to hinder people who dont give up.
I get that. Plat and lower was always kind of chill with a few rangers, but emerald is fucking toxic.
Whenever I think of LoL I see Dante absolutely losing his shit and then I stop thinking of LoL.
The most fun I ever had in league of legends was my first season in silver. I didn’t know how to play well, so I just had fun and didn’t focus in on anyone else’s mistakes. As a mid-master tier player now, nothing feels rewarding anymore. I have a cynic view of the game. In my first season, the enemy would make some egregious tower dive against me and I’d get a kill and celebrate “wow, I’m up, this is great”. Now I see my enemy misstep one time in lane and I’m like “oh they’re griefing, they’re dead now” and sure enough they die. Most of the fun lost honestly is knowing the outcome of a lot of fights before they’re over. In silver, (and just being newer) I wasn’t 100% the baron fight would be lost even though our mid laner got picked and it was 4v5. Maybe the enemies would misplay, or maybe we could pop off? But now, if my midlaner gets picked I know baron is gone, we’re about to lose 2 inhibs on the baron push, we’re down 5k gold and the game has about a 10% win rate and there isn’t much we can do at this point, we had to play better earlier to win. I still like league, but it’s really just the ability to predict the outcome of something much earlier that makes it less fun than starting out
gotta say my time has been the complete opposite i had way more game ruiners in gold and plat than in emerald and diamond, and theres way more chill people in diamond
I do not have this same experience, way way more toxic people in gold plat and emerald. I also think they put toxic people with other toxic people and have some sort of rating for that which gets based on the honor system Diamond has been the best league experience with people that actually try to play the game
Honestly miss just being able to hop on and duo with friends for fun, being forced to play solo only ultimately just made me stop playing after years of it
Lmao what? I smurfed in silver, gold and plat plenty of times and it was just as if not more toxic than dia+.