Author Topic: The 'League of Legends' team of scientists trying to cure toxic behavior online  (Read 8592 times)

Offline Wingflier

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http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/10/13/3498092/the-league-of-legends-team-of-scientists-cure-toxic-behavior-online

I want this thread to be proof that I don't ONLY have bad things to say about Riot or League of Legends.  I think this "initiative" that they have started is extremely important, and I'm excited to see the results.  I think all DotA-likes could learn a lot from what Riot is doing in this field.

When I read about chat being off by default, and having to "opt-in" to participate, it immediately impacted me as a stroke of genius.  I have a best friend who doesn't mind a little friendly competition, but HATES online games because of how negative and hateful people can be when he makes the slightest mistake.  When he plays with me we have to go through all the trouble of turning off the chat on his screen (it helps that League doesn't have built-in voice chat, though this is also one of its greatest weaknesses as well) in order for him to have a good gaming experience.

It makes completely sense for this to be the default state of the chat, and I'm amazed that nobody thought of this before!

So League players, explain to me how this new "chat opt-in" system works.  Do you opt-in when you enter the game?  How do you do it, through the options?  Do you have to "opt-in" every single game, or do you just opt-in one time and it saves your preference?

I have no interest in playing League of Legends but I am interested to know how this particular aspect of their new system works.
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Offline Wingflier

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Some humurous responses to the same article in the HoN forums:

Quote
What a bullshit carebear community. I'm glad HON would never do something silly like this. Best online gaming community bar none!
Quote
On topic: I regard the HoN community the same way as the german commercial for the mint "Fisherman's friend" says about them - "If they are too strong, then you are too weak."
This is not everyone's enviroment, just like the desert or freaking Alaska. If it's too "toxic", then you're obviously too weak-willed to fit in and you have to find a more suitable place like Dota 2 or LoL. I personally hope to whatever god may exist that S2 won't turn this manly game in to a care-bear faschistic pony-land (yes, enforcing everyone to be happy and friendly conformists through a set of rigid rules is faschistic behaviour) like LoL is.
I agree that it could benefit from bots and a similar "karma" system (btw, if they took "honor", HoN should take "karma"), but don't start doing that tribunal system or friendly pony stuff becouse it blows.
I guess it's obvious why this kind of idea is necessary ;p
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Offline Volatar

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So League players, explain to me how this new "chat opt-in" system works.  Do you opt-in when you enter the game?  How do you do it, through the options?  Do you have to "opt-in" every single game, or do you just opt-in one time and it saves your preference?

Cross team chat is disabled by default. Team chat is still enabled. Under one of the options screens there is a checkbox to enable cross team chat. It remembers this preference.

Offline Wingflier

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Hmmm interesting.  Is there now an option in the settings to easily disable the team-chat as well?  It used to be quite a task - certainly much harder than it should be considering the circumstances.
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Offline Volatar

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Hmmm interesting.  Is there now an option in the settings to easily disable the team-chat as well?  It used to be quite a task - certainly much harder than it should be considering the circumstances.

I don't remember. I'll go look right now.

No, there is no way to disable team chat in the options. This is what the more options screen looks like, with the beforementioned cross team chat button in the lower right.

http://i.minus.com/ibxDxyDoj8pI8Z.png

However, I will note that it is super easy to mute people when needed, including your team mates if necessary. Simply hold tab or press O for the score screen and on the right side there is a set of buttons to ignore people with one click. They are in the red box in this image when actual players are involved. I just fired up a custom game with some bots though.

http://i.minus.com/iCWowEA9zmeAr.png

Offline Echo35

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How about they work on their toxic company AM I RITE?

Offline Wingflier

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How about they work on their toxic company AM I RITE?
YES!

YOU WIN THE INTERNET TODAY.
"Inner peace is the void of expectation. It is the absence of our shared desperation to feel a certain way."

Offline keith.lamothe

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Why on earth would he want the internet?
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Offline Wingflier

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He gets all of it.  Just for today.
"Inner peace is the void of expectation. It is the absence of our shared desperation to feel a certain way."

Offline Coppermantis

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It really strikes me as strange as to why the LoL/HoN/DotA communities are so hostile towards each other and themselves. Even this forum, which is usually very pleasant has gotten kind of flamey when dealing with this sort of stuff. I haven't seen so much conflict even between the CoD/Battlefield Communities. It makes me wonder what about this set of games makes people so hostile. One could argue that it's the competitive nature, but games like Starcraft have big competitive elements and those communities are mostly pleasant.

Anyway, good on Riot for trying to reduce it. As the guy in the article said, they won't be able to stop it but if they can at least reduce toxic behavior that would be awesome and it might actually get me to try out LoL. I like their Honor initiative: Using a "carrot", that is, rewarding good behavior is superior to using a stick method to cull hostility.

This reminds me of Valve's statement that they would punish rude players by putting some limit on them with DotA 2, but I forget exactly what that was. I seem to remember something about paying extra, but that seems to me like a terrible idea.
I can already tell this is going to be a roller coaster ride of disappointment.

Offline keith.lamothe

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Getting a large group of people to treat each other decently in an anonymous medium is a much harder problem than any I have encountered in programming or game design :)
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Offline Aklyon

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Getting a large group of people to treat each other decently in an anonymous medium is a much harder problem than any I have encountered in programming or game design :)
An anonymous, heavily team-based medium is even worse it seems. :)

Offline KingIsaacLinksr

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It really strikes me as strange as to why the LoL/HoN/DotA communities are so hostile towards each other and themselves. Even this forum, which is usually very pleasant has gotten kind of flamey when dealing with this sort of stuff. I haven't seen so much conflict even between the CoD/Battlefield Communities. It makes me wonder what about this set of games makes people so hostile. One could argue that it's the competitive nature, but games like Starcraft have big competitive elements and those communities are mostly pleasant.

Anyway, good on Riot for trying to reduce it. As the guy in the article said, they won't be able to stop it but if they can at least reduce toxic behavior that would be awesome and it might actually get me to try out LoL. I like their Honor initiative: Using a "carrot", that is, rewarding good behavior is superior to using a stick method to cull hostility.

This reminds me of Valve's statement that they would punish rude players by putting some limit on them with DotA 2, but I forget exactly what that was. I seem to remember something about paying extra, but that seems to me like a terrible idea.

One word: fanboyism.

Fanboyism, for whatever reason, makes people blind to the flaws of the company and will make them evangelize about how great their company is and how great their game is. For whatever reason, pointing out the flaws in that game makes them react as if you spoke ill of their own mother, and how dare you point out (legit) flaws in a flawless game!! Etc and so forth. Its a disturbing trend to see gamers act like this...I really wish they didn't because it fuels some really stupid behavior from these communities.

Which, btw, companies love fanboys. Best advertising ever.
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Offline Coppermantis

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It really strikes me as strange as to why the LoL/HoN/DotA communities are so hostile towards each other and themselves. Even this forum, which is usually very pleasant has gotten kind of flamey when dealing with this sort of stuff. I haven't seen so much conflict even between the CoD/Battlefield Communities. It makes me wonder what about this set of games makes people so hostile. One could argue that it's the competitive nature, but games like Starcraft have big competitive elements and those communities are mostly pleasant.

Anyway, good on Riot for trying to reduce it. As the guy in the article said, they won't be able to stop it but if they can at least reduce toxic behavior that would be awesome and it might actually get me to try out LoL. I like their Honor initiative: Using a "carrot", that is, rewarding good behavior is superior to using a stick method to cull hostility.

This reminds me of Valve's statement that they would punish rude players by putting some limit on them with DotA 2, but I forget exactly what that was. I seem to remember something about paying extra, but that seems to me like a terrible idea.

One word: fanboyism.

Fanboyism, for whatever reason, makes people blind to the flaws of the company and will make them evangelize about how great their company is and how great their game is. For whatever reason, pointing out the flaws in that game makes them react as if you spoke ill of their own mother, and how dare you point out (legit) flaws in a flawless game!! Etc and so forth. Its a disturbing trend to see gamers act like this...I really wish they didn't because it fuels some really stupid behavior from these communities.

Which, btw, companies love fanboys. Best advertising ever.

Of course, but for some reason MOBA fanboyism is more intense than FPS or RTS fanboyism. Or perhaps it's just the communities that I hang out in, which are either so small that almost everyone is like-minded or are forums revolving around strategy games (Here, TeamLiquid, SC2 Battle.Net) and strategy games aren't so competitive with one another. CoD and Battlefield are pretty competitive from what I hear but I don't hang out with a lot of people who play those games intensely.

And there's still in-game BM, which from what I've seen is pretty terrible in LoL at least. The community is just generally intolerant of others' mess-ups, whereas in other games I play (Planetside 2, Starcraft 2, Team Fortress 2 (2!)) most people are really polite or at least neutral towards the newbies or just plain unskilled players.

I can already tell this is going to be a roller coaster ride of disappointment.

Offline Wingflier

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Quote
And there's still in-game BM, which from what I've seen is pretty terrible in LoL at least. The community is just generally intolerant of others' mess-ups, whereas in other games I play (Planetside 2, Starcraft 2, Team Fortress 2 (2!)) most people are really polite or at least neutral towards the newbies or just plain unskilled players.
I think I can explain that:  At least partially.

DotA 2 is a very competitive game, where every team member is EXPECTED to play to their fullest.  I personally don't think LoL is a very competitive game, but the same rule applies in that each team member is expected to play to their fullest.  If you didn't come to bring your A-Game, then why the hell are you wasting 4 other people's time?  That's my philosophy on it.  You can play bot games or play something else if you just want to mess around and be casual.  There's an unwritten rule that when you play a competitive matchmaking game where ratings are at stake, that you're going to take it seriously.

To give a good example:  My cousin.  He's been playing DotA for as long as I have, which is around 9 years.  After nine years, I EXPECT him to know and do certain things that should be plainly obvious and routine for a player that has been around for that long.

So we played a game last night where I was the carry in the lane and he was the support.  I was Priestess of the Moon and he was Venomancer, and we were laning against a solo Bounty Hunter.

Now, in any logical or just Universe, Bounty Hunter should get little or no farm in that lane.  If both PotM and Veno are doing what they're supposed to be doing, it's going to be a wash for him, and he'll probably die several times too:  Which is why the lane is aptly named "the suicide lane".

However, my retarded cousin failed in many basic ways throughout that game (starting with the lane), and eventually was (in my opinion) the main reason for us to lose:

1) After 9 years, he still doesn't know how to creep pull.  What a freaking retard.
-This means that I, the carry, instead had to creep pull, missing important farm and opportunities to harass Bounty Hunter.
2) He never upgraded the courier.  (See next point)
3) He never spent 200 gold for sentry wards or 180 gold for dust for Bounty Hunter. 
-We got Bounty Hunter low several times, but he would just go invisible and run away before we could secure the kill.  If Logan hadn't been so selfish and had spent a little money on some form of detection, we definitely would have killed him a couple times, and denied a lot more of his farm as well.  The upgraded courier would have made the detection items faster to get to our lane as well.
4) He was constantly fighting with me for last hits. 
-As the support YOU DON'T FIGHT YOUR CARRY FOR LAST HITS.  My farm was miserable because A) He doesn't know how to pull and B) He fights with the carry for last hits.  This would ALMOST be okay if he got the last hits, but he doesn't even take them, he just messes them up so you can't get them.

I will tell you right now, that if I had been SOLO in that lane, I would have done significantly better than I did with Logan there.  I wouldn't have had to fight with him for lasts hits, meaning I would have gotten more farm, and a lot more exp as well.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about:  Logan is not a stupid person.  He's been playing the game long enough to know what he's supposed to be doing.  He just doesn't care.  Little things like this are just annoying to him, he'd rather just play the game without worrying about all the details.  I'm sorry, but if you're doing that you're playing the wrong game.  There were several more things he did that game that were unbelievably stupid and could have been easily avoided, but he'd rather just play with half his brain turned off instead.

When you try to approach him with issues like the ones I just laid out after the game, he gets extremely defensive and angry, starts blaming everyone else but himself, and says, "What the f*** do you want me to do man, I was trying my best!"

No, you weren't trying your best, because sometimes he does actually try his best, and when he does, he's a damn good player.

To me, that's where the frustration comes in these games.  Team Fortress is just a casual game so obviously most people aren't going to rage over a teammate that is just goofing off.  Starcraft 2 is a game that would be difficult to goof off in, simply because it's so effort and skill-intensive.  Unfortunately these DotA games allow you to goof off and still contribute somewhat to your team, because you're only controlling 1 unit the entire time (for the most part).

For me at least, that's where the anger comes from.  If you aren't playing to win, don't join my game.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2012, 10:34:34 am by Wingflier »
"Inner peace is the void of expectation. It is the absence of our shared desperation to feel a certain way."