Hey folks. I'm currently in the middle of doing a small study on the social discourse in League of Legends and thought it would be interesting to hear about some of the experiences other people have had interacting with other players in the game. If you have stories to tell I'd really appreciate if you could share them, or just tell me about your general feelings on the community at large. I'll take what I can get! If you're inclined to post, no format is necessary but if you could give me some indication of how regularly you play the game, that'd be fantastic. Thanks.

Upon beginning the study I was entirely new to LoL and MOBA games in general, so it was an interesting opportunity for me to learn a bit more about this vastly popular genre. I've sunk roughly 15-ish hours into LoL and that time with the game has given me a good first-hand look at some of the ways players communicate online. I've learned about the ways in which the game encourages and discourages toxic behaviour, the 'code' players adopt to communicate strategies more seamlessly and simply the complexity of the game's mechanics. I don't know if I have the time or patience to keep playing League regularly but I feel far more knowledge about MOBAs after this little experiment. When I was watching that Paragon quick look earlier I was surprised by how much I could understand about that game, having never played it before.

Mostly I just go in and pretend to be marketing Clash Royale nowadays. It gets a laugh out of some players.

I have played a lot of League of Legends over the years and still play a lot. Currently ranked Platinum 3 but have spent time in gold and silver. If you have any more guided or specific questions I would be happy to answer them if I could.

As for the community, it's largely shit. The new matchmaking system they introduced seems to have lowered toxicity a little bit, but most games still seem to have at least one asshole, usually on the losing team.

I don't have any specific stories, but here's something interesting i don't think a lot of players would bring up even if they've experienced it. There have been multiple occasions where I've played a game with someone toxic(probably lost) and then been matched with them again the next game. I Always say something if I get matched with someone I recognize, regardless of their behavior or quality of play(sometimes admittedly I could still be a little tilted and greet them referencing one of those two factors or even just an "ugh"). However, in those instances, I have never had that person be toxic from the jump. Usually they either say nothing or apologize. There have even been times where they seemed like a totally different person in game(probably winning). I'm not defending their behavior, I just think it's interesting how far some people fall because of this game.

A few months back my friend and I would play ARAM every day for several hours. I'd say about every 4 out of 5 games the time the community was nice, or they didn't talk, but occasionally you'd get a dickhead that expects you to know how to play every single hero, so if you are unfortunate enough to get a random hero you've never played and you're unfortunate enough to play with one of these guys, then it makes the game significantly less fun, because they're trash talking you the entire game. It honestly happened frequently enough to the point that my friend and I just muted the other players right away. It made us lose a tool to communicate with our team, and that honestly probably lost us a good amount of games, but having someone trash talk, even if it's not directly at you, really makes the game significantly less fun.

I've only played a handful of normal 5v5 matches, but the last one I played I tried to play Soraka support and had some guy trash talking me the entire game because according to him, I didn't heal him in time so he died. Every single time he died he blamed it completely on me. The ADC I was playing with defended me from the guy, but even with that, the experience soured my entire experience with the game. I don't play games to be shit on by other people, so that was the last 5v5 match I played.

Edit: Oh, I got another story. One time my friends and I made a 5-man group, so we played some matches. We went up against this team that destroyed us, COMPLETELY destroyed us, and they were taunting us in our base instead of just ending it. Then out of the blue, they did a surrender vote and gave us the victory. We were completely baffled at the time, but looking back at it now, I think the enemy team did it to be dicks, because since the game thought we won that match, we were placed against teams that were much better than us, and we had a string of losses after that.

I had played LoL for about 2-3 months like 2 years ago. My friends got me into it, and playing with them had been a ton of fun.

I stopped because not playing with them was an absolutely miserable experience. The amount of venom and vitriol that people spit forth literally every game took a toll on me to the point where I decided to just stop playing. The games just stopped being fun. Constant blaming, put-downs and shitting on your own teammates and their alleged mistakes sucked all of the joy out of winning... don't even get me started on losing. Oh man. Losing a game in LoL has to be among the most miserable experiences I've ever felt while playing a game. The community is an absolute nightmare for people who don't know what they're doing and just want to learn the game by playing. Every game felt like I was playing in a national championship stress-wise, but none of the payoff of such stakes was there for me should I win.

As a dotaplayer i find that talking at the start can boost morale (we have an english speaker, he wants to win). Ofcourse if a player has a bad time during a game he might turn negative. At that point, you either help him out and throw out some ' well played' when he gets a kill, to turn the mood around. If you realize its a lost cause and the player won't be beneficial to the team, mute him before the negativity affects your own game.

Since there are comeback mechanics in place, unless the enemy is able to snowball you still have a chance to come back later in the game. Mistakes at the start tend to matter less as the game progresses.

I used to play a fair bit of League and Dota 2. I was never amazing, but the one piece of advice I always give (and it applies to CS:GO as well, which I play more) is to never burn the bridges of communication.

Often if someone makes a mistake that looks like it could cost the team a teammate will start harassing them in some way, telling them they suck or that the match is lost and the team should surrender. The mistake most people make is trying to reason or argue with these people, as it usually just creates more hostility between players. I've seen a lot of promising teams fall apart because an argument splits the team and conversation stops.

The solution I've found is simply to keep quiet if you mess up, and always provide positive reinforcement to good plays by your teammates, even your antagonizer. I've had many games turn around because a teammate frustrated by a bad play isn't turned on by the rest of the team, and is more willing to acknowledge good plays made by someone who messed up early.

Sometimes people are set on being vitriolic and sometimes people just can't take being ragged on by others, and there's not much to be done about that.

The vast majority of the games I've played has been in a group of 3-5 of my friends. The few times I did play alone however, I actually managed to chat up some new buddies and join up in their teams and stuff. I actually generally had a decent experience. Some people I met through league are long lasting connections that bled outside of the game as well.

You most definitely get the sea of trolls and assholes, but I kinda felt like they cropped up more often as the 1-2 leftover spots on the team. While when I took up one of those spots on another groups team we had a good time. It's not hard to imagine an A-B-C where assholes just inevitably end up queuing alone, so in matches with lonely queuers is where you'll find them.

There's someone on youtube called Sky Williams (not sure if I can post his youtube channel since that could go agains da rulz) and he gets a lot of things right when it comes to the community.

On my own personal experiences I have played a lot of League. More than a 1000 matches on Normals alone and I have no idea how many on Ranked. I don't do so good because I will admit to raging because it just sucks that you are trying your best and some guy just wants to troll and I would usually just do Solo. But now I've found people who are like me that want to do better and we become friends. This has made me do WAY better because to more you group up the better you do because you end up with less trolls, or only trolls on the other team and that's fine by me just makes the win easier.