Canada balances out the NA, making it a better environment :^) Also "toxic" is now a blanket word for criticism. Just like how "trolling" is now just making a joke. (Which by the way, it isn't.)
I don't completely understand the 2nd part. Are you saying people often take criticism as someone is cursing at the for doing badly (so they are overreacting) or are you saying it's a modern synonym?
i really enjoy listening to your thoughts and i also agree about the wrong definition for toxicity by riot. its the internet and ppl are playing a competetive video game.
Great video. You didnt even fully cover all the relevant issues around the axes of stereotypes and toxicity but for what you did cover you did an excellent work at.
fucking finally, someone actually puts this whole clusterfuck of a topic into a concise & eloquent explanation. you are spot on about pretty much everything. great video, your best for a while. also, "oh that singed top what a rascal" LOLD SO HARD
very nice video, wonderful explanation, As a former EUW playing in NA i feel this every time. It was just normal for me in EUW. but these guys in NA take their toxic way too seriously. Like you said riot should define their toxic-ness. Great job thooorin, hats off.
to be honest for me on euw its got to the point where everyone flames for fun now, i used to get offended by it but now i talk back as sometimes its fun to argue, and now i like it when someone flames me i like it as i find it fun to talk shit back, and most of the time after we flamed eachother we both dont get offended and say ggs
+Adrelandro Wilding If someone is flaming you, mute them. If you are the one flaming, flame them out loud, not in chat. You get to express your anger and they don't hear about it, so it's a win-win. That's how I do it and I've never had issues with the tribunal.
Thooorin As far as Riot goes I think the reason they ab it over board sometimes with it is cause they want to make LoL look more professional. When you look at let's say NFL players get punished all the time for basically making the NFL look bad as a brand. An NFL player would never be aloud to hard core shit talk a fan. The issue is in League pros have to play with and against "fans" whereas an NFL player has a strong barrier between themselves and their fans so its easier to slip up as an LoL pro. Not to mention most of the pros are young and don't have agents and everything to help teach about being a professional and someone others look up to.
Amen Thorin, This is why i hate the people who condemn people who ask "why did you do such and such?" and say that people shouldn't ask or say "why", it isn't a disney fantasy movie it's a game/sport.
Good points. The thing single most responsible for actual toxicity. Is the 20 minute surrender and inability to just leave a lost game without being punished. In starcraft where a leave is just a loss there is hardly any toxicity at all. Being forced to sit and stew in your defeat just consumes all the patience players have.
I agree as well, Thooorin.I've taken sociology, so I know about the act of comparing another society by your own society's standards. I DON'T take part in the blanket stereotype, but when I have someone on my server who makes it overtly clear that they're European, there are a lot of times that they turn out to be pompous, aggressive, offensive, boisterous, etc.
This is 24 minutes of pure truth. One of my favourite videos made on LoL, it's a pity probably nothing will be done though. I loved the part about how you can criticise in sports, but if you make a constructive criticism half as harsh in league you're met with ranked restrictions. Even with a 70% winrate over 2 weeks in ranked I've gotten ranked restrictions, twice. The second lot while still being restricted for a month. How can I be restricted from something I'm not even allowed to do? Mute me for life, I couldn't care less, but ranked restrictions just because I'll ask someone what they're doing when they're 0-9? The punishment has nothing to do with the supposed "crime" anyway,
Only a slight mistake you made at around 14:00: Ireland's first language is English too. :P You're pretty much correct though; culture between each European country can be radically different, it's insane. Yet I don't think really there are much trolling or anger on the server; its no worse than what I've seen in FPSes like TF2.
I have a simple idea about "toxicity" in league, and it basically comes down to people are confounded by the idea that the fate of their time investment in a game can be affected by someone who can't do something right, as they might view it. As for whether or not it's true, that'll go to case-by-case. I personally just don't like to hear people swearing, I'm a delicate soul :3 I don't mind trash talk if they also have something legitimate to say, but otherwise they're just spouting garbage that I have no real reason to care about.
Its true, Americans don't have much experience interacting with people from other cultures, and we generally operate with a sense of entitlement about others needing to conform to the way we do business.
You can be banned for feeding as well Thorin. Back when tribunal was a thing, I saw that type of case a lot. Where someone would have multiple games where they had a 16+ deaths and minimal kills and assists, with a chat log that shows his team / the enemy commenting on it. So your claim that Riot only cares about text based crimes, and not in game crimes, is silly. Also, when Riot says that 'on average' angry players lose 20% more games, they are talking overall, not specifically one region or one player.
So why is it that NA pros and top players can make so much money with streaming while the european counterparts can't? I assume it's because the french pro will stream in french and the german pro will stream in german etc., hence having a lot less potential viewership?
Pros are possibly the statistical outlier of the normal distribution from that stats that riot provide so I would tend to believe that the stats are true that you see in the tips, but this could be skewed based on your language point. I would also like to believe that Riot takes the time with cases when dealing with pros and not just glancing at a random percent. I did like the point about english being the common language but not being the players first language, I saw this a lot with exchange students during high school. Either way interesting video.
That thing where people report other people just because they can in high masters+, that's why I call EUW toxic, that and banning out your own teammates champions when you know what they play/wanna practice, it's soooooooooo fucked up.
Does anyone actually argue that the people themselves in EUW are toxic? I always heard it as the player behavior on the server itself is worse, and that isn't only Americans claiming it, it's usually from the EU players themselves. I figure it would be obvious that the server behaviors would be different due to the culture differences. Still, enjoyed the breakdown on why you think it might be the case. Anyway, try to go easy on some of the Americans, when living here it's easy to forget that we're not the center of the universe. The majority of the stuff we consume is by us, for us - we're not surrounded by a ton of different countries like EU is.
Great vid man, I find another large problem when Americans are looking in on us EUW players is that they do not understand at all the way in which we can casually throw out insults to each other and think nothing of it. Sit them down and get some Dark British humor going and you got yourself one confused and angry American.
I feel you slightly missed the mark when you referenced the impact streaming money makes on NA toxicity levels. To some extent the money certainly takes the edge off a bad game, but especially early on in season 1-2 the streamers would try so desperately to prove to their viewers that they weren't at fault that they would point fingers (sometimes rightly so) and assign blame until it lead to massive amounts of negative behavior. It was only when streamers like Voyboy came around and figured out that by drinking the kool-aid and pretending everything was hunky-dory they could land and maintain higher viewer numbers that everyone started following that lead. So my point is that it's not so much the money taking all the pressure off and giving them some euphoric view of the world but instead that all the monetary pressure enforces that mode of thinking.
Every time I hear these "EUW is so toxic" kind of comment I remember how ever since I migrated from it to the BR server, due to moving back overseas, all the HUE has constantly sapped my will to go into soloq... ffs, the people in the HUE server so clearly remind me of why I always avoid them everywhere
I've been employing that passive aggressive attitude of typing "wp" after each time my teammate (no matter the laneI) feeds of a kill in the most stupid manner possible. Now the question to everyone reading the comment: How do you harass people without getting on the radar of the tribunal and - at the same time - do not obviously troll ingame, as in: Intentionally running into towers?
I've noticed that younger people are more shit talky and understand it as that and just become friends at the end in cs, which is why it is funner to play than LoL because it's like a bunch of soccer moms protecting their kid.
I find it funny how we think this is only a problem with EU and that NA is the bar that is set for being toxic. When in reality it's a whole crusade started to "clean" up online gameing. In that we all know that if the cyber bully crap was never a issue the whole toxic player thing would be a much smaller issue. From any country it's our right to say shit on the internet.
The only problem with your argument thoorin is that those pros actually do the intentional feeding and afking you speak of.They aren't just misunderstood and there is a reason why they are getting reported 24/7.The problem of getting spam reported in high elo by the same peopleis real and I hope riot have looked at it but doubt it.
I was once chat banned for ''being'' toxic in LoL. I was allowed veiw the games which lead to ban. I did not write a word in all of those 3 games :DDDD
Thoorin, for all the respect I have for you generally having sound logic, this was a really disappointing post. Being in the Dota scene much more than LoL, I can tell you for a fact this isn't just some "strange coincidence" that it's really bad in LoL. Toxicity is a rampant issue in Dota. In fact, it's been really well (and importantly) emphasized issue recently between top players, community figures, and even Valve to some degree. There's many well-known total blow-ups even pros have had, even while they're streaming with their camera on. Your conclusion of "it's too abnormal to have this much of a problem, therefore we must be misusing the word toxicity" logic is a poor one. Of course there some scenarios where it's misused or abused, but that's not reason to brush off the majority. There's an alternative you're not thinking of -- LoL and Dota are both very different *types* of games than SC2, CS. or even Call of Duty, etc. The time commitment and required team play nature of the games, is unlike those. Not only are the games 30-60+ minutes, thus making the penalty for a loss much worse, but you are much more at the mercy of your team playing really well around you. In CS:GO, if one of your teammates is regularly feeding for the first few rounds, you still have a reasonable chance of winning. In LoL and Dota, that's nearly impossible. Additionally, if someone is an a-hole, you're stuck with them for an hour. All that to say, that's a lot of tension and anxiety that can build up, and a recipe for anger, as the body's "fight or flight" system gets ramped up without any release. Further, you're suggesting that NA players don't understand EU culture because they're not EU. By that logic, you can't make that assertion, because you yourself are not NA, and thus cannot understand NA culture. That's simply not true. Now, to varying degrees, yes, all cultures are different, even wildly different between different parts of the US or CA. But as a whole, the majority of people would agree that NA and EU cultures are very comparable, and certainly hardly differing to the point where degrading or bullying is simply "laughed at" and not a real issue any more in EU as in NA, as you suggest. Additionally, in my experience, people who get generally worked up over things (i.e. passionate) tend to notice it less, or experience it far less negatively/seriously. It's possible that this clouds your viewpoint. TLDR: While I agree with your premise that it's out of the ordinary that players are much more toxic in LoL than in real-life or other games, the more rational conclusion is the environment the game genre creates. Dismissing the problem as non-existant is not only illogical, but also dismisses the critical need for players to work on bringing a positive attitude to their play.
Totally agree that we must put things in their cultural context. But to use anecdotes about THE BEST PLAYERS IN THE WORLD to make your argument is a bit silly. Not saying I buy Riots stat on how "toxicity" impacts win rate, but in the context of NA I do believe your doing yourself a disservice by calling people out. Most of the time people just get defensive and it becomes a pointless exorcise. In my experience calling people out on mistakes even in a "nice" way rarely helps and more often hurts your chances of winning.
To your last point: LoL is attracting toxic players. LoL is made to attract big masses. This results in a wide playerbase with a lot of casuals who just want to play/win in their freetime without much effort. When they lose, they need a reason for it. Because of playing casually, they will not practice and will not look for faults in their gameplay, they will think "I lost because this guy fucked up!", thus resulting in flame. While the percentage of players who takes the game serious and who want to compete with others will be small with such a big playerbase. Those will take the game seriously and try to get better
I played on EUNE, EUW , NA and TR and i can say TR and EUNE is completly toxic, it is unbearable. EUW is better compared both servers but comapared to NA it is still too much toxic.
I really like all Thorin's Thoughts videos, but I think you messed this one up because you failed to differentiate between trash talk aimed at the enemy team and trash talk aimed at your own team. That point would completely change your argument on how "toxic" language is common in across sports. Yes, trash talking the opposition is common in many sports and it's considered a legitimate tactic, because you want to psychologically shake them, or put them on tilt. But trash talking your own team mates is not nearly the same thing. Imagine if one ball player said to his own team mate "You're shit. Quit the team. Don't show up for practice tomorrow. We are better without you, even man down", especially in the middle of a game. There's no way that flies in any culture. I think you were intellectually dishonest when you selectively used whichever one was convenient for your point.
Yeah. I had one game when someone didnt get jungle, he picked nunu and followed me around in the jungle and ate the camp. People like those shouldnt honestly be born, if i tell them that they are fucking shitty assholes, that is not being toxic. It is not even insulting, it is just stating a fact. In the end of the game, obviously he had some 1/3 stats, pretty much like mine, and noone in the tribunal could ever tell you if he or i was the toxic troll that picked double jungle and fucked up the game. I can understand that it is even harder for a player who is dedicated to the game and winning the game in really high elo with a more competitive mindset to keep calm about such stuff.
I'll tell you who is toxic, the overwhelming majority of players in NA who play CS. I know it's a different game, but I am just appalled by many of the people who play in NA. I never play CS without my friends in Mumble anymore.
I think League has a trend towards toxicity due to: a) Age range. Duo to the apparent simplicity of the game (at least at a casual level), kids from 11 years onward play it, and its no unknown fact that the "internet impunity" tends to make kids speak shit way above their shoulder height. b) Extreme need for cooperation. Being a 5v5 game, the desperate need of a fairly decent team in order to win (we are not talking Trynds roflstomping on lvl 13 players) makes every display of "idgaf about winning" attitude that much more irritating. Much more so when as a semi grown up you've got 2hs at best to relax and play and need to deal with annoying munchkins who just saw Voyboy go AP Trynd and they think its an excelent idea to do so. These two are almost non-factors in games like SC, in which everyone mainly depends on themselves and game is too complex and high skillcapped for brats to even waste their time in trying to learn it. Just a theory, feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong and have a civilized discussion. PS: Sorry for long post and non-native english :
So a few things on that topic. 1st that money argument is rediculous 2nd League makes you a worse person while in game: I met somebody at a tournament, hes a nice person, than i make a game with him and he and his friend bullied a jarvan (he wasnt even that bad) for so long that he left the game in a fucking ARAM. Thats what league turns us into.
Shit happens 24/7 in mid-high diamond in NA. I've been a few times to master elo, it really stops there. but i see it literally half the games people will report others just for playing poorly, or complaining at all. And then when you call them a douchebag for false reporting "verbal abuse" when you've literally complained once, and not even with any insults, they say "hey hey you all see that? PROVES THAT HE WAS TOXIC!" I see it all the time. You're not even allowed to complain on NA half the time, people literally call it toxic even when you don't insult a single person, not just these trolls i'm describing. But those people will just go for a "negative attitude" report, which is technically accurate, but a fucking joke to get banned for being "negative". That's why me as a person just doesn't say jack shit to people. It wasn't always this way, but ever since season two ish, people just became more and more nazi-like in their requirements of what your attitude had to be. Used to be, as long as you didn't insult anyone, you never got reported and you never got anything. Back in season 1 and early season 2, on na there was TONS of cursing and verbal abuse just everywhere, but then as tribunal came along it disappeared, and transformed into this "can't argue or be negative" bullshit. A solution that really helped me was downloading a keyboard program that allowed you to disable certain keys, so i just disabled enter before every league game, until i got the hang of just literally not saying anything to anyone. I'd feel good after like 10 games, but then i'd start arguing with someone, get reported, and go back on it for a while. It's a really good way to help you get self-control, because it's not easy for a lot of people, especially the argumentative type like myself.
Your entire rant about if Mexico had it's own server and we had NA east and West showed your lack of knowledge about servers. This was a HUGE problem with the BR servers and them coming over to the NA server instead because of bad relations with Riot and the general toxic behavior on the server. I don't know how you missed the period of time where huehuehue was an instant report on NA servers because of how toxic the BR players on the NA servers were.
I gotta disagree with you about the "people who swear lose more games" statistics. To me, it basically just means that if you swear, you destroy team synergy. People don't wanna cooperate with you anymore, and in the end you'll probably be arguing and become enemies other allies. Now this doesn't apply to pro level cause most of these guys put victory before this kind of stuff. Therefore incarnati0n's example isn't really relevant. To me, displaying that statistic aims at making players realise that if you're "mean" to others, then you're not really a team anymore. Back to watching the vid :3
I remember here in Australia when our German teacher told us how Germans are always honest to the point of insulting their best friends, everyone in our class just looked at each other with shock, as we're used to lying for the sake of being friendly. Different cultures are interesting to compare :P
Well you can't compare the best of the best players who happen to be toxic to the enormous community full of people who suck and are toxic to say the stats aren't true.
matchmaking just promotes toxicity since it always tries to get you to 50% win ratio and it gives you a worse team and their team is better every game if you keep wining
I think a lot of it is people being way too sensitive. In another game, whether its online or a sport it would be along the lines of banter, is labeled as toxic by the league community. I mean come on, this random guy online you're never going to interact with again just said your a terrible player, if that really hurts your feelings you have more problems than being bad at league.
And i'm saying toxicity in the big picture, afk, flamers, trolls etc.. It happens everywere but it's really worse on EUW, at least that's my experience
hugooooooo000000 Imo (played na, euw, eune) Euw has the most afkers (from rage), eune has alot off flamers but they usually dosn´t speak alot of english so it´s just hillarious :P NA has more trolls (not unconventionall, just not giving a f***). For me Eune works the best, but it´s becuse I can laugh when people flame, overall I feel like the Euw afkers makes you the most sad, since you got no chance, you can carry the NA trolls cause they actually do stuff, an afk is pretty bad.
hugooooooo000000 No you haven't, KR have most afk players in world, KR and EUW is similar in terms of "toxity", KR is imo much more toxic, im diamond 5 in EUW(have really high ping) and Master 1 in KR and Diamond 1in NA, NA has most trollers... Clearly you havent played in all 3, you probably cant even access KR servers-
Zibbit27 Ok first of all I nerver stated ive played on kr server. Second just becuse your experience is diffrent dosnt mean your right. The funny part is that you agree with me but say korea is worse, when clearely state ive only played euw, eune and na...
Zibbit27 I lived an entire semester on KR in a sort of Erasmus for my university and was playing for 6 months on the KR server. I'm just a gold scrub, on the 3 servers, but from my experience, EUW is the worst one. It's also the one where i play usually (i live in EU), but ye. In NA i played also for 4-5 months, and rly enjoyed the people in the server overall.
Canada balances out the NA, making it a better environment :^)
Also "toxic" is now a blanket word for criticism. Just like how "trolling" is now just making a joke. (Which by the way, it isn't.)
I don't completely understand the 2nd part.
Are you saying people often take criticism as someone is cursing at the for doing badly (so they are overreacting) or are you saying it's a modern synonym?
Canadians are toxic and introverted, stop talking crap, and reason why west coast is toxic is because it's full of mexicans and asians
*****
Ok, that's what I thought, but you can never be sure enough.
Thank you. :)
Hiiwa Hch a Stealthy guy Err, thanks for proving my point I guess, continue being racist if you feel like it.
On point here.
i really enjoy listening to your thoughts and i also agree about the wrong definition for toxicity by riot. its the internet and ppl are playing a competetive video game.
13:20 - 16:57
This is the key point in the video for me. Well done Thorin. Why am I only watching your videos now and not earlier?
i agree, thorn. my teams are so toxic this is why i lose and stuck on bronzy belo bell... gg
wow this guy is on every video I watch, that´s so sad :P
yea maybe you should take a break zeptuz1
qqqtpie yea and maybe you should come up with an original name :)
Great video. You didnt even fully cover all the relevant issues around the axes of stereotypes and toxicity but for what you did cover you did an excellent work at.
fucking finally, someone actually puts this whole clusterfuck of a topic into a concise & eloquent explanation. you are spot on about pretty much everything. great video, your best for a while.
also, "oh that singed top what a rascal" LOLD SO HARD
europia is le toxic, but also na because im sunk in bronze elo hell, i should be challenger but cant because toxic teammates, gg
Great video and great series keep up good work Thorin!
Thanks for this video Thooorin. I found it to be very interesting and a real eye opener. :)
Amazing video thorin, you really got the point across, atleast to me. Keep it up, I really enjoy your thoughts.
I apprecaite your opinion mate. have a good christmas
"Toxicity" is a buzzword used by Riot if they dislike something/
*used by Riot* ... right
What is Thoorin's ign @ League of Legends?
really liked this video, nice work thorin!
Thorin, can we hear your thoughts on Amazon/Twitch acquiring The GoodGame Agency?
very nice video, wonderful explanation, As a former EUW playing in NA i feel this every time. It was just normal for me in EUW. but these guys in NA take their toxic way too seriously. Like you said riot should define their toxic-ness. Great job thooorin, hats off.
to be honest for me on euw its got to the point where everyone flames for fun now, i used to get offended by it but now i talk back as sometimes its fun to argue, and now i like it when someone flames me i like it as i find it fun to talk shit back, and most of the time after we flamed eachother we both dont get offended and say ggs
I've got one question how to stop to flame if you dont want to disable chat?
+Adrelandro Wilding If someone is flaming you, mute them. If you are the one flaming, flame them out loud, not in chat. You get to express your anger and they don't hear about it, so it's a win-win. That's how I do it and I've never had issues with the tribunal.
Subscribed...
you Thooorin make thge best videos..always listening to all from reddit and finally decided to subscribe.
Really like these "thought" videos , feels real and not scripted bullshit that everyone puts up on leddit/youtube, looking forward to more
Thooorin As far as Riot goes I think the reason they ab it over board sometimes with it is cause they want to make LoL look more professional. When you look at let's say NFL players get punished all the time for basically making the NFL look bad as a brand.
An NFL player would never be aloud to hard core shit talk a fan. The issue is in League pros have to play with and against "fans" whereas an NFL player has a strong barrier between themselves and their fans so its easier to slip up as an LoL pro. Not to mention most of the pros are young and don't have agents and everything to help teach about being a professional and someone others look up to.
Amen Thorin, This is why i hate the people who condemn people who ask "why did you do such and such?" and say that people shouldn't ask or say "why", it isn't a disney fantasy movie it's a game/sport.
Good points. The thing single most responsible for actual toxicity. Is the 20 minute surrender and inability to just leave a lost game without being punished. In starcraft where a leave is just a loss there is hardly any toxicity at all. Being forced to sit and stew in your defeat just consumes all the patience players have.
I agree as well, Thooorin.I've taken sociology, so I know about the act of comparing another society by your own society's standards. I DON'T take part in the blanket stereotype, but when I have someone on my server who makes it overtly clear that they're European, there are a lot of times that they turn out to be pompous, aggressive, offensive, boisterous, etc.
This is 24 minutes of pure truth. One of my favourite videos made on LoL, it's a pity probably nothing will be done though. I loved the part about how you can criticise in sports, but if you make a constructive criticism half as harsh in league you're met with ranked restrictions. Even with a 70% winrate over 2 weeks in ranked I've gotten ranked restrictions, twice. The second lot while still being restricted for a month. How can I be restricted from something I'm not even allowed to do? Mute me for life, I couldn't care less, but ranked restrictions just because I'll ask someone what they're doing when they're 0-9? The punishment has nothing to do with the supposed "crime" anyway,
Spot on man! Great video!
that fish analogy gg
so true on so many levels and so many places not only league
Only a slight mistake you made at around 14:00: Ireland's first language is English too. :P You're pretty much correct though; culture between each European country can be radically different, it's insane. Yet I don't think really there are much trolling or anger on the server; its no worse than what I've seen in FPSes like TF2.
I have a simple idea about "toxicity" in league, and it basically comes down to people are confounded by the idea that the fate of their time investment in a game can be affected by someone who can't do something right, as they might view it. As for whether or not it's true, that'll go to case-by-case.
I personally just don't like to hear people swearing, I'm a delicate soul :3
I don't mind trash talk if they also have something legitimate to say, but otherwise they're just spouting garbage that I have no real reason to care about.
Its true, Americans don't have much experience interacting with people from other cultures, and we generally operate with a sense of entitlement about others needing to conform to the way we do business.
You can be banned for feeding as well Thorin. Back when tribunal was a thing, I saw that type of case a lot. Where someone would have multiple games where they had a 16+ deaths and minimal kills and assists, with a chat log that shows his team / the enemy commenting on it. So your claim that Riot only cares about text based crimes, and not in game crimes, is silly.
Also, when Riot says that 'on average' angry players lose 20% more games, they are talking overall, not specifically one region or one player.
So why is it that NA pros and top players can make so much money with streaming while the european counterparts can't? I assume it's because the french pro will stream in french and the german pro will stream in german etc., hence having a lot less potential viewership?
What happened to sticks and stones?
Words can hurt thou :'(
Bam. Thorin nailed this. Wish Riot would notice. Sigh.
Pros are possibly the statistical outlier of the normal distribution from that stats that riot provide so I would tend to believe that the stats are true that you see in the tips, but this could be skewed based on your language point. I would also like to believe that Riot takes the time with cases when dealing with pros and not just glancing at a random percent. I did like the point about english being the common language but not being the players first language, I saw this a lot with exchange students during high school. Either way interesting video.
I was watching Hotshot stream once. One game I saw, he didn't say or do anything bad to his team and got reported.
That NA example you made actually is real
after a long series of complicated scientific research i have found out that
EU>NA
That thing where people report other people just because they can in high masters+, that's why I call EUW toxic, that and banning out your own teammates champions when you know what they play/wanna practice, it's soooooooooo fucked up.
thanks for the viedo, but i would love to see some new cs go content.
Dota 2 is a perfect example of this. Proplayers shittalk each other, Valve, the game and everything else constantly. Nobody panics.
Didnt even know there was a stereotype that Europe was toxic.
Does anyone actually argue that the people themselves in EUW are toxic? I always heard it as the player behavior on the server itself is worse, and that isn't only Americans claiming it, it's usually from the EU players themselves. I figure it would be obvious that the server behaviors would be different due to the culture differences.
Still, enjoyed the breakdown on why you think it might be the case.
Anyway, try to go easy on some of the Americans, when living here it's easy to forget that we're not the center of the universe. The majority of the stuff we consume is by us, for us - we're not surrounded by a ton of different countries like EU is.
Hopefully, someone at Riot sees this video.
Great vid man, I find another large problem when Americans are looking in on us EUW players is that they do not understand at all the way in which we can casually throw out insults to each other and think nothing of it. Sit them down and get some Dark British humor going and you got yourself one confused and angry American.
well done keep em up!
I feel you slightly missed the mark when you referenced the impact streaming money makes on NA toxicity levels. To some extent the money certainly takes the edge off a bad game, but especially early on in season 1-2 the streamers would try so desperately to prove to their viewers that they weren't at fault that they would point fingers (sometimes rightly so) and assign blame until it lead to massive amounts of negative behavior. It was only when streamers like Voyboy came around and figured out that by drinking the kool-aid and pretending everything was hunky-dory they could land and maintain higher viewer numbers that everyone started following that lead. So my point is that it's not so much the money taking all the pressure off and giving them some euphoric view of the world but instead that all the monetary pressure enforces that mode of thinking.
Every time I hear these "EUW is so toxic" kind of comment I remember how ever since I migrated from it to the BR server, due to moving back overseas, all the HUE has constantly sapped my will to go into soloq... ffs, the people in the HUE server so clearly remind me of why I always avoid them everywhere
In case of incarnation he was not only banned for his toxic behavior but also for ddosing his opponents - hence the exception.
I've been employing that passive aggressive attitude of typing "wp" after each time my teammate (no matter the laneI) feeds of a kill in the most stupid manner possible. Now the question to everyone reading the comment: How do you harass people without getting on the radar of the tribunal and - at the same time - do not obviously troll ingame, as in: Intentionally running into towers?
I've noticed that younger people are more shit talky and understand it as that and just become friends at the end in cs, which is why it is funner to play than LoL because it's like a bunch of soccer moms protecting their kid.
toxic can apply to anything, ppl calling each other toxic when they don't even know what it means, the game itself makes completely nice people toxic
People need to stop being toxic towards Teemo
16:40 blew me off my chair
so true
I find it funny how we think this is only a problem with EU and that NA is the bar that is set for being toxic. When in reality it's a whole crusade started to "clean" up online gameing. In that we all know that if the cyber bully crap was never a issue the whole toxic player thing would be a much smaller issue. From any country it's our right to say shit on the internet.
Well if the other 9 report the one guy just to fuck with him doesn't that make the other guys toxic?
My friend is high diamond player and he is toxic in my opinion but now I watch this video he is not toxic at all he is just pro!
This has to be the first Thoughts that I completely, 100% don't agree with. Still entertaining.
Thorin - EU's biggest fanboy.
did he just drink beer mid rant?
nice video, gotta throw in that cs go is toxic as well, just like any teamgame with matchmaking to some degree
The only problem with your argument thoorin is that those pros actually do the intentional feeding and afking you speak of.They aren't just misunderstood and there is a reason why they are getting reported 24/7.The problem of getting spam reported in high elo by the same peopleis real and I hope riot have looked at it but doubt it.
wtf is the problem with the word rape?
Someone who says "(insert my user here) is trash" in all chat and gives no constructive criticism when we both die in lane must be toxic, surely?
I don't think EU and NA are that different in terms of their social mores.
so is this video literally just to bash on na?
how u can not love thorin after videos like this?
I was once chat banned for ''being'' toxic in LoL. I was allowed veiw the games which lead to ban. I did not write a word in all of those 3 games :DDDD
+crabby112 your presence caused toxic behaviour. clearly!
Knops maybe, im the silent salty player type. Just dont know hot how the fuck chat ban would help that situation back then if I dont use it. :D
crabby112 s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/81/01/1d/81011db8e5c74aea64a71d5346d6cc2c.jpg
:D
Thoorin, for all the respect I have for you generally having sound logic, this was a really disappointing post.
Being in the Dota scene much more than LoL, I can tell you for a fact this isn't just some "strange coincidence" that it's really bad in LoL. Toxicity is a rampant issue in Dota. In fact, it's been really well (and importantly) emphasized issue recently between top players, community figures, and even Valve to some degree. There's many well-known total blow-ups even pros have had, even while they're streaming with their camera on.
Your conclusion of "it's too abnormal to have this much of a problem, therefore we must be misusing the word toxicity" logic is a poor one. Of course there some scenarios where it's misused or abused, but that's not reason to brush off the majority. There's an alternative you're not thinking of -- LoL and Dota are both very different *types* of games than SC2, CS. or even Call of Duty, etc. The time commitment and required team play nature of the games, is unlike those. Not only are the games 30-60+ minutes, thus making the penalty for a loss much worse, but you are much more at the mercy of your team playing really well around you. In CS:GO, if one of your teammates is regularly feeding for the first few rounds, you still have a reasonable chance of winning. In LoL and Dota, that's nearly impossible. Additionally, if someone is an a-hole, you're stuck with them for an hour. All that to say, that's a lot of tension and anxiety that can build up, and a recipe for anger, as the body's "fight or flight" system gets ramped up without any release.
Further, you're suggesting that NA players don't understand EU culture because they're not EU. By that logic, you can't make that assertion, because you yourself are not NA, and thus cannot understand NA culture. That's simply not true. Now, to varying degrees, yes, all cultures are different, even wildly different between different parts of the US or CA. But as a whole, the majority of people would agree that NA and EU cultures are very comparable, and certainly hardly differing to the point where degrading or bullying is simply "laughed at" and not a real issue any more in EU as in NA, as you suggest.
Additionally, in my experience, people who get generally worked up over things (i.e. passionate) tend to notice it less, or experience it far less negatively/seriously. It's possible that this clouds your viewpoint.
TLDR: While I agree with your premise that it's out of the ordinary that players are much more toxic in LoL than in real-life or other games, the more rational conclusion is the environment the game genre creates. Dismissing the problem as non-existant is not only illogical, but also dismisses the critical need for players to work on bringing a positive attitude to their play.
Totally agree that we must put things in their cultural context. But to use anecdotes about THE BEST PLAYERS IN THE WORLD to make your argument is a bit silly. Not saying I buy Riots stat on how "toxicity" impacts win rate, but in the context of NA I do believe your doing yourself a disservice by calling people out. Most of the time people just get defensive and it becomes a pointless exorcise. In my experience calling people out on mistakes even in a "nice" way rarely helps and more often hurts your chances of winning.
so much toxicity in this video
Send this vid to Riot pls
Nobody should care if someone is toxic:)
I'm toxic in game but mature in real life
You know what you just said is an oxymoron.
Matt Lewis not you moron. It was meant for Christian Loubs
To your last point:
LoL is attracting toxic players. LoL is made to attract big masses. This results in a wide playerbase with a lot of casuals who just want to play/win in their freetime without much effort. When they lose, they need a reason for it. Because of playing casually, they will not practice and will not look for faults in their gameplay, they will think "I lost because this guy fucked up!", thus resulting in flame.
While the percentage of players who takes the game serious and who want to compete with others will be small with such a big playerbase. Those will take the game seriously and try to get better
League makes you evil dude. I play for four years and I hate everything.
I played on EUNE, EUW , NA and TR and i can say TR and EUNE is completly toxic, it is unbearable. EUW is better compared both servers but comapared to NA it is still too much toxic.
The guy you are talking about at 11:00 is that shook? ROFL
both servers are pretty bad. But the point that Thorin makes about the culture difference throughout europe itself i agree with
I really like all Thorin's Thoughts videos, but I think you messed this one up because you failed to differentiate between trash talk aimed at the enemy team and trash talk aimed at your own team.
That point would completely change your argument on how "toxic" language is common in across sports.
Yes, trash talking the opposition is common in many sports and it's considered a legitimate tactic, because you want to psychologically shake them, or put them on tilt.
But trash talking your own team mates is not nearly the same thing. Imagine if one ball player said to his own team mate "You're shit. Quit the team. Don't show up for practice tomorrow. We are better without you, even man down", especially in the middle of a game. There's no way that flies in any culture.
I think you were intellectually dishonest when you selectively used whichever one was convenient for your point.
Yeah. I had one game when someone didnt get jungle, he picked nunu and followed me around in the jungle and ate the camp. People like those shouldnt honestly be born, if i tell them that they are fucking shitty assholes, that is not being toxic. It is not even insulting, it is just stating a fact. In the end of the game, obviously he had some 1/3 stats, pretty much like mine, and noone in the tribunal could ever tell you if he or i was the toxic troll that picked double jungle and fucked up the game.
I can understand that it is even harder for a player who is dedicated to the game and winning the game in really high elo with a more competitive mindset to keep calm about such stuff.
I'll tell you who is toxic, the overwhelming majority of players in NA who play CS.
I know it's a different game, but I am just appalled by many of the people who play in NA.
I never play CS without my friends in Mumble anymore.
I think League has a trend towards toxicity due to:
a) Age range. Duo to the apparent simplicity of the game (at least at a casual level), kids from 11 years onward play it, and its no unknown fact that the "internet impunity" tends to make kids speak shit way above their shoulder height.
b) Extreme need for cooperation. Being a 5v5 game, the desperate need of a fairly decent team in order to win (we are not talking Trynds roflstomping on lvl 13 players) makes every display of "idgaf about winning" attitude that much more irritating. Much more so when as a semi grown up you've got 2hs at best to relax and play and need to deal with annoying munchkins who just saw Voyboy go AP Trynd and they think its an excelent idea to do so.
These two are almost non-factors in games like SC, in which everyone mainly depends on themselves and game is too complex and high skillcapped for brats to even waste their time in trying to learn it.
Just a theory, feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong and have a civilized discussion.
PS: Sorry for long post and non-native english :
So a few things on that topic.
1st that money argument is rediculous
2nd League makes you a worse person while in game:
I met somebody at a tournament, hes a nice person, than i make a game with him and he and his friend bullied a jarvan (he wasnt even that bad) for so long that he left the game in a fucking ARAM. Thats what league turns us into.
Shit happens 24/7 in mid-high diamond in NA.
I've been a few times to master elo, it really stops there.
but i see it literally half the games people will report others just for playing poorly, or complaining at all.
And then when you call them a douchebag for false reporting "verbal abuse" when you've literally complained once, and not even with any insults, they say "hey hey you all see that? PROVES THAT HE WAS TOXIC!" I see it all the time. You're not even allowed to complain on NA half the time, people literally call it toxic even when you don't insult a single person, not just these trolls i'm describing. But those people will just go for a "negative attitude" report, which is technically accurate, but a fucking joke to get banned for being "negative".
That's why me as a person just doesn't say jack shit to people. It wasn't always this way, but ever since season two ish, people just became more and more nazi-like in their requirements of what your attitude had to be. Used to be, as long as you didn't insult anyone, you never got reported and you never got anything. Back in season 1 and early season 2, on na there was TONS of cursing and verbal abuse just everywhere, but then as tribunal came along it disappeared, and transformed into this "can't argue or be negative" bullshit.
A solution that really helped me was downloading a keyboard program that allowed you to disable certain keys, so i just disabled enter before every league game, until i got the hang of just literally not saying anything to anyone. I'd feel good after like 10 games, but then i'd start arguing with someone, get reported, and go back on it for a while. It's a really good way to help you get self-control, because it's not easy for a lot of people, especially the argumentative type like myself.
its true, we are toxic as fuck. but thats because everyone is either a tryhard or a dipshit noob. im looking at you french and spanish guys
Because we are building a society of people not able to handle judgemental comments
Thorin reported for flame, says fking all the time.
Your entire rant about if Mexico had it's own server and we had NA east and West showed your lack of knowledge about servers.
This was a HUGE problem with the BR servers and them coming over to the NA server instead because of bad relations with Riot and the general toxic behavior on the server. I don't know how you missed the period of time where huehuehue was an instant report on NA servers because of how toxic the BR players on the NA servers were.
I gotta disagree with you about the "people who swear lose more games" statistics.
To me, it basically just means that if you swear, you destroy team synergy. People don't wanna cooperate with you anymore, and in the end you'll probably be arguing and become enemies other allies.
Now this doesn't apply to pro level cause most of these guys put victory before this kind of stuff. Therefore incarnati0n's example isn't really relevant.
To me, displaying that statistic aims at making players realise that if you're "mean" to others, then you're not really a team anymore.
Back to watching the vid :3
a good example for americans thinking europeans are toxic is that germans are considered unpolite because we dont do small talk ^^
I remember here in Australia when our German teacher told us how Germans are always honest to the point of insulting their best friends, everyone in our class just looked at each other with shock, as we're used to lying for the sake of being friendly. Different cultures are interesting to compare :P
Fooking fish.
Well you can't compare the best of the best players who happen to be toxic to the enormous community full of people who suck and are toxic to say the stats aren't true.
Dudes never heard of the OCE server bahaha, we embody that shit.
matchmaking just promotes toxicity since it always tries to get you to 50% win ratio and it gives you a worse team and their team is better every game if you keep wining
I think a lot of it is people being way too sensitive. In another game, whether its online or a sport it would be along the lines of banter, is labeled as toxic by the league community. I mean come on, this random guy online you're never going to interact with again just said your a terrible player, if that really hurts your feelings you have more problems than being bad at league.
Well, i have play for long periods in 3 servers (EUW,NA and KR). EUW is the worse, not by far, but is definetely the worst (in terms of toxicity)
And i'm saying toxicity in the big picture, afk, flamers, trolls etc.. It happens everywere but it's really worse on EUW, at least that's my experience
hugooooooo000000 Imo (played na, euw, eune) Euw has the most afkers (from rage), eune has alot off flamers but they usually dosn´t speak alot of english so it´s just hillarious :P NA has more trolls (not unconventionall, just not giving a f***). For me Eune works the best, but it´s becuse I can laugh when people flame, overall I feel like the Euw afkers makes you the most sad, since you got no chance, you can carry the NA trolls cause they actually do stuff, an afk is pretty bad.
hugooooooo000000 No you haven't, KR have most afk players in world, KR and EUW is similar in terms of "toxity", KR is imo much more toxic, im diamond 5 in EUW(have really high ping) and Master 1 in KR and Diamond 1in NA, NA has most trollers... Clearly you havent played in all 3, you probably cant even access KR servers-
Zibbit27 Ok first of all I nerver stated ive played on kr server. Second just becuse your experience is diffrent dosnt mean your right. The funny part is that you agree with me but say korea is worse, when clearely state ive only played euw, eune and na...
Zibbit27
I lived an entire semester on KR in a sort of Erasmus for my university and was playing for 6 months on the KR server. I'm just a gold scrub, on the 3 servers, but from my experience, EUW is the worst one. It's also the one where i play usually (i live in EU), but ye. In NA i played also for 4-5 months, and rly enjoyed the people in the server overall.