My current “session” game is WildRift. I like this fast-paced MOBA that I can play on my iPad and only need a short time to finish a match. 20-30 minutes is my ideal game time for a session. Looks good, right? But there is one thing I don’t like about this game: the community’s toxicity. When I start a match, I do the same thing each time – open the party screen, and mute everyone. Yes, theoretically, I would miss some important information from my teammates, but 95% (or even 99%) of it would be something like “jg diff,” “report bot,” or “noob mid.” Those are not so bad; most of the time, it would be curse words, insults, and mentioning of all relatives. Even if it is not about me, I don’t want to hear/read it. I seriously don’t understand why RiotGames doesn’t ban and punish this behavior. I tried to play with chat and report such behavior – nobody cared, and most of the reports were without an answer. High ELOs are even worse, and people there are flaming and afk for any reason.
The worst part about this problem is that when I raise this topic in the game dev community, I often hear – “It’s MOBA; what have you expected? It’s normal there and an important part of the game”. Seriously? Everyone was new to any game; everyone had bad days when they play not good, and everyone can have a problem with the network. So if someone in your team is not playing well, you don’t need to blame everyone and make this person feel bad. Instead of this you can try to help him, give some advice or just play your best and try to win. Flaming, blaming, and insulting never help you to win. Well, even defeat can teach you a lot, but not if you are busy typing long messages in chat explaining why their ego is more important than the game.
I’ve stopped to play WildRift several times and got back. I really like this game, but I don’t like the community. So again and again, I start each match with the Open menu, mute, mute, mute, mute. I don’t expect that this will change, but I hope that one day I will be able to play without this routine. Well, or at least – RiotGames, please, add a “mute all” button to the game settings by default.
#MOBA #WildRift #Toxicity #Community #Gamedev #videogames #bettergaming
