Sections:
*Introduction
*Causes of Toxicity (Theoretical)
*Toxicity as Advertised, Ingame
*Toxicity and You
*Closing Remarks
(Ctrl+F should let you skip around)
Introduction:
Why am I writing this if I’m basically quitting Vainglory? Well, I’m too frustrated with the playerbase myself, but I still love the game like one is attracted to their first crush. I guess I’m hoping that I can convince some of the readers who survive this post to consider a new point of view. With a little luck, that can lead to change within the community, maybe even a few nudges on the developers in a different direction. Maybe I want to gain a bit more influence before AFKing - most newer forummers won’t remember any of my in-depth posts from the old forums. I also feel I owe it to @Idmonfish after promising activity and never delivering any thought-out threads… 
Get some coffee, and a cookie or two. Toxicity is much more complex than most people appear to realize, and any attempt to simplify the topic will not do it justice. I’m going to start this out theoretical, and then try to make sense of it from a regular player’s perspective. I’m going to tie everything back together again in a summary again at the bottom, but it won’t have much context at all.
Toxicity is very near and dear to my heart. Ok, that’s the wrong phrase. A more accurate statement would be that I have both contributed and received toxic behavior, and almost all of you readers as well. Toxicity is a topic that brings many of us frustration, in seemingly needless fashion. Its not as simple as immature brats acting up. Grown adults suffer from rage issues too. Toxicity is actually tied into a variety of other issues, and resides in all of us to an extent. View it as the collective symptoms of a disease, and attempts to ban toxic players are both misguided and foolish.
So, what causes Toxicity? What comes to mind when I say “Toxic behavior”? Think about this for a second, maybe while you fetch that cup of coffee. Go on, I’ll wait…
Causes of Toxicity (Theoretical)
Got your thoughts about toxic behavior down? Let’s list some common behaviors, and think about what they have in common:
*Flaming.
*Intentional Feeding
*Item Selling
*Farm Stealing
*Mine Spamming (only for 3v3 mode)
*Rage Pinging
*Afking
The obvious information here, is that all of these behaviors ruin game experiences. A slightly more subtle read, is that they all come from people who are frustrated and believe they are wasting their time playing the current match. People don’t usually flame or rageping for fun. They do it when they think someone made one or more highly questionable decisions. People feed, spam scout traps, or afk when they think they are just going to lose the game, often paired with sarcastic pings.
Keep in mind, I am not saying that people being toxic is inexcusable - it ruins the game further for the others on their team. Especially innocent bystanders. What’s important here, is that toxic players are being toxic as a reaction. Very few people are natural trolls and ragers. Toxic players are usually angry and reacting to actions their teammates undertake that seem objectionable. While there is usually only 1 optimal or correct decision possible in any situation, there are many more that are more likely to be found by each player. Failure to meet the expectations of any single player can result in an outpouring of toxic behavior. People get rage pinged for (not comprehensive):
*Going to try to steal Kraken solo
*For NOT trying to steal Kraken solo
*For building any item not desired by the rager
*For focusing a different target in teamfights
*For not splitting into more advantageous 1v1s
*For not peeling
*For peeling and not cancelling enemy ultimates
*For picking _ hero
*For picking _ hero to help the team - and clearly not knowing how to use said hero
*Not stutterstepping
*Inefficient stutterstepping and clearly losing DPS
*Dying in general
*Not dying for the team
*Using abilities are the “wrong” time
Many of these are paired with opposite behaviors to highlight the subjectiveness of it all. Toxicity can erupt after 1 “offense” or 15, depending on how triggered the player is. So if you were to take 1 thing away from this, know that Toxicity results from people not meeting each-other’s expectations. Suspiciously like in real life.
Toxicity as Advertised, Ingame
Ok, enough of the theoretical. Lets see Toxicity ingame. For this shining example, I would like you all to pretend you have no earthly clue who FlashX is. His pro player status is important in highlighting the extent of toxicity misunderstanding.
Its important that you watch this video with an open mind (hopefully with my commentary alongside), and don’t blindly follow everything he is doing. I respect FlashX as a player - he’s better than I will ever be. However, he clearly doesn’t understand the low and midtier mindsets at all, and makes no effort to communicate with his teammates. He states his own plans, and puts very little thought into his ally’s actions. He states a lot of good points that work on paper, but his execution is just… bad. It is really quite emblematic of the stereotypical soloque player.
The goal is not to trash FlashX (I could easily be a lot meaner). Rather, it is to show how easy it is for us to tunnel vision on specific aspects of the game while completely ignoring others to the detriment of our team.
Side note - you realistically only need to read a few of these comments with the video pulled up, to see my overall point. You are welcome to read all of them for comprehensiveness though.
Summary
1:00 - Watch what his allies do. Two flex picks who are both willing to roam with an instalocker (FlashX, obviously). The important thing here is that his allies are trying to work with an instalocker, instead of being selfish as well.
2:30 - Notice BF demonstrates greater map awareness. Ardan obviously didn’t know the high level rotation (which is common for T7).
2:55 - Pay very close attention to both FlashX’s positioning + events in lane, as well as the Blackfeather’s movements. Blackfeather sees the enemy team try to gank FlashX on Vox and IMMEDIATELY ROTATES. Was it necessary? Hard to say since Ardan hasn’t flared the enemy lane brush. Its definitely a team play on the Blackfeather’s part, and FlashX clearly does not even consider the prior gank as a reason for Blackfeather to rotate. Anyone who plays very long in the low and mid elos quickly figures out that this kind of teamplay is hard to find and really important to winning a game. Usually people have about 0 map awareness until partway through T8. FlashX hasn’t had to worry about this that much due to prior hard carrying.
Also notice that FlashX makes about 0 effort to communicate any of his thoughts to his team. No target ping on the jungle camps. No caution sign on his lane bush when Blackfeather arrives. Nothing. Blackfeather is not to blame here.
3:15 - FlashX decides that he needs to take Blackfeather’s backs to make up for the lost experience. I want you to notice two things here. A. You can see ON HIS SCREEN without even looking at the minimap, that saw is pushing through another wave of minions. You can ALSO see on the minimap, that Blackfeather is down in the center of the jungle with 2 enemies nearby. He completely ignores a highly obvious fight - a 2v1 that could have become a 3v2 if he paid any attention to his allies and wasn’t focused on stealing farm. Quite ironically, joining the fight to make it a 3v2 for his team would have mitigated the whole snowballing issue he talks about in the voice over. Saw isn’t rotating because he is pushing turret. Blackfeather is clearly trying to contest the center Treants. Instead, FlashX focuses entirely on making jungle rotations and effectively abandons his jungler AND his turret.
3:42. FlashX showcases a prime example of rationalization. Normally people are able to delay Saw a 1st turret beyond the 4 minute mark. Here Saw gets it just after 2 minutes. This + not fighting the enemy duo + missing out on farm is actually enough to lose some games already. I want you to notice how little communication FlashX gives to his teammates, for all his “concern”.
4:25 - This CS stealing/wave pushing is super common on tilted roamers. Especially ones that don’t know how to freeze under turrets, or believe their laner is absolutely horrible. coughs. Is it a good idea? Probably not. But think over what’s happened in these first 4 minutes. What reason does Ardan have to put any confidence into his Vox? It is situations exactly like this, that make good players not want to support at all. Notice that FlashX doesn’t seem to consider his behavior tilting in the least.
5:00 - again with the farm stealing. Quite ironically, here FlashX says that sharing XP is “good” but earlier he complained about Koshka being ahead in levels over Blackfeather. Sharing Jungle XP just exacerbates the initial issue further. I really don’t see how you don’t see why people are pinging. The last time he did this, they lost a turret.
6:10 - Ardan probably Vanguarded Blackfeather to try to help him get the lasthit on the Treant. FlashX disrespects the damage from the entire enemy team and blames Ardan for not saving him despite a rather obvious cooldown on Vanguard. Additionally, if FlashX had been in lane for longer, there would be less of a minion wave pushing up to the turret.
6:50 - This is common carry behavior. Speaking as a on-off roamer, its VERY HARD to fountain someone who is brought from 50% to 0 health in 2 autoattacks. Frankly, given the bad matchup, its fine for Ardan to save the fountain for Blackfeather who isn’t as hopelessly outmatched close range by the Saw. Ardan and Blackfeather have likely both concluded that their Vox is just bad, and to support eachother. Ardan’s Fountain is actually fine for the most part. FlashX hasn’t considered any of this obviously, and assumed the Ardan is just bad or trying to annoy him (FlashX).
8:20 - Notice his team has been at the Gold Miner for quite some time, roughly 20 seconds at least. Ardan might have bought SGB to take lane minions, but more likely its his normal build and he wants to take the Gold Miner. Notice that FlashX doesn’t push lane for a stated calculated reason. He pushes because he wants farm and doesn’t want Ardan to take it. I will withhold commentary on his farming style. FlashX ignores the enemy team for over 30 seconds. He assumes they are chasing down his allies with no vision. Notice both that he doesn’t check the actual teamfight and only glances at the minimap, AND that he has 0 intention of helping his allies prevent the steal or teamfight.
9:45 - FlashX disregards the potential 3v2 from the enemy. He also doesn’t try to help them push turret in the name of stealing farm. He apparently doesn’t notice the enemy laner and jungler coming to defend their turret and is confused when his team comes back for the remaining jungle farm. He doesn’t even check to see the damage on the turret before wondering if his teammates valued farm over objectives.
11:20 - I honestly don’t see how FlashX doesn’t understand why his team keeps pinging him.
12:28 - The Ardan probably tries to Vanguard FlashX too late and vanguards himself. The whole team overtextended here, placing blame on the roamer doesn’t cut it.
13:10 - FlashX takes damage and is slowed by Saw. His team has no vision on the enemy brush and Suppressing Fire could have been a setup for a Koshka gank. Ardan Vanguards FlashX to prevent this and block damage. FlashX complains later that Ardan is not helping at all. This could be general CS gripes (not going into all that) but just as likely that FlashX is just dissatisfied with his roamer most of the game.
17:00 - FlashX makes the interesting statement that his team has a lot of levels. He puts it down to sharing the jungle experience, rather than repeatedly killing enemies and stealing their stuff.
After this point, its probably not worth analyzing further. After the first 13ish minutes its really hard for the opponents to come back into this game bar a significant error from FlashX’s team.
Now, think about everything you saw in that game. Who played well here? I would say the Blackfeather actually carried the game, and Ardan was at least a decent T7 roamer who didn’t try to help his weaker carry. Seriously, most roamers there can’t Fountain at all in teamfights, let alone using Crucible to block ultimates for your team or specific allies. FlashX was carried. He repeatedly makes huge lapses in judgement during the first half of the game and makes exactly 0 effort to communicate his plan to his allies. As observers, we can see the rationale behind his decisions, but clearly many of them are faulty in practice. It takes a long time for FlashX to start actually helping his teammates on a consistent basis, and he even then maintains the selfish viewpoint. Yet to FlashX most of his decisions are reasonable, and he is often confused as to why his allies are mad at him.
(Some of you might notice my comments here bear a striking resemblance to those of a “Jon S” on FlashX’s video. Well, that’s me, but keep it on the low down will ya?)
Toxicity, and You
Currently, the primary method of dealing with toxicity is the LPQ. This is counterproductive for a couple of reasons. The obvious one should be that toxic people feel justified in their behavior. I’ve met plenty of people who threw games purely because they thought someone didn’t deserve to win. You can’t effectively punish someone who views their behavior as justified. Likewise, in the real world, treating the symptoms without addressing the cause, is foolhardy at best. We don’t blow our noses and expect a cold to go away, you take medicine and bundle up and fight the germs. We don’t fix poverty by shooting people, we fix poverty by systematically improving the economic outlook for the poor. And thus with toxicity. Its unrealistic to hope to ban/LPQ every toxic player - they live within all of us. Rather, it is more impactful, easier, and less stressful if SEMC and Players alike focus on removing the CAUSES of Toxicity for a happier game environment.
We need to make the system set up to succeed for team players, not set up to fail.
I’ll be the first to admit, FlashX got lucky that none of his teammates started feeding or mine spamming early game when they were losing hard. We actually miss out on a lot of the really toxic behavior listed earlier. But, most of us aren’t FlashX. What can we do to improve the issue of toxicity?
The first thing is easy to implement - tolerance. Its a hard sell, especially for the more emotional of us, but its necessary. If FlashX can make a ton of mistakes and be hard carried by weaker players, so can you. No need to get uppity about matchmaker pairing you with “low tier” players. Matchmaker paired you guys for a reason. Writing them off as “low tier” not only reduces the chance you work together as a team, it also takes you out of the winning mindset. You can definitely be more forgiving of your ally’s mistakes. If you focus on working with a Saw that doesn’t stutterstep, instead of writing them off as trash, you are far more likely to succeed as a team. What if you are playing your own hero wrong? I’ve run into plenty of Lance/Reim/Baptistes that never focused on peeling for their ally and instead maximized their damage output. The end result is they “carry” the game by letting their hypercarry die, ruining their team’s win condition. In such scenarios, is it truly the fault of the hypercarry?
The second thing that comes to mind to fix this toxicity issue, is improved communication (both from players and from improved ingame options). You can try to communicate more with your allies in a useful manner, rather than remaining silent. If you are going to remain silent, at least be consistent about it, don’t start ragepinging an ally for a mistake when you did NOTHING to warn them. Unfortunately, pings are not at all helpful for communicating anything remotely complex like when to engage or choosing a target. God forbid we get a method of telling your allies “Play conservatively until we catch up in items” or “Baron is our hypercarry, Krul and Ardan to peel for him.”
The third thing is strictly beyond the player’s direct control: Reducing the disparity in game knowledge between players. So much frustration and toxicity ultimately results from players not living up to each-other’s expectations. Improved communication would help with this issue, but reducing player ignorance is at least as important. As nice as it is for players to make guides themselves, most people put little effort into learning outside of the VG app. Therefore it falls upon SEMC to help with this toxicity issue and help improve the ability of players to learn about the game. The academy is a start, but it clearly is not sufficient. A lot of information needs to be forcefed to players if you want them to learn and not be as conductive to toxicity. I discuss the idea of expanded Player Tutorials in some posts here. -> Think we need some serious player made tutorials for newplayers
Closing Remarks
If it hasn’t been readily apparent before I’ll spell it out here - “bad” gameplay is often a very subjective thing. Complaining about matchmaker and the like ignores the reality of the situation and is highly counterproductive. Work with your teammates and you are likely to have more pleasant games.
Remember. Most people don’t START a game with the intent to lose. They change their mind though when they feel their teammates are going to lose them the game. Toxicity is ultimately a player based issue that results from weak infrastructure. It will require a more subtle approach to combat - simple things like banning and LPQ only address the symptoms and not the disease. Almost nobody is immune to the toxicity. The current methods only punish players who believe their behavior is justified, and only makes them angrier.
If I’m completely honest, positive reinforcement is the easier approach to implement. If you see someone make a good play, give them a happy ping. Give people upvotes by default unless they are actively trolling. Many players are just really bad and don’t even realize they are walking to their doom, pings or no, and are legitimately trying their best. Everyone has a bad game, even FlashX. It feels really bad to try your best and then feel like everyone downvoted you for being a weak player. Downvotes are intended for trolls and taunters and AFKers. Let’s keep it that way, and prop up the others a bit shall we?
Unfortunately, due to the whole Mobile interface, its impossible for VG to directly copy the chatbox from PC based MOBAs - the keyboard screen alone will murder your map awareness and get you killed. Voice chat is perhaps an option, but I might get into that in another thread. I genuinely believe expanded and improved Player Tutorials would go a long way towards solving the information issue - likewise a more forceful display of the patch notes. However, both of these belong in separate discussions.
Toxicity looks like quite the achievable problem to fix - so long as we are honest and objective with ourselves about its causes and nuances. In real life, there is plenty of cause for toxicity, but its far less often an issue compared to here in VG - in part because how we handle toxicity there and here is different. That needs to change.