Toxicity is a fact of life in popular MOBA games like League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, and Dota 2. No two toxic players are exactly the same, though. Encountering toxicity can even lead to genuinely heartfelt moments between people who’ve never met before. What’s your most memorable run-in with MOBA toxicity?
These can be great moments where you made a new friend and in-game ally in the least expected of ways, or demoralising moments when some bitter old smurf seemed hell-bent on ruining your day for no good reason. Or: were you a toxic player at one point in your life? What made you change your ways?
I’ll start things off with a story of an unfortunate encounter I had with a certain League of Legends player a few weeks back.
I probably should have seen the player’s in-game handle — “woodinthebutt” — as some sort of warning sign. But there are a lot of people playing League with dick-themed handles. Plus, some of them can actually be pretty clever (a ferocious assassin character who went by the honorific “FEAR THE D” certainly earned the right to put “fear” in all-caps in his name, for example). I didn’t think much of woodinthebutt’s unfortunate name choice as a result. Then the game got going.
Sir woodinthebutt was playing as Shaco, a demonic jester champion, in the jungle. I was playing on the top lane as Garen, a standard-model sword-wielding tank character. Our positions means that woodinthebutt would pop into my lane from time to time to help me take out the opposing champion. At least — that’s what he was supposed to be doing. The first time he showed up to do this, we doubled up on the enemy before I used Garen’s ult move to finish him off.
“wow nice steal,” woodinthebutt wrote once I’d killed off the opposition. ‘last time i help u out.”
He was accusing me of taking an enemy kill out from under him by finishing the guy off after he’d done all the hard work winnowing his health down. Still new enough to be scared of starting any unnecessary fights, I promptly apologised.
“and you used yr ult,” he added after I apologised. “what a ******* noob”
Ok…that was a little rude, I thought. But it’s also hard to read anyone’s tone from a few lines of text. Plus, he actually called me a noob. As an insult. People still actually do that? It just sounded like an antiquated stereotype of what a rude gamer was supposed to sound like more than something a person I was in the middle of a heated game with would actually say.
A few moments later, and woodinthebutt had left my lane to go attend to something else. Things were pretty quiet. Than another message from Shaco popped up.
“wow noob”
He was doing the same thing to another member of our team. Then another.
‘are u fkkng srs noob’
And another.
‘why am i on a team with these losers lol’
Luckily, there was one other player on my team in that game who sounded like he was far more experienced than I, and wasn’t putting up with
woodinthebutt kept heckling everyone besides the one other teammate he seemed to already know from outside the game. Having a friend to egg him on only made it more infuriating, as there was always someone there to validate his crummy jokes.
Playing through another 30 or 40 minutes with woodinthebutt and his compatriot was irritating enough in its own right, knowing that every idle mistake would be greeted with a barrage of increasingly harsh rejoinders about how we all sucked and were ruining the game for him. But what really got under my skin about this player — and the others like him that I’ve come across — is that they’re not just being disrespectful. They’re also being counter-productive. Raging at a teammate takes valuable time and energy away from doing more valuable League things like, say, actually helping your team by coordinating attacks or offering constructive tips so someone can avoid messing things up again. And what does it bring in return? The satisfaction of knowing you’ve rubbed one of your teammate’s noses in their embarrassing stumble? These are the sort of moments that leave you with such a bad taste in your mouth that abandoning a fun game entirely can start to seem like a good idea.
Thankfully, dispiriting experiences like my game with woodinthebutt have been countered by plenty of positive experiences as well. After getting crushed by an enemy team’s Heimerdinger player (a mad scientist who can drop turrets around and drive you insane in the process) and singlehandedly losing the entire game for my team as a result, for instance, I slunk away from the match in shame only to see the very Heimerdinger player who’d embarrassed me so thoroughly show up as a teammate in my next game. Luckily, he was actually so friendly we ended up adding each other after that next game.
You win some and lose some, I guess. Hopefully win more often than lose.
OK, enough out of me. Tell me about you!
Comments
14 responses to “Tell Us Your Best Toxic MOBA Player Stories”
Ain’t this culture grand?
I’ve only got one story as I only played League of Legends long enough to convince me it wasn’t terrible. Only played the tutorial and against bots, jumped into a game as I was enjoying it.
It wasn’t a bad match, we never really long ground and were slowly pushing forward. During the time one guy just kept yelling at us, particularly one of the other players who was new to the game. He was really getting worked up about it.
What made the whole thing worse though is that we were playing against bots.
Dota 2, for months now, the Aussie servers have been inundated with players from South East Asia, who do nothing but abuse people for speaking English, and for being Australian, call everyone noobs, then proceed to play terribly and throw the match
DOTA has the worst/funniest stories though.
In DoTA I once had a really toxic Slardar on the enemy team when they were up like 20 kills to 5 or something. He kept calling us noobs, telling us to uninstall and saying “easiest game of my life”.
Our team just went along with it, and got him so worked up he did a couple of failed dives on me and we got a couple of kills and there was a huge xp swing in our favour.
Then we just pushed and won. There was no better feeling than at the end where we all said “ez game”.
This one time in a MOBA, there was a dickhead player who was pissing me off; so I plug pulled and have never looked back since. Theendkthnxforreading.
stopped playing LoL because of the community. So far Heroes Of The Storm doesnt have that culture, although I am sure once it goes into Open Beta it will creep in and ruin yet another great game.
Well the best story for me is the lack of stories I have for my time in DOTA 2. But if you want a story of when I did encounter toxic behaviour it would be the time I had to abandon a couple of matches close together because really life, this put me in the low priority queue, or the troll hole, it was pretty funny really seemed like 8 of the 10 players were really only playing to abuse people so me and one other guy just face rolled over the top of then to get out of there as fast as possible.
Same here. I have a handful of experiences with assholes, so I mute, report and get on with my life. Dwelling on assholes does not seem to do much good for anyone. Except maybe the assholes.
I used to play LoL a lot but that tapered off due to sheer amount of people who are abusive. I tend to find they fall into a couple of categories:
The Rubber:
This player will blame their teammates for everything that goes wrong. No matter how bad they play it is always someone elses fault. Conversely of course all victories are due to their skill
The Godot:
MOBA’s tend to be a team game. The Godot player will never be where they are needed. They are usually off in their own little world. If the rest of the players lose a team fight this player will usually comment that it was their own fault for fighting without them. Conversely if they are killed wandering by themselves it will be because the team didn’t back their play.
The !@#$%
Swearing, name calling, abuse of all sorts will be laid upon the first player to make a mistake. Will target anyone saying they are new with a champ or coming back after a hiatus (which usually results in that returning player being reminded why they stopped)
The Gloryhound
Usually the Jungler or ADC this player always goes for the kill and will abuse anyone who gets the kill whether by intention or accident. Worst case for these sorts is that they will sit and wait on a fight letting another player do all the work until the opponent is almost dead before diving in for a killing blow. Anyone who takes their rightful glory will be abused continually until the next person dares to get a killing blow near them.
So we use to have this tool around called “zeroaxis”. He rather enjoyed blaming EVERYONE for his mistakes. He use to top lane zed of fiora alot. Anyway, he once got double ganked by jungle and top lane returning (he over extended), as he died, i down in bot lane as support jokingly said “jee, i can’t wait to hear how that was my fault”. So which he abruptly turned around and said it WAS my fault. If me and the ADC had put more pressure onto our lane then the jungler wouldnt have ganked top. Mind you we just returned from base after a positive trade off with our lane.
Only one LoL game really sticks out to me. I was playing Sona support, so I was paired up with a marksman. He kept getting himself killed and became really abusive and eventually the rest of my team becomes unpleasant and no one wanted me in their lane.
The game drags on, my team is dying a lot but only slowly losing ground. They start swearing and trash talking at the other team. Meanwhile I have the bottom lane to myself and spend of the rest of the game quietly and somewhat safely farming minions, and getting some occasional kills.
The game finally ends and I’m the only person on my team without a horrible kill/death ratio. Everyone on the other team marks me as an honorable opponent.
Toxic? you mean normal player right?
getting whispered after you finish the game is always enough to know that you have gotten to them.
Or when they rage quit.
If you really can’t be bothered arguing with them, just ignore.
It’s just words.
DOTA 2 > One of those rare matches where it seemed like the entire opposing team was quite a lot less experienced. They were getting frustrated, we were all well fed. After a bit of ‘RAGE’ pausing antics they sunk to a new low…. I saw the ‘mic’ icon appear on… and the theme from the Frozen movie come blasting through. Never hit mute so quick in my life.
Not that often on Heroes of the Storm, though getting blamed for a loss is pretty annoying. Got called out for having a bad hero dps, as a support hero, Rehgar, that should be a given. Had the highest healing and the highest mechanics at the end. Healing and buffing, jungling and being able to chase down occasionally are what I’m good for, especially getting called out by a shitty nova that decided to siege dmg by herself. GG
ITT: some people are being idiots via the anonymous internet.
I dunno, I always like to watch the replays and see what the other team says to each other on their team chat – but only if we steamroll them and they keep playing for some reason.
So many impregnated mothers.
I don’t have any particular stories, since I’ve played LoL once, and that is my MOBA career in a nutshell.
Basically the one time I did play LoL, I experienced exactly what you experienced; constant insults thrown at me for every little thing I did, giving me no advice or anything to help me improve.
After that one experience, I promptly quit the game, uninstalled it, and will never touch another MOBA again.
There is an infamous Australian Dota player (from original Dota) who has sinced moved on to Dota 2. He goes by the handle of KazzA, and he has been recognized by everyone in the scene as a total douchebag.
His douchebaggery is well known:
http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/2j6agi/
http://au.cybergamer.com/forums/thread/551985/kazza-the-truth-revealed/
http://southerncrossdota.com/forum/index.php?topic=1724.0
I even had the dubious honour of playing with him a few times back when Dota 2 was taking off… it emptied out the Dota 1 lobbies pretty quick, and there was quite a small community of AU players that stuck it out for a while… but, the inevitability of progress being what it is, they all eventually made the switch.
I’ve only really played Dota & Dota 2, and I’m not justifying toxic behaviour… but what each player does in a game is important for the whole game. It’s the main reason for the banlists in the original Dota. Like if you’re a noob and feed the enemy team… it can be game over from the start(especially if you took mid and fed their carry). And the games usually go for at least half an hour to double that. Like a carrot and stick… if you congratulate someone on making a good play or getting first blood that’s great, but people often focus on the stick(their crucible of fire) more.
In the case of something like dual ganking a lane… it can be bad to “ks” from a carry, but supports need gold too. That’s assuming he was a carry and you were a support. And burning an ult can be bad if you need it later on for a team fight and it has a long cd… but it’s a judgement call; it’s hard to know if you really would need it rapidly with a pug, and I’m very much on the “kill them first, debate the merits of it later” train. I think Zeus is a really good example for the support ks argument… like some fights I’ll map nuke as soon as the team fight goes down, but other fights I’ll pick off stragglers to ensure the gold. At the end of the day, it’s mainly about whether people have the skill to back up the smack, and how much smack they want to use. Like you and others are allowed to vent a bit… some people DESERVE to be called out… but if it gets to the point where it’s toxic and detrimental for the team, then that’s bad. Yay for the mute function.
I’ve been playing HOTS for almost 3 months now (just hit lvl 40 with over 300+ games) and its been fairly tame. However, last night I had my most toxic interaction to the point that the punk worked in a go kill yourself comment, the first I ever received!
To give you the scenario, we are in a fairly tight match on Blackheart’s Bay and I’m Illidan. This guy calls me out as the “epitome of what is wrong with HOTS”, out of the blue. To this point I’ve got same number of take downs as him and been doing well collecting coin. My hero dmg & exp numbers are lower then I like them to be (likely his gauge of my performance) but not many opportunities to gank or many team fights at this point, with the enemy team ignoring coin collect for the most part, which I was taking advantage of. So it escalated from there, with him continuing with snarky remarks trolling me until he goes over the line with the kill myself remark.
Now cut to the end of the match, our team wins of course and I finish with only .25 less take downs as him and have less deaths while finishing with the highest map mechanic score… and to top it all off I find he is only level 13! Unbelievable! Of course I just should have taken advantage of the chat mute button as soon as he started being toxic and brushed it off. The pinging system is enough to communicate effectively in a quick match anyway. Lesson learned. Luckily this interaction has bee the exception to the rule in HOTS so far.