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Disabling /all chat in matchmade queues

84 points by twostorytower 5y ago

chmod775 5y ago
That's pretty misguided. It's team chat that is toxic, not /all chat. /all chat is typically full of jokes and banter. Your opponent is not going to flame you for making what they think is a mistake. In fact /all chat can offset negative interactions you have with your team. It's not uncommon for someone from one team to give angry members of the other a "reality check" from an unbiased position, usually ending any toxicity right there.
- johnisgood 5y ago
  Funny thing is that you can already disable /all chat, and it is disabled by default. > All Chat is automatically disabled when you first download League.[1] [1] https://support-leagueoflegends.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026679653-Using-Allied-and-All-Chat https://support-leagueoflegends.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/artic...
- jez 5y ago
  And there's always `/mute enemy` to mute all emotes and chat messages from the enemy in that game.
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  You are mostly right that team chat is more toxic than all, but I’ve seen all chat be very toxic on a regular basis.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- creshal 5y ago
  > That's pretty misguided. Seems to about sum up Riot's management these days.
- bpye 5y ago
  I never really played LoL but that was my experience with Dota 2 - with the exception of the end of the game when the enemy team might well flame you if you're doing badly.
- Jare 5y ago
  I feel that this is really an experiment to gather data on how dynamics change. A fairly radical one, but not something that they think is going to be "a solution" in itself. It's true in my (very old and short) experience with LoL, that the worst toxicity came from random teammates, but disabling team chat is not so easy to experiment. I would still bet that the solution lies in better in-game tools to replace team chat, but that's a huge problem to solve (the low hanging fruit with map pings etc is already in place).
  - alpaca128 5y ago
    Instead of blocking a form of chat I'd just make the system auto-mute anyone using certain key words and phrases. Before the message is even shown. Reading or reacting to those kinds of messages doesn't help anyone, and the game already has a completely ineffective version of this in the form of censoring words (in the default setting).
- LZ_Khan 5y ago
  My experience hasn't been the same. All chat is toxic just as often as team chat. ggez, lots of taunts and jests after getting a kill on you, and the laner who lost lane against you rubbing it in your face after his team carries you -- all of these are extremely common.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ketzo 5y ago
  The point is not to shield people from the flame of their opponents. /mute exists, and in fact, you already have to opt in to having /all displayed in the first place. The point of this change is to stop people from engaging. > usually ending any toxicity right there. Nope, nope, nope. This is online arguments 101. Engaging with angry, anonymous, online strangers does not deescalate; it makes them angrier and draws in others. Which, for what it's worth, is exactly what happens in /all. Also: > Your opponent is not going to flame you for making what they think is a mistake. You... may not have not played very much League of Legends. This is, like, the literal number one use of /all.
  - maverwa 5y ago
    > This is, like, the literal number one use of /all. as someone whe spend way to many hours of his life in bronze: yes, it is. [3rd edit or so]: oh, that and "gg easy" which is not a nice thing to say as well.
    - chmod775 5y ago
      There might be some variations based on rank here. Higher ranked people need to have at least some ability to reason about the game and look at (their own) gameplay objectively to improve - even if that ability can get overridden by anger. They're probably going to be slightly more "tilt resistant" as well. Additionally I know there's regional differences, because of culture and simply language barriers. Anyone who has heard of korean servers will know what I mean.
aeze 5y ago
Maybe a dumb question, but why is toxicity in chat a problem that needs to be solved (to the point of disabling all cross team chat)?
- ridaj 5y ago
  Maybe because a company like Riot can be held accountable for the poor content of its chats? (in the court of law I'm not sure, but in that of public opinion definitely)
  - ahevia 5y ago
    Online chat has been a staple for multiplayer PC games for ages now. Since when has a company been held accountable on a meaningful scale for what happens in chat? (No doubt in my mind that what’s said in chat is called out especially if users aren’t banned) Sure you might get statements like X community is toxic, but that normally stems from more problems then just the game chat of said community.
    - ridaj 5y ago
      I guess maybe they don't want to be dragged to a congressional hearing where they'd be shown a bunch of screenshots that'll look extra offensive out of context and have to explain to senators why they're not doing more to protect players' mental health from bullying, toxic comments, dehumanizing etc
    - nieve 5y ago
      If nothing else they may be a bit worried about the Chinese government since they're a Tencent subsidiary. There's been some significant pressure on game companies this year.
- californical 5y ago
  Just kinda ruins the game, which makes people not want to play. People get really aggressive when they built their identity around “being good at x”. So if you’re their teammate and you make a decision that they think is wrong, they see you as losing the game for them (even if you think it was right). Same as sports, but you’re generally playing with random anonymous people online that changes every game, so there’s no incentive for long-term teamwork or relationship building. Imagine playing casual pick-up basketball in the park on a team of 5, and you try one play that doesn’t quite work, and your teammates first reaction is to go “Wow you must really suck at basketball to try that!” Or: “Go home and quit, dumbass.” You’d probably feel a little bad, but also just never want to play with that group again. Now imagine 70% of all basketball games you try to play have people yelling at you like that. You’d probably just quit trying to play basketball. There are also some really friendly people in these games (I always tried to be someone who shuts down the mean people), but the problem is that eventually the friendly people just don’t want to play your game at all anymore because of so many negative interactions. They obviously want to grow the number of players, so having a reputation of a horribly toxic community makes people avoid the game, which is bad for profits (and the non-toxic players). Not sure how much this change will help, because the bigger source of toxicity is a player’s own team. But it still could be a good step towards trying to fix their image.
bradhensen 5y ago
Good move by Riot Games, this will definitely promotes healthy game play and coordination.
bentheax 5y ago
I have a friend who plays DotA 2 reguarly who alleges that toxicity is much less of a problem with that community because players can call out good or bad sportsmanship at the match end and this is taken into account by the matchmaking system. This results in all the trollers and flamers and griefers mostly getting matched up with each other in a mutually contstructed cesspit while the fun games happen elsewhere. Does this match others' experience, or is it a bit of a rose-tinted glasses situation?
- gsich 5y ago
  A bit rose-tintet. All chat is not the problem usually. It's team chat.
- throw149102 5y ago
  From my experience playing DotA 2, it does help, but it's not a magic bullet. You will have a lot less people griefing/throwing, but you'll still have a hyper-competitive atmosphere where people will shit on each other for fucking up. So trolling is rarer, griefing is rarer, but flaming is still pretty common.
liotier 5y ago
From long experience with Eugene's Wargame series, this is a good decision. Wargame's "all chat" nicknamed Warchat is an horrible place that too many take as a competition in toxicity. It is now legendary bad, bordering on the comical - but really it is just ugly. Good matchmaking and intra-team chat are all a game needs.
Madmallard 5y ago
If the game was more enjoyable even when you're losing this would have never been an issue.
- bob1029 5y ago
  If it wasn't so miserable to lose for 30+ minutes, winning wouldn't be so awesome by comparison and no one would participate. The whole point of the game for many is to get taken for a bit of an unpredictable ride. If it's always going to be fun and easy, the novel experience evaporates. I think this is on the same spectrum as casual vs hard-core gaming. Casual is always going to feel at least OK, but it's never going to give you that same rush that you get when a single skillshot seals the victory for your team after a sweaty 55 minute slugfest.
robin_reala 5y ago
Unfortunate mangling of the headline – chat is only being disabled in games with auto matchmaking – but it’s still an interesting development.
- imgabe 5y ago
  And only chat between teams. People on the same team can still chat with each other.
  - baq 5y ago
    Should be muted by default, too
- paulmd 5y ago
  Would be better as all-chat or allchat, pretty obvious what that is contextually
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    It should be what the other commenters are already using: "/all chat". Definitely not "all chat".
pgt 5y ago
/all chat, not all chat.
- fwip 5y ago
  For people unfamiliar with LoL, disabling /all means that you can still talk with your team, but not to the other team.
glanzwulf 5y ago
Not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I get it, all chat can be a source of twisted toxic wasteland. But on the other hand, sometimes it's fun, so let people communicate and solve the toxic wasteland some other way. A simpler fix for me would've been give the users the option to hide/deactivate the all chat. If they want to talk they'll keep it on if the other team is a bunch of dicks they'll report them and hide the all chat. Easy.
- chrsig 5y ago
  I think the problem is making people opt out of interacting with douchebags. Let people opt into it. It shouldn't be easier to be abusive than it is to avoid an abuser. So long as that's the case, it's sort of enabling the shitty behavior.
- ridaj 5y ago
  Here's the deal as I picture it... As the platform moderator you can either moderate and have something that's acceptable banter but it'll cost a lot of money to moderate, it'll give players a feeling of being nannied, and no matter your decision you'll constantly be called out either as too repressive or too permissive or both at once. Alt: you can censor everything. Congrats trolls, you won.
- djrockstar1 5y ago
  all chat is actually disabled by default, you have to opt-in to it through the settings.
- ungawatkt 5y ago
  I dunno, at this point "LOL toxic" is such a meme that it's probably a reasonable barrier to entry for folks,so they're probably trying to address that. And "sometimes fun" isn't enough to get over "usually not fun". And it isn't entirely unreasonable, I thought the toxicity was overstated until I tried league, and my first game I got yelled at and called various slurs for not playing right, same for the next 2 games I played until I quit forever (because there are other fun games, sure that was years ago but why bother trying again when I can just play X), and that was from my own teammates (in wood tier), not even the other team. Anecdotal for sure, but I suspect not terribly unusual if not that fast, and from the player side it's less "I'm offended" and more "huh, I could just play anything else". Especially if dealing with the toxicity is opt-out rather than opt-in, or gives the player fomo, like an option to disable all chat would implicitly be/do. Edit: I replied to this one because it made the most context sense, but it's not really a direct agreement or refute of anything in the parent
unrealhoang 5y ago
This suites the paternalistic approach style by Riot. On the other side, Dota2 having a player allchat a triggering "?" in a pro match is one of the most epic moments.
menthe 5y ago
At this point, League of Legends is completely irrelevant. Watch/Play Dota2 - it was where it started and where it’s at (although to be exact Warcraft III’s DotA Allstars spawned from Warcraft III’s AOS custom map). The game has a team voice chat which eliminates toxicity almost completely, and taunts/high-fives/spray tags which gives interaction a positive twist. The game mechanics are so much more complex, and thus challenging and entertaining than the copycat League of Legends. The International 10 tournament is actually ongoing (without crowd unfortunately this year) and the prize pool is set at $40M - including $18M for the top #1 team.
- nindalf 5y ago
  Even as a Dota fan of 10+ years, this comment misses the mark. This website’s audience is mostly North American. LoL dominates that region by a wide margin.
- bob1029 5y ago
  Does dota2 still have that ridiculous turning speed "feature" for all the heroes? I tried to play that game and lasted about 30 seconds when it became clear that simply moving my hero around was going to be a hateful affair.
  - bronzeage 5y ago
    It's important feature, makes a real trade-off between fighting back and fleeing. Otherwise you could do both. Dota also has many mechanics around where you're facing, getting damage reduction from certain angles, or even getting stunned when facing towards someone. If it was instant these things won't work.
- Bishonen88 5y ago
  Irrelevant to whom? You? League is one of the most played games in the world. At this very moment, it is the third most-streamed game on twitch, with 16k more people watching than dota 2.
- Levitz 5y ago
  It's frankly impressive how even 10 years down the line the dota playerbase still holds a grudge.
danskeren 5y ago
I don't follow League of Legends, but I assume the real reason for this would be to help disguise bots?
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  No. That assumption would be incorrect.
- heromal 5y ago
  >I don't follow League of Legends You should've stopped there.
ketzo 5y ago
So, as someone with a lot of very strong opinions about both League of Legends and online communication, I am wildly in favor of this decision. The problem with all-chat in League of Legends, particularly in the ranked queue, is that it can only hurt your team's chances to win. At best, you're wasting time typing; at worst, you're actively frustrating and distracting yourself from what is already a very difficult game. All-chat, as some have already noted, is actually an opt-in feature already; you have to turn it on. I've had it turned off for about two years. I don't like it; it makes me play worse. That is beside the point. In my opinion, the point of this change (from Riot's perspective) is not to shield you, individually, from your opponents' flame. /mute exists, and if you want, you can turn /all off entirely. What you can’t do is turn it off for your teammates, and that’s the problem. The point of this decision is to stop people from engaging. And for that, I am grateful. I can count many, many games that I knew my team could win, if only they would stop getting tilted and typing back at what the enemy team was yelling at them in /all. All I want -- and apparently, all Riot wants -- is for people to just stop yelling and play a gosh darn videogame. The complaint, as far as I can tell, is that you lose beneficial interactions from this, too; "glhf [good luck, have fun]" at the start of the game, or "nice play" from someone you just killed. I have played a lot of this game; comfortably thousands of hours. I understand that this is anecdata from some guy on the internet, but I feel extremely confident in saying that the positive interactions are a minority; even if they're not, I would be hard-pressed to say that they outweigh the games that I've lost, or the anger/frustration I have seen teammates feel, as a result of /all.
- drenvuk 5y ago
  /all was opt in. this is basically barrens chat from literal decades ago. I feel like things turned out ok back then. What's the difference now?
  - cowvin 5y ago
    I mean in World of Warcraft, Horde and Alliance could never chat freely with each other due to the language barrier so it wasn't full of trash talk.
- 5y ago
trabant00 5y ago
Servers require moderators/administrators. I hosted the counterstrike server in my university a long time ago, that's how I got into linux, and while at first I thought it would be a technical challenge it turned out to be a people problem mostly. Police language, resolve conflicts, even got into a physical fight with a banned player. Obviously companies don't want server administrators because they want to scale without employees. But a multiplayer game is a socializing game and socializing without moderation is horrible. And I'm not talking about moderators that get reports out of context and don't know the players. A server admin, a game master, has to be in the community. You can't scale human interactions without turning them to shit.
- alpaca128 5y ago
  I'm not sure what exactly you're proposing. LoL chat is not a server-wide communication channel, it's a separate chat within each of thousands of games running at the same time. I can't imagine an efficient way to moderate all this without just relying on reports. And reports give insight into the complete chat history within that game. Not quite enough for all situations, but definitely not out of context. This is chat in countless 10-player-games, not some Battlefield server that runs 24/7 with 64 players where moderation/admins in realtime actually make sense.
  - trabant00 5y ago
    I'm not proposing anything. I am just saying that the way the game is set up ends up sucking for human interactions. You said it yourself: "I can't imagine an efficient way to moderate all this". And for this reason I quit this kind of multiplayer games.
  - taurath 5y ago
    It’s still the same problem though - more so in mobas because leaving a game in progress completely ruins it for everyone. You can’t even just strict kick someone out of an in progress game. League and mobas in general have a reputation for toxicity because you more or less have to work together to win, even with wide skill gaps. Reports are all post game - wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t do a bunch of ML on users text reports.
Der_Einzige 5y ago
This will kill league of legends. The most fun I've ever had in this game was playing, and winning the "psychological war" by intentionally tilting the other team. The moment I'd get a hint of internal strife within the other team, myself and my friends would do whatever we could (not offensive) to encourage keyboard warrioring because it literally would win us games. They'd get sloppy, spend time typing, and would occasionally rage quit. The fact that this aspect of the game is lost means I am instantly dropping it, and switching to Dota 2. Many of my long time (like since 2010) league friends feel the same way, regardless of how much they have spent in the past. This is super ironic since Riot has a bunch of internal culture problems with sexism (especially compared to pro-speech valve). League of legends was already a dying game, but this is a pretty epic self-pwn.
- heromal 5y ago
  Lmao you're the exact reason they're turning off all chat. The most fun you've had in the game is tilting other people in all-chat. AKA being the keyboard warrior you claim to bring out in other people. Bye.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- VortexDream 5y ago
  And good riddance? Why would anybody want to play a game with somebody toxic like you? Why is it so fun for you to make people feel bad? That doesn't seem downright sociopathic to you?
therealdrag0 5y ago
Sad. I’m also reminded of a UX change a few years back that I felt significantly reduced chat engagement in the post-game screen.
- nopcode 5y ago
  gg ez
heromal 5y ago
The problem is team chat. The first thing I do every match is /mute all , because the chance of me getting question ping spammed, flamed, etc. is much higher than someone actually saying something useful in chat. I've been playing this game since Fiddlesticks was released in 2009, and it has always harbored the most vile children you'll come across online. It's like back in 2005 when you'd hear squeakers calling you the n word on Xbox Live, but on steroids. It's too hard to properly coordinate without voice chat in a real time game such as this one, frankly. That's why text chat has no use outside of flaming and flash timers.
- cdr 5y ago
  You've had the ability to turn off team chat in settings for quite awhile. I also turn it off, both all and team.
  - kubb 5y ago
    It's a different game without team chat. When we're loosing hard I can just invent some minigame, like go farm enemy jungle or go hide somewhere in a bush while they break into our base. Otherwise it just feels like a chill game.
Garlef 5y ago
Seems to be a good move to make the game more enjoyable. Not sure if this is a smart move businesswise. As recent events suggest, FB keeps engagement up through negativity. Maybe the tilt, strong emotional ups and downs, etc are a big contribution to what makes LoL so engaging? But I guess riot has some data on this.
Genego 5y ago
LoL is likely the game that I played the most in the past decade. And one of the first things I would do after joining a match is disabling chat. I'd be in discord with friends talking about other stuff. The amount of trolling, name calling, hate and insults in the game is just on another level. It also seems to be one of the main reasons why some people leave the game behind. Am I glad that chat was disabled? Yes in the current state of the game I am, still sad that it had to be done.
swagasaurus-rex 5y ago
League of Legends and toxicity have always gone hand in hand. I used to blame the players, but I no longer think so. 1. You cannot lose the game quickly! Other genres like RTS, games can last between 3 minutes or as long as 30 minutes. Not so with MOBAs, it's rare to see a game conclude before 20 minutes. 2. You cannot surrender early. Even if a game is clearly one-sided, you're forced to play it out. 3. Small mistakes mean you fall behind and feel weak/useless. It's a rat race/red queen scenario. 4. Your teammates get upset when you die to your opponents. Your opponent becomes a lot stronger. 5. There's no reliable way to come back from being behind. You're basically waiting for your opponents to make multiple mistakes, multiple times until the game is even again. I think all of this adds up to a feeling of frustration and helplessness. Everbody knows this about League. It feels good to get fed because then the game is easy. It sucks to fall behind since it's such an uphill battle. These feelings come out in team-chat. People project, they blame, they rage. And you can't really escape it, since you're supposed to just play the game out.
- zucker42 5y ago
  > You cannot surrender early. Not true. You can surrender after 15 minutes. The game is rarely completely lost before then. The problem comes when some players believe the game to be lost and others do not. Also, a small number of players seem to get pleasure from punishing their teammates by helping their opponents.
  - Randosaurus 5y ago
    This is disingenuous, it typically takes 10-15 minutes to find a game and get through champ select. That 15 minutes is in reality 25-30 minutes.
- Randosaurus 5y ago
  I haven't played league in years and barely even watch it anymore (watching worlds, but didn't even bother watching NA LCS championship). Part of the reason I stopped playing was I realized ranked wasn't competitive, it was just a different mode. If riot actually considered it competitive, autofill wouldn't be a thing. But to your point, you're absolutely correct. There's an old video about a well known streamer (forget his name) ranting about where the toxicity in league comes from. And he draws the following analogy. If you're in a game of pickup basketball and someone on your team decides to start scoring for the opponent, you can simply walk away. If you do that in league you get punished for it so you're forced to stay in a game you don't want to be in. The long and short of it is that LoL players have very little control over both their teammates, and their willingness to play with someone who decides to be an asshole. Riot could solve a large % of the toxicity in league, but they choose not to.
apexalpha 5y ago
The problem is that the only way to drop out is to mute everyone else. But then, psychologically, it feels like you're losing. Because you're opting out of chat while the toxic people don't. What it should be instead is that your teammates, and the opponents can call a vote-mute for team and all-chats. This way you place the toxic person out of the social circle, not yourself. But I guess you could also just give up, like they're doing now. Although I do want to say that 90% of toxicity happens in teamchat. Not allchat. Your opponents usually don't mind you throwing the game, your team on the other hand...
- X-Cubed 5y ago
  I find that there are a couple of problems with vote-mute: - the damage has already been done before the vote gets called, and often the mute only applies to subsequent communications, so the initial abusive message still appears in the chat window. - it requires collaboration to solve the problem, when your team is likely too busy playing the game, or don't feel as strongly as you do about the comment that was made.
xg15 5y ago
HN headline is a bit misleading by omitting a load-bearing slash: They are disabling /all chat, i.e. chat between enemy teams. They are not disabling "all chat" as in "all chat functionality". Maybe someone could change the headline?
emmaLe 5y ago
Weird how the reaction on HN is so much different from the reaction on reddit where everyone is angry at riot for this decision. I am very much sad to see /all chat go, and I see no reason to remove it since it was already opt in. Most toxicity is in team chat, not all chat. The only "toxicity" in all chat that happens regularly is your own team saying "rep [insert lane]" and a "gg ez" at the end of the game which shouldn't bother anyone sane at this point. Sucks that now will be no way to communicate with the other team except emotes and dances. Stop taking the fun out of the internet, god damn it.
- bob1029 5y ago
  The opt-in part is clearly being missed and is a huge piece of the equation. All chat isn't a problem if you didn't explicitly go into the menu to turn it on in the first place... this also means there is a convenient way to turn it back off. For me, this all amounts to virtue signaling by Riot towards the broader community regarding their ongoing war against toxicity.
DarkWiiPlayer 5y ago
As a smite player, I'm just amazed LoL even has this. I don't see what the point would be of letting players interact before the end of the game (and if you really care, /whisper is the tool for you)
mrgordon 5y ago
They’re finally copying the best designed MOBA that was unfortunately late to the party, Heroes of the Storm. The lack of cross-team chat greatly reduces toxicity compared to League and DOTA even though MOBAs as a whole tend to be a bit toxic. Blizzard also put in some other mechanics like team experience instead of individual experience so that you don’t have one person at a much higher level raging at the rest of the team to “get good”
bronzeage 5y ago
If they made it in Dota that would be bad. All chat is usually to convince the other team to keep pausing when your teammates disconnected. It's not really toxic, it's team chat that's toxic. In fact, I've had games won by the enemy flaming his teammates in all chat, which made my team realize it's just as bad on the other side. Getting pissed by the enemy is usually more motivating to win than getting pissed by your teammates.
subjectsigma 5y ago
Ctrl-f'd "bot" and I didn't see any comments so I'll throw in my 2c. I play LoL very casually and I'm pretty new at the game, but I know some people in Platinum/Diamond/Challenger and they all hate this decision. To paraphrase one friend who is in and out of Challenger: "/all chat is not the major source of flaming and BM, it's game design. The number one problem Riot has is bots. There's already some fairly strict filters in place to ban players who say bad things to each other, but it doesn't really matter when you can go online and buy an account for $10 and be instantly back in the game. I myself have many multiple accounts for a variety of reasons. Many high-level players I know have multiple accounts and some of them have been banned at one point; they're all still playing. Riot knows this but they basically can't stop people botting to 30 and flipping the account, and they can't stop the online marketplaces that sell the accounts, so they don't try. Instead they make less effective decisions that players don't want, such as disabling /all. If they could get rid of botting people would actually be scared of bans because losing access to Ranked and all your stuff (champs, skins, etc.) becomes a real danger. Add this to the fact that it is so ridiculously easy to throw games and deny early surrenders, and you get a dangerous cocktail where a small amount of players can instantly run the fun of nine other people with very little consequence." I'm not 100% sure I buy this but these people collectively have >10K hours in the game and I have less than 50, so I defer to them.

84 points by twostorytower 5y ago

That's pretty misguided. It's team chat that is toxic, not /all chat. /all chat is typically full of jokes and banter. Your opponent is not going to flame you for making what they think is a mistake. In fact /all chat can offset negative interactions you have with your team. It's not uncommon for someone from one team to give angry members of the other a "reality check" from an unbiased position, usually ending any toxicity right there.

johnisgood 5y ago
Funny thing is that you can already disable /all chat, and it is disabled by default. > All Chat is automatically disabled when you first download League.[1] [1] https://support-leagueoflegends.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026679653-Using-Allied-and-All-Chat https://support-leagueoflegends.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/artic...
jez 5y ago
And there's always `/mute enemy` to mute all emotes and chat messages from the enemy in that game.
birdyrooster 5y ago
You are mostly right that team chat is more toxic than all, but I’ve seen all chat be very toxic on a regular basis.
deleted 5y ago
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creshal 5y ago
> That's pretty misguided. Seems to about sum up Riot's management these days.
bpye 5y ago
I never really played LoL but that was my experience with Dota 2 - with the exception of the end of the game when the enemy team might well flame you if you're doing badly.
Jare 5y ago
I feel that this is really an experiment to gather data on how dynamics change. A fairly radical one, but not something that they think is going to be "a solution" in itself. It's true in my (very old and short) experience with LoL, that the worst toxicity came from random teammates, but disabling team chat is not so easy to experiment. I would still bet that the solution lies in better in-game tools to replace team chat, but that's a huge problem to solve (the low hanging fruit with map pings etc is already in place).
- alpaca128 5y ago
  Instead of blocking a form of chat I'd just make the system auto-mute anyone using certain key words and phrases. Before the message is even shown. Reading or reacting to those kinds of messages doesn't help anyone, and the game already has a completely ineffective version of this in the form of censoring words (in the default setting).
LZ_Khan 5y ago
My experience hasn't been the same. All chat is toxic just as often as team chat. ggez, lots of taunts and jests after getting a kill on you, and the laner who lost lane against you rubbing it in your face after his team carries you -- all of these are extremely common.
deleted 5y ago
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ketzo 5y ago
The point is not to shield people from the flame of their opponents. /mute exists, and in fact, you already have to opt in to having /all displayed in the first place. The point of this change is to stop people from engaging. > usually ending any toxicity right there. Nope, nope, nope. This is online arguments 101. Engaging with angry, anonymous, online strangers does not deescalate; it makes them angrier and draws in others. Which, for what it's worth, is exactly what happens in /all. Also: > Your opponent is not going to flame you for making what they think is a mistake. You... may not have not played very much League of Legends. This is, like, the literal number one use of /all.
- maverwa 5y ago
  > This is, like, the literal number one use of /all. as someone whe spend way to many hours of his life in bronze: yes, it is. [3rd edit or so]: oh, that and "gg easy" which is not a nice thing to say as well.
  - chmod775 5y ago
    There might be some variations based on rank here. Higher ranked people need to have at least some ability to reason about the game and look at (their own) gameplay objectively to improve - even if that ability can get overridden by anger. They're probably going to be slightly more "tilt resistant" as well. Additionally I know there's regional differences, because of culture and simply language barriers. Anyone who has heard of korean servers will know what I mean.

aeze 5y ago

Maybe a dumb question, but why is toxicity in chat a problem that needs to be solved (to the point of disabling all cross team chat)?

ridaj 5y ago
Maybe because a company like Riot can be held accountable for the poor content of its chats? (in the court of law I'm not sure, but in that of public opinion definitely)
- ahevia 5y ago
  Online chat has been a staple for multiplayer PC games for ages now. Since when has a company been held accountable on a meaningful scale for what happens in chat? (No doubt in my mind that what’s said in chat is called out especially if users aren’t banned) Sure you might get statements like X community is toxic, but that normally stems from more problems then just the game chat of said community.
  - ridaj 5y ago
    I guess maybe they don't want to be dragged to a congressional hearing where they'd be shown a bunch of screenshots that'll look extra offensive out of context and have to explain to senators why they're not doing more to protect players' mental health from bullying, toxic comments, dehumanizing etc
  - nieve 5y ago
    If nothing else they may be a bit worried about the Chinese government since they're a Tencent subsidiary. There's been some significant pressure on game companies this year.
californical 5y ago
Just kinda ruins the game, which makes people not want to play. People get really aggressive when they built their identity around “being good at x”. So if you’re their teammate and you make a decision that they think is wrong, they see you as losing the game for them (even if you think it was right). Same as sports, but you’re generally playing with random anonymous people online that changes every game, so there’s no incentive for long-term teamwork or relationship building. Imagine playing casual pick-up basketball in the park on a team of 5, and you try one play that doesn’t quite work, and your teammates first reaction is to go “Wow you must really suck at basketball to try that!” Or: “Go home and quit, dumbass.” You’d probably feel a little bad, but also just never want to play with that group again. Now imagine 70% of all basketball games you try to play have people yelling at you like that. You’d probably just quit trying to play basketball. There are also some really friendly people in these games (I always tried to be someone who shuts down the mean people), but the problem is that eventually the friendly people just don’t want to play your game at all anymore because of so many negative interactions. They obviously want to grow the number of players, so having a reputation of a horribly toxic community makes people avoid the game, which is bad for profits (and the non-toxic players). Not sure how much this change will help, because the bigger source of toxicity is a player’s own team. But it still could be a good step towards trying to fix their image.

bradhensen 5y ago

Good move by Riot Games, this will definitely promotes healthy game play and coordination.

bentheax 5y ago

I have a friend who plays DotA 2 reguarly who alleges that toxicity is much less of a problem with that community because players can call out good or bad sportsmanship at the match end and this is taken into account by the matchmaking system. This results in all the trollers and flamers and griefers mostly getting matched up with each other in a mutually contstructed cesspit while the fun games happen elsewhere. Does this match others' experience, or is it a bit of a rose-tinted glasses situation?

gsich 5y ago
A bit rose-tintet. All chat is not the problem usually. It's team chat.
throw149102 5y ago
From my experience playing DotA 2, it does help, but it's not a magic bullet. You will have a lot less people griefing/throwing, but you'll still have a hyper-competitive atmosphere where people will shit on each other for fucking up. So trolling is rarer, griefing is rarer, but flaming is still pretty common.

liotier 5y ago

From long experience with Eugene's Wargame series, this is a good decision. Wargame's "all chat" nicknamed Warchat is an horrible place that too many take as a competition in toxicity. It is now legendary bad, bordering on the comical - but really it is just ugly. Good matchmaking and intra-team chat are all a game needs.

Madmallard 5y ago

If the game was more enjoyable even when you're losing this would have never been an issue.

bob1029 5y ago
If it wasn't so miserable to lose for 30+ minutes, winning wouldn't be so awesome by comparison and no one would participate. The whole point of the game for many is to get taken for a bit of an unpredictable ride. If it's always going to be fun and easy, the novel experience evaporates. I think this is on the same spectrum as casual vs hard-core gaming. Casual is always going to feel at least OK, but it's never going to give you that same rush that you get when a single skillshot seals the victory for your team after a sweaty 55 minute slugfest.

robin_reala 5y ago

Unfortunate mangling of the headline – chat is only being disabled in games with auto matchmaking – but it’s still an interesting development.

imgabe 5y ago
And only chat between teams. People on the same team can still chat with each other.
- baq 5y ago
  Should be muted by default, too
paulmd 5y ago
Would be better as all-chat or allchat, pretty obvious what that is contextually
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  It should be what the other commenters are already using: "/all chat". Definitely not "all chat".

pgt 5y ago

/all chat, not all chat.

fwip 5y ago
For people unfamiliar with LoL, disabling /all means that you can still talk with your team, but not to the other team.

glanzwulf 5y ago

Not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I get it, all chat can be a source of twisted toxic wasteland. But on the other hand, sometimes it's fun, so let people communicate and solve the toxic wasteland some other way. A simpler fix for me would've been give the users the option to hide/deactivate the all chat. If they want to talk they'll keep it on if the other team is a bunch of dicks they'll report them and hide the all chat. Easy.

chrsig 5y ago
I think the problem is making people opt out of interacting with douchebags. Let people opt into it. It shouldn't be easier to be abusive than it is to avoid an abuser. So long as that's the case, it's sort of enabling the shitty behavior.
ridaj 5y ago
Here's the deal as I picture it... As the platform moderator you can either moderate and have something that's acceptable banter but it'll cost a lot of money to moderate, it'll give players a feeling of being nannied, and no matter your decision you'll constantly be called out either as too repressive or too permissive or both at once. Alt: you can censor everything. Congrats trolls, you won.
djrockstar1 5y ago
all chat is actually disabled by default, you have to opt-in to it through the settings.
ungawatkt 5y ago
I dunno, at this point "LOL toxic" is such a meme that it's probably a reasonable barrier to entry for folks,so they're probably trying to address that. And "sometimes fun" isn't enough to get over "usually not fun". And it isn't entirely unreasonable, I thought the toxicity was overstated until I tried league, and my first game I got yelled at and called various slurs for not playing right, same for the next 2 games I played until I quit forever (because there are other fun games, sure that was years ago but why bother trying again when I can just play X), and that was from my own teammates (in wood tier), not even the other team. Anecdotal for sure, but I suspect not terribly unusual if not that fast, and from the player side it's less "I'm offended" and more "huh, I could just play anything else". Especially if dealing with the toxicity is opt-out rather than opt-in, or gives the player fomo, like an option to disable all chat would implicitly be/do. Edit: I replied to this one because it made the most context sense, but it's not really a direct agreement or refute of anything in the parent

unrealhoang 5y ago

This suites the paternalistic approach style by Riot. On the other side, Dota2 having a player allchat a triggering "?" in a pro match is one of the most epic moments.

menthe 5y ago

At this point, League of Legends is completely irrelevant. Watch/Play Dota2 - it was where it started and where it’s at (although to be exact Warcraft III’s DotA Allstars spawned from Warcraft III’s AOS custom map). The game has a team voice chat which eliminates toxicity almost completely, and taunts/high-fives/spray tags which gives interaction a positive twist. The game mechanics are so much more complex, and thus challenging and entertaining than the copycat League of Legends. The International 10 tournament is actually ongoing (without crowd unfortunately this year) and the prize pool is set at $40M - including $18M for the top #1 team.

nindalf 5y ago
Even as a Dota fan of 10+ years, this comment misses the mark. This website’s audience is mostly North American. LoL dominates that region by a wide margin.
bob1029 5y ago
Does dota2 still have that ridiculous turning speed "feature" for all the heroes? I tried to play that game and lasted about 30 seconds when it became clear that simply moving my hero around was going to be a hateful affair.
- bronzeage 5y ago
  It's important feature, makes a real trade-off between fighting back and fleeing. Otherwise you could do both. Dota also has many mechanics around where you're facing, getting damage reduction from certain angles, or even getting stunned when facing towards someone. If it was instant these things won't work.
Bishonen88 5y ago
Irrelevant to whom? You? League is one of the most played games in the world. At this very moment, it is the third most-streamed game on twitch, with 16k more people watching than dota 2.
Levitz 5y ago
It's frankly impressive how even 10 years down the line the dota playerbase still holds a grudge.

danskeren 5y ago

I don't follow League of Legends, but I assume the real reason for this would be to help disguise bots?

TulliusCicero 5y ago
No. That assumption would be incorrect.
heromal 5y ago
>I don't follow League of Legends You should've stopped there.

ketzo 5y ago

So, as someone with a lot of very strong opinions about both League of Legends and online communication, I am wildly in favor of this decision. The problem with all-chat in League of Legends, particularly in the ranked queue, is that it can only hurt your team's chances to win. At best, you're wasting time typing; at worst, you're actively frustrating and distracting yourself from what is already a very difficult game. All-chat, as some have already noted, is actually an opt-in feature already; you have to turn it on. I've had it turned off for about two years. I don't like it; it makes me play worse. That is beside the point. In my opinion, the point of this change (from Riot's perspective) is not to shield you, individually, from your opponents' flame. /mute exists, and if you want, you can turn /all off entirely. What you can’t do is turn it off for your teammates, and that’s the problem. The point of this decision is to stop people from engaging. And for that, I am grateful. I can count many, many games that I knew my team could win, if only they would stop getting tilted and typing back at what the enemy team was yelling at them in /all. All I want -- and apparently, all Riot wants -- is for people to just stop yelling and play a gosh darn videogame. The complaint, as far as I can tell, is that you lose beneficial interactions from this, too; "glhf [good luck, have fun]" at the start of the game, or "nice play" from someone you just killed. I have played a lot of this game; comfortably thousands of hours. I understand that this is anecdata from some guy on the internet, but I feel extremely confident in saying that the positive interactions are a minority; even if they're not, I would be hard-pressed to say that they outweigh the games that I've lost, or the anger/frustration I have seen teammates feel, as a result of /all.

drenvuk 5y ago
/all was opt in. this is basically barrens chat from literal decades ago. I feel like things turned out ok back then. What's the difference now?
- cowvin 5y ago
  I mean in World of Warcraft, Horde and Alliance could never chat freely with each other due to the language barrier so it wasn't full of trash talk.
5y ago

trabant00 5y ago

Servers require moderators/administrators. I hosted the counterstrike server in my university a long time ago, that's how I got into linux, and while at first I thought it would be a technical challenge it turned out to be a people problem mostly. Police language, resolve conflicts, even got into a physical fight with a banned player. Obviously companies don't want server administrators because they want to scale without employees. But a multiplayer game is a socializing game and socializing without moderation is horrible. And I'm not talking about moderators that get reports out of context and don't know the players. A server admin, a game master, has to be in the community. You can't scale human interactions without turning them to shit.

alpaca128 5y ago
I'm not sure what exactly you're proposing. LoL chat is not a server-wide communication channel, it's a separate chat within each of thousands of games running at the same time. I can't imagine an efficient way to moderate all this without just relying on reports. And reports give insight into the complete chat history within that game. Not quite enough for all situations, but definitely not out of context. This is chat in countless 10-player-games, not some Battlefield server that runs 24/7 with 64 players where moderation/admins in realtime actually make sense.
- trabant00 5y ago
  I'm not proposing anything. I am just saying that the way the game is set up ends up sucking for human interactions. You said it yourself: "I can't imagine an efficient way to moderate all this". And for this reason I quit this kind of multiplayer games.
- taurath 5y ago
  It’s still the same problem though - more so in mobas because leaving a game in progress completely ruins it for everyone. You can’t even just strict kick someone out of an in progress game. League and mobas in general have a reputation for toxicity because you more or less have to work together to win, even with wide skill gaps. Reports are all post game - wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t do a bunch of ML on users text reports.

Der_Einzige 5y ago

This will kill league of legends. The most fun I've ever had in this game was playing, and winning the "psychological war" by intentionally tilting the other team. The moment I'd get a hint of internal strife within the other team, myself and my friends would do whatever we could (not offensive) to encourage keyboard warrioring because it literally would win us games. They'd get sloppy, spend time typing, and would occasionally rage quit. The fact that this aspect of the game is lost means I am instantly dropping it, and switching to Dota 2. Many of my long time (like since 2010) league friends feel the same way, regardless of how much they have spent in the past. This is super ironic since Riot has a bunch of internal culture problems with sexism (especially compared to pro-speech valve). League of legends was already a dying game, but this is a pretty epic self-pwn.

heromal 5y ago
Lmao you're the exact reason they're turning off all chat. The most fun you've had in the game is tilting other people in all-chat. AKA being the keyboard warrior you claim to bring out in other people. Bye.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
VortexDream 5y ago
And good riddance? Why would anybody want to play a game with somebody toxic like you? Why is it so fun for you to make people feel bad? That doesn't seem downright sociopathic to you?

therealdrag0 5y ago

Sad. I’m also reminded of a UX change a few years back that I felt significantly reduced chat engagement in the post-game screen.

nopcode 5y ago
gg ez

heromal 5y ago

The problem is team chat. The first thing I do every match is /mute all , because the chance of me getting question ping spammed, flamed, etc. is much higher than someone actually saying something useful in chat. I've been playing this game since Fiddlesticks was released in 2009, and it has always harbored the most vile children you'll come across online. It's like back in 2005 when you'd hear squeakers calling you the n word on Xbox Live, but on steroids. It's too hard to properly coordinate without voice chat in a real time game such as this one, frankly. That's why text chat has no use outside of flaming and flash timers.

cdr 5y ago
You've had the ability to turn off team chat in settings for quite awhile. I also turn it off, both all and team.
- kubb 5y ago
  It's a different game without team chat. When we're loosing hard I can just invent some minigame, like go farm enemy jungle or go hide somewhere in a bush while they break into our base. Otherwise it just feels like a chill game.

Garlef 5y ago

Seems to be a good move to make the game more enjoyable. Not sure if this is a smart move businesswise. As recent events suggest, FB keeps engagement up through negativity. Maybe the tilt, strong emotional ups and downs, etc are a big contribution to what makes LoL so engaging? But I guess riot has some data on this.

Genego 5y ago

LoL is likely the game that I played the most in the past decade. And one of the first things I would do after joining a match is disabling chat. I'd be in discord with friends talking about other stuff. The amount of trolling, name calling, hate and insults in the game is just on another level. It also seems to be one of the main reasons why some people leave the game behind. Am I glad that chat was disabled? Yes in the current state of the game I am, still sad that it had to be done.

swagasaurus-rex 5y ago

League of Legends and toxicity have always gone hand in hand. I used to blame the players, but I no longer think so. 1. You cannot lose the game quickly! Other genres like RTS, games can last between 3 minutes or as long as 30 minutes. Not so with MOBAs, it's rare to see a game conclude before 20 minutes. 2. You cannot surrender early. Even if a game is clearly one-sided, you're forced to play it out. 3. Small mistakes mean you fall behind and feel weak/useless. It's a rat race/red queen scenario. 4. Your teammates get upset when you die to your opponents. Your opponent becomes a lot stronger. 5. There's no reliable way to come back from being behind. You're basically waiting for your opponents to make multiple mistakes, multiple times until the game is even again. I think all of this adds up to a feeling of frustration and helplessness. Everbody knows this about League. It feels good to get fed because then the game is easy. It sucks to fall behind since it's such an uphill battle. These feelings come out in team-chat. People project, they blame, they rage. And you can't really escape it, since you're supposed to just play the game out.

zucker42 5y ago
> You cannot surrender early. Not true. You can surrender after 15 minutes. The game is rarely completely lost before then. The problem comes when some players believe the game to be lost and others do not. Also, a small number of players seem to get pleasure from punishing their teammates by helping their opponents.
- Randosaurus 5y ago
  This is disingenuous, it typically takes 10-15 minutes to find a game and get through champ select. That 15 minutes is in reality 25-30 minutes.
Randosaurus 5y ago
I haven't played league in years and barely even watch it anymore (watching worlds, but didn't even bother watching NA LCS championship). Part of the reason I stopped playing was I realized ranked wasn't competitive, it was just a different mode. If riot actually considered it competitive, autofill wouldn't be a thing. But to your point, you're absolutely correct. There's an old video about a well known streamer (forget his name) ranting about where the toxicity in league comes from. And he draws the following analogy. If you're in a game of pickup basketball and someone on your team decides to start scoring for the opponent, you can simply walk away. If you do that in league you get punished for it so you're forced to stay in a game you don't want to be in. The long and short of it is that LoL players have very little control over both their teammates, and their willingness to play with someone who decides to be an asshole. Riot could solve a large % of the toxicity in league, but they choose not to.

apexalpha 5y ago

The problem is that the only way to drop out is to mute everyone else. But then, psychologically, it feels like you're losing. Because you're opting out of chat while the toxic people don't. What it should be instead is that your teammates, and the opponents can call a vote-mute for team and all-chats. This way you place the toxic person out of the social circle, not yourself. But I guess you could also just give up, like they're doing now. Although I do want to say that 90% of toxicity happens in teamchat. Not allchat. Your opponents usually don't mind you throwing the game, your team on the other hand...

X-Cubed 5y ago
I find that there are a couple of problems with vote-mute: - the damage has already been done before the vote gets called, and often the mute only applies to subsequent communications, so the initial abusive message still appears in the chat window. - it requires collaboration to solve the problem, when your team is likely too busy playing the game, or don't feel as strongly as you do about the comment that was made.

xg15 5y ago

HN headline is a bit misleading by omitting a load-bearing slash: They are disabling /all chat, i.e. chat between enemy teams. They are not disabling "all chat" as in "all chat functionality". Maybe someone could change the headline?

emmaLe 5y ago

Weird how the reaction on HN is so much different from the reaction on reddit where everyone is angry at riot for this decision. I am very much sad to see /all chat go, and I see no reason to remove it since it was already opt in. Most toxicity is in team chat, not all chat. The only "toxicity" in all chat that happens regularly is your own team saying "rep [insert lane]" and a "gg ez" at the end of the game which shouldn't bother anyone sane at this point. Sucks that now will be no way to communicate with the other team except emotes and dances. Stop taking the fun out of the internet, god damn it.

bob1029 5y ago
The opt-in part is clearly being missed and is a huge piece of the equation. All chat isn't a problem if you didn't explicitly go into the menu to turn it on in the first place... this also means there is a convenient way to turn it back off. For me, this all amounts to virtue signaling by Riot towards the broader community regarding their ongoing war against toxicity.

DarkWiiPlayer 5y ago

As a smite player, I'm just amazed LoL even has this. I don't see what the point would be of letting players interact before the end of the game (and if you really care, /whisper is the tool for you)

mrgordon 5y ago

They’re finally copying the best designed MOBA that was unfortunately late to the party, Heroes of the Storm. The lack of cross-team chat greatly reduces toxicity compared to League and DOTA even though MOBAs as a whole tend to be a bit toxic. Blizzard also put in some other mechanics like team experience instead of individual experience so that you don’t have one person at a much higher level raging at the rest of the team to “get good”

bronzeage 5y ago

If they made it in Dota that would be bad. All chat is usually to convince the other team to keep pausing when your teammates disconnected. It's not really toxic, it's team chat that's toxic. In fact, I've had games won by the enemy flaming his teammates in all chat, which made my team realize it's just as bad on the other side. Getting pissed by the enemy is usually more motivating to win than getting pissed by your teammates.

subjectsigma 5y ago

Ctrl-f'd "bot" and I didn't see any comments so I'll throw in my 2c. I play LoL very casually and I'm pretty new at the game, but I know some people in Platinum/Diamond/Challenger and they all hate this decision. To paraphrase one friend who is in and out of Challenger: "/all chat is not the major source of flaming and BM, it's game design. The number one problem Riot has is bots. There's already some fairly strict filters in place to ban players who say bad things to each other, but it doesn't really matter when you can go online and buy an account for $10 and be instantly back in the game. I myself have many multiple accounts for a variety of reasons. Many high-level players I know have multiple accounts and some of them have been banned at one point; they're all still playing. Riot knows this but they basically can't stop people botting to 30 and flipping the account, and they can't stop the online marketplaces that sell the accounts, so they don't try. Instead they make less effective decisions that players don't want, such as disabling /all. If they could get rid of botting people would actually be scared of bans because losing access to Ranked and all your stuff (champs, skins, etc.) becomes a real danger. Add this to the fact that it is so ridiculously easy to throw games and deny early surrenders, and you get a dangerous cocktail where a small amount of players can instantly run the fun of nine other people with very little consequence." I'm not 100% sure I buy this but these people collectively have >10K hours in the game and I have less than 50, so I defer to them.