Toxicity in Gaming NEEDS to change.

As a longtime gamer, I have become overwhelmed with frustration in regards to the amount of trolls, and negativity in the competitive gaming community.

As a mid-rank player in most games I play, I find that it's hard to break out of the pack and rank up, when most competitive games are plagued by toxicity and trolling. I have been playing League of Legends for quite sometime, and played Counterstrike and CSGO. Lately I have been playing Overwatch, as I got increasingly tired of the level of negativity and disrespectful people in CSGO and League. Overwatch has not been much different. The amount of people that troll games, and ruin the experience for everyone is around 50% from what I have experienced. It seems that just about any game that has good communication, and a group of people that all WANT to win, seems to go well, and we often win. I find that when the games are silent and I'm usually one of two or three people in team chat, then the game is surely a loss. Often there is someone on the mic who is there just to throw games and derank an account. The only real reason to do this would be to be able to play at a lower rank with friends. It is frustrating playing a game that is meant to be competitive, and people are trying to lose on purpose. In any other sport, you receive MASSIVE penalties from throwing games, and usually results in a ban. In one case in e-sports, a team threw games, and was banned from all tournaments for life. Their ban has only recently been lifted as the community felt those players had reformed and deserve another chance. I would love to see harsher penalties in lower-mid rank competitive games, for purposely throwing a game. When reporting a player, the option "throwing" is not there, but "griefing" is. I feel like they should add 'throwing' instead of griefing, as it is more specific, and griefing these days just means picking a weak champ and pretending to try but not really trying at all.

There have been recent improvements mentioned in upcoming updates, for being able to block 2 people you come across in competitive play, that you would like to add to a "avoid player" list. As I have not been able to test this yet, my thoughts would be that it should higher. I think 10 players is a much better number, as there are often multiple games in a row with a person trying to derank. Deranking on purpose is unfair for everyone involved, as it gives the other team free SR points they might not deserve. What happens when you keep giving people free SR? They destroy other higher rank games because those people dont deserve the win. For the people on the team you are throwing on, they now get put in a lower SR they might also not deserve and then are placed with lower tier players. The main reason I personally dont want to be placed lower is purely the fact that when I play a competitive game, I like to communicate with the team, work as a team, and play for the win. I often play support roles in competitive games, as I feel its a very undervalued role, and can help the team get out of bad positioning or playing.

I think I'm going to take a small break from playing competitive games on my own. At least that way I can ensure that there is one less spot on the team for a troll player to fill. I also could use a good story-mode game to play on PC if anyone has any recommendations. Solo play is rarely enjoyable anymore. I know I sound like an old fogey, and I'm really not, but back in the day the trolling was way different. Less people threw games on purpose, but more people had sex with eachothers moms. Ah the good ol' days.