Misconceptions in Solo-Q: You're not carrying shit

I have to admit my pet peeve when it comes to League of Legends is when someone on my team says they couldn't carry in a demeaning manner. As if they were going above and beyond trying to carry us but we were trying to lose on purpose. Not to be the bearer of bad news but your score isn't the deciding factor of whether you're carrying or not, if anything it displays your potential to carry. And we all know that having potential doesn't factor into winning league games.

"Baaaah I dominated my lane but other lanes lost, I can't carry these scrubs"
"q___q team doesn't know how to focus, I can't carry these scrubs"
"this support/adc is sooo bad I can't carry this trashbag"

I'm not going to say you're lying, but I'd cut your sentence a little short to make it more truthful. "I can't carry." would be much more accurate. Thats nice that you went 4/0 by 20 minutes in top lane, but theres a game going on on the other 3/4 of the map. You could have went 0/4 and it would make no difference, you literally did nothing to carry the game. Oh, you killed the enemy botlane over and over but couldn't win teamfights? You'll get them next time. Your opponent mid was your bitch and under turret the whole laning phase barely getting any farm? I'm glad you had fun playing dominatrix. But please don't tell me you were carrying because you weren't. Let me make this clear however; I'm not saying you can't win lane or that you're not better than the people in your elo like you claim to be. I'm just saying that carrying implies that you're carrying the team on your back, which you most likely aren't doing.

Carrying is a playstyle. I've said it in multiple blogs before but winning your lane doesn't mean you win the game. Evidently so because of the popular phrase "win lane lose game". To carry you have to take the pressure off the other players. Give them breathers, make the game easier for them. Carrying the team on your back, breaking your back from carrying, being most impactful player, etc. When you're dominating your lane you aren't doing any of that unless the enemy has global pressure. If you win your lane and stay in it you probably carrying just as much as if you were going even or losing. Thinking "I'll win lane then carry the game" isn't going to do you justice. Just put pressure all over the map while keeping your tower safe. Get the minions (which also keeps your tower safe) and put pressure elsewhere on the map. Force fights that are unfavorable for the enemy, get objectives when you can.. what I'm basically saying is make plays. I know you've seen this advice on AMAs tons of times, but its the truth.

Now I'm not saying that stomping your lane doesn't open avenues for you to carry. Just that the act of just stomping the lane isn't carrying, its what you do after. You must push for objectives, get the jungler to pay attention to you, do things that affect the other players in the game. You have to dictate how the game is going, make the enemy team very aware of your presence by shoving it in their face. Gank other lanes and get their towers, and not JUST their first tier towers. Do it at second tier towers, inhib towers if you can. Your item advantage means nothing if you're not doing anything with it, and if you think you are doing enough but you're still losing games then you need to do more. Complaining about teammates is like complaining about the weather. You can do it all you want but it isn't going to change anything. If you don't like getting wet when it rains use an umbrella.

Just please don't surrender at 20 and complain about not being able to carry scrubs because you won your lane and did nothing else. You gain elo by carrying games, not winning lane. Don't let your item advantage carry you through games, use your item advantage to carry games.

Mute/Ignore Button; Useful but Unused Feature & Curbing Toxic Behavior

In my opinion the ignore button is the single most powerful tool for keeping a game cleansed of toxicity. Generally to succeed in a game you have to be playing a mental game with your enemy. Thinking about what they're going to do, where you have to go or which objectives you should go for next. When someone spouts toxic nonsense at you(and if you argue back, you're definitely not thinking about the game anymore), you automatically lose this train of thought. You DO need concentration to play your best so anything that removes you from a comfortable environment should be dealt with. Whenever someone says something toxic, you have the ability to simply ignore them. Out of sight, out of mind. That being said the ignore function is barely ever used despite its power.

I don't believe the ignore button is accessible enough. Yes, the ignore being two clicks away isn't accessible enough. The mute button should be somewhere that as soon as someone says toxic, you're automatically reminded that you can mute them. In chat, right at the end of every sentence the mute option in the scoreboard should appear for a few seconds before fading away. Now, some issues may come into play if this is carried out. While it makes the game enjoyable again for the person muting, it does not curb the behavior of the verbal assailant. It doesn't tell them they've been muted and no doubt they'll go on putting up a show for the other players by slandering the player. Riot is adamant about correcting the player behavior (as they rightly should), so something should be done about this.

Now I know a lot of people give Riot flak for not implementing things like prisoner island because of how toxic the community is. I'd argue that what they're doing is a good thing because they're actually trying to clean up the MOBA community in their own way. Some people may say its not their job to do so but then whose job is it? The players are not just going to fix it themselves and if you ever want a decent community some actions must be taken. Things like prisoner island doesn't help fix the problem. Its like a band-aid fix, a very very explosive band-aid fix. Just imagine a prisoner island game and how volatile the situation is. Everyone is a rager/afker and as we all know, even ragers can make people who are usually not toxic, toxic through arguments. In a game full of ragers its like throwing a lighted match in a box of explosives, just one sets off and everything explodes. There are arguments that if people don't like it they can remove themselves by bettering their behavior but in my opinion it would make 'light' ragers much more toxic than they normally are on a regular basis while only reforming a small amount of players. Much like prisons where people who are in jail for light crimes come out harder criminals.

Some things Riot could do to use the mute button to reform behavior;

• Suggested before but telling the player that they've been muted. "A player has muted you." No doubt it'll send the message that they're being toxic while taking the pack mentality away from them. Knowing that they have no audience will most likely stop them from raging.
• At the end of the game, a little message could pop up saying "You muted X person this game, would you like to report them?" would appear. I often forget to report someone after a game because I just want to move on and only after closing the end game stats I realize I should have reported them.
• Track mute percentage. Riot can use this information to understand what mute rate (eg. muted once ever 3 games) is toxic and administer a restricted chat punishment accordingly. People who go over the threshold they decide get a restricted chat.

Now I see some problems that may arise and I'd like to address them.

People might abuse the mute button:
Much like false reporting, it won't affect anyone who is not being toxic habitually.

People might rage and afk/feed after getting notified that a lot of people have muted them.
All the power to them, while it will ruin a few games it'll only hasten them being banned.

Something else that would be good is to remove the ignore list. It doesn't do anything but keep people muted if you play with them again, the mute button would work like that in this case. They would be unmuted if you played with them again, but if they're toxic you just mute them once more. The ignore list can't really do much anyways, if it could prevent you from playing with other players I feel like it would be abused a lot. Especially in high elo where there isn't a large pool of players, someone could easily ignore the people they don't want to face against regardless of whether they're toxic or not.

These are not changes that would help to better the community in the short run. It may prove to make the environment more volatile for a while but in the long run it would make the community much less toxic.

TL;DR Making the mute button more accessible while adding a few features onto the mute button can prove to curb toxic behavior.