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.

Created By : Unknown ~ A blog about various video games

Article Mute/Ignore Button; Useful but Unused Feature & Curbing Toxic Behavior was published by Unknown on Tuesday 4 February 2014. There are currently 0 comments: for the article Mute/Ignore Button; Useful but Unused Feature & Curbing Toxic Behavior