Beatings won’t improve systemic problems with your genre.
There’s a reason every MOBA is this toxic, and only MOBAs are this toxic. Every system is perfectly designed to produce its observed outcomes. You designed this problem.
To add to other commenters - its also really hard, assuming you play solo, to focus on your own performance and not blame teammates. I’ve never been toxic, and tried to focus on my own gameplay, but I eventually realized its almost impossible. Even though I thought that I don’t care about others, and even though I managed to never be toxic, it only ocurred to me when I switched to StarCraft, where you play 1v1 and there’s no-one else to blame. It was so mentally taxing, queueing for another game when you know that you just suck and will loose again to some easy build. I lasted for two months of ranked StarCraft, before I had to quit due to mental health. I just wasn’t able to play anymore and was dreading the next match.
Which is something that never happened to me in MOBAs, because even though I was sure I’m only focusing on myself, it became clear that wasn’t true - otherwise, I’d have quickly had the same problem as with 1v1 games. I managed to not be toxic because I hate toxicity and am non-confrotational in general, but if you are someone with less self-control, blaming your teammates just come so, so naturally. And accepting your own mistakes is way harder than I thought, which surprised me by how much.
It’s a zero-sum team project. Half the people playing will lose, and none of them will feel responsible. Even though they need to work together the entire time, to such a degree that any single person can ruin it for everybody… and one player quitting counts as ruining it for everybody. You’re handcuffed to these people for an hour. If this was all silly fun-times then you’d laugh it off, but of course, no, it’s a competitive sweatbox.
This is a formula for a stranger in Nebraska to blow out your headphones screaming obscenities because you clicked NPCs wrong twenty minutes ago.
Compare other hyper-competitive team games like Counter-Strike. One player can clutch a 1v5. Quitting is heavily discouraged, but is roughly balanced through numeric adjustments. And most importantly, games are quick. A round can happen in under a minute. Whole matches can be as long as a MOBA round, but being broken up into multiple phases - each one a separate win or loss - lets people feel that they did okay. Even if they stood no chance. Nobody invents a racial slur, mid-aneurysm, when they lose an aim-duel in silver.
One of the ex-devs for LoL or DotA said people should get kicked just for picking the wrong guy. If you can commit a bannable offense on the character select screen, maybe the game has intrinsic problems.
And you are more than likely to never play with the same people ever again forever. No community building, only community destruction.
Makes sense. I played Dota for some time and honestly that was one of the things I enjoyed about it, unreasonable people being furious with me while being totally helpless to do anything about it other than lose their shit. Although it’s a dirty sort of enjoyment and makes things extremely awkward; on an emotional level what you want out of the match is for your teammates to fail, but you’re obliged by the rules and a sense of sportsmanship not to throw, so even if you don’t want to be dishonest about what you’re doing it’s hard to play seriously.
I think it would be cool if there was a moba that somehow formalizes the adversarial relationship you have with your team. Maybe like a Survivor esque battle royale setup; in the beginning it’s 5v5, and you’ll be advantaged by the success of your team, but ultimately you are going to have to betray them to win, and also the losers will have an opportunity to influence the outcome.
