I played League and Dota to the point that I got into the in-house leagues. I saw the entire moba gammut from "noobs in beta and no one knows what they're doing" to "I played beside pros". So I'll just say this:
The entire genre is toxic. Playing it causes psychological and mental health damage. Capitalist profit incentive akes this worse in practically every iteration of the genre. Tying this garbage in with a kid's IP is tantamount to abuse. Don't encourage this.
That is all.
A long rant about moba toxicity
Coupled with how most MOBAs encourage binge playing with their monetization/freemium model, so you get people who lose and should stop but continue anyway just to get into a match where someone is "not performing to their standard" again.
The lack of ability to introspect what's going on in the game makes the entire genre rife with Dunning-Kreuger Syndrone and teammate blame, especially since most often than not you'll never see your teammates again after the game is over.
The requirement to adhere to a specific meta/strategy to perform means people who want to play to have fun in their own way are either punished, or frustrate "serious" players. There is also inherently no way to divide casual and serious players because this will inherently result in the game being played two entirely different ways that don't mesh together well when people want to switch or when the devs want to balance things.
Just so much... so... so... much.
tl;dr: The genre is built such that if your entire team is not EXACTLY the same amount of "serious business" as each other, people are gonna have a bad time. If there's a skill gap, people are gonna have a bad time. If everyone isn't on the same page, people are gonna have a bad time. And then you throw 5 random people together and tell them "If you stop playing when you're not having fun, we're going to ban you"
Toxicity and bad mental health patterning are an EXPECTED result from this.
re: A long rant about moba toxicity
@trysdyn @IceWolf wow, this... also goes a long way to explain why random instances and raids in MMOs are generally so... like that. :| at least dungeons don't usually have a PVP component, and when they do it's a brief gimmick, so it's much easier to go in with friends and get it done rather than relying on getting a bunch of complete strangers together, and since it's against a programmed opponent it's easier to communicate strategies and follow along. still... bleargh.
re: A long rant about moba toxicity
@IceWolf @troodon @trysdyn From playing a lot of DOTA2, FFXIV, MHW, Splatoon, and similar matchmade titles: the problem comes up when you throw randos into a highly structured experience where one or two players being inexperienced crashes it for everyone.
That situation sets up a negative feedback loop that conditions players to be abusive. Games where one or two players can carry on anyway generally lack it.
re: A long rant about moba toxicity
@IceWolf @troodon @trysdyn As for taking the MOBA toxicity out of MOBAs: a close experiment to success was the game Vainglory, which leaned heavily on individual laning, had very little group synergy, had short rounds, and had no voice chat.
Though doing all that kind of gives up the point that the formula behind MOBAs leads to the toxic conditioning loop described above. I can't see the Pokemon one ending well.
