“Voyboy Was Right”, TF Blade Quits Stream Again After Frustration With NA Solo Queue

Cover image courtesy Youtube
Thumbnail courtesy Les Belettes

• TF Blade quits stream after 1 hour wait due to troll in lobby
• Many players are voicing concerns over sad state of Solo Queue

Just a couple of days after Voyboy came out with a video voicing his concerns over Riot’s lack of punishment for toxic players in ranked queues, TF Blade experiences the wrath of the Solo Queue. After playing 2 games, the streamer waited an hour only to get put into a troll lobby. This forced him to dodge the game and stop the stream before resuming a few hours later. 

TF Blade was doing the ‘climbing for rank 1’ challenge on the NA server, during which a player in his lobby decided to ban one of his teammate’s declared champion. The streamer realised this game was probably going to be another toxic troll fest, so he decided to dodge the game after an hour’s wait in the queue saying, he was going to have to wait another hour. 

Pros frustrated With the state of Solo Queue

The conversation about toxicity in the solo queue has been happening in the League of Legends scene for quite some time now. It has ended up affecting everybody from Challenger tier players to lower ranks as well as normal games. Joedat ‘Voyboy’ Esfahani has recently slammed Riot in a video about not addressing the problem. Saying, “The state of the community and the player base has gotten progressively worse over time,” Voyboy lamented about the way these players work around the system. “There’s no point of even reporting people,” he explained. “No one is scared of getting in trouble. No one is scared of being banned. Riot has really made it clear through their actions… that they don’t really care.”

Unlike openly aggressive players who let out a string of insults in chat (for which they can be reported and banned), these players go out of their way to doom their team in sly ways. They run it down mid, ping incessantly, grief junglers by following them around or stay at base, dodging Riot’s AFK system by moving around just enough. 

Some players are of the opinion that part of the reason solo queue is so toxic is that there is no incentive to be respectful, and the reactive rather than proactive approach taken by Riot in combating toxicity. Many players are saying the 'new' honour system isn't working partly because the only discernible benefits to being high honour are for cosmetics like yearly ward skins, the odd few key fragments, and the ability to participate in Clash.

At this point, a routine update from Riot won’t be enough to satisfy frustrated players who might just stop playing League of Legends and jump to other games.