I would say I'm fairly newish to the game. I've had it for a while, but don't play often. I'm level 22, I think. I only play about 2-3 games a week. Now, over the course of the time I've played, you'd think I've gathered enough information to understand the role of each champion, which lane they go fight in, and when to do certain things in game.

The problem is, I haven't. I play very sparingly and it's when I have free time to do so, which may be an hour or two a week. I like the game, it's fun. But the community of players you find in game isn't. More often than not, as soon as I pick a champion, I get called all sorts of expletives. Most of the time, my sexual orientation is called into question, without me even saying a word.

Last night I played a game with a buddy. We aren't seasoned veterans, so we pick champions we've played before and are comfortable with. As soon as we picked our champions, a player on our team proceeds to start using profanity and telling us we're going to lose, because we had no mid lane champion. He proceeds to completely harass each person on our team and calling out players when they die. What gives him the right to pick a champion at will, then flame everyone else for picking one? I eventually ignore him, but I can still see other players on the team are arguing with him.

When the 20 minutes elapse, we just surrender the game, as at this point the player in question isn't playing, just harassing others. I report him after the game. Here's where the shock came in. There's an option for reporting unskilled players. What kind of mindset does that breed in a player base?

The next game we get into, as soon as I pick my champion I get called a few homophobic terms, and another player tells me to uninstall the game and never think about playing again. They leave the game lobby, and we're stuck looking for another game.

But it's not just that. I'll ask for help in game about where I need to go, how the lanes work, and what champions are good where. Because quite honestly, I just don't know. Seven out of ten times, you don't get help, you get called names, cursed at or called derogatory, homophobic names. It does't lend well to new players looking to improve, or even learn anything about the game.

Admittedly, I could do more research outside of the game, and I've tried some. But some people just don't have the time to devote to researching a game they only have a couple hours a week to play. I don't think it makes those players any less entitled to play a game than anyone else. Also, you would think with an ELO system, you'd eventually get paired with players of the same skill. So why am I having to play with players that are evidently way more skilled than me?

Hey Xero, I'm really sorry to hear about your experiences, and they aren't uncommon.
I'm still level 16 on my first account, and after many bot games, I just started getting into PvP.
I was trying out various champions as well, and even bought a few because they 'looked cool' (Kha'zix and Blitzcrank most notably), only to find out I had no idea how to play them, despite seeing skilled players massacre me with them.

A friend of mine who is ranked and really skilled suggested just sticking with 1-3 champions I felt really comfortable with and learning them in and out as best I could while grasping the mechanics.

You will get rude/toxic/insensitive people sometimes, and all you can do is report them if they're violating the code. But so long as you communicate that you're new/learning/don't understand things, you'll often run into a few friendly, helpful people who will offer advice. A lot of people in my friend list are people I played against who respected my attitude and openness and added me because they'd rather help an unskilled player with a good attitude learn than pair up with a skilled but rude player, so I'd recommend if you play with someone - on your team or theirs - who communicates well and is friendly, consider giving them an add, and you might get invited into some team or custom games, where you can learn the ropes in a safer environment.

I myself after playing tons of games as Ashe and occassionally Jax have really started appreciating Garen and Soraka, and am trying to learn how to play them effectively. What items to buy and why. How to ward, how to avoid junglers, how to last hit and farm effectively. I still have a long way to go, but understanding the WHYs and not just the WHATs has, I believe, made me a much more fundamentally sound player who isn't just looking to drop mad DPS on every minion and champion I see.

I hope you don't give up because of a few bad apples. Feel free to add me next time you're on and if I'm around I'll be happy to game with you. I'm sure there's many other people in this forum who feel the same.

Good luck and may karma swing in your favor.

Are you playing 5th age Taric? Just kidding.

Let me give you some advice, when you reach summoner level 20+ ppl start to play meta. I personally don't agree to follow the meta all the times, but it's good to play the meta because it works. Try to call out the lane you are going before you chose the champion, and don't autolock, (this makes you look like a selfish/selfcentered player).

Soon you will reach 30 and there applies the ELO ranking system (sometimes called ELO Hell (don't ask why)) and you need to know the meta.

Also get more friends, add me (offline right now but I'll check it when I connect), and you will forget this bad experience.

The League of Legends community isn't perfect. There are a lot of very welcoming players, but at the same time there are a lot of players who are quite vile and nasty.

Over the course of time, you will learn to accept that every so often you will be playing a game with undesirable people. Also, by then you should have learned how to ignore it as well.

If those people still get on your nerves, there is a report button and a mute button (Press tab and click the speech bubble on the right) for your convenience.

So I didn't read any posts other than the original posts because I'm tired, but you can't be banned for being an unskilled player. If a player is reported excessively for being unskilled, a Red looks at it (or maybe it's automatic) to see if the player should be paired against easier opponents. I've reviewed hundreds of cases in the tribunal and never seen a case where a charge against a player was "Unskilled Player."

OP, you and I have a similar situation. Though I'm lvl 21, I have played a grand total of 2 pvp games. I found the community so awful in those 2 games and anecdotes from others that I left the game for more than a year. Now I've come back, but I'm strictly doing Bot games atm.

This of course means that I'm awful at pvp and I likely won't even attempt it without a premade group of friends. However, I am good at research and understand the meta fairly well. If you want assistance figuring things out, add me and I'll try to help

You'll find this with every PvP game ever made, not just League. As long as you're nice and not trolling or feeding on purpose, you're not going to get banned for picking the champion that you want.

Yes it is, I'm sorry your having bad experiences I've noticed a lot of smurfs accounts and they troll every game making fun of the players that aren't as experience with game mechanics and builds. best advice is to find people who are generally nice friend them and start que's. I will say LoL is the worst community I've ever seen but with time you understand more of the game and people rage less. just have to be the better person and not respond to those degenerates. Don't get discouraged either everyone was new to the game at some point.

Unfortunately, the community is pretty toxic at lower levels of play. The best you can do is find a group of people who you can enjoy playing regularly with. There are several different in-game cmmmunities that are friendly and aim to bring amiable players together: eloheaven, loluniversity, glhfgg, etc. You can find these communities by clicking on the chat rooms button on your league client and entering the names of the communities.

I think the problem is your extremely casual attitude toward the game. Two to three games a week is not going to provide consistent enough practice to learn, retain experience, and improve - as you have noticed.

The problem isn't that you're new - its that your skill level isn't at the point that's expected for someone of your summoner level, because you don't play enough to increase it at the same rate as your peers.

I highly recommend you increase the time you spend on the game. If you're unwilling or unable to do that, but still enjoy the game enough to keep playing, you may want to consider switching to AI, instead of PvP, since your opponents don't learn at all, and won't have the edge over you that PvP opponents will. AI does teach you bad habits, but that won't become a concern unless you actually do increase the frequency of your play enough to return to PvP, and if you are playing that much, you'll start to catch up.

Yeah, the community doesn't help, but even the nontoxic ones get frustrated when someone clearly doesn't know the basics, and throws the game for them. That problem is on your end, and it's up to you to fix it.

Edit: As far as your comment about the matchmaker, that is also retarded by the infrequency of the games you play. Yes, it will eventually drop you to an appropriate level, but that will take far longer then if you played consistently, simply because there aren't enough games for it to adjust off of. Even then, you presumably win occasionally due to being carried, which slows it down even further. So yes, it is working - just not anywhere near fast enough, because you're not playing enough.