Face it: Popular online games are a mess when it comes to interacting with other people. We’ve heard of stories about Call of Duty and Halo players being completely insufferable black holes of humanity, but you should know that it happens in massively online battle arenas too… and it’s far worse.

Call of Duty is the most popular game on Xbox Live, and the teenagers that seem to permeate that game can ruin one’s experience. Likewise, League of Legends has that status in Windows gaming. However, there are some differences between massively online battle arenas and first person shooters that become very relevant when we are speaking of a toxic community: Game length, the use of teams, and familiarity with the game and its mechanics.

The length of a match in an FPS can depend on the specific game, but I would argue that 9-15 minutes is a good estimate. In MOBA’s, the average game length is about 30 minutes. If you have awful people in a MOBA match versus an FPS, more of your time is wasted. Of course, many games have punishment schemes for those that quit early, so you have to be stuck in a game that you don’t really feel like playing.

FPS games have free-for-all modes but also, by their design, are not entirely reliant on teamwork for success. MOBA’s teams typically consist of three or more players, and one player refusing to cooperate effectively can destroy any chances of victory. In essence, one troll can not only ruin their four teammates’ opportunity at a fun game, but also the five people on the other team. Sure, they might get a free win, but any semblance of challenge is ruined.

As far as game familiarity goes, FPS games have been around for a very long time. For better or for worse, people know how to play them. MOBA’s are a new genre that do not have that ubiquitous understanding. If someone is trying to learn how to play and is roadblocked by a troll, the genre may have lost a player since frustration will trump curiosity.

So it is of tantamount importance that the developers and publishers of MOBA’s, the stewards of the genre, fight what has so far been seen to be a losing battle. Most games have a reporting feature, in which players can report negative players so that action can be taken, but this feels unsatisfactory. Players who report others don’t get to see the direct results of their actions.

Riot Games, the makers of League of Legends, have come up with a novel solution: The Tribunal. When a player is reported enough times, a tribunal report is generated, which contains records of the last few played games where the player was reported, along with a battle history and full chat log. The player then decides if the offender in question should be punished or not. If a big majority of players votes to punish, the player is then punished. The Tribunal originally had obvious offenders enter its mechanisms, but as time has gone on, The Tribunal tends to host players whose actions are more borderline, and wanting for more scrupulous attentions.

I have also noticed an odd exception to this rule: Super Monday Night Combat. Currently, Super Monday Night Combat does not have one-tenth the playerbase of League of Legends. This may be a contributing factor to the proportional lack of trolls in the game, but the fact that the game is more active, and plays like a third-person shooter, probably means that players are spending more time manually moving and aiming, then trying to be a negative influence.

It also could be that combining a genre of games PC players are intimately familiar with, such as shooters, and marrying them to MOBA-like game mechanics, greatly reduces the education factor, and lets players feel like they are making tangible contributions to their teams much earlier in the learning period.

What’s clear is that as the popularity of the genre continues to grow, different companies are going to have different approaches to try and grow their audience. Whichever company finds the “right way” has the most to gain. There’s clearly a lot of money to be made: Riot Games has grown their staff size at a rapid pace over the past three years in order to handle the increased player load. Even here, the Zynga formula applies: The larger the player base, the more people are likely to spend money on a free-to-play game, especially if they are happy and loyal, and don’t feel like the rest of the game is out to get them. That isn’t to say that MOBAs aren’t competitive; they make be the perfect eSport. Of course, it helps that they were built from the ground up with that in mind, but that’s a topic we will save for next time.