I'd like to discuss with people/mods in a formal debate manner.

Better Jungler·Oct 14, 2017·6 votes·729 views

In gaming, what is the benefit to having a heavily moderated chat/game? I dont want anyone to think I'm saying that real life threats, cheating, intentional feeding, or leaking personal information is acceptable, These should always be heavily monitored and the perps should be punished accordingly. This post is strictly in regards to the bickering arguments, and basic toxic CHAT. I would also like to point out I'm not in trouble, my account is fine and Im not usually a toxic person (I do have my moments though).

From a business perspective, It seems it would dissuade a number of people from joining just because they don't want to watch their mouth in a competitive game. I know the initial "answer" to this is "It would dissuade a lot MORE People that don't want to deal with the toxicity", but if you look at the system now, it doesnt work. Every game I play has a toxic person in it, and in the past that person has been me once or twice. So using my personal experience, I can say that the punishment system here doesn't work. On top of all this, the man power to regulate a system like this is, in my opinion, a waste. Look at the boards for an example, the number of posts daily that start out with "Is this worthy of a punishment" are entertaining yes, but from a business standpoint, theres someone that has to answer all these tickets, review these games, and make sure the automated system isnt making mistakes. (@riot tantrum)

From a gaming perspective, its fairly uncommon to have such a heavily regulated chat. In a competitive game that has pretty high punishments for death (in this case death timers+enemy advantage) its not unusual for tensions to run high. We see this in games with much less pressure on death like most first person shooters, aside from Overwatch im not sure of any fps that monitors their chat. Mmo's like WoW and Elder Scrolls are basically "Block the person you dont want to hear." and that seems to be a fairly effective strategy to having a decent community. Other Mobas like dota 2, have pretty much NO Punishment system for chat (could be wrong).

We always hear the argument:

"Why have a mute function, if you're going to punish the abrasive players anyways?"

I know the argument is used all the time, but if you take the core of the argument, its not a bad point really. The game has a way to turn off ALL communication with a player, yet the abrasive player gets punished anyways.

My final prompt for this debate is in regards to the false statistics that League tips show. Stuff like:

".06 % of players are permabanned" "only the bottom 7% of players see a punishment after their first punishment"

I have a terribly hard time believing this, and anyone that actively plays this game at any elo can see this isn't true. If 4/5 of my games have two people flaming eachother, and my level 17 account gets flamed in aram while trying to level up, and my 15 games of 3v3 have toxic people in nearly half of the games, theres no way that i'm the "outlier" that sees more toxicity than anyone else. If its this common to see toxic people, and this common to see "was this toxic" board posts, how are these tips accurate?

TL;DR

Again this isnt to start a heated argument of moral right and wrong, this is just for discussion. I'm curious from a riot/moderators perspective your thoughts on the benefits to having a heavily moderated community. I'm also curious to your thoughts on if you consider the current system to be effective in its mission to reduce/get rid of toxicity?

Thanks for your time!:P

10 Comments

ModThe DjinnOct 14, 20173 votes

So firstly let me apologize for what will not be the most in-depth answer (I'm a bit exhausted tonight), but I'd love to get the discussion rolling.

I think it's important to acknowledge that Riot is making a conscious choice with their decision here. It's very easy to put in a mute function and say "If you dont like it, mute it and deal. Problem solved." Riot has opted to put a lot of time and effort into going above and beyond that and, if it wasn't a good decision for their community, I suspect that decision would have been reversed years ago, as development of a behavioral system in this scale is not cheap.

See, League has a huge playerbase, and a lot of those players are casual. This is something that can be difficult for hardcore players to realize or fully appreciate. For many of us games are a really serious thing to get worked up over, but there are a huge number of people out there who just want to relax and play some fun League, and, as gaming grows as a hobby, this number will only increase.

More and more, companies with casual playerbases are working to build friendly, positive communities. Blizzard is putting behavioral bans into Overwatch and HotS. League has its behavioral system. These systems are desired by a lot of players: Overwatch wouldn't be adding one if there wasn't backlash about the amount of toxicity in the game.

It's not that a little trash talk can't be fun: it's that a lot of people can't manage the difference between mutually fun trash talk and actual abuse or harassment. Trashing someone with a wink in your eye is great, but putting them down in seriousness isn't a fun thing to experience or to see, and feeling like you have to into every game ready to mute an asshole is a great way to make those casual players leave, and take their friends with them.

League's new ads make it clear that they want the opposite: new players, good or not, who just want to have some fun and try their best. It's a conscious choice as to the type if community Riot wants League wants to be, and that choice will not appeal to everyone. They've willingly spent resources on it, which means it is important to them. Whether or not it's a net boost to profits we will never know, but its clear that profits aren't the driving force here. I've interviewed at Riot and talked to many Rioters persinally, and all of them really believe in the greater League community. They really do want the best, friendliest community possible, and so they put effort into building that.

As for the system itself? I do think the current system is effective, although there is always room for improvement. I have noticed a slight decrease in toxicity over the years and, more importantly, I have noticed an increase in the number of friendly, respectful, communicative players. My friends list has more strangers than ever before, which is fantastic.

Finally, I would avoid starting off a discussion by claiming false stastistics while providing only anecdotal evidence. Neither you nor I can prove or disprove those statistics about the ban rate, and arguing about their validity will get us nowhere. Assuming them to be false without evidence, however, is bad for discussion. Also remember that perceptions are skewed by experiences: I've personally seen about two problem players in my last 8 games, which is a 2.5% toxicity rate. That may be low though, as I'm a positive, supportive, chatty player, and that may reduce toxicity in my games. Since everyine influences games differently, we'd need seriously big data to have more than anecdotal guesses at the true rate.

Better JunglerOct 14, 20172 votes

I do think it is a good show of confidence in the community that Riot puts so much effort and resources towards the behavioral system. I just think that effort would be better suited for a system that works. Either better rewards for positive players to persuade people to be better. Or more punishment types/tiers that ultimately ends in an IP ban. Both systems mentioned will 100% improve player behavior, it seems like riot is split right down the middle though.

They give minor rewards for positive behavior, and a 10/25 game chat restirction isnt harsh enough to truly make someone feel like they are in trouble. If they are toxic enough to reach the 14 day ban stage, they probably don't mind making a new account for those 14 days.

I obviously wont critique without giving ideas to improve. I think if they go the "reward positive behavior" they should give away major store rewards. I know this would be a financial hit to their profit, but this is a way to show that they do care about the rampant toxicity. This could include skins, emotes, champions, chromas on a regular-ish basis (one skin every 2 months of good behavior etc)

If they wanted to go the negative route, put a playtime restriction rather than a number of games, and get rid of the 1 message every 5 minutes. NO COMMS, NO EMOTES, NO MASTERY FLASH, for 10 full hours of gameplay in any mode. This punishment would definitely start off the "I need to reform" thought process.

Forgive me for the statistics, I remember seeing them somewhere, I just cant find the source. Theres alot of people talking about it on google, so I know i've seen statistics like that, but I cant recall the actual numbers. It might be on the punishment card :P

I don't want to get too far off track, so Ill just touch on this. Theres a very large movement right now to try and make everything as "nice" as possible for as many people as possible. Everyone gets offended at way too much, and I think that has a major influence on the community in NA especially. We cant have "harmless" trash talk with the opponent, as a report will cause the automated system to flag the game, and a punishment to be issued for what was mutual trash talk that negatively effected a third party to the conversation.

Final idea/point. League wants new people, I picked that up too when I saw the Lily Pichu ad for league of legends. Its a foreign idea to me (i've been playing since season 1-2) that there are actual new players to this game. I often have to remind myself that maybe the player is actually just ignorant to how a champ works, and not trying to ruin my game. Again, I try not to criticize without an idea to fix the problem... I think the queue system would fix the issue here. With the new leveling system coming out, if you made a separate draft queue for level tiers, players that have 10000 hours in this game, wouldnt be matched with level 17 accounts that have 20 hours of gameplay. I understand this will have a longer queue time, but I am honestly 100% convinced players like me will wait an extra minute or 2 to play in a queue with equal experience enemies and teams. A great example of this is me playing against a platinum player earlier. We both had some silvers on our team, but on my team I had a level 17 person. Needless to say he ended the game 0/10 (maybe worse) and rage quit at 15 minutes. It wasnt enjoyable for him, our enemies, or my team.

ModThe DjinnOct 14, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Better Jungler,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=MPAjEtoi,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2017-10-14T06:30:03.721+0000)

I do think it is a good show of confidence in the community that Riot puts so much effort and resources towards the behavioral system. I just think that effort would be better suited for a system that works. Either better rewards for positive players to persuade people to be better. Or more punishment types/tiers that ultimately ends in an IP ban. Both systems mentioned will 100% improve player behavior, it seems like riot is split right down the middle though.

See, I'm not convinced that's correct. IP bans are definitely off the table, as a lot of League players share networks, whether at a college campus or a cyber cafe. An IP ban is super detrimental to innocent players in those situations, and, frankly, anyone who knows what they're doing can circumvent them easily by just masking their IP.

All positive rewards sounds great, but there are two issues there. One is that Riot is, ultimately, a business, and while they'll take some hits for the community (see the loot system) they can't take TOO many hits. The other is that there are a lot of players who simply don't care about rewards. If I'm a toxic Yasuo one-trick, I don't give a fuck about skins and champions -- I just want to play Yasuo and trash-talk people. By all means take away my honor and my rewards if that lets me keep going.

This is why Riot currently combines the carrot and the stick -- some people are more motivated by rewards, and others by the fear of punishment. A system on this scale has to account for both to be effective.

They give minor rewards for positive behavior, and a 10/25 game chat restriction isn't harsh enough to truly make someone feel like they are in trouble. If they are toxic enough to reach the 14 day ban stage, they probably don't mind making a new account for those 14 days.

The majority of people who receive a punishment of any kind never receive another punishment though. Remember that on these boards we tend to see banned players who are either confident in their innocence or who simply demand the right to be toxic. That is NOT the majority: League has millions of players, which means there are tends to hundreds of thousands of players who have received chat restrictions, and these boards have maybe a dozen posts a day of people who have been banned. It's a highly self-selected group from those who are puzzled/angry enough about their ban to come inquire about it directly.

I obviously wont critique without giving ideas to improve. I think if they go the "reward positive behavior" they should give away major store rewards. I know this would be a financial hit to their profit, but this is a way to show that they do care about the rampant toxicity. This could include skins, emotes, champions, chromas on a regular-ish basis (one skin every 2 months of good behavior etc)

They already do this. The loot system will gives you more than a skin every two months, and can also give champions. Riot has stated there are plans to make it include other rewards like emotes and icons as well. This is a thing they are doing actively.

If they wanted to go the negative route, put a playtime restriction rather than a number of games, and get rid of the 1 message every 5 minutes. NO COMMS, NO EMOTES, NO MASTERY FLASH, for 10 full hours of gameplay in any mode. This punishment would definitely start off the "I need to reform" thought process.

I agree that blocking emotes and mastery flashing would be helpful. Limiting communication entirely I'm not as keen on -- League is, ultimately, a team game, and I feel the ability to send important messages when necessary is important.

Forgive me for the statistics, I remember seeing them somewhere, I just cant find the source.

The source is Riot. My point is that you're flatly assuming them to be false at the outset without providing any actual proof that they are so. Going into a discussion immediately doubting the only available numbers simply because they're released by the organization in question isn't a good way to have a debate.

heres a very large movement right now to try and make everything as "nice" as possible for as many people as possible. Everyone gets offended at way too much, and I think that has a major influence on the community in NA especially. We cant have "harmless" trash talk with the opponent, as a report will cause the automated system to flag the game, and a punishment to be issued for what was mutual trash talk that negatively effected a third party to the conversation.

We totally can have harmless trash talk. Every time I play Gentleman Cho'Gath I ask my opponent to kindly bathe in a nice lemon-port reduction to impart extra flavor, and I ramble about how delicious it is every time I feast one of them. I type things like "Not quite! :P" after close-fought 1v1s where I came out ahead. I'll say "FIND YOUR OWN CARRY. THIS ONE IS MINE" when, as a jungler or support, someone tried to assassinate my carry and I pull off a great play and wreck them. I'll type "EVELYNN LIVES AGAIN!" when I escape a chase with 12 health remaining. That's all trash-talking, but it's done with a wink and a smile, and I'm actively polite and friendly the rest of the game so they know it's friendly trash-talk.

I would argue that the movement is to draw a clearer line between "I'm teasing you in a friendly manner" and "I'm abusing or insulting you and CALLING it teasing." Even if it wasn't, societies change -- it's perfectly acceptable for society at large to go "you know what...we're done with allowing harassment to go unchallenged in the name of free speech." We've changed as a society on a number of issues (which I won't talk about here, since that could veer us into politics), and that's just part of the progression of society.

But yeah, you can still totally have friendly trash talk. You just can't go have your trash talk be abusive. I can go into the difference here in more detail if you'd like, since I appreciate that a lot of people struggle (or choose not to understand) this distinction.

I think the queue system would fix the issue here. With the new leveling system coming out, if you made a separate draft queue for level tiers, players that have 10000 hours in this game, wouldn't be matched with level 17 accounts that have 20 hours of gameplay.

This is what the MMR system does. Separating it increases queue time, cuts the community in half, and really doesn't work that well. Imagine that I pick up this game SUPER fast -- and some people do. I'm Diamond 1 in my second season, because I just CLICK with this game. What do I do now? Is Diamond 1 split up between those who are new and those who aren't? If so, the Diamond 1 queue for new accounts will either be really small, or generally worse as far as players go. In the former case queue times go crazy and there are TWO ranked queues for no reason. In the second people make new accounts every season to get the "easier" queue.

I am honestly 100% convinced players like me will wait an extra minute or 2 to play in a queue with equal experience enemies and teams.

I am not. I have a friend who has been playing since Season 2. He's awful. He's HAPPY with that, but he's awful. Would you rather have him in your competitive game, or someone who has been playing for one season but already has the mechanics, knowledge, and desire to improve to have hit high gold? I'm guessing the latter -- the MMR system would say the second one is a better match for you, while your proposed system would say the former is a better match due to his greater "experience."

Remember -- practice doesn't make perfect. PERFECT practice makes perfect. How long someone has played matters very little compared to how seriously they focus on improving. And yes -- if you get situations like that level 17 situation (which often happens when people duo with their friends) it can suck. But those ARE, ultimately, rather uncommon outliers.

Better JunglerOct 14, 20171 votes

You raise some great points. My outlook on the games community gets skewed because I spend alot of time on the boards reading the "DOES THIS DESERVE A BAN?!" posts. I do have to say though, in every elo I've played at (bronze silver gold) it is more often than not that there is an overly toxic person on my team. which raises the question, why isn't the stick and carrot system effective. Riot is rewarding positive behavior, punishing negative players, yet the overall community as a whole is undeniably toxic. (people outside of leagues community refuse to play the game due to the toxic community. Part of that can be chopped up as stereotype, but there's gotta be a bit of truth to that if a fairly large percent of people believe that.)

You are right though, a toxic yasuo one trick (also just known as a yasuo one trick) probably doesnt care about punishment etc.

In my 7-8 years of playing, I can honestly say I've never met someone who picked up this game naturally, and was able to get past gold or so. I'm sure they exist, but that will be a TINY minority of people affected by the queue time. I also never wanted to get rid of the mmr system for my proposed queue. I just want a level lock on it. (Level 50-100 queue option, mmr still taken into account in matchmaking).

I went through my recent match history. In the last 20 games, I've played with 7 premades, and I've played with 3 people that are under level 20. Nothing against them, but that is essentially putting my team at a 4 v 5 right at the start, which is a real problem in my opinion.

Before getting too far off track, prompt:

You said the system is pretty effective overall, but has room for improvement. What would those changes be? More rewards? more punishments? Harsher punishments? better rewards?

(Edit: I was curious to see how the poll was going on this post, of the 14 people polled, 12 of them have had a toxic player in their last 5 games.)

ModThe DjinnOct 15, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Better Jungler,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=MPAjEtoi,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2017-10-14T17:45:07.791+0000)Which raises the question, why isn't the stick and carrot system effective. Riot is rewarding positive behavior, punishing negative players, yet the overall community as a whole is undeniably toxic.

I'm not convinced it's undeniably toxic, personally, but I'll address the question before expanding.

Riot can't MAKE people behave. They can punish those who don't and offer incentives, but, if someone wants to be a toxic asshole and ruin the experience of others, it's hard to stop that preemptively. Riot has said that this is not a community for people who wish to abuse their teammates in the name of "gaming trash-talk," and a lot of toxic players don't like that, since they're used to games that don't bother to try. Ultimately these players WILL exist, as Riot can't really make them change their habits or their views -- they can only keep hitting them as they pop up like a giant game of Whack-a-Mole.

Additionally, a large part of it is confirmation bias, and a large part is how much you personally encourage certain behaviors. A single toxic player sticks in the memory more than 2-3 good ones, and a single toxic player tends to discourage good players from speaking up. If you are even mildly toxic or provoke toxic players (which a lot of people do accidentally more than they think), you'll see more toxicity and less good behavior.

If you go out of your way to set a friendly, compassionate, responsible example, you'll start seeing LESS toxicity. It won't eliminate it completely, but it will reduce it (fewer tilters) and it will encourage those friendly-yet-quiet players to speak up and engage more. Die early doing something silly? "Sorry, guys -- I judged the situation wrong. Having a rough start." Preempt the toxicity with an acknowledgement and shoulder the responsibility. Did your JUNGLER die early trying to gank your lane? "Sorry, Hecarim -- Didn't get into the fight in time. They're a bit ahead of us, and I'm afraid I wasn't confident we'd pull it off. Ping us a little earlier next time and we'll get 'em then." There's no benefit to blaming him, and something like that encourages communication and avoids the blame-game.

In short, toxic players don't need encouragement to be toxic. Well-behaved players sometimes need encouragement to come out and join in the conversation and, in doing so, you can often avoid the toxicity caused by provocation and tilting.

In my 7-8 years of playing, I can honestly say I've never met someone who picked up this game naturally, and was able to get past gold or so. I'm sure they exist, but that will be a TINY minority of people affected by the queue time. I also never wanted to get rid of the mmr system for my proposed queue. I just want a level lock on it. (Level 50-100 queue option, mmr still taken into account in matchmaking).

All that does is split the queue for no real gain. If no one rises up in MMR quickly then new players will be paired at MMR appropriate levels -- whether that be with new players or experienced players who really aren't as good at the game as they think.

You said the system is pretty effective overall, but has room for improvement. What would those changes be? More rewards? more punishments? Harsher punishments? better rewards?

Frankly, I'm not 100% sure. I haven't really buckled down and done an analysis of that, since I lack a lot of meaningful data.

Off the top of my head I'd be interested to see if 24-hour or 48-hour bans worked better than chat restrictions. I'd also like to see recently-punished reminders for a week or two after a restriction or punishment -- something like this:

"Your account was recently punished for behavioral violations. Further toxicity towards your fellow players will lead to escalating punishments, which can end in the permanent loss of your account and all content on it. Please remember to treat your fellow players with respect and courtesy, even if their actions or words are not respectful or courteous back. The mute button and report button exist to help you identify problematic players to Riot, and should be your tools to deal with the situation."

"Sufficient good behavior can restore your account's positive standing. Additionally, over time this pop-up will become less frequent. These are separate systems, and the frequency of this reminder is merely time-based and has no connection to your account's standing."

"Click 'I AGREE' to acknowledge this message and return to the client.

(Edit: I was curious to see how the poll was going on this post, of the 14 people polled, 12 of them have had a toxic player in their last 5 games.)

5 games is 45 other players. Assuming few premades on the voter's part, that's about the rate at which I'd expect to see 1-2 toxic players, yes.

Better JunglerOct 15, 20171 votes

Those are actually really good ideas on inprov8ng the system. I think seeing a weekly reminder of your current punishment tier would get rid of most of the "is this ban fair" board posts.

More interesting though, it the 24 hour ban. It brought another idea to mind. What if they had a 4-12 hour ban that has no long lasting negative effect on your account, basically just a mandatory cooldown period when you start to get toxic.

I don't know about you, but I believe everyone messes up with toxicity occasionally, and in my personal experience it's when I'm trying to grind out games back to back. Having a short ban that is basically just a cooldown period allows for the players that are tilting to chill out and realise their mistake before continuing to play. Obviously after a few times of this the regular puunishment system would come through, but Having that message that pops up that says:

"Your previous games were flagged as toxic from your fellow players, and our systems confirmed it. We are placing an 8 hour ban on your account in an effort to let you cool off. This ban will not raise your punishment tier, but multiple occasions of this may cause harsher punishments. We know the Rift can be frustrating, but keep it friendly out There!"

Obviously Riots writers would make somethi mg better than that, but you get the point.

What do you think about mandatory cooldown period replacing chat restrictions?

I appreciate your input on here, truly making me see from a different point of view. While I don't agree with some stuff, my overall view on how toxic the community is has changed a bit. I'll be keeping an eye out for good players over my next few games.

ModThe DjinnOct 15, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Better Jungler,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=MPAjEtoi,comment-id=000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2017-10-15T17:24:27.784+0000)More interesting though, it the 24 hour ban. It brought another idea to mind. What if they had a 4-12 hour ban that has no long lasting negative effect on your account, basically just a mandatory cooldown period when you start to get toxic.

I don't know about you, but I believe everyone messes up with toxicity occasionally, and in my personal experience it's when I'm trying to grind out games back to back. Having a short ban that is basically just a cooldown period allows for the players that are tilting to chill out and realise their mistake before continuing to play. Obviously after a few times of this the regular puunishment system would come through, but Having that message that pops up that says:

"Your previous games were flagged as toxic from your fellow players, and our systems confirmed it. We are placing an 8 hour ban on your account in an effort to let you cool off. This ban will not raise your punishment tier, but multiple occasions of this may cause harsher punishments. We know the Rift can be frustrating, but keep it friendly out There!"

Hm. I'm not opposed to the idea in theory, although you'd want to ensure that this is applied only to moderate toxicity and not merely another way to get extra strikes for severe abuse. Would be interested to see how that would affect behavior.

I appreciate your input on here, truly making me see from a different point of view. While I don't agree with some stuff, my overall view on how toxic the community is has changed a bit. I'll be keeping an eye out for good players over my next few games.

Always happy to have this sort of conversation. :)

Better JunglerOct 15, 20171 votes

Great we have an agreement! Call up Riot (i kmow you have either Ryze or Tryndamere on speed dial) and tell them to implement this!

ModThe DjinnOct 15, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Better Jungler,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=MPAjEtoi,comment-id=00000000000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2017-10-15T17:56:49.145+0000)(i kmow you have either Ryze or Tryndamere on speed dial) and tell them to implement this!

Ha! Absolutely. Those two are part of my book club, and we go out for tea and crumpets on Mondays, interpretive dance lessons on Wednesdays, and bowling on Fridays. Well known fact. :P

Camping Bot LaneOct 14, 20172 votes

i want to agree...

but everyone has a bad game now and then. There could be a filter in place that just blocks a message from being sent if it has keywords in it. Players would find ways around it, but it would stop the majority of people from getting their account in trouble for a temper tantrum that happens to most people on occasion. We've all lost our cool.