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

Better Jungler·10/14/2017, 3:46:42 AM·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 Djinn10/14/2017, 5:00:06 AM3 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.

Camping Bot Lane10/14/2017, 6:34:07 AM2 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.