We can put most of these under umbrella aspect of "griefing".
Griefing can include many things including but not limited to "inting". "Inting" can furthermore be broken down into "hard inting" and "soft inting" as even a particular Riot employee argued for in a company sponsored video this past year.
Hard inting is the classic old T1 run it down mid and just suicide to enemy team the whole game if you don't like how it's going. That's pretty easy to detect and is perhaps one of the only forms of griefing actually punished by Riot.
Soft inting is harder to detect and is much more elo-dependent. As in... what is "soft inting" in challenger would be an "honest mistake" in gold or plat. And what is "soft inting" in gold or plat would be an "honest mistake" in bronze or iron. Thus... it is elo-dependent. Soft inting is when one does not simply run it down lane suiciding as quickly as possible, but they do more or less "check out" of the game, stop TRYING to win, (often, not always) stop TRYING to work with their team, etc.
The guy that just blind pushes by himself all game when he's underpowered and is in gold or plat knows better than to do that, but he's "checked out" of game so he doesn't care that he's screwing his team over and making it harder for them to win. The guy who realizes his team needs to make a stand or they'll lose their base but is afk farming jg (be it a jungler or a laner) is not making an effort to win. Sure he's maybe not actively sabotaging his team in the same way as someone who is hard inting, but he is accomplishing the same end with more subtle means.
With soft inting people argue that you can't detect this, but that's complete bs. Players often know it themselves when they're doing it. Teammates know. Opponents in the game know. You know it because there's a certain standard of skill at each elo. You might not be able to tell if your in a diamond 4 vs a diamond 2 or 1 game all the time if you were just dropped in with no nameplates and no knowledge of the rank of the account you were being asked to play a game on; however, you COULD tell the difference between playing one game in bronze 2 and the next game in silver 2.
Why? You can tell because of that standard set of skills that everyone needs to have in order to climb to that elo. You don't see a challenger player going... "what's 1-3-1?". You don't see a plat player asking what a tp flank is. Because they had to learn certain things to GET TO that elo. They might not be as good at every single aspect as some other players at that elo, but there's other aspects where they will be better. While they aren't AS GOOD at certain things, they'll still have a basic knowledge and SKILL FLOOR for those things that are basically required to reach that elo. So when a player fails consistently (we all mess up here and there) to meet that skill floor throughout a whole or vast majority of a match, they are at the very least "soft inting" or some other form of griefing.
Imagine if Faker just never warded an entire game, ignored warnings that people were coming to gank his lane, and intentionally forced fights vs the now fed enemy midlaner and his fed jungler by himself. He'd know he was going to lose and cost his team a bunch for dying... again and again and again. His teammates would know it. His opponents would know it. That would be griefing and would get him benched or worse. But in iron tier, that behavior might be more a series of honest mistakes by the midlaner and the other mid having a jg duo rather than actual griefing. So you see here, it's pretty simple to tell one is griefing while the other might be honest mistakes - which we can tell because we have a SKILL FLOOR at each elo, and Faker isn't meeting the SKILL FLOOR for a professional player.
Yet in ranked play, this type of behavior exhibited by Faker (in the theoretical example above - which is characteristic of actual ranked gameplay by some individuals) is ignored or even DEFENDED. If you are failing to meet the skill floor of your elo throughout a match, then you are either boosted (got over-rated, bought or stole someone else's account, paid someone to inflate your elo), or you are INTENTIONALLY trying to sabotage your team's ability to with the game. Sure, Faker picks up some minions along the way or appears to try to heroically 1v3 defend the tower vs fed enemies or even lands some abilities on his opponents before he dies... for the 8th time. But everyone knows he could and should be doing better even if he's "having a bad game". He's not playing in a way that enables his team to help him to a degree that would be typical of a pro player. And therein lies the problem. He's not TRYING to win. He's "checked out". This behavior may not fit the description of "hard inting", but it DOES fit the description of "soft inting". This behavior is NOT acceptable according to basically every player in ranked that gives a crap about TRYING. Going 1/8/2 in lane because you fell behind and got picked on but you TRIED and enabled your team to do their best to help you is ok. Going 1/8/2 in lane because you turned off your brain and failed to meet the skill floor for your elo is griefing. And that's no less toxic of behavior than someone telling said player "you're being really stupid". Yet one is allowed and even defended by Riot while the other is hunted like witches in Salem.
This is where people get mad. This is what causes much of the toxicity you see in chat. Because people get tired of such griefing game after game after game no matter how nice or silent they are in chat. Eventually somebody runs into one too many such griefing teammates in a row and snaps at them. And then they're burned like a witch. Did they ask for it with what they said? Probably. But why did they say it in the first place? Because Riot FAILED to attack the original toxicity... the dozen inting teammates said "toxic" player encountered on their team over the past handful of games that ruined every one of those games for said "toxic" player.
You can "fix" the game by weeding out every "toxic" player and you'll still end up with more toxic players. Why? Because the source of said toxic players is still being left in the game and allowed to corrupt more decent human beings into becoming toxic because they actually give a shit about the game and eventually get fed up of being screwed over by griefing teammates game after game. Imagine what would happen if... the griefing players were dealt with even a little bit. Well now... you'd have less frequent encounters with griefing players because they'd either be feeling pressured to stop by Riot (not just by "toxic"players) or because they'd be banned (temporary or perma). And with that more players feeling frustrated because they CURRENTLY have griefing teammates way too often end up having fewer of them, getting less stressed out when they do have them, and largely avoid snapping. Which leads to what result? Oh, that's right... to "killing 2 birds with one stone" so to speak - root out the griefing players and much of verbal toxicity is also dealt with. Clearly ignoring griefing or defending griefing (Riot's current and long-time approach) hasn't fixed the problem of either griefing OR verbal toxicity.
You're trimming the leaves of weeds and leaving the root to grow more leaves. Spray the root and you'd kill the whole weed (root and leaves). It's really that simple.
And with things like Riot tracking where and when you died in a match as well as stuff like itemization measuring if a person met or tried honestly to meet or exceed skill floor isn't as impossible as so many people make it out to be. And if you guys still think it is impossible to get any positive matches for this without getting some false positives, then you simply write the program to detect where it will get fewest number of false positives along with actual griefing and use that as step 1 in the system. Step 2 is human review. And yes, this is possible because the system using such a method would drastically weed down the number of reports that a human would have to review to a much more manageable amount.
I mean it's that or continue to see toxicity and griefing build up until you've got only 3 groups of people left playing the game and it's essentially dead:
pro's and streamers (who mostly hate the game but still play cuz money at that point)
players who don't care about win/lose or trying hard but play only to hang out with their friends or for meme's
griefers
When tons of players make solid logical arguments about this being a problem
When streamers will admit as much and say that playing isn't fun for them anymore and they basically play because their fans want to watch League and not some other game
When pro's complain they can't get meaningful practice in solo queue like they used to - not just in NA either... Faker said this in an interview about Korean solo queue too and I'm sure there are others
...
you have a problem. A problem you've been ignoring for far too long that needs to be addressed properly. Stop making excuses and put that energy into making EFFORT to improve the situation. Stop pawning the problem off on another department at Riot - that's another thing some Riot employees like to do. Start taking ownership and initiative. If you think it's more in some other department's wheelhouse, then YOU go talk to them. Push them. FORCE Riot to take ownership of the problem and make a solution. As evidenced by people complaining about balance every patch and continuing to play, we'll take an imperfect system that you can improve on over the years. But people won't keep settling for NO system.
