So if you type something completely asinine or something like GG EZ it will turn it into a funny line like "I'm sorry it's past my bedtime, don't tell my mommy." Make asshole toxic players in this game feel ridiculous everytime they feel like being a complete ass to someone.
RiotYpherion89 votesWe've talked about this kind of thing internally several times over the past couple years. Some of the discussions about what to use as replacement messages are among of my favorite memories at Riot (some of us are kind of terrible people...creative, but terrible).
The main reason we haven't gotten to it, aside from having other stuff we thought was more urgent, is that it tends to create a bit of an arms race. Once people figure out what the filters are, they adapt their messages. GG3Z, ky$ or just come up with entirely new stuff like "GG stomp" or something, which then becomes GGST etc. etc. Then the filters need to be updated, then players adapt, repeat ad nauseum. There's also an interesting question around how players will perceive the replacement messages once the mapping from input to replacement is well known.
I have no doubt that it will help to a decent degree, and I'll be interested to see how it works out. I love that other games are experimenting in this space more and more. It'll only speed up development on awesome ways to deal with this kind of behavior.
TequilaZombie25 votesIf you share what ideas the terribly creative people at Riot had with the comunity I'll sacrifice Teemo as a way of saying thank you.
RiotYpherion59 votesA lot of them were non sequitur humor, which is pretty much my favorite. Or total nonsense.
"gj, you get a cupcake!" "turnips sleep loudly when the moon is cheerful" "did you know, <insert really inane game trivia>"
There were more, but sadly, memories fade even when the emotions remain.
With the constraint that you are not allowed to intentionally feed, please go slaughter as many Teemo's as possible!
TequilaZombie26 votesI don't even care how little sense it makes, I'm going to spam "turnips sleep loudly when the moon is cheerful" in the chat whenever I kill my oponents from now on.
Anyway, off to Teemo slaughtering I go! 
Hawkefire39 votesPlease tell me you guys considered replacing ggez with "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell"
RiotYpherion60 votesFucking Krebs cycle...
l Helios l1 votesCellular Respiration!!!! At least it's not as hard to remember as the Citric Acid Cycle...
RiotYpherion17 votesHate to break it to you, but the Krebs cycle is just another name for the Citric Acid cycle ;(
Pale Pirate8 votesLet me try.
"NOOBS" ----> "If God was the flying spaghetti monster, who would Satan be?" "retard" ------> "No thanks, I eat iodized salt only." /all "easyyyyy" -------> "My doctor doesn't let me vomit rainbows..."
Kinetika5 votesShouldn't you be able to make an easy-to-update reference table or relatively simple algorithm for predictive analytics? I know it's not so cut and dry, but when these unfortunate trends become part of the vernacular, it should be relatively simple to identify and address from the server side.
Pain in the neck? Yeah. Worth it? In my opinion, absolutely.
RiotYpherion3 votesThat's certainly one of the big guns in the "arms race". There's some interesting questions about how to get labeled data for an algorithmic solution at the volume and pace we'd likely need to keep up with the trends, but it has potential.
It still runs afoul of the standard disease-cure model: there must be a disease before there can be a cure. By definition, players will always be ahead of the filter.
That's not to say we're giving up and just saying gg ez is ok. We've got other stuff in mind :)
Mysticman894 votesIn devils advocate mode, what about the occasional legitimate uses of "gg ez" where someone is legitimately saying good game to an ezreal?
Guy Fox Teemo5 votesSay GG ezreal then instead of using a term thats regarded by most as negative.
Raven Elizabeth6 votesIn the Criminal Justice system we call it the Cat and mouse game. We put up "traps" and "barriers"(rules and enforcement) in order to catch some of the mice before they get the cheese,all the while mice try and find ways around these things. It is a endless cycle but we view it as a necessary evil. Since opportunity is defined by the aggressor, then the best we can do to prevent deviation is to predict it and evolve with an ever changing strategy. The goal doesn't have to be complete dissolution of the crime just simply a decrease. League has a report/punish system similar to law enforcement, but it lacks the prevent/predict system that a CJ system has.
RiotYpherion9 votesIt's a good analogy.
I agree with the necessary evil. Just because this particular direction isn't and arms race we want to start, we have several others we are deeply involved in.
In terms of prevent/predict, we've prototyped some systems internally which showed decent capability, but they never got to the degree of accuracy we believe we need.
Raven Elizabeth4 votesI apologize, I thought you were implying that yall were trying to avoid the arms race all together. I have faith that yall can come up with a system to alleviate this type of problem.
RiotYpherion7 votesNo worries, didn't take you post as anything but interesting info :).
Thanks for the vote of confidence!
Avios12 votesHey, I REALLY hate to bother you, with all the amazing work you guys do, but is there ever a chance of the Tribunal coming back? We might be able to root out subjects there.
RiotYpherion4 votesWe still really, really want to have more direct player input into behavior.
The old Tribunal had some serious problems from a tech, scalability and portability perspective. We didn't realize how bad it really was until we'd brought it down and started work on upgrading it. It's pretty much a total rewrite at this point.
Work was well underway when we had to shift the people working on it to another project, but it's something we intend to get back to. Personally I hope it's soon, professionally I'm not sure when it will be.
patmax171 votesObvious question: are we allowed to know where these people are employed? What exciting stuff is coming up, except LCU? :D
RiotYpherion5 votesI can't really say, which sucks because I'd love to share more.
I mentioned this elsewhere, but it's worth repeating: as much as it is so, so sorely tempting to peel back the curtain a bit, it's really not fair to you folks or my team. It's not fair to players outside of Riot because if we say things too early, we may have to change course and never deliver on what we promised (I swear, that's never, ever happened...>.>). On the other side it's not fair to my teams because it creates this weird pressure for them to keep going on whatever we revealed, even if it's not the best direction after all.
AMYS GRAVE1 votesI agree with the necessary evil. Just because this particular direction isn't and arms race we want to start, we have several others we are deeply involved in.
But given the lack of action on the matter, trolls are realizing that they can get away with this kind of behavior, and that it will go unpunished. I've seen more kys, %%%%%%, jew, etc... this season compared to the previous two seasons combined. You dont want to start an arms race, but by not picking up any arms you're giving up and letting them win.
RiotYpherion3 votesI don't want to seem like this one element, automatically swapping certain chat lines, and my hesitation about it as hesitation towards negative, and positive, feedback systems in general.
I care deeply about such systems. I worked on Honor when it was released, and was the designer overseeing the Tribunal being deployed to regions beyond NA and EU. I've stayed involved as our systems have improved, and I'm now more directly in the space again after some other projects.
We take a lot of action to mitigate negative behaviors, but for the most part we don't want to publicly shame players because it's not very effective. We prefer to provide such feedback in a more private way. However, there is also value to feedback to those who are helping us identify negative behavior. We have some light versions of this in place, but I'd like to see them expanded at some point.
I'm sorry that our efforts are so opaque, and it's good to get that perspective. I know it's hard to see, and hard to accept, but we really do care, and we are doing quite a bit in this space already with more planned for the future.
Kei1431 votesI'm gonna poke at you again !! As an active of member PB&M boards, I truely care about the behavioral systems. More than gameplay (what do I know, I'm a Bronzie). So let me come at you with some questions / concerns / opinions / discussions.
People would see some peace when I say that and they are glad that Riot is working on it, but Should I stop telling people that?
Personally, I think if the toxics did back off for a period of time for the punishment scale to decay, the game would benefit from a period of lesser toxicity.
Think of it like what Harvey Dent said to the Mayor of Gotham in Batman - The Dark Knight movie. Removing the small thugs off the street for 3 months, will keep the place clean for 3 months and still be worth.
Where if you tell others to kys and drink bleach the "toxicity level" and "how close you are to being punished" will sky rocket. The decay would be something like "50+ games remaining to decay into good standing", similar to the hextech rewards, but with more visibility.
It'll also tell you what your next punishment level is based on your toxicity level, as we know that extreme verbal abuse / hate speech can skip punishment tiers. I get so tired of those people saying "I didn't know my next punishment is a permaban, else I would have stopped. Rito please give me another chance" when they clearly didn't read their emails (not that it helps when that warning is the last sentence of the email).
I'm going to ignore those whom think their punishment is unjust, but focus on those whom want more justice, or at least they want to be able to see more justice.
Tantrum / Lyte / WookieCookie (Can't remember whom) did say that they didn't want to spam the ones supplying the reports with notifications that someone got punished. Personally, I want to see that my reports are doing something and I am contributing towards the community, and I don't mind getting notifications when someone I initially reported does eventually get punished.
Granted maybe the notification spam would be so high that in due time, whenever I log in, I'll see that notification everytime and maybe people will just eventually ignore it. But in combination with a system with better visibility, I think alot of those notifications will be highly appreciated.
RiotYpherion3 votes"WHY DIDN'T THEY GET PUNISHED"
There's a couple reasons for this:
"How close are you to being punished"
I was actually just talking with another designer about this this morning. I agree that getting them to back off for a bit would be good. What I don't want is to give too much information that will allow players to tailor their behavior to just barely avoid punishment.
We're talking about some kind of feature that provides an idea of how you're doing, gives you more immediate feedback etc., but it's literally in the realm of discussion at this point. There's something compelling in the space, but definitely a lot of nuances to figure out as well.
tell you what your next punishment level is based on your toxicity level
Punishment is no longer perfectly mapped to previous punishment level. More severe behaviors may accelerate it. That said, I think it's fair that players should understand the potential consequences for their actions, and that right now it can be hard to find. I'll bring this up the next time I talk to the right team.
I want to see that my reports are doing something
Totally agree here. We might turn up the cadence, though it's not my call ultimately, or we may want to go with a different system. There may be more value in a periodic aggregate feedback system rather than a per-report one. Not sure, TBH.
RE: too much spam, given the current levels of (valid) reporting we see, I wouldn't be too worried about this once Honor is in a better state (SoonTM). Even if we're not spamming, I'm not a fan of biasing the general experience to focus so much on negative moments without celebrating the good ones. I think it paints a really bad, and also inaccurate, picture of player experience and has a risk of being a bit of a vicious cycle.
rtbf2256182412 votesIt could work for the younger players that don't work their way around the filters as often or just the newer ones. Ofcourse, older players that are toxic can get around it but they are also more susceptible to getting punished for prolonged negative behaviour, am i right?
RiotYpherion2 votesI think younger players would be less likely to be the cause of adaptation, but would be very quick to mimic whatever becomes popular.
To be clear, it's not that it wouldn't work to some degree, it's that there are likely better places to focus our development bandwidth.
Boiled Triangles6 votesWhat if you made it so if a player says something like "gg ez" or "kys", nobody sees it except the player who typed it, and the game does not give any indication that the message was filtered. Additionally, don't even tell the playerbase this so that most people won't even be aware of this. This way, the negative messages get filtered, and many of the toxic players wouldn't even know they have to work around the filters and come up with a new phrase. Think of it like shadowbanning certain phrases.
Just a thought.
Darksyde3 votesWe've talked about this kind of thing internally several times over the past couple years. Some of the discussions about what to use as replacement messages are among of my favorite memories at Riot (some of us are kind of terrible people...creative, but terrible).
The main reason we haven't gotten to it, aside from having other stuff we thought was more urgent, is that it tends to create a bit of an arms race. Once people figure out what the filters are, they adapt their messages. GG3Z, ky$ or just come up with entirely new stuff like "GG stomp" or something, which then becomes GGST etc. etc. Then the filters need to be updated, then players adapt, repeat ad nauseum. There's also an interesting question around how players will perceive the replacement messages once the mapping from input to replacement is well known.
I have no doubt that it will help to a decent degree, and I'll be interested to see how it works out. I love that other games are experimenting in this space more and more. It'll only speed up development on awesome ways to deal with this kind of behavior.
There's also the problem of standing up for free speech, at least to a reasonable extent. I understand that as a private company you can punish anything you want and the first amendment in America doesn't matter, but do you really want to be known as an authoritarian anti free speech company? If players need to be protected from something as innocuous as "GG EZ" then we've reached a point where coddling them isn't going to help. Especially when there's an incredibly effective way for easily offended players to block/mute people who say something they don't like.
By no means am I defending players who cross the line with death threats or anything like that. That's legitimately breaking the law and it should be punished. However, "GG EZ" and other similar trash talk, which is a part of every competitive game in the world by the way, should not be a major concern for anyone. At some point it has to be on the easily offended to either grow a thicker skin or use the mute feature provided by you hard working people at Riot for this exact purpose. Remember everyone, sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you. Everyone should've learned this simple fact from their mothers when they were kids.
RiotYpherion40 votesI'm not too worried about, in this context, censorship. With only rare exceptions, we only take action on behaviors determined by large numbers of players. I also think we have very different opinions about where the lines for sportsmanship are.
I'll agree that, compared to a lot of what I've seen in League, "gg ez" isn't that severe. However, without some level of social connection, it has no purpose except to elevate the speaker and denigrate the listener. Acceptable trash talk not withstanding, I don't see why this would be a behavior we (we as a player, not just Riot) would want or accept in League.
Now, with trash talk there's a few things that I often see omitted when it's called out:
League has it's own version of trash talk that I think is perfectly fine. If someone flashes their champ mastery emote after killing me, or outplaying me, that has some effect on me but it's totally within reason. If an enemy mid laner sends out a quick "nice flash" after I try to make a flash play and come up short, totally fine. An "I'm going to fucking crush you" as laning starts...all good.
Anything targeted at the player themselves or broadly generalizes their abilities, is beyond the line for me. "you fucking suck" (they, the person are being attacked) or "you should uninstall" (they, the League player are being attacked) don't have a place in the game I'd like to play. Do they make me alt-f4 and cry? Hell no. Would I be happier if I didn't have to deal with it? Hell yes.
This is not a question of is a behavior survivable, or can players push through it. The question is whether the behavior is a net positive for the game as a whole once you look at how it makes every player in the game feel/behave. A lot of trash talk is within the realm of being net positive. Some of it, like "gg ez" or "uninstall fucker", are not positive and should be treated as something to be removed from our community.
Darksyde2 votesI'm not too worried about, in this context, censorship. With only rare exceptions, we only take action on behaviors determined by large numbers of players. I also think we have very different opinions about where the lines for sportsmanship are.
I'll agree that, compared to a lot of what I've seen in League, "gg ez" isn't that severe. However, without some level of social connection, it has no purpose except to elevate the speaker and denigrate the listener. Acceptable trash talk not withstanding, I don't see why this would be a behavior we (we as a player, not just Riot) would want or accept in League.
Now, with trash talk there's a few things that I often see omitted when it's called out:
- Most of the sports you're talking about are initially learned in school or with a league of some kind. In these cases behavior is observed and corrected by a teacher, a parent, a coach or similar. Players learn early where the boundaries are. League doesn't have the benefit of this assumed baseline. How many players started playing League under supervision and got feedback on their behavior?
- Each competitive game ultimately determines it's own tolerance of trash talk. Hockey (I'm Canadian) has a boat load of trash talk during the game, but that doesn't stop them from having, and using, a rule that severely punishes unsportsmanlike conduct. Also, trash talk happens almost exclusively during play or outside the game asynchronously (i.e. trash talk someone during a press conference). Rarely if ever is it at the beginning or end of the game. I don't know of any sport where it is acceptable, upon winning, to walk over to the opponents and tell them it was an easy win. If you look at other sports, especially globally, the degree of trash talk that is acceptable is much much lower. Look at badminton, tennis etc. And then as we go to games, take a look at what is ok in competitive board games. Not a lot.
League has it's own version of trash talk that I think is perfectly fine. If someone flashes their champ mastery emote after killing me, or outplaying me, that has some effect on me but it's totally within reason. If an enemy mid laner sends out a quick "nice flash" after I try to make a flash play and come up short, totally fine. An "I'm going to fucking crush you" as laning starts...all good.
Anything targeted at the player themselves or broadly generalizes their abilities, is beyond the line for me. "you fucking suck" (they, the person are being attacked) or "you should uninstall" (they, the League player are being attacked) don't have a place in the game I'd like to play. Do they make me alt-f4 and cry? Hell no. Would I be happier if I didn't have to deal with it? Hell yes.
This is not a question of is a behavior survivable, or can players push through it. The question is whether the behavior is a net positive for the game as a whole once you look at how it makes every player in the game feel/behave. A lot of trash talk is within the realm of being net positive. Some of it, like "gg ez" or "uninstall fucker", are not positive and should be treated as something to be removed from our community.
On the point of trash talk in other games being limited to press conferences, I beg to differ. Have you ever watched an NFL game? The players get in each others faces and talk shit to each other all the time on the field. In fact, sometimes the confrontation comes to violence which is basically the only time the refs will actually step in and lay out some type of punishment. The random scuffles and chest beating that happens generally goes unaddressed by the officials, this would basically be the equivalent of someone calling the other team noobs in league. Thankfully League of Legends has an environment where no real harm can be done because physical violence isn't an option and words can't hurt you.
As for your "safe" trash talk, with all due respect, I think your version of trash talk belongs in pee wee football leagues. "I'm gonna crush you" sounds like something an 8 year old says trying to sound tough. Someone saying "You suck" shouldn't be considered "over the line" unless your line is miles away from the average person's line for reasonable trash talk in a competitive environment.
I'm a huge advocate for free speech in every arena, whether it be in the legal arena being protected from the government, or in an online arena like social media or here in gaming. I see the loss of freedom of speech and expression as a huge negative which I don't think you've factored into your "net positive" calculation. This calculation gets even easier for me when you factor in the mute feature that anyone has readily available with literally two inputs from their keyboard/mouse. It's the simplest and most effective fix for this entire situation. People get to say what they want and express their opinions and ideas, and people who are offended by those ideas can quickly and easily remove them from their gaming experience. Everybody wins, at least that's the way I see it.
I feel like this generation somehow became the most easily offended. The group of people most easily crippled by words. You'd think it would've been the opposite because we all grew up with the internet lol. I don't think adults need safe spaces or carebear zones. We don't need padded walls, kids gloves or training wheels. We just need to grow up.
P.S. - I hope this conversation doesn't get me banned lol. Another problem with over policing is a lot of your playerbase starts to live in fear of stepping just an inch or two over the incredibly precariously placed "line."
RiotYpherion27 votesFirst off, I'd be really sad if players were in fear of posting opinions on the boards. Preferably respectfully as you're doing. Certainly not going to be talking about banning or anything for this stuff.
words can't hurt you
I know we're mostly talking about lighter stuff, but I have an instinctive reaction to this. Physically, words can't hurt you, but defining "hurt" so narrowly seems wrong to me. Words and ideas can do a great deal of damage, and are highly context dependent.
Have you ever watched an NFL game?
To be honest, not many...tragic cost of being Canadian, but my Grandpa (American) used to complain that hockey was so violent, why can't they be more like the NFL so...*shrug* no idea. However, despite my press conference example, I don't think it's particularly useful to compare trash talk from professional leagues to that seen in lower levels of play. There's a lot of trash talk that happens in professional LoL, though thankfully most of it is kept on the topic of League rather than family etc. That type of trash talk has context way beyond the one statement. The same words from yee old random Ranked player lack any context, and that makes a large difference.
IRL people have a great deal of control over who they play with, the culture around it etc. The cost of that is often scheduled play, travel etc. In League everyone is mostly all together. We need to create a culture where the greatest number of players can enjoy their experience (note I didn't say "have fun", because there are contexts where that's not realistic). For players who don't enjoy significant trash talk, trash talk can ruin the experience. For players who enjoy the banter, it's just less fun, hopefully not ruined. I'd be concerned about players who play only for the trash talk...I doubt they'd be satisfied staying within reasonable bounds.
As for your "safe" trash talk, with all due respect, I think your version of trash talk belongs in pee wee football leagues
To some degree, this is fair. My examples are very tame. That said, consider that many players are in the early to mid teens. Every organized sport I was a part of at that age heavily emphasized the difference between acceptable banter and unsportsmanlike conduct. If we behaved like junior or pro hockey players we would have gotten wrecked by coaches, refs, parents etc.
As a side note "I'm going to crush you" came from a much more serious context than you seem to assume, and was genuinely terrifying, but point taken.
I'm a huge advocate for free speech in every arena
Hesitant to even dig into this due to how deep the issue can run, but I'll say a bit. I don't want to censor players, except for certain extremes, well beyond the nuances we're talking about, where we as a company feel like we need to make a stand. For the most part players should say what they want, and then deal with the consequences.
Freedom of speech to me is the right to send messages I wish to, by voice, text, interpretive dance, whatever. It does not provide protection from the consequences of said speech, especially in cases that do not involve government oversight. If I go to a busy sandwich shop (I'm hungry..) and start a loud rant filled with hate speech, threats and other content deemed unacceptable by the community in and around that shop, I'm not going to get out without consequences. They could be that I'm simply judged by everyone present, I could be told to leave, perhaps I caused people to fear for their safety so they call the cops and I'm arrested. It's unlikely that handing out ear plugs (everybody muting me) would be a satisfactory resolution. Yes, that's hyperbole, please don't take it literally...
In League, we want to offer tools for players to act when the speech of others offends them. Players rarely see each other twice, so the default IRL social consequences are absent. Asking a player to leave is not tenable due to the nature of the game. Reporting is kind of the equivalent of calling the police, though much, much less severe and thus used for less severe behavior.
If your point is that speech should not have consequences, we just have a fundamental disagreement. Historically this has not been true, and there have always been social consequences to speech. Though what speech was unacceptable has changed DRAMATICALLY. Can you imagine the reaction if half of our commercials (sex sells!) were shown to a "normal" person from the early to mid 1800's. They'd think we were depraved.
Muting alone is not enough, and probably never will be. Since there's no negative feedback to the person who is being seen as offensive, they keep going. Why would they change? Over time that means the percentage of chat that is "offensive" only goes up. The people who are offended leave, and over time the culture shifts. We don't want to punish people for every little thing. We don't want to nanny players. We want players to be able to provide meaningful negative feedback to those they find are impacting their game to offset the absence of the traditional, implicit systems that exist IRL. We want players to have a strong say in their culture.
Darksyde1 votesFirst off, I'd be really sad if players were in fear of posting opinions on the boards. Preferably respectfully as you're doing. Certainly not going to be talking about banning or anything for this stuff.
I know we're mostly talking about lighter stuff, but I have an instinctive reaction to this. Physically, words can't hurt you, but defining "hurt" so narrowly seems wrong to me. Words and ideas can do a great deal of damage, and are highly context dependent.
To be honest, not many...tragic cost of being Canadian, but my Grandpa (American) used to complain that hockey was so violent, why can't they be more like the NFL so...*shrug* no idea. However, despite my press conference example, I don't think it's particularly useful to compare trash talk from professional leagues to that seen in lower levels of play. There's a lot of trash talk that happens in professional LoL, though thankfully most of it is kept on the topic of League rather than family etc. That type of trash talk has context way beyond the one statement. The same words from yee old random Ranked player lack any context, and that makes a large difference.
IRL people have a great deal of control over who they play with, the culture around it etc. The cost of that is often scheduled play, travel etc. In League everyone is mostly all together. We need to create a culture where the greatest number of players can enjoy their experience (note I didn't say "have fun", because there are contexts where that's not realistic). For players who don't enjoy significant trash talk, trash talk can ruin the experience. For players who enjoy the banter, it's just less fun, hopefully not ruined. I'd be concerned about players who play only for the trash talk...I doubt they'd be satisfied staying within reasonable bounds.
To some degree, this is fair. My examples are very tame. That said, consider that many players are in the early to mid teens. Every organized sport I was a part of at that age heavily emphasized the difference between acceptable banter and unsportsmanlike conduct. If we behaved like junior or pro hockey players we would have gotten wrecked by coaches, refs, parents etc.
As a side note "I'm going to crush you" came from a much more serious context than you seem to assume, and was genuinely terrifying, but point taken.
Hesitant to even dig into this due to how deep the issue can run, but I'll say a bit. I don't want to censor players, except for certain extremes, well beyond the nuances we're talking about, where we as a company feel like we need to make a stand. For the most part players should say what they want, and then deal with the consequences.
Freedom of speech to me is the right to send messages I wish to, by voice, text, interpretive dance, whatever. It does not provide protection from the consequences of said speech, especially in cases that do not involve government oversight. If I go to a busy sandwich shop (I'm hungry..) and start a loud rant filled with hate speech, threats and other content deemed unacceptable by the community in and around that shop, I'm not going to get out without consequences. They could be that I'm simply judged by everyone present, I could be told to leave, perhaps I caused people to fear for their safety so they call the cops and I'm arrested. It's unlikely that handing out ear plugs (everybody muting me) would be a satisfactory resolution. Yes, that's hyperbole, please don't take it literally...
In League, we want to offer tools for players to act when the speech of others offends them. Players rarely see each other twice, so the default IRL social consequences are absent. Asking a player to leave is not tenable due to the nature of the game. Reporting is kind of the equivalent of calling the police, though much, much less severe and thus used for less severe behavior.
If your point is that speech should not have consequences, we just have a fundamental disagreement. Historically this has not been true, and there have always been social consequences to speech. Though what speech was unacceptable has changed DRAMATICALLY. Can you imagine the reaction if half of our commercials (sex sells!) were shown to a "normal" person from the early to mid 1800's. They'd think we were depraved.
Muting alone is not enough, and probably never will be. Since there's no negative feedback to the person who is being seen as offensive, they keep going. Why would they change? Over time that means the percentage of chat that is "offensive" only goes up. The people who are offended leave, and over time the culture shifts. We don't want to punish people for every little thing. We don't want to nanny players. We want players to be able to provide meaningful negative feedback to those they find are impacting their game to offset the absence of the traditional, implicit systems that exist IRL. We want players to have a strong say in their culture.
I mostly just want to touch on the last part here. When talking about consequences for speech and how it relates to free speech, I observe your right as a company to censor whatever you want, because you're not the government. Also, I agree that speech and behavior should obviously have social consequences even if there are no legal consequences, but in this context social consequences would be coming from your peers and not the establishment. In this scenario, Riot Games is the establishment, you're basically the government of the league community. Receiving punishment from you would be the equivalent of receiving punishment from the goverment in real life.
For instance, a permanent ban in league is basically the video game version of life in prison. I think most people who the system deems as "toxic" are fully capable of accepting social consequences for their speech. Things like retaliation from other parties involved, being muted or being excluded from a group. These are what I think of when I hear "social" consequences. A punishment coming from those in power, the establishment or government of league, is not what comes to mind.
Your comment about reporting being equivalent to calling the cops in real life is actually quite an apt comparison. Saying some mean words to a stranger in real life won't get the cops called on me because in real life people don't crumble under the weight of a nasty comment. Somehow on the internet the opposite is true, people can't give up their right to be an asshole quickly enough if it keeps them safe from words on a screen. Again, I think everyone should have the right to be an asshole, and of course I have the right to mute them or not associate with them ever again which would be the social consequence of their actions. I would never call the cops on them though, until they do something severe of course.
"Muting alone is not enough, and probably never will be. Since there's no negative feedback to the person who is being seen as offensive, they keep going. Why would they change?"
My question is, why should they change? If the mute feature acts as a wall between the player who is easily offended and the offending player, why does the offending player need to change? I think the easily offended player could deal with some thicker skin, but I'd never force them to change. If they want to give power to words on a screen then by all means they can get offended and immediately mute anyone who says anything negative to them. I believe words can only have power when you give them power, they can only hurt you when you let them. However, when you have this built in wall to keep those words out then even the easily offended can take the power back with one click of a button. Also as you hinted, what's seen as "offensive" is highly subjective and I guarantee you that you can find someone who is offended by anything, even your safe trash talk from earlier. At this point, who becomes the soul arbiter of what is and is not offensive? What's the upper limit of offended players that you're willing to live with? Set the bar too low and everyone is in danger of being banned, set the bar too high and it's the wild west you're so afraid of where everyone can say anything. How do you find out where to draw the line with the ever changing culture. Will the line ever need to be moved? Could "GG EZ" be too offensive now but totally okay later down the line when new trend develops that's perceived as being worse?
On a related topic, and one that ties in nicely with the sandwich shop analogy, the issue of trolling seems to be a much more important one in my mind but it feels as though Riot cares less about it than the "toxicity" which can be almost entirely solved with the mute feature. Unfortunately, there's no mute feature to stop intentional feeders, trolls, or afkers from ruining games but it never gets the same spotlight that nasty words and unsportsmanlike conduct does. Back to the sandwich shop, I see toxicity the same way you do in your analogy, someone yelling mean things in a shop and being asked to leave. I don't think threats or hate speech are covered in this situation as I'm not arguing for that to be allowed in league, by all means ban those people who threaten others or spew bigoted hate speech. However, the trolls, feeders, and afkers who ruins games are basically the equivalent of a maniac coming into the sandwich shop and bashing the place up with a baseball bat. It's on a whole different level from toxicity in terms of the damage it causes to the game but as I said it seems that it doesn't get the spotlight as much. I'd like to know from your point as a Rioter, do you think it's easier to be banned for overly toxic chat messages or intentional feeding and ruining games?
RiotYpherion6 votesWant to give a quick reply before I call it a night.
I think we agree about social consequences being the appropriate response to mild-moderate negative (subjective ofc) behavior. However, where we differ is that I don't believe that an online community like League inherently has the same capability for consequences as more traditional circumstances.
At the very least, a huge swath of core human psychology and behavior is totally skipped: the automatic, unpreventable interpretation of the physical expression and body language of others. If I yell at someone at a pick up basketball game, or even say something disrespectful that I thought was fine, I'm immediately inundated with feedback from every person I see. This type of interpersonal empathy having no impact is quite literally a sign of certain social disorders. Unfortunately, by having players hidden behind networks and screens, every player is saddled to some degree with this deficit.
I think it's important to compensate for what is lost during interactions with physical presence, because of the inherent lack in the digital space. There needs to be ways for quick feedback that can trigger an empathetic response, and also ways to mimic the more persistent social consequences that occur in real life (e.g. people get asked not to come back if they've offended someone and/or a group). Muting is one such tool, but it just isn't an effective measure. It fails to provide the feedback we're missing by the nature of the digital space.
On your point about feeding/trolling etc.: holy balls is that behavior infuriating. We have systems in place to act on it, but the truth is that so far it has been much harder to reliably differentiate trolling/feeding from a bad game (yes, going 0/10/2 in a game can be just having a bad game) that it has to separate highly negative chat from banter or idle swearing (which we're fine with). We are punishing players who blatantly troll, but the systems simply aren't as effective and to keep from falsely punishing people we have to let a higher percentage slip through. It sucks, but it's how the world is for now :(.
AMYS GRAVE1 voteshere needs to be ways for quick feedback that can trigger an empathetic response, and also ways to mimic the more persistent social consequences that occur in real life
I'm curious what your thoughts on this are with respect to voice chat?
ninja edit:
On your point about feeding/trolling etc.: holy balls is that behavior infuriating. We have systems in place to act on it, but the truth is that so far it has been much harder to reliably differentiate trolling/feeding from a bad game
Also i feel the pain in this, I've seen teammates have bad games going 0-10, but I've also seen people who were 10-0 walk it down mid, purposely miss an ability or two (like not even close to the right direction), spam laugh, and afk in fountain on respawn for 20 seconds to watch their team lose. Its rough because even one intentionally fed death can mean the game, but its so hard to pick those out.
RiotYpherion3 votesIt's a double edged sword. Voice chat removes a property called "masking" (basically removing all information except the explicit message content). This can be great if someone expresses pain in certain ways, but it can backfire. If someone is really angry, that pain can feel pretty good; it's an unfortunate property of human evolution. Also, if the player who is offended expresses it as attack or very defensively, the natural response for everyone else is to react defensively, which then just escalates.
A lot of the feedback that people get IRL is visual cues: major facial expressions, microexpressions, body language etc. Voice still cannot convey those.
Voice is an interesting problem space for me, and we give it a lot of thought. If we can ship it in ways that doesn't open the door wide for a bunch of the problems that comes with it, I think that would be an exciting opportunity for everyone.
AMYS GRAVE2 votesHey, its really cool of you to be here having this discussion. Props.
RiotYpherion6 votesNo problem. I'd been dark on the forums for a loooooong time. Decided it was time to hop back in.
I've spent a bunch of time on this in the past few days, which I don't think I'll have the bandwidth to do too often, but I'll still check in when I can :)
Oakleaf Ranger2 votesI enjoy the games more when there some trash talk involved, but if someone is solely playing for that reason then there is probably a problem. I know there are lines that shouldn't be crossed and those players probably won't care about crossing. It seems one of your problems comes from where you wish to draw that line but because everyone has multiple variations or views of where that line is you don't know where to draw it. I think one of the issues your going to have to deal with is start making, clarifying, and sticking to a line you guys are willing to stand by and support with reasons for it. Personally I'm fine with trash talk that sticks within the realm of gameplay but I know that there are those who disagree. So your gonna have to make the call and make it clear where you agree the line is with solid reasons to back it up.
RiotYpherion2 votesWe're reluctant to draw that line unilaterally.
Ultimately we want it to be the result of aggregate player feedback, but that does place a burden on us to find a way to clarify it somehow. Whether that's more proactive feedback, or something else, I'm not sure.
Probably need to think about it as we move into the next generation of systems in this space.
Oakleaf Ranger1 votesMaking that line is definitely not gonna be an easy task, but without it I imagine solutions are going to have a minimal effect without a clear foundation to base decisions off when it comes between the difference between banter and unsportsmanlike behavior. Also when you someone gg ez I imagine it's like when you put a sibling in their place and make sure they know it. Is it childish? Yes but damn does it feel good when you whoop em at something real good and they know it.
RiotYpherion2 votesWe are working on some guidelines that we'll want to share in the future (not sure how yet). They don't stipulate what sportsmanlike behavior is in detail or examples, but instead describe the experiences we want to create and those we want to prevent. We hope that will form the foundation you're talking about. Players can ask themselves "That player just did X. Does X help the game be like ABC (from the guidelines)?" If yes, then cool and hopefully the player can be recognized for it. If no, they can hopefully provide feedback to that player and to Riot.
There's never going to be a perfectly clean line. All we can do is adapt as the player community provides feedback and we integrate it into our systems.
As for the gg ez and putting a sibling in their place...
I think saying gg ez or generally gloating to a sibling or a friend is actually super fun in the right context (and within reason...it's very easy to be a pretty terrible person when gloating). The problem for me comes in when it's done to a random stranger on the internet that you'll likely never encounter again. You have no history to give the moment meaning and context, whereas with a sibling you definitely have meaning and context. You also never get to follow up. With a friend or a sibling gloating carries over to the next game, it builds tension and stakes. With a random player, there's no rematch, no future interaction.
Without both the shared history/meaning and the future implications, it's just mean spirited. It just reinforces that the player lost, which they clearly already know, and doesn't add anything to the relationship, since it barely exists.
If you had a friend of a friend over and you had never met them before, would you finish a competitive game with a "nice try, but I owned you!"? For a first meeting, I'd hope not. After a few games, or you get to know them better, sure.
Elikain1 votesAs for the gg ez and putting a sibling in their place...
Without both the shared history/meaning and the future implications, it's just mean spirited. It just reinforces that the player lost, which they clearly already know, and doesn't add anything to the relationship, since it barely exists.
Boy, isn't that the truth...
Pretty much sums up my experience with "gg" and "gg ez" comments as i don't consider them at all a gg. There have only been a handful of games where i truly felt like everyone tried their damnest to win and gave it their best shot and for those games, everyone has gotten an honor. But in my 7 years of playing League (and let's say 3 years of actually caring enough to report and play ranked), there hasn't been many.
I'm not saying that i'm never happy with a game because otherwise, i wouldn't have been here for this long if this was true but that these comments about the general performance are something i wish to filter out from my games. I am able to do so because i mute all chat as this inevitably gets tossed around in there a lot by both teams.
The context is really important when we discuss what is and what isn't considered "offensive" but looks neutral and i don't think people use these words appropriately. I just don't see a reason to comment on a game at the very end, whether you had won or lost. That's just my opinion.
#I don't mind shaking hands with the opposing team in IRL game as this is sportsmanlike but in League, the physicality of this interaction does not exist which is why saying "gg" always sounds demeaning to me, weather you won or lost a game.
RiotYpherion3 votesCan't say I agree with "gg" not having a similarity to shaking hands.
My history with it is pretty long, starting when it was just the cultural norm in Starcraft and Broodwar. In those games there was a bit more nuance because they almost always end in surrender, and it was the losing player's way to respectfully call the game before surrendering and disappearing. It was considered somewhat bm to say gg as the winning player before the losing player did.
In League the game is played to conclusion far more often, and the victory is clear to both teams at a certain point. You'll see gg's thrown out after a critical team fight or not until the nexus explodes. There's a lot more variance.
I think "gg" is the closest we can get in digital space to a handshake, and I don't mind the compromise of it lacking the physical interaction given the realities of the game.
Ireliavence2 votesis league a game, or a system to you?
one of those, is designed to control things, and we are not "things to be controlled".
we are humans. With the free will to associate whatever feelings we want to whatever order of letters we want. Untill someone can prove that "gg ez", has never and will never stand for "good game excessively zesty", in every single players mind; i cant see the justification for being triggered by it. If u get triggered by your assumption then enjoy your feelings, ive got games to play.
to all who would say we have to take into account that GunShyClumsyVeteran's feelings, why are thier feelings more important than mine? i was raised,on an island (St.Thomas), and were a nice people, but if riot was based out of St.Thomas, this wouldn't even be an issue.
the states are soft.
RiotYpherion10 votesAggro tone aside, League is a game, made up of systems.
What differentiates a game from a toy is simply that there is an objective, and barriers to that objective. By their very nature a game restricts freedom in some way. In chess I can't win by stealing the opponents king while they're not looking. I can steal the king, but I'm pretty much opting out of the game at that point, and consequences will apply accordingly.
Also, I don't see why every single person must interpret a message in the same way for it to be meaningful. Context is extremely important. If you said something that reminded a friend of a dead family member and they got a bit choked up, I hope your response wouldn't be "not everybody would feel that way, so I don't care". For someone who is invested in their skill in League, getting a 'gg ez' after a loss can be pretty painful. I don't see what value anyone gets out of saying 'gg ez' when the best case is that it doesn't offend anyone, and the worst is that it hurts. It's like walking down the street tossing a cell phone high in the air; at best it doesn't break, but nothing good is going to come from it, and at worst you end up with a busted phone (weird analogy, but it's been a long day).
I don't see players as "things" to be controlled. I see players as people who deserve to understand the general expectation when they decide to play a game of League. I have no desire for League to become a game where only those who are happy dissociating from what others say get to play and enjoy it. Just like any community, League has to have cultural norms and expectations, even if I'm not interested in sitting down and authoring them myself.
Wild Wild Smith5 votesmake a bad game? nice
ApexInTheCircle150 votes[{quoted}](name=I HAVE REFORMED,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=WuiG5a1Y,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2016-08-22T07:56:36.188+0000)
make a bad game? nice
It's okay man everyone is entitled to their own opinion, no matter how wrong yours is.
