The Tribunal Is a Joke
Recently, I had a teammate who was toxic all match long, suggesting we were mentally retarded and, even worse, had Down syndrome ("downies," he called us). He did this in match on all chat and post-match as well. I asked for everyone to report him, but that request seemed to fall on deaf ears even with more than adequate proof of his toxicity. So I went so far as to email Riot themselves, complete with screen shots of said toxicity. They just told me they'd look into it, but couldn't tell me whether or not any punishment was doled out because of "privacy reasons." Am I just supposed to take Riot on their word that the Tribunal system works? Because I cannot recall running into anyone who's mentioned having ever been punished, including my friend who is probably the most consistently angry person I've seen in the game. He spends half the game talking. All the stupid crap you see bronze players say, he's said. If he's mid and you gank, the only outcome he doesn't find a reason to complain about is him getting the kill and you taking zero CS. If a jungler shows up in his lane a couple times, he's all-chatting "nice tent" and other assorted stuff like that. If more than one person comes after him and kills him, it's "lol wow, takes (insert number here) to kill me." And that's just the stuff that I see every match. In other matches, he becomes full-blown toxic. Still, I've yet to hear of him seeing any repercussions for his toxicity. None whatsoever.
Maybe it's because getting anyone to join you in reporting someone is next to impossible. We had a guy telling us all match to kill ourselves, and he continued doing this after the match, and nobody even said "got it, reported" when we were asking the whole time for him to be reported. But I guess when Riot cannot even give you confirmation that your report has resulted in anything because of "privacy reasons," it's easy to have the attitude that it's pointless to bother. I keep seeing this stat about how the Tribunal has successfully reformed so many users, but I don't believe it because we get zero actual proof of the Tribunal's supposed effectiveness.
How about this? We can see counts in people's profiles for the number of times they've been honored. Why not give us the same counts for each type of report? Or at least the more serious ones, such as "verbal abuse" and "leaving the game/AFK." Have banners for them too, just like for the honors. And in order to get rid of said banners, you should have to play nice for long enough for the reports you've accumulated to "fall off." Kind of like how the NFL handles it. If you've gone incident free for so long, you are in essence a "first offender" once again, which is why Ndamukong Suh hasn't just been kicked out of the league with all the trouble he's been in throughout his career. If you were to do this, we'd know who to watch out for, and whether the user's toxicity is just an isolated incident or not. And the users who already have the banners would have no choice but to shape up because it'd be like a target on their back, which I imagine some will say is why this wouldn't work. How can people reform themselves if these banners have them viewed negatively from the start? Well, the Tribunal is already supposed to be able to tell the difference between valid and invalid reports, so as long as it actually does its job correctly, that shouldn't be a problem.
All I know is this game has the most toxic online community I've ever encountered, that something needs to be done to fix that, and that the current system isn't doing nearly enough.
