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Account penalties should be handled by humans, not a bot

KTFresh·4/8/2019, 3:43:19 PM·98 votes·18,442 views

A bot should not have the power to suspend/ ban accounts. The information as to how the bot works is not transparent to my knowledge. What I do know is that my first ever penalty in the 6 years I have played league was a 2 week suspension for calling the 4 teammates flaming me "bad," as they were flaming me within the first five minutes of the game and they all died in their lanes and blamed me (I was jungle). I appealed the penalty immediately, and got a response about a week later, and the penalty got reduced to a 10 game chat restriction and losing all my honor.

My second penalty was received this past weekend. Three teammates were flaming each other and me, and I told them to "stfu and stop typing." I said nothing derogatory. I did not think much of the game, I said in all chat that the 3 teammates could use some reports for being toxic, and moved on to the next champion select. My account was perma banned.

I was appalled. I had no intention of hurting anyone or ruining the game for anyone. I was frustrated that they were more focused on typing than trying to win, and I expressed that in a fairly appropriate manner. No name calling, no spamming of pings or chat, no inting, just telling them to shut up and focus.

Once again, I immediately sent an appeal. This one with less willingness to be understanding and less patience. I also hopped onto twitter and messaged the Riot Games Support account, where I got to speak with "Tank." He was able to look up my situation and agreed both penalties were outliers and very harsh bans given the context and the fact I do not have a history of toxic/negative behavior.

Has the penalty bot system been adjusted in 2019 to be more sensitive and intense? If so, is this to address some mega terrible chat problem? If chat really is that much of a problem, then just disable the feature entirely. At this point, I have no idea what constitutes earning a penalty, or what level of penalty. This last situation somehow earned me a perma ban, yet I never thought I was deserving of ANY level of consequence given the context of the game. There are so many worse things I could have said or done to retaliate, yet I told them to shut up and play, and that earned a perma. I was told that my messages appeared "provocative." I would like to have "provocative" defined within the game then. I feel like so much within any given interaction could be classified as "provocative," and it is not fair to allow a bot to have god power to decide what trigger words/symbols deserve a penalty without context. Especially so quickly.

Allowing a bot to decide the fate of my account, so quickly and without thought, is unacceptable. These days I no longer have much time to play league anymore. Had this been an issue back when I played hours upon hours every day, losing access to my main account for periods of time may have not been an entirely huge issue in my eyes; just hop on a smurf account and play with friends! These days, the little time I get each month, I only desire to play on my main. The great majority of my in game communication is positive, encouraging, friendly, and game focused. It is hard not to say anything when teammates are allowing their characters to stand still or be in places they shouldn't because they are busy typing negative things. I suppose I need to speak to them like the children I work with in mental health; proper, elaborate, polite. Even though this is not an accurate representation of how their speech in chat and actions are affecting me. (Not to say it is not about losing control of my emotions and venting it out, it is simply me being truthful to myself and them as a value I hold.) The game is less enjoyable with a martyr mentality. I value standing up for myself and others, while maintaining a level head of course, yet the penalty system appears to not recognize neutral speech. I was informed it often looks for "passive negative." How?? What EXACTLY constitutes "passive negative"?? From what I gathered, just engaging in conversation with someone being toxic counts as "passive negative." That's insane.

This is so long Jesus Christ.

Riot I believe there are a few options/solutions here:

  1. Disable chat across the board to avoid toxic communication within your game.
  2. Remove the power of suspensions/bans from the penalty bot, it is not fair for people to suffer overly harsh penalties or lose access of their accounts for periods of time before a human even looks at the situation.
  3. Bring back tribunal or create a team designated to WORK WITH a bot that has the ability to flag potential suspension/ban worthy behaviors.
  4. Provide an option for people to completely disable chat on their accounts, to avoid getting baited into human interaction within the game and to treat the players they're playing with as bots to avoid potential trigger words/symbols that trigger an unwarranted penalty.

TLDR; I received my first penalties ever in 6 years within 2019, the first being a 2 week suspension, the second being a perma ban. Both penalties confirmed to be too harsh. I do not enjoy unjustly losing access to my account for no good reasons.

Also, I really enjoyed being honor level 5 last season. What a descent into hell I have made. I am the epitome of toxic behavior according to this bot.

EDIT * People appear to be focusing more on my situation and the circumstances of me presenting this discussion. The 3 Rioters I spoke with about both situations (Derp, Tank, and Skeletor) all confirmed the system over penalized my account given the context of the games and not having a history of negative behaviors. I would like the discussion to be more about the inconvenience of that problem.

Thanks, Kylie "KTFresh"

EDIT how can I post pics here?

EDIT * Here are conversations with the 3 Rioters

Derp on reducing first penalty https://imgur.com/a/SWT543Y Me starting a convo with the Riot Games Support Twitter account https://imgur.com/a/Coe8V4V Tank https://imgur.com/a/8vGUmal Tank confirming https://imgur.com/a/q6P5lZm Skeletor https://imgur.com/a/uQgBuDC My conclusion https://imgur.com/a/U52w8ZU

EDIT * After all the craziness of this situation was said and done, some great memes came out of a great weekend at LCS in St. Louis. Meeting up with so many of my online friends for the first time, all of who can vouch for my character within the game. Thanks for taking the time to read and discuss my post!

https://imgur.com/a/K8Be29Z

https://imgur.com/a/yDTiZpa

https://imgur.com/a/y2ZjY97

https://imgur.com/a/oYnnEbr

https://imgur.com/a/Oq8paIA

https://imgur.com/a/WDLT5Je

140 Comments

Timethief494/8/2019, 3:46:31 PM24 votes

If you think your penalty was unjustified, feel free to post it here with the chatlogs to review, but dont be surprised if humans see it the same way the bot does. Also, context doesnt matter, there is not justifcation for toxicity. Tribunal was terribly slow and less concistant than the bot, also the bot was partially based on the tribunals results. Making the system human-reviewed is not doable, you´d need too many people to do so.

Jamaree4/8/2019, 3:47:11 PM18 votes

We actually did have a system where punishments were doled out by people, wanna know what happened?

When this community was given a chance to clean up the community, decide who they wanted to play with, actually do their part in dealing with trolls, feeders, afkers, a system that allowed context because you saw all sides of the logs, they ACTIVELY didn't use it. Even then, there was a section of people who just spammed punished to either troll or get the meager amount of IP it gave back then.

So yeah, while it would be nice for punishments to all go through peer review, we saw first hand that that can't and doesn't work.

Hotarµ4/8/2019, 3:50:29 PM7 votes

Disable chat across the board to avoid toxic communication within your game.

No, in-game chat is too vital and Riot would/should never remove it because a few people are toxic.

Remove the power of suspensions/bans from the penalty bot, it is not fair for people to suffer overly harsh penalties or lose access of their accounts for periods of time before a human even looks at the situation.

Bring back tribunal or create a team designated to WORK WITH a bot that has the ability to flag potential suspension/ban worthy behaviors.

It is fair and it's also the only realistic way to deal with the mountain of reports that Riot receives daily. Do you have any idea how much it would cost to maintain a team that would manage to keep up with the hundreds of thousands (or maybe even millions) of reports that are sent in daily?

_ A lot. _ Probably so much that it would bankrupt Riot.

With humans you also run the risk of human error, something that the system reduces heavily. Humans can also show bias while robots can't.

The first being a 2 week suspension, the second being a perma ban. Both penalties confirmed to be too harsh. 

If your first suspension was a 2 week ban, that means it was for hate speech such as racism, homophobia, or inciting self-harm. You were warned that any further negativity would result in a permanent ban.

Definitely doesn't seem too harsh to me.

Busty Demoness4/8/2019, 10:09:27 PM7 votes

If your first punishment was a 2 week suspension, then you clearly crossed a zero tolerance line. The big ones are death threats, encouraging self harm, and hate speech (including blatantly racist/sexist/homophobic terms). There is no other way for that punishment to be your first.

After the 14 day suspension, you're on thin ice to the point any punishable log, such as the one you linked, warrants a permanent ban. Thin Ice lasts for dozens of games. I'd say 100 of no toxicity and you won't be immediately punished for a mildly toxic log (just a guess, I don't know the exact system).

So I'm 100% inclined to call bullshit on "my punishments were too harsh".

AeroWaffle4/8/2019, 3:55:50 PM6 votes

I received my first penalties ever in 6 years within 2019, the first being a 2 week suspension, the second being a perma ban. Both penalties confirmed to be too harsh. I do not enjoy unjustly losing access to my account for no good reasons.

Confirmed by whom?

Morbys4/9/2019, 5:59:53 AM5 votes

The bots are REALLY bad, and don't take into consideration how bad you're getting flamed before you try and stick up for yourself. The current environment promotes bullying. All you can do is mute these kids and hope they get their just desserts.

Quality Content4/8/2019, 5:35:16 PM3 votes

They have to use bots to police a playerbase of this size. The influx of reports they get is too high for just humans to sort through.

SammyDayspring4/10/2019, 4:00:46 AM3 votes
  1. It is impossible for humans to monitor a game of this size.
  2. It is not Riot's responsibility to babysit players whose parents failed to raise them with the social skills to interact with other people.
  3. There is an appeals process. The bots will never be perfect. They are a necessary evil since some players can't control their own behavior.
Beerstein4/8/2019, 11:56:24 PM3 votes

All I know is if I haven't been banned yet, RIot is pretty leniant.

ModPeriscope4/11/2019, 3:57:54 PM2 votes

That's unfortunate that you had bans where such actions weren't indicated. What did your chat logs say? Did the Riot Support offer any reason as to why you had escalated punishments?

Silly Neeko4/8/2019, 4:08:51 PM2 votes

I would like to see chat logs.

But.... I do understand the point of wanting that final punishment to be done by a human, rather than a robot (as long as it wouldnt be warrented due to racial or homophobic problems....). It would still take a small team of people quite a bit of time to get through them all..... but depending on the size it could be doable and not be too expensive.

For literally everything else BEFORE the permaban the bot works just fine still.

RAT IN GAME UwU 4/8/2019, 6:54:36 PM2 votes

if everyone who got banned didn't do essentially the same thing they probably would have to use humans but it's just the same immature children doing the same shit on repeat with very few cases of hacking, or other issues

14daysuspensionk4/8/2019, 7:22:00 PM2 votes

So you're saying bots aren't human? OMG RACIST.

actualytryndawin4/10/2019, 12:22:23 PM2 votes

what you dont realize is that while disabling chat outright or even just giving people a chat disabled as their penalty is an amazing idea but would lose riot a truckload of money. its a very simple formula: ban accounts. people make more accounts. riot can tell their stockholders they have a bigger playerbase and stock price increase. also those people who spent money on their banned acct might also spend money on their new acct. riot get rich. community more toxic. more banned accts. repeat the cycle.

riot is not going to do anything positive about toxicity it would lose them money. its up to us to stop the endless cycle of seemingly random bans(ive said things a million times worse than what you claim WITHOUT a ban). you can disable your chat all together or just ignore it.

on a side note i just got a chat restriction for flaming and telling people i was going to report them for using an ai script(very obvious one that just kept suiciding to jg camps) and i guarantee they are still doing it without riot even batting an eye.

Ambient Snow4/10/2019, 1:44:47 PM2 votes

Honestly , I agree with the OP, but I would also say riot needs to have a Better Definition of what is TOXIC and what is Frustration.

I'm a firm believer that this is a competitive game, and in these types of games, people can get frustrated and upset when losing.

This is a Esport game, players want to play competitive and like any sport when you start to lose you get frustrated not only with yourself but your team members as well. And Riot needs to stop Bullshitting themselves and realize that this game is pretty trolly and frustrating and their ranking system is FAR from perfect on giving 50/50 Game chances between smurfs, and trolls and trolling smurfs, and so on .

So yes people will say stuff like DUDE you suck or UGH I hate this player all he's doing is feeding. and so on because yes its frustrating and people need to vent, and how do you not expect people to vent in a game when most the communication is via Typing in ALL chat or Chat.

But with that said.

Riot needs to understand and have a more unified definition of what TOXIC behavior is because frustration venting is WAAAAAY different then some one Being toxic and telling some one to Kill themselves, or Insert Racist remark here. or dropping off Swear words at some one or hoping they die or some thing.

Schoenberg4/8/2019, 9:38:19 PM1 votes

Keep the animated system, it's already nearly as good as any human is going to be, but does it much, MUCH quicker. Yours was a fluke and I would not be surprised at all if the system bans correctly 90-95% of the time, and those who do know that they were unjustly punished can take it to the forums/support. The majority of the ones that I see on the forums are complaining about COMPLETELY fair bans versus unjust punishments.

That having been said, there's always room for improvement, and riot's system is far from being an exception. Humans just aren't the answer. Wayyy, wayyyyy too much effort. You'd need hundreds for each region and reports would likely pile up over Christmas break when all the toxic kiddies are out of school. Riot does not need to pour money into maintaining that type of job, they need to improve their system.

"Disable chat across the board to avoid toxic communication within your game." No. All-chat is admittedly almost never used for anything good, but it still adds a social aspect to the game that I doubt Riot would be willing to remove, no matter how beneficial. That and I believe there's a way to disable it if you feel you can't control yourself.

"Remove the power of suspensions/bans from the penalty bot, it is not fair for people to suffer overly harsh penalties or lose access of their accounts for periods of time before a human even looks at the situation." This would require TONS of effort, effort which is probably best spent elsewhere. The bot is sufficient in most cases and keep in mind that humans DO have different takes on situations, too. There would still be some amount of false bans.

"Bring back tribunal or create a team designated to WORK WITH a bot that has the ability to flag potential suspension/ban worthy behaviors." This is interesting.

"Provide an option for people to completely disable chat on their accounts, to avoid getting baited into human interaction within the game and to treat the players they're playing with as bots to avoid potential trigger words/symbols that trigger an unwarranted penalty." If you can't control yourself and stop yourself from flaming the trolls, work on self-control. You're going to meet people like that in real life and if you can't control yourself you're going to get fired/other bad shit. That aside, the option would not hurt at all and it probably shouldn't take much effort to implement at all.