Lets Discuss Player Moderators

I've been thinking a lot about the community in LoL, and it seems to me that even though things have gotten a lot better recently there seems to be something lacking. I'm sure you have all seen players that're trolling/feeding/being awful people say things along the lines of "I won't get banned, Riot never bans people". I believe this to be factually false of course, what with the Tribunal and everything doing its job.

That being said however, I think there's one change (albeit a massive one) that could solve a lot of issues without creating new ones. Before coming to League I was an avid RuneScape/FunOrb player, and JaGeX had a system implemented in these games called Player Moderators (PMods). The PMod system did three things:

• It allowed positive members of the community to be recognized both by the company and by the rest of the community as being great people to be around.
• PMods were given the ability (and responsibility) to temporarily mute or temporarily ban other players for particularly egregious behavior.
• PMods could also immediately escalate particularly severe cases directly to JaGeX's Player Support/Community Management team.

The PMods were volunteers hand-picked by JaGeX for responsibility and kindness, and were strictly policed by the company. Player Moderators were positive pillars of the community first and police second. If they abused their power they immediately had their PMod status removed and were potentially banned from the game depending on the severity.

The reason I bring all this up is that I feel a system like this could work extremely well for League of Legends. A lot of the concepts in FunOrb are relatively similar to LoL, although on a larger overall scale. FunOrb games had a global lobby for each server, whereas LoL obviously only has game lobbies of up to ten people. Without further ado I'd like to lay out the limitations I want people to consider before raging at me for suggesting this:

• I do NOT think this should be based on Honor. The Honor system is decently accurate, but it's a bit too easy to falsely acquire Honor or not acquire Honor you deserve. In my opinion there should be a different metric in place.
• I am suggesting this under the assumption that Riot picks PMods well and makes sure they do not abuse their power. Please don't fill the comments with "ehrmagerd but Mr T pmods will just mute everyone they dont like" because SHH!
• This is also under the assumption this system already exists and all of the infrastructure is in place. I realize this would be difficult to implement, take the suggestions with a grain of salt.
• I would like to think of this as an extension of the Tribunal as opposed to an adversary. The Tribunal works extremely well, but it does tend to be a bit slow in comparison to the experiences that can be ruined by a player.
• I want to consider PMods to be excellent community-minded players first, and policemen second. The main focus here is a combination of pulling out extreme edge cases very quickly and having the best members of the community actively recognized by Riot for being as such.
• Last but not least, this is assuming Riot tells/teaches the PMod team how they'd like them to go about their business.

Right, now that's out of the way let's get on to the potential responsibilities of the PMods. I have been thinking about two systems, one is more geared towards rewarding the best players and giving them a small way to very quickly report people and the other is much closer to JaGeX's system. I'm going to start with the more player-involved version.

• PMods are required to send a warning to the player in question before taking any action. This warning would entail either a message in their chat window or some sort of other UI interaction.[
• If the player accepts the warning and stops the toxic behavior, no punishment will be administered. However, the PMod would have the ability to "blackmark" that player so that if either the same PMod or a different PMod caught them it'd be clearly obvious that they were a repeat offender.
• *If the player does NOT accept the warning, the PMod can apply one (or both) of two punishments. 1) The player is selectively muted for x amount of time or x number of future games. 2) The player is banned from joining future games for x amount of time. I’ll explain this below. This one is also OPTIONAL. Tell me what you think. **
• *In addition, the PMod would be able to escalate players to Player Support. This escalation would include a recommendation of punishment from the PMod that submitted it based on the severity of the toxicity. For example, an extremely serious breach of the CoC could be accompanied by a recommendation of a long-term ban. **

The mute suggested above would not be a hard mute, it would be akin to what Lyte is currently testing on the PBE what with the limited communication punishment. Basically the way it’d work is that the player would only be able to send a certain amount of messages per x amount of time/per game. This would limit the ability this individual would have to rage at his teammates, but still allow him to communicate. The temp ban would be reserved for only the absolute worst cases, where reform seems impossible. This is not meant to be a direct punishment, but more of a preventative measure while the escalation is looked over by Riot. I had quite a few questions on my previous thread, so I’m going to try an FAQ sort of dealio. Feel free to contest my answers as these are opinion and not fact. Though some of them might be fact. :P

With the way League works the lighter version may be much easier to implement than the first option. Essentially what it would entail is that the players selected would receive an icon next to their name any time they typed something in-game and also an icon during the loading screen/champ select. These players would be hand-picked by Riot for this, and would be the upper echelon of the community. As opposed to the option above, these players would not have the ability to enforce any punishment whatsoever, even for the absolute worst of cases. They would however have both the "black mark" functionality and the ability to escalate cases directly to either Riot or the top of the Tribunal. This would still allow PMods to be relevant and useful, but would not cause any of the issues of power abuse, undermining the Tribunal, or incorrectly punishing someone. Edge cases would not be able to be immediately removed from gameplay, however.

Wouldn’t there be a giant gap between the PMods and the normal players? Wouldn’t that feel like a first-class second-class interaction?

• In general I think not. From my long experience dealing with players in FunOrb and RuneScape it seemed (and others agreed) that when PMods were around the atmosphere improved quite a bit. I’m going to quote a reply I got by BirdboyDom: “Becoming a PMod was desirable, and any member of the community could become one, so many people made an effort to be upstanding community members in order to become a PMod.” Many many people I’ve discussed this with agree, and it may seem counterintuitive. Yes PMods might be in higher regard in a certain sense, but they do not get any perks relating to gameplay whatsoever. It’s hard to imagine when you haven’t ever been around a PMod system, but when implemented correctly it really doesn’t seem to have this feeling at all.

What would a PMod do if they just wanted to play a casual game without needing to field questions/be a moderator?

• Becoming a PMod is a responsibility. It’s an honor yes, but it’s also a responsibility. The company is trusting you to help them improve the community, and that isn’t something to be taken lightly. That being said, smurfing is indeed very possible in League. I know it takes a long time to level a smurf but realistically speaking being able to switch off your PMod…ness would be against the whole point in my opinion.

How would PMods be chosen?

• This one I’m still not sure on. I think it should definitely be a long-term decision, possibly a year or more of your record while playing LoL. In general I feel like it shouldn’t be limited to the people who are only reported 0.02% of the time (the top tier of the population as far as report frequency goes), but I feel like report accuracy SHOULD be a factor. The reason I believe this to be the case is that if it’s limited to the 0.02% reformers will never have a chance to become one. Report accuracy I think is important because as a PMod sending escalations would be your main responsibility. Feel free to suggest other factors in the comments. :P

What happens if a PMod abuses their power?

• In a perfect world, this would never happen. Realistically speaking there’s always going to be at least one, and this is where it would be up to Riot to make sure they are able to very quickly identify a PMod that’s doing this. In general I would suggest a warning if it’s mild, and if it’s either a repeat offense or severe I’d suggest removal of the PMod status (I hate calling it a status, it’s a responsibility) and a possible temp ban/black mark.

Doesn’t the concept of a PMod completely ruin the democratic nature of the Tribunal?

• No. The goal I’m trying to achieve here is that the PMod system would be an extension of the Tribunal. I’m aware this is giving individuals a lot of power, but at the same time that power should only really be used for cases that are extremely severe and would be a guaranteed punish on the Tribunal no matter how the Tribunal normally votes. This would be things like someone intentionally feeding from the start of the game while laughing at his teammates’ anger, or spamming chat with racial slurs and death threats. I realize these cases are relatively uncommon, but being able to immediately take them out of the game would be a massive boon. In addition I’m experimenting with the thought of sending escalations to the Tribunal as the first cases people see so that there WOULD be a democratic vote on them. I’ll discuss this below.

Can PMod Steve ban PMod Jimmethy?

• I would say most likely no. I feel PMods should have the ability to send an escalation for another PMod in the same way they would for another player, but not to punish them.

Can a PMod ban people in a chat room?

• I would say absolutely! From what I’ve seen chat rooms tend to have quite a bit of spam.

Can a PMod ban pillars of our community?

• In general I’m not entirely sure why Riot turns a somewhat blind eye to these individuals. I know they generate a lot of hype/revenue, but in my opinion they are problematic. I’m not sure what to say on this one, it would have to be up to Riot to choose how they want that handled. Personally I’m of the mind that if someone is being an extreme case of negativity it shouldn’t matter if they are popular or not.

Now then, there are a few questions I still don't know how to answer myself and I would love some input from you guys.

• Would a system like this get in the way of gameplay in any way? If so how?
• Should escalations be sent directly to Riot (circumventing the Tribunal) or to the Tribunal? If sent to the Tribunal I’d be thinking of the escalations as the first cases everyone sees, and in x amount of hours (24 or less) the case is considered finished and the punishment recommended by the PMod/Riot would be enacted, thus way faster than the current Tribunal method but still a bit slower than directly to Riot.

TL;DR - I am suggesting a Player Moderator system where Riot picks extremely positive players from the community to both be recognized as such and have the ability to keep some of the more egregious cases out of your games. The goal would roughly be to make PMods a near-instant front line arm of the Tribunal. THIS IS ALL THEORETICAL!

Now then, these are the suggestions I've come up with so far. Please feel free to tell me what's wrong with them or suggest other responsibilities/restrictions!

Thanks for reading,
Mr T

@Lyte if you happen to come across this I would love to discuss it with you in-game or in some other way.