Boards›[ARCHIVED] Miscellaneous

@Riot, my personal experience with the chat restriction system

Unward49·9/17/2015, 6:51:43 AM·2 votes·720 views

In the 10 or so games I have played since my chat restrictions have been lifted, I have received not only no reports but have been honored for team working in at least half of those games.

Why is this? Because I am a leader in games. I use pings a lot and I chat to the team a lot, I call plays, I direct traffic in the mid game, because I'm a jungler, so I don't need to be controlling my champion while I kill camps, so it's easy for me to divert my attention to these other critical tasks. I have made no particular effort to be less toxic and yet all of a sudden, when I have all the words I need to properly express what I need to say, all of a sudden I can do so in a way that is not instantly interpreted as toxic and inflammatory by my team.

When I only have a tweet's worth of information to type every 20 minutes and my top laner is getting camped, I can't actually tell them what my plan is to deal with it, all I can respond to their constant pings and increasingly urgent requests to gank with is "Play safe, stop dying" Because I literally don't have the space to say what I want to say which is,

"I can't gank right now, I'm too low on hp and I don't have any damage to help" "let me back to base to buy a longsword, then I'm going to hit level 6 as I clear my red, I'll ping you when I'm 5 seconds out" "When I do that, bait them in and we'll get the kill. I'll play like I've gone away and when they TP back to clean you up, we'll ambush again"

That right there is my entire chat allotment as a chat restricted player, but I also direct the level 1 plays if my team is up for it and maybe a want a smiteless gromp or whatever.

What's my point?

My point is, Chat restriction is counter productive to the goal of making people less toxic. It only frustrates the player more making them more likely to simply use their small amount of chat allowance to rage at their team mates. And I can certainly speak from experience here as I have been chat restricted for basically as long as I can remember. It's only these past few days after those chat restrictions have been lifted when I've been able to properly communicate with my team and actually achieve some positive results through that communication. And yeah, doesn't mean I win, but when I lose and I did everything I could and my team tried to rally but we got beat anyway, then I don't get angry and toxic and ragey from the loss. I might get a tad salty, but who doesn't.

Anyways, this is just my experience with chat restriction vs no longer being chat restricted for you to consider.

18 Comments

SmokedAlmonds9/17/2015, 7:02:51 AM1 votes

It sounds like you have a strong reason to want to work out off those chat restrictions and never get one again then.

Unward499/17/2015, 5:17:43 PM1 votes

I guess what I'm saying is that a potentially good call can SEEM bad if it isn't followed completely.

You see this a lot in pro play too, what made C9 so great was not that they made "good" calls. It's almost never a "good" idea to go 5 man tower diving bot lane around the 5 minute mark, but something would happen, like a morg binding landing and they would just hit the go button and because they all went all in without hesitation, they generally came out ahead, even though arguably it was an incredibly stupid call to make.

Often what determines the goodness or badness of a call is the result and a call that is only half followed or not followed is almost certain to turn out bad.

Jubbinaut9/17/2015, 5:27:05 PM1 votes

{quoted}

When I only have a tweet's worth of information to type every 20 minutes and my top laner is getting camped, I can't actually tell them what my plan is to deal with it, all I can respond to their constant pings and increasingly urgent requests to gank with is "Play safe, stop dying" Because I literally don't have the space to say what I want to say which is,

"I can't gank right now, I'm too low on hp and I don't have any damage to help" "let me back to base to buy a longsword, then I'm going to hit level 6 as I clear my red, I'll ping you when I'm 5 seconds out" "When I do that, bait them in and we'll get the kill. I'll play like I've gone away and when they TP back to clean you up, we'll ambush again"

That's a solid point. And I hope you'll keep it in mind and continue to ensure that your communication is clear, effective, and (at worst) neutral.

But it doesn't take that many lines to get across the important information you want to share. For example:

"can't gank, too low. lemme back and clear red, then omw. try to bait when I ping"

That covers the important things you wanted to share in one line, by clearing out a bit of extraneous detail.

Which is not to say that you're saying or doing anything wrong with those lines. Merely that it's perfectly possible to share the same information with fewer lines/characters. Because sometimes it helps to be more brief.

My point is, Chat restriction is counter productive to the goal of making people less toxic. It only frustrates the player more making them more likely to simply use their small amount of chat allowance to rage at their team mates. And I can certainly speak from experience here as I have been chat restricted for basically as long as I can remember. It's only these past few days after those chat restrictions have been lifted when I've been able to properly communicate with my team and actually achieve some positive results through that communication. And yeah, doesn't mean I win, but when I lose and I did everything I could and my team tried to rally but we got beat anyway, then I don't get angry and toxic and ragey from the loss. I might get a tad salty, but who doesn't.

While it's true that it does create that effect sometimes, it most often accomplishes its goal quite effectively - which is, simply, encouraging players to put more consideration into how they use the chat feature. And it certainly seems to have helped you recognize - or at least remember - the importance of effective use of chat.

The repeated issuance of your restrictions indicates to me that it was not a perfect solution for you, but it seems nevertheless to have been an effective one.

Unward499/18/2015, 12:33:41 AM1 votes

How. How is a system that increases toxicity in some players an effective measure at decreasing overall toxicity?

The way the system was set up, I never would have had the chance to find out that it was lack of communication in the first place that was causing so much of my frustration because it never gave me a chance to play without it. I KNOW I'm not the only person who was in this situation.

Let's look at it this way.

The vast majority of people don't enter into a game with the intention to be toxic. Very occasionally they do and there's nothing that can be done about that, but even then, chat restrict is useless if they're just going to walk to the center of a lane and press S until they're 0/10. They don't need to talk to do that. For most people, something will happen inside the game that will cause them to become toxic. Whatever that is, the solution is NEVER going to be to limit their communication. When has a psychologist ever said that the answer to a problem is to just suppress it harder and harder. Why should we expect it to work with the chat system.

If someone starts the game by calling people %%%got %%%%%%s and does so for the entire duration of the game, then a chat restriction isn't going to cause them to stop doing this. Besides, what I always say here is "THAT IS WHAT THE MUTE BUTTON IS FOR". I talk a lot in game, but you know what, I can't tie you down and force you to listen to me. If you don't want to read it, hit that mute button.

But we already know that people who do that get perm banned, they don't just rack up more and more chat restrictions like what happened to me and Riot has said that actually saw a lot of what was happening to me happening, which is why they have changed the system to something far more draconic in my personal opinion, far more akin to a 3 strikes and you're out, but that's not the issue at hand here.

The issue at hand is that the punishment I had been given for a thing I did that was at best on the periphery of what is acceptable by the summoner's code was actually making me a more toxic player than I had been without receiving the punishment. I maintain that I am guilty of nothing more than occasionally wanting to win more than I should and having an abrasive online personality that is pretty much guaranteed to rub some people the wrong way some of the time. My attitude hasn't changed in the slightest. I haven't self censored anything since the chat restriction has been lifted. The only thing I've made an effort to do is talk MORE than I did before, because I can now.

I suppose what I'm saying is that Riot needs to really sit down and think about what they want the goals of their punishments to be, because at least in my case, doing nothing would have been better than what they did.

Matthias91199/18/2015, 1:30:41 AM1 votes

I might get a tad salty, but who doesn't.

If you "have been chat restricted for basically as long as you can remember" then you're being more than a "tad salty".

Unward499/18/2015, 2:01:37 AM1 votes

If that is true, then explain why ever since the chat restrictions have been lifted I have not received a single validated report. At no time has the game given me the little popup saying "You have been reported for such and such, blah blah stupid butt hurt children blah blah".

I haven't changed my attitude, the way I'm talking now is exactly how I talk in game.

The only difference that I can see is that now I am allowed to provide full context to any seemingly offensive thing I might blurt out.

Cause that's the other thing. Sometimes I will go too far. I will say more than I mean to. But if I'm chat restricted, you know what? It stays said for a very long time. 5 minutes is a very long time in game time and if I type out "For fuck sakes stop feeding you assholes!" And then 5 minutes later say "Sorry guys, I was just frustrated cause of blah blah and stupid butt hurt feels and stupid unimportant crap and I didn't mean to lash out at you and etc etc" then it sounds super disingenuous and way too fucking late.

If I come right out with the apology immediately, MOST PEOPLE ARE DECENT and they understand.

My point is, yes, I get a bit salty, but all chat restrict does is turn those times when I go too far into further reports. Further reports leads to more frustration, more frustration to more lashing out, more lashing out to more reports, more reports to more chat restrictions and there's a hole in my bucket dear Liza.

And of course, try telling your team you got chat restricted and they instantly assume it's because you're a racist homophobe and will never listen to a single thing you have to say ever.

Remember when those stupid honor things came out? I was one of the first to get a banner for team worker. I fuckin loved that banner, I was so happy to get it because I feel I do play a very team focused style of game. I don't go into every game trying to carry unless the situation means that it's optimal and I like to win because my team does well. If I'm to carry, I prefer it to be through leadership and shot calling and rallying my comrades. THAT'S HALF OF WHY I PLAY JARVAN. That's what Jarvan is all about. Stand with me brothers and sisters, Ours is but to do and die.

Then I had two really shitty games in a row or something where I said some nasty things and from 2 reports, fucking Riot took away my Teamwork banner.

My fucking team work banner.

For a thing that wasn't the least bit connected to team work. Because I used some naughty words and some children got offended that I called them bad.

I was fucking livid! How DARE they. It took probably 100 people vouching for me as a team player to get that banner and 2 people clicking the report button were able to steal it from me. That's the kind of shit that turns salt into actual toxicity. Don't tell me I shouldn't have said those mean things if I didn't want that to happen, I said those mean things because I wanted to win and I wanted to win because I'm a good team player.

Still don't have my team worker banner back yet... Still kinda salty about that...