Boards›Player Behavior

Riot: Problem with toxic players, and how riot encourages toxicity.

Vaynes·5/18/2017, 1:30:59 PM·4 votes·1,767 views

>**Ban system: **

League is known for having a large amount of extremely toxic players, it seems Riots "solution" to the problem is to just permanently ban the accounts, this doesn't work, it will never work.

    • Once a toxic players main account is ban there is no real reason for that summoner to not be toxic on their new accounts, if anything the level and frequency of the negative behavior will increase due to them having far less to lose. The current system offers no help to players, it simply tells you to stop the toxic behavior and that's it, slowly increasing the length of restrictions and bans until a permanent ban, and in some rare cases going from no previous offences to a permanent ban.

I would like to use my case as an example, I have played league for 5 years, played 1000's of games and only ever received 2 penalties, a 10 game chat restriction and a permanent ban, both around the same time. the events were isolated to a few weeks, were I was going through an extremely rough patch in my life a ban for 14 days or even a few months would have been a far better outcome for me and riot. I would still get to enjoy the game, and they would retain a loyal customer. instead they left it all to an automated system which has absolutely no context of the game, my account history or my personal situation.

I am not trying to use personal situations as an excuse to be toxic, there absolutely has to be some punishment for my actions, what I’m trying to say is that there was an outcome that benefited everyone involved far more, and I doubt it would be hard to implement a feature that checks an accounts creation date, bans system creation date and various other factors, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. this is just part of the reason already toxic players may become more toxic and negatively affect the community and Riot games far more.

>_**Voice chat: ** _

Two main reasons why implementing voice chat would reduce the levels of toxic behavior.

1: Humanization: When you are talking to someone over text chat, in game or on a message board you feel far more anonymous, it’s hard to care about the way someone may feel when they are only represented by a summoner name. Adding voice chat would humanize players far more, make it easier to sympathize with them and want to help/assist them so your team can be victorious rather than flame them.

2: Communication: A main source of frustration is mistakes, or misinterpretation. Your jungle misses a gank opportunity, someone isn’t in a team fight etc. With voice communication it allows players to communicate more precise, clear and efficiently compared to smart pings and text chat, in the heat of a battle you can’t type that you plan to focus (champion x) so the other assassin should go for (champion y) to avoid ability wastage and tilting.

Communication also allows players in the low-mid elo range to exchange information such as build paths, counter picks, jungle routes, play styles, other champs ability's far more effectively ensuring less people tilt due to lack of knowledge and always having 4 other teammates information on hand extremely quickly.

>Reforming and Account Unbanning

When a player is permanently ban they are allowed to create a new account and play on that, why? As I mentioned before this will just encourage them to be toxic, they have nothing to lose now. They exhibited toxic behavior despite the threat of an account they spend 1000's of hours and dollars on being ban, taking it away and letting them have a fresh account encourages the behavior.

I am talking about toxic behavior such as insults, threats, racism etc, not feeding or cheating those are different issues and should not be grouped together. The best solution to deal with players that are constantly racist and flame is to permanently chat restrict them, I know when I was chat restricted I wanted to flame or comment on something but I didn't, because I still wanted to win and thought those messages would be better off saved. Permanently banning players for language use will not work, league is a large scale case study for that.

I think people should always be given chances to reform, if they have truly reformed and are ready to rejoin the league community, and contribute in a positive manner, why would you hold their account from them? why would you force them to dominate and ruin lower skilled players’ games (having a negative impact on lower skilled players) to regain their previous rank, while making them feel like you (Riot) don’t care enough to press an unban button. A player willing to "reform" change potently a life time of behavioral patterns for your game and you don’t care enough to give them back content they paid for or earned, making them start from scratch, as someone that has been permanently ban it feels very bad, even more so that I don’t think I deserved a permanent ban in the first place.

>Getting rid of permanent bans for behavior related offences

There is no reason why a player needs to be permanently ban for toxic behavior, maybe a permanent ban from typing in chat, or restricting the chat to limited messages but unless they are feeding, cheating trolling there is absolutely no reason for anything more than a few week suspension and chat restrictions of varying lengths.

Trolling, feeding and cheating are very different things, and players should be ban first offence for cheating and trolling, and given a few warnings for feeding.

>**Punishing players for feeding, trolling, afking. **

This is VERY important, players that feed, troll or simply afk because they don't feel like playing anymore are typically the players that don't care much about the competitiveness of the game they do this because they know they will get a reaction out of someone, someone will flame them, they report them and they get that little a player you reported has been punished. The players that flame them do it out of anger, they get so mad because they CARE about the outcome, they care about the game, they are more than not the hard care fans and the people that keep league alive. When a toxic player gets ban, but not the person that walked around doing nothing all game, subtly hinting that they were trolling but never saying anything or doing anything that an automated system could pick up on, most the time people that blatantly run it down mid all game don't get punished unless they also flame. This happened to me for my very first restriction, I got ban and the troll didn't and it is extremely enraging.

>Poll

Riot wants discussion and community input on these issues, according to Riot only 0.006% of players receive a permanent ban so the hopefully the pole reflects popular opinions and the comments/replies are touch on what you voted in the pole and why, as well as adding further discussion, information and opinions.

Garen Let’s bring justice, to the fields of justice!!Garen

38 Comments

EvilDustMan5/18/2017, 1:37:18 PM4 votes

Permanent banning is an attempt to get that player to leave entirely. If they are racist or exceptionally toxic to receive a permanent ban, they'd rather that player leave entirely.

archerno15/18/2017, 1:36:11 PM3 votes

This is a joke...

fumiefan5/18/2017, 3:35:05 PM2 votes

I've said it a million times. Riot are the MVP's of toxicity. They've created this monster, they've been given millions of suggestions on how to tame it and all of it ends up ignored.

This game claims to want to stop toxicity the most yet continues to have the most toxicity of any other game year in and year out.

Kei1435/18/2017, 1:49:26 PM2 votes

i vote the pole should be smooth and made of brass.

Cornerstone15/18/2017, 2:01:10 PM1 votes

People are given several warnings, which means several opportunities, to reform their behavior (Unless their first offense is so toxic, that a permaban is warranted.)

Breaking the rules has consequences, whether in game or real life. I understand you don't like the consequences RIOT has implemented, but you were warned....

Personally, I'd like to see a quicker escalation to a chat warning than currently exists, ultimately leading to quicker permabans.

Reform is great, and RIOT wants that to happen. But reform ultimately is on your shoulders.

[Lots of parallels to real life, eternity in heaven or punishment in hell and the need for Jesus Christ to help reform our lives.]

Cornerstone15/18/2017, 2:25:24 PM1 votes

A permamute is an interesting possibility. Might be worth an experiment to see how it goes.

I suspect that even a permamute would not solve the problem. People would just be passive aggressive with their play, troll, interfering with cs, laning, playing poor to give opponents kills, but not so drastic as to be flagged as an intentional feeder. Lots of ways to be a jerk without chat.

Permabans solve all those potential problems.

Creating new accounts could be minimized if RIOT implements some kind of hardware/software detection to stop new accounts on the same computer.

Scary Door5/18/2017, 2:50:58 PM1 votes

The OP definitely hits one issue right on the head: Permanent bans really aren't the answer.

Players can make new accounts, level them fairly quickly and be right back in the community within a month or less. Let's not forget that some people can just buy a level 30 account for $10-$20 and be back the same day.

Perma-mute doesn't necessarily sound like a bad idea, but when it was done before under the direction of RiotLyte, it sometimes resulted in players escalating to gameplay trolling as opposed to simple chat toxicity.

However, I have a better idea for perma-mute. Make it a stealth-permamute, whereby the Summoner is not made aware of the fact that they have been muted. If they queue in a game with their friends then the friends will still see their chat, but anyone not on the Summoner's friends list will not see the chat.

DrCyanide5/18/2017, 1:52:44 PM1 votes

If accounts can be earned back, then the person just treats the "permaban" like they did the 14 day ban. It becomes a temporary loss of content and a rank ban for X games. I don't really see that as being an effective tool to help people change.

Voice Chat is something I never want integrated into solo play. If you can't remember that you're not playing with/against humans you are not mature enough to be playing this game. Asking those not mature enough to be here to leave doesn't seem that far off.

I agree that Trolling/Intentional Feeding needs to be punished more frequently and quicker, but outside of extreme cases it's hard to automatically detect. So unless there's an revival of the Tribunal, that's not going to happen any time soon.

Dispelle5/18/2017, 4:51:55 PM1 votes

I kinda like the idea of permamuting, personally.

YerroFever5/18/2017, 5:56:24 PM1 votes

{quoted}

>**Ban system: **

League is known for having a large amount of extremely toxic players, it seems Riots "solution" to the problem is to just permanently ban the accounts, this doesn't work, it will never work.

    • Once a toxic players main account is ban there is no real reason for that summoner to not be toxic on their new accounts, if anything the level and frequency of the negative behavior will increase due to them having far less to lose. The current system offers no help to players, it simply tells you to stop the toxic behavior and that's it, slowly increasing the length of restrictions and bans until a permanent ban, and in some rare cases going from no previous offences to a permanent ban.

I would like to use my case as an example, I have played league for 5 years, played 1000's of games and only ever received 2 penalties, a 10 game chat restriction and a permanent ban, both around the same time. the events were isolated to a few weeks, were I was going through an extremely rough patch in my life a ban for 14 days or even a few months would have been a far better outcome for me and riot. I would still get to enjoy the game, and they would retain a loyal customer. instead they left it all to an automated system which has absolutely no context of the game, my account history or my personal situation.

I am not trying to use personal situations as an excuse to be toxic, there absolutely has to be some punishment for my actions, what I’m trying to say is that there was an outcome that benefited everyone involved far more, and I doubt it would be hard to implement a feature that checks an accounts creation date, bans system creation date and various other factors, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. this is just part of the reason already toxic players may become more toxic and negatively affect the community and Riot games far more.

The reason is that if you continuously stay toxic, you will never stay in end game content for very long, which is the main player base that Riot is trying to protect. Ban after ban, going back to level 1. Earning runes and unlocking champs all over again... that's a huge inconvenience.

It's not riot's job to make you a better human being. That's your job as a person to be better and critically think about your behavior. If you continue to be an asshole and wonder why you're getting punished, that means you are immature and not the kind of person Riot wants in its community.

>_**Voice chat: ** _

Two main reasons why implementing voice chat would reduce the levels of toxic behavior.

1: Humanization: When you are talking to someone over text chat, in game or on a message board you feel far more anonymous, it’s hard to care about the way someone may feel when they are only represented by a summoner name. Adding voice chat would humanize players far more, make it easier to sympathize with them and want to help/assist them so your team can be victorious rather than flame them.

2: Communication: A main source of frustration is mistakes, or misinterpretation. Your jungle misses a gank opportunity, someone isn’t in a team fight etc. With voice communication it allows players to communicate more precise, clear and efficiently compared to smart pings and text chat, in the heat of a battle you can’t type that you plan to focus (champion x) so the other assassin should go for (champion y) to avoid ability wastage and tilting.

Communication also allows players in the low-mid elo range to exchange information such as build paths, counter picks, jungle routes, play styles, other champs ability's far more effectively ensuring less people tilt due to lack of knowledge and always having 4 other teammates information on hand extremely quickly.

Voicechat is another method where people can be harassed and abused. You have the option of joining those curse rooms on the web if you want to do VOIP. Nothing is stopping people from doing VOIP with strangers.

With voice chat, there is no record of it unless you expect Riot to record their VOIP and then screen through voice chat recordings to determine if there was a verbal abuse on the VOIP. This is incredibly inefficient and ineffective. Instead of typing out things that can be easily reviewed, you are asking Riot to implement a more difficult mode of communication to review, which makes it an easy way of harassing players and getting away with it for longer.

>Reforming and Account Unbanning

When a player is permanently ban they are allowed to create a new account and play on that, why? As I mentioned before this will just encourage them to be toxic, they have nothing to lose now. They exhibited toxic behavior despite the threat of an account they spend 1000's of hours and dollars on being ban, taking it away and letting them have a fresh account encourages the behavior.

I am talking about toxic behavior such as insults, threats, racism etc, not feeding or cheating those are different issues and should not be grouped together. The best solution to deal with players that are constantly racist and flame is to permanently chat restrict them, I know when I was chat restricted I wanted to flame or comment on something but I didn't, because I still wanted to win and thought those messages would be better off saved. Permanently banning players for language use will not work, league is a large scale case study for that.

I think people should always be given chances to reform, if they have truly reformed and are ready to rejoin the league community, and contribute in a positive manner, why would you hold their account from them? why would you force them to dominate and ruin lower skilled players’ games (having a negative impact on lower skilled players) to regain their previous rank, while making them feel like you (Riot) don’t care enough to press an unban button. A player willing to "reform" change potently a life time of behavioral patterns for your game and you don’t care enough to give them back content they paid for or earned, making them start from scratch, as someone that has been permanently ban it feels very bad, even more so that I don’t think I deserved a permanent ban in the first place.

Reforming and unbanning are not the same thing. Reforming is accepting your punishment and being a better person afterwards. Unbanning is when there was a wrongful ban that should be lifted.

If you were rightfully punished, you should not get your old account unbanned. That defeats the purpose of punishment. It encourages faking it until you get your things back, which means you can sell the account once it gets unbanned and then you cheat the person you sell the account to.

>Getting rid of permanent bans for behavior related offences

There is no reason why a player needs to be permanently ban for toxic behavior, maybe a permanent ban from typing in chat, or restricting the chat to limited messages but unless they are feeding, cheating trolling there is absolutely no reason for anything more than a few week suspension and chat restrictions of varying lengths.

Trolling, feeding and cheating are very different things, and players should be ban first offence for cheating and trolling, and given a few warnings for feeding.

Getting rid of permabans is a bad idea. If you never ever change and you continue to be toxic, why should Riot let you stay in the community that they are trying to build? If you keep ruining the gaming experience, it's better for the community to get rid of you rather than let your toxic behavior rot the community from the inside out.

>**Punishing players for feeding, trolling, afking. **

This is VERY important, players that feed, troll or simply afk because they don't feel like playing anymore are typically the players that don't care much about the competitiveness of the game they do this because they know they will get a reaction out of someone, someone will flame them, they report them and they get that little a player you reported has been punished. The players that flame them do it out of anger, they get so mad because they CARE about the outcome, they care about the game, they are more than not the hard care fans and the people that keep league alive. When a toxic player gets ban, but not the person that walked around doing nothing all game, subtly hinting that they were trolling but never saying anything or doing anything that an automated system could pick up on, most the time people that blatantly run it down mid all game don't get punished unless they also flame. This happened to me for my very first restriction, I got ban and the troll didn't and it is extremely enraging.

Intentionally feeding, trolling, and AFKing are already punished.

If you're upset that someone lashes out at those people in an unacceptably offensive or harassing way, then you're trying to give free passes to toxic behavior on the person who is feeling frustrated. It's not their fault they get frustrated however it is their fault if they create a toxic atmosphere on top of the preexisting toxic atmosphere made by the intentional feeder, troll, or AFKer.

>Poll

Riot wants discussion and community input on these issues, according to Riot only 0.006% of players receive a permanent ban so the hopefully the pole reflects popular opinions and the comments/replies are touch on what you voted in the pole and why, as well as adding further discussion, information and opinions.

Garen Let’s bring justice, to the fields of justice!!Garen

I disagree with every single suggestion of yours as it creates a more toxic environment and sounds like all you want is Riot to cater to you.

KORGtuners5/18/2017, 7:39:37 PM1 votes

1, A lot of people seem to be too stupid to know the difference between permanent muting and chat restriction. Riot has never done permanent muting. I suggest ignoring anyone that says Riot tried permanent muting and it failed.

  1. Children play this game. Legit under 10 year old children. Almost always without parental supervision. Expecting children to behave when they are alone, or worst in a gang of friends, is silly. Teenagers are not much better.

  2. The ban system is flawed on many levels. Mainly, it is too slow. Riot has access to data instantly as it happens. Yet, they want to wait until you break the rules over several games before they tell you there is a problem.

  3. Riot spends more time "smiting" toxic players than they do participating in productive discussion.

It is going to take a miracle for things to change. I don't think Riot wants change. I feel they are perfectly content with their current system.

Edit: number system is fucked up on this forum sorry

BigBellBrute5/18/2017, 7:53:17 PM1 votes

The only real way to cut the level of toxicity is to charge an up front fee for an account. It won't eliminate it. But it would reduce it. But that would create more backlash then it is worth.

Cornerstone15/19/2017, 4:02:28 AM1 votes

RIOT didn't create toxicity. It's so crazy how people will try to blame anything but themselves.

If anything, I think RIOT needs to act faster and not wait for X number of reports or incidences of a specific type of bad behavior before punishing.

Hardly anyone is worried about the punishment system because they know they can almost always get away with bad behavior for a few games. Multiply umpteen thousands of people getting away with bad behavior for a few games is what creates the toxic environment as it exists.

Closer to zero tolerance for your first warning , and markedly faster punishment through the tiers would weed the repeat offenders who create new accounts. Especially faster and harsher on pre level 30 accounts.

(Not talking about the excessive case where a permaban is issued on first offense. I assume those are probably rare.)

Vectros5/19/2017, 6:11:36 AM1 votes

The threat of having your account banned is probably the harshest punishment Riot can dish out.

Once a toxic players main account is ban there is no real reason for that summoner to not be toxic on their new accounts, if anything the level and frequency of the negative behavior will increase due to them having far less to lose.

Your entire post is basically saying to go easier on people-but if you don't learn your lesson from an account ban/you can't reform yourself before it happens, nothing will.

themachamp5/19/2017, 7:51:14 AM1 votes

Banning people makes them money, as wrong as it is, they won't even think about unbanning accounts till league is in decline ( like what blizzard did with WOW a few years ago). They could always do an updated and PROPERLY RUN level 20 challenge or something but they are too lazy and just point to 1 failed ( and quite flawed) experiment to justify not trying it again.