Why aren't permanent chat bans a thing?

Qulminadox·Apr 5, 2018·2 votes·478 views

Since low level league games are sometimes filled with previously banned players, it tends to be an awful experience for new players or people leveling smurfs, if flaming players just got permanently chat banned instead they'd have less of an incentive to make a new account.

Just seems way more logical to me

6 Comments

AeroWaffleApr 5, 20183 votes

It was a thing for a while (sort of). For poor chat behavior you would just constantly accrue ever-increasing games that you were chat restricted.

But this didn't help the situation. Riot said that most of the players that effectively got a permanent chat restriction (like, 500-1000 games before the restriction would be finished) would just find other methods of showing their poor behavior when they were unable to do so through chat. Like trolling.

And while trolling is bannable, it's much MUCH harder to spot without doing manual reviews.

So Riot scrapped it. What's the point of permanently chat banning someone if they still behave poorly, but in new ways that is harder to catch?

zPOOPzApr 5, 20182 votes

They have more incentive to use game play trolling, which is significantly worse. If someone is flaming, it's easy to mute and they usually continue to try to play. If they can't flame and resort to game play troll, then you have almost zero chance of winning.

QulminadoxApr 5, 20181 votes

Well then you'd obviously ban them. There's probably a percentage of players that take the game too seriously to ruin games and just use the chat to talk shit and vent, even if its just 10/100 players, it's still 10% less new accounts if those types of players just got chat bans instead.

ChermorgApr 5, 20182 votes

The way matchmaking works, new players are almost never matched with Smurf accounts. There is too large a skill disparity for them to end up together. As such, the leveling experience for a Smurf is notably different than that for a new player.