@Riot: Can we do something to educate players regarding behaviour?
I've played a lot of League, and in most games I tend to see the same negative behaviours repeated over and over again. At a casual glance, one might wonder "why don't these people get punished or banned if they are toxic?", but the truth of the matter is that League has such a large player base that you rarely see the same player twice anyway. Every one of those toxic players that you met in your games might get punished (and then reform into perfectly polite players), but you will probably never know because you won't see them again anyway.
So, why is it that we constantly see the same behaviours over and over again? I think that a big reason for it is that people honestly don't know that it is wrong. If they see everyone else that they meet acting a certain way, then they assume that is the correct way to act in their own games, and will copy it.
For example, if you play Starcraft, you will usually see players say "gg wp" at the end - so, players notice that everyone does this, and start to say it too, since it appears to be the proper behaviour.
In League, however, while you do also see "gg wp", the other norms are "gg ez" and "report <random person on my team who did nothing wrong> for <invalid reason>". You see those in almost every game, so people just assume that's the way it's meant to be. If you win a game, you should insult the enemy team. If you lose a game, you should tell everyone to abuse the report system against a player who didn't play as well as you did that game. The same applies, to a lesser extent, to the more extreme behaviours too. If you see people going AFK or trolling in enough of your games, then you start to think that must be the norm too - after all, those people are still playing and you see them in a lot of your games, so it must be the proper way to act, right?
There are three things which could, and I feel should be done to help improve this situation and to make the player base more aware of what is and what is not acceptable behaviour.
Make information on behaviours more prominent
If you are a dedicated player who is interested in the game, reads the boards or Reddit, etc., you can probably find information about Riot's stance on various behaviours, but most players are not that dedicated and do not read the boards so heavily. We need more information out there, preferably in the client and loading screens, that clarify these things.
Let people know how the reporting system works, that one report is enough to flag a player's behaviour and that asking for reports in-game is a form of harassment. Let people know that saying "easy" after a game is considered unsporting and unacceptable behaviour. Let people know that there is little tolerance for hate speech, racism/sexism and death threats, and that these behaviours will be dealt with extremely harshly. Let people know that intentionally going AFK or rage-quitting is not acceptable in League and that it will be punished severely (and actually do so.)
Make this kind of information prominently available to all players. Make sure that players understand that these behaviours are not acceptable in this community.
Give instant feedback
When a toxic behaviour is detected, give the player instant feedback indicating that this behaviour is not acceptable and continuing to act in this manner will lead to punishments. Ideally, this feedback should be within the game itself, immediately following the behaviour. If someone starts to flame another player, a warning would pop up indicating that their behaviour is becoming negative, for example.
This is a contentious one, because Riot have often said that they are afraid of players "gaming" the system to find the line of what they can get away with without being punished.
However, I'd like to argue that a lot of Riot's own talks and statistics on player behaviour (e.g. Lyte's talks) indicated that the majority of toxic behaviour comes from normal players having a bad day, rather than players who are actually dedicated to being toxic. Surely this means that the value of immediately informing those bad-day players that their behaviour is straying out of the normally acceptable ranges would be far more valuable at reducing overall toxicity than the harm caused by allowing some dedicatedly-toxic players to potentially game the system?
Also, in order to successfully game the system and find out what is and isn't acceptable, a player would have to try various toxic phrases or behaviours to see if they trigger the system - which in turn would flag them as toxic and probably lead to punishments anyway.
Make punishment more visible
Right now, when you meet a toxic player, you report them and move on. Sometimes, very rarely, you will receive a notification that a player you reported has been punished, but it's very, very rare.
This gives the impression - true or not - that the vast majority of toxic players are never punished, no matter how toxic their behaviours were. Not only does this lead to people having very low faith in the system ("I had a troll on my team in two games in a row, and it feels like Riot aren't even doing anything about it"), but it also, in turn, makes people believe that they can get away with anything since they keep meeting other players who are doing these things and they never hear about them being punished.
Information about punishments needs to be more public. At the very least, we need statistics for the number of players punished each day/week/month for various behaviours, and the kinds of punishments. This would not only restore faith in the system, but it would also serve as a warning to players not to try being toxic themselves.
If people read that 100 players have been banned this week for intentional feeding, perhaps it will sink in that this behaviour really isn't tolerated and will actually lead to real punishments, so they will be less inclined to do it.
How many players and potential players are being driven away from this game every day because of the insane levels of toxicity present?
How many of us would actually recommend League to their friends? As someone who's been playing since season 1, I would be extremely hesitant to recommend the game to anyone because I simply can't help but consider it malicious to try to expose people that I consider friends to this level of toxicity.
