Boards›Player Behavior

Flaming is punished harder than it should be.

ArgosPup·10/22/2019, 4:28:21 AM·2 votes·2,188 views

Hello, as someone who has been banned before for flaming, I will say that the system is too harsh on the player, eventually resulting in suspensions/perma bans. And for someone who, like me, is very quick to snap at a teammate for even saying anything remotely snide or rude in any way and be completely thrown off of my game (It's not easy for me to just want to turn off chat because in order for that to work I would have to mute pings and other things as well, which would make it hard to communicate crucial information. I also have a very bad temper and am quick to snap at somebody and it isn't as easy to manage as you would think.) While I am not saying that flaming and toxic behavior is an unpunishable offense, I do believe that the measures it can be taken to at some point are extreme, especially when someone may put a lot of money into an account that at some point ends up permabanned.

I believe that, a better solution than resorting to suspensions and bans, are chat suspensions, and chat bans. Somewhat similar to what we have now with the chat restrictions, I believe that instead of completely banning them from the game, it would be better to just cut off their chat interactions all together either temporarily, or permanently (like with suspensions and permabans). They would simply completely disable the chat for the player (either limiting them to only seeing chat, or not seeing it at all and only seeing/using pings) and make honor unattainable.

To me, a player being banned for saying negative things in chat (possibly with the exception of slurs and hate speech) and general flaming, isn't enough to warrant a ban from the game outright, but it is enough to warrant chat limitations like mentioned above. If a player who has been repeatedly reported for being negative in chat and has been flaming their teammates consistently, they should at some point get hit by a chat suspension, followed by a chat ban if they continue to be verbally toxic. The chat suspension/ban would not allow messages to be sent whatsoever and would limit you to pings only, as well as resetting/disabling your honor. It could also be made to forcefully disable the chat outright, but that decision could be left to a player if the chat tilts them that much without being able to respond (like it would me.)

I would like to know if it would even be possible for something like this to happen? Because in my opinion, the only people who should be banned outright are the people who are consistently inting in games, trolling/griefing, and other things of the sort (of course hacking/cheating as well).

Edit: This might get deleted from downvotes and so I just wanna say that you guys seem to be just rejecting this idea without a second thought.

35 Comments

Mianta10/22/2019, 4:40:04 AM5 votes

There already are chat restriction punishments. Nobody else should suffer toxic people simply because you cant control your actions. That's your problem, not League's nor Riots.

Imperial Pandaa10/22/2019, 4:34:03 AM4 votes

Flaming is punished in 4 steps unless someone used Zero Tolerance. 10 game CR 25 game CR 14 day ban Perm

Gameplay gets 2 steps. 14 day ban Perm

You say you can't turn off chat yourself, but Riot should force people to. Don't you think these other people are like you and want to communicate but snap easily? They already have given us the ability to opt out of Ally chat, why isn't that enough?

AeroWaffle10/22/2019, 4:33:48 AM3 votes

There was a period of time where poor chat behavior would only give the player more stacks of chat restriction.

During that time Riot found that players with an extremely high amount of chat restrictions often found other means to vent their anger at their teammates when they couldn't do it through chat. And griefing behavior is a lot harder to catch and hold someone accountable for because it often looks ambiguous when compared to unintentional mistakes.

So that type of punishment system was scrapped. The conclusion was that if someone was incapable of controlling themselves in chat despite knowing it could get them in trouble and being punished for it several times already, it's unlikely that only blocking one outlet such as chat would get them to behave.

KFCeytron10/22/2019, 6:32:50 AM2 votes

Did you find something in Riot's store allowing you to break the ToS? No, because such a service is not offered. Regardless of how much money you spend, you are required to follow the same rules as everyone else. If the IFS determines that you've been validly reported in violation of those rules, you'll be punished according to those rules. If you wanted to avoid a punishment, you should've followed the rules.

Riot's punishment system used to hand out stacking chat restrictions, such that consistently toxic players basically had a permanent chat restriction. Unfortunately, it turns out that such players used their few chat opportunities to be toxic, and, when they couldn't be as toxic as they wanted to, they resorted to committing non-chat offenses such as griefing (following someone around and taking their farm, using wall abilities to interfere with their play, etc.) or inting. The purpose of the punishment system is to eliminate rule-breaking, not make it worse. Thus, if a couple chat restrictions don't make any difference in a player's misbehavior, the system ramps up the punishments until the player is permabanned and thus unable to use that account to break any more rules ever again.

Your opinion of the rules is of zero relevance. When a cop stops you for going 40 in a 25 zone, you can claim "I think the limit should be 45 here" all you want. You're still getting a ticket. If a librarian asks you to keep your voice down while you use the facilities, shouting that libraries should be loud will simply get you escorted out. If you go to a friend's house who insists that you remove your shoes while you're in their home, "that's a stupid rule and I do what I want" will lose you a friend. If you are using someone else's services, facilities, equipment, etc., you abide by their rules or you deal with the consequences. If you think the rules should change, that is a completely different conversation (and I wouldn't give a plugged nickel for your chances at convincing Riot to change their rules to allow behavior like yours).

From Riot's support knowledgebase:

We work with the overall community and within our own company guidelines to identify what disruptive behavior is and what the consequences for those behaviors should be. We understand that it can be difficult to know where the line is, which is why we provide chat logs and we have a few tiers in the ban process in order to allow for you to learn and grow.

MythicAgent10/22/2019, 6:39:33 AM2 votes

Yes much too harsh, most games ignore the fact that it exists and it usually is much less toxic than league. Because league has "declared war" on toxicity it has blown it out of proportion and now it is a real issue because when someone is told not to do something they want to do it more. Look at counter strike no one flames in chat comms and just use the mute while overwatch is unbelievable toxic because when a community is told to do something 100% of the time they just don't.

Kei14310/22/2019, 4:37:05 PM1 votes

Have you tried to disable your ally chat in your options > communication?

That option leaves pings unmuted and persists throughout the consecutive games.