Holding Pre-Game Lobbies Hostage, Why it's ridiculous, How it's against the ToS, & What can be done

Princess Albedo·Feb 13, 2020·6 votes·4,267 views

This kind of thing is ridiculous, and a massive problem with your community. Please address it somewhere with a formal statement citing that holding pre-game lobbies hostage because your hovered champion was banned by a teammate isn't allowable. This type of thing happens daily to me, it's not an exaggeration, I play 3-10 games a day, and I can count on seeing this at least once. Someone's champion gets banned and their response is "I have to troll now gg guys" "I'm gonna feed and run it down mid fuck you all" because they have the minds of a 4 year old and if they don't get their way, they're going to hold the lobby hostage, threaten to feed and play something awful like soraka jungle or something else that can't possibly work under any circumstance and force us a 20 minute loss because lord knows if they're that convinced to troll, they're not going to surrender at the unanimous 15 minute mark.

Please address this stuff, it's rampant, it's uncool, and I'm getting exhausted of opening tickets here to communicate to Riot support and I quote: "Unfortunately, player support doesn't have a way to directly forward your feedback to the devs but you can head over to the boards and post it there as that's the best way to get their eyes on it!" I believe this is a shielding tactic on Riot's end to have us all come to the forums in droves to formally complain about things and it is what it is.

Even in the Riot ToS which I linked you can see clearly and I quote again from section 7.1.5: "Transmitting or communicating any content which we reasonably believe to be offensive to players, including language that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, sexually explicit, or racially, ethically, or otherwise objectionable;" this kind of thing should be reprimandable. Yet there is no system in place to report someone in-game if there is a dodged lobby which is what happens I'd say 2/3's or more of the time resulting in the very very rare occasion that someone like me is exhausted enough to finally open a ticket and complain about the individual directly to Riot Support. Which as we all know & I quote yet again from multiple riot support responses: "We can't really disclose any information or update you with whatever happens to the account for privacy reasons though. Hope you understand". [sg-ahri-3]

It's aggravating that the community is this toxic, it's even more aggravating to me that Riot Support is hidden behind some veil when we do submit literal screenshots/chat logs to them that they can't 'do anything about it' or 'they can't relay suggestions to the development team'. So here's a solid wall of text for this 'development team' to read and I've included as many quote's as I can and even a poll for users to vote on, because I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that genuinely feel like that when they're 3rd or 4th pick and hover Sett, that their teammates better not ban it. I believe this kind of thing is a lot more prevalent in lower elo as in bronze/silver so far my experience has been that most people 'stuck' here aren't there because of lack of skill or game awareness, it's things like this where people love to go full keyboard warrior and type literal paragraphs every game 3-5 minutes into a game because it's 'the support/jungle's fault' everything's going to hell when realistically the score might be 0-2 at worst, they tilt, they flame, they go afk, and it's much a similar mentality to the people holding pre-game lobbies hostage and it needs to stop. I've taken a 5 year break from League and comeback to find the community has somehow, against all logic, gotten worse even though Riot's moved heaven and earth to shorten the average gametime down from 40+ minutes to 23 minutes. This kind of thing seriously needs to be formally addressed and imo, hopefully added into the ToS, players shouldn't have to be sacrificing 3lp constantly to avoid being held hostage and take a losing game because someone's throwing a temper tantrum in pre-game lobby.[sg-ahri-3]

Please discuss below whether you agree that this should be a reportable offense somehow with a new system, or if you think it's within player rights to hold pregame lobbies hostage if you don't get your way and expound upon your reasoning on either side please. I believe the more attention something like this gets, the more 'development team eyes' will go on it. [sg-lux-2]

17 Comments

deathgod5Feb 13, 20208 votes

In current versions of reports the pre-game chat is already reportable. We have seen people on here that were posting their bans with a clearly marked pre-game part.

The bigger problem is that what often happens is that they first troll people and then people dodge(because you don't want to play a full game with mr the troll) so it won't be reported.

An actual report button after a dodged match might be useful.

BijeesnyFeb 13, 20205 votes

I like how you wrote an essay saying how people trolling because A TEAMMATE BANNED THEIR CHAMP is bad, while you said nothing about the players banning teammates picks.

Thats imo just as bad.

TrulyBlandFeb 13, 20205 votes

Depends on the intention. There are absolutely valid reasons to ban a teammate's champion. If people do it deliberately to be dicks, I would indeed consider them trolls.

Even then, the person who out of spite trolls his entire team is arguably still worse than the person who trolled one single member of this team.

ToxsihkFeb 13, 20203 votes

True you shouldn't troll if your champ gets banned but there's been so many times where I have seen someone just not like someone playing a certain champ ban the champion. The ONLY VALID REASON to ban a teammate's champion is they weren't paying attention, if you don't like someone playing with a teemo or a master yi, you dodge. Don't spoil someone else's game just cause you feel like you need to dictate what champs get to be played

TrulyBlandFeb 14, 20202 votes

{quoted}

The ONLY VALID REASON to ban a teammate's champion is they weren't paying attention,

Or if you really don't want the enemy to play that champion. You don't get to dictate which risks your teammates should take.

BijeesnyFeb 15, 20201 votes

{quoted}

Depends on the intention. There are absolutely valid reasons to ban a teammate's champion.

Even if there are reasons it will still piss people off. Some will let it slide, some will troll etc. But the fact is that it will create a negative atmosphere.

Even then, the person who out of spite trolls his entire team is arguably still worse than the person who trolled one single member of this team.

Since when is okay to troll one person? o.O Trolling is trolling no matter how many people are affected.

TrulyBlandFeb 15, 20201 votes

{quoted}

Even if there are reasons it will still piss people off. Some will let it slide, some will troll etc. But the fact is that it will create a negative atmosphere.

That also applies to having a different strategy and in some cases even not believing in a common misconception, as I was once flamed for believing spell vamp applied to physical damage spells. Whichever way you spin it, pissing people off by doing things for legitimate reasons may not be optimal, but it's not the same as trolling, which seems to be the implication of the original post. And while appeasing potential trolls might be a sensible idea, but it is in no way required by the rules or even just social norms.

Personally, I stick to my "I don't negotiate with terrorists" guideline. I will do whatever I can within the game to make it possible for our team to win, but I won't be bullied into submission by trolls. I won't judge you if you choose differently, but this is how I chose.

Since when is okay to troll one person? o.O Trolling is trolling no matter how many people are affected.

This is veering pretty heavily into strawman territory. I never said anything like you are implying. A is worse than B does not imply B is okay, or not trolling, or anything else. I was specifically responding to the claim that both are equally bad. Nothing more, nothing less.

GatekeeperTDSFeb 13, 20204 votes

threatening to feed all game because a player didn't get their way should be reportable?

I'm not sure why this required an essay. This is reportable, and always has been.

This is all covered under what already exists. "Don't be a jerk" covers all jerk-ish behavior including this. A report function is not ever going to be added to champ select. This is not something that belongs in champ select. Your avenue to report this is in a support ticket, and then move on. Riot is never going to disclose to you any action taken or not taken against another player's account.

ZyniyaFeb 13, 20203 votes

the times I've said gg gonna int have fun 4v5 guys I get someone to dodge its the only reason I even say that if a teammate bans my pick I wont really in game but some times it gets the desired results

TommyTicklerFeb 13, 20202 votes

Yasuo would have the highest pick rate ever. I frankly do not want to live in such a world.

JustA kleoFeb 13, 20203 votes

tl:dr, how do you hold a pre game lobby hostage? the timer ticks down.

yes it would be nice if there was a system that would just force a person to dodge when they say "i int" or something like this.

"then noone would say that anymore" yes and if we'd make murder illegal noone would do it either right? humans are idiots and at least every 2nd game i still see ppl asking for reports. ofc they'd still do it.

Modl Ryden lFeb 13, 20203 votes

Go work for Buzzfeed or something. I cannot take anyone seriously who uses the term 'held hostage' in a video game unironically.

It's irritating, I know. But you can't call it being held hostage when you agreed to pressing the 'Play' button to start a queue and a game altogether. You put yourself in that situation the second you pressed 'Play'.

The best way to avoid this is queue up with friends. The game plays much better that way anyways.

5 Dollar HollerFeb 15, 20203 votes

What I've found is that most people who threaten to troll are just trying to get YOU to dodge. If you call their bluff:

They will dodge themselves, or
They will actually try to win when the game loads

This is at least 80% true from my experience.

Original ExileFeb 13, 20202 votes

This has been a problem since draft pick, even since blind pick really. It should definitely be punishable but I’m not sure it’d really solve the problem. Threatening the integrity of competitive play is definitely bad but its definitely a people problem more then it being a limitation of the rules as we have it. It doesn’t help that if they don’t get caught or punished they’re instead rewarded with LP they should have lost from dodging.

Maybe a good idea would be instituting a Honor Requirement for Ranked Queues? In addition to making the Honor system a bit more sensitive to dodges or inflammatory reports, maybe then other queues could have a purpose as being a quasi prisoners island since they are inherently casual. Then the toxic lad, if he wants to play ranked, has to play nice.

ToxsihkFeb 13, 20202 votes

Just make it to were if a teammate has a champ hovered you can't ban it.

Dr Cat PoochFeb 13, 20202 votes

It is punishable, there just isn't an easy way to report them with a few button clicks. There is a way, though. Take screenshots of their behavior and send in a support ticket with the screenshots.

Also, why do you NEED to see/know that they were punished? Just do the report and move on. I report people and don't often get the Instant Feedback Report, but I'm not entitled to know that everyone I report gets punished. I just trust that Riot is doing the work by coming to these boards and seeing all of the salty whiners who complain about getting banned.

Billybaroo2314Feb 15, 20202 votes

Riot does not care about their community or their player base. I get flamed over and over in a game, even when winning, and I get perma banned becsuse I fired back at trolls, and did hope we would lose a game because of them, after winning 3 in a row. Mind you I'm 7/8/8 and the flame is like 4/14 but I get perma banned because fed up with getting told "get carried" and "you suck" when doing my job. Riot deserves to lose players. Best bet, uninstall as they don't care about their base. Most my friends have (even the one that told me about the game at first) as they are fed up with "Ranked" play, that has nothing to do with skill. Good luck, sorry about your games, but totally understand it. Don't say anything though, as you get the ban not the trolls.