Boards›Player Behavior

Introducing: Trollbuster

Great Muta·3/21/2017, 9:30:47 PM·10 votes·1,829 views

Since League doesn't want to go the Low Priority Queue/Prisoner's Island approach, but does use leaverbuster, I've created a new behavior system called Trollbuster.

#What's Trollbuster?

Trollbuster is an idea for the League of Legends behavior system that takes what works about leaverbuster and extends it to other toxic, verbal and negative behaviors.

#Why Trollbuster?

Let's face it, the current behavior system just doesn't work that well. We see that banning players becomes a game of whack-a-troll, where a player gets banned then creates a new account. I do not feel that banning players is really that effective and due to League being so addictive, I think a lot of people couldn't quit easily even if they tried.

Players consistently report people and rarely get a message saying that person got punished. This makes players think "if this guy could do that and not get punished, why can't I?". It creates a wild wild west scenario where rules are broken and where the reporters even get punished by losing report weight. People start to think their reports don't matter and sometimes don't even bother reporting, because nothing happens.

#How does Trollbuster work?

  • Once you hit x amount of reports, you receive a Trollbuster penalty. Trollbuster requires you to wait 20 minutes before playing the next game when in penalty. Just like leaverbuster, if you cancel out or aren't there when it goes off, you go back in.

  • Trollbuster also would require you to win x number of games to get out, to promote positive gameplay ala Dota's LPQ. This would ideally be 3-5 for the first time trollbuster and it would increase to require more wins if this keeps happening.

  • Trollbuster would also only allow you to play in normal blind pick. Ranked play should be an earned reward since trolls can do the most damage there.

  • Finally, Trollbuster only lets you play from the free champion rotation. This is an extra annoyance that still lets people play, just not with full privileges.

  • You still get x reports n trollbuster even while winning your games? Your trollbuster penalty is extended.

  • Trollbuster wouldn't affect AFK's and Intentional Feeding. There should be no tolerance for those issues and those systems should continue on as before. Feeding and AFK's can both be tracked numerically though and they should be easier to spot at times, but unless you start watching games, you can't catch everything.

#What are the pros of trollbuster

  • No more whack-a-mole bans. No one's going to get banned for being toxic or verbally abusive in this system then create a new account and continue on, but they will be punished and if it keeps up, punished consistently.

  • Players get punished and still can "reform". Chat restrictions are a blessing for some people.

  • We already know League likes the leaverbuster system and not the Low-Priority Q system, so this is an extension of that. Anyone who has been in leaverbuster can tell you that it is an incredibly annoying punishment and is something you don't want to be in.

  • The game wouldn't affect Q times, since players would still be in the same Q, just have a penalty before entering Q.

  • After completing trollbuster, you are free to play on as before, until you hit the required x amounts to go back into troll buster. I think there could be an option as well for players who haven't reformed after their first trollbuster to go into a longer trollbuster, but I don't think people are going to want to.

  • Trollbuster only goes by x reports, not x reports in x time. Anyone can play bot games if they had a bad few games to let their levels drop a little, but not in trollbuster. All reports are created equally here.

#Time for some Q&A

#Trollbuster might create negative experiences for people who are punished

You don't say. These people are ruining games. Helping them out only makes them more willing to keep doing what they are doing because there's no real punishment at the moment. I look at chat restrictions as a blessing and a 2 week ban just gives me time to make a new account and get it up to level 30, which only takes a week.

Banning people really ruins their experience though, and this wouldn't do that.

#I know you hate the system, so why go with some of the already included rules that you hate?

Good point, basically a little bit of haggling and negotiating. I feel that this at least lets Riot keep some of its goofy behavior system in play and uses Riot's own already in place systems to create something better.

#This system is going to be abused somehow

Every system and rule ever has been abused. You can't make or have any rules under that logic. But this would crack down on people making new accounts since they would never get banned and need to make a new account unless they are smurfing.

#The current behavior system is already perfect and works great

League is known bar-none as the most toxic game on the planet despite having the most measures taken behaviorally. I see multiple threads per day here wondering why people got banned and how others got away with their actions. There's issues with the system.

#I'm just gonna downvote you because I don't agree with you

Then you aren't really contributing to the forum and are abusing the downvote system

44 Comments

scazzman3/21/2017, 9:55:49 PM7 votes

The one flaw i see with your system, false reports still need to be thrown out, or trolls will spam report people every game

Magical Player3/21/2017, 10:13:43 PM3 votes

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs] Maybe post on other boards as well to increase awareness :D

System is still open to abuse , but hey good thinking :D

deathgod53/21/2017, 9:38:26 PM2 votes

The only thing that worries me about this is that blind pick will effectively be seen as the troll dumping ground.

KORGtuners3/21/2017, 10:40:55 PM2 votes

Love alone from hatred releases.

TyrekGoldenspear3/21/2017, 10:43:00 PM2 votes

When there's some trollin In your promo game Who ya gonna call? TrollBusters!

Looks like a good idea... Until I read this.

#I'm just gonna downvote you because I don't agree with you Then you aren't really contributing to the forum and are abusing the downvote system

What? What's the point of the downvote button then?

ModPeriscope3/21/2017, 11:13:23 PM2 votes

So you are still making a prisoner's island, now it's in blind pick. That's not really an area where you can allow reform. Also, doesn't playing in ranked require two things: being level 30 and owning 14 champs? The owning 14 champs, if we're going on the cheapest champs, still takes some time.

While you've given us a new way to punish players, you have mentioned that you were punished by the system currently in place. Do you feel you were unjustly punished?

AeroWaffle3/22/2017, 12:41:39 AM2 votes

Copying my other reply to here;

I would go towards the route that doesn't ban people, then you wouldn't have to worry about it. I'm going to debut this new idea to you, so I'm giving you a special scoop. It's called TROLLBUSTER. TROLLBUSTER requires you to wait 20 minutes before playing the next game when in penalty. Just like leaverbuster, if you cancel out or aren't there when it goes off, you go back in. Trollbuster also would require you to win x number of games to get out, to promote positive gameplay ala Dota's LPQ. Trollbuster would also only allow you to play in normals. Finally, Trollbuster, as Dota's LPQ does, only lets you play from the free champion rotation. You still get x reports n trollbuster after you win your games? Your trollbuster penalty is extended. I promise you, even I wouldn't flame if you put me in this. It's fair and it's about as unfun as you can get without being extreme. You don't want to complete it? You don't play. You want to go play on a non-trollbustered account? Fine, but the troll-bustered account's penalty stays.

How is this any more of a deterrent than getting banned? In almost every one of your posts you say how easy and effortless it is to create a new account.

What's stopping people from creating a new account to avoid Trollbuster? If the risk of getting their account permanently banned doesn't stop someone from behaving poorly, do you honestly think that preventing the account from playing ranked is going to be better?

If they want to play ranked and their current account was unable to, they'll just create multiple accounts according to your previous logic.

ModThe Djinn5/4/2017, 9:22:48 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Great Muta,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=4JUlAbmE,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-03-21T21:30:47.261+0000)Trollbuster is an idea for the League of Legends behavior system that takes what works about leaverbuster and extends it to other toxic, verbal and negative behaviors.

Alright. I appreciate the stated premise. Let's see how this idea works. :)

Players consistently report people and rarely get a message saying that person got punished. ... People start to think their reports don't matter and sometimes don't even bother reporting, because nothing happens.

Definitely true. If the current system remains, the "your report contributed to a punishment" feature needs to be extended.

Now on to the nitty-gritty:

  • Once you hit x amount of reports, you receive a Trollbuster penalty. Trollbuster requires you to wait 20 minutes before playing the next game when in penalty. Just like leaverbuster, if you cancel out or aren't there when it goes off, you go back in.

  • Trollbuster also would require you to win x number of games to get out, to promote positive gameplay ala Dota's LPQ. This would ideally be 3-5 for the first time trollbuster and it would increase to require more wins if this keeps happening.

  • Trollbuster would also only allow you to play in normal blind pick. Ranked play should be an earned reward since trolls can do the most damage there.

  • Finally, Trollbuster only lets you play from the free champion rotation. This is an extra annoyance that still lets people play, just not with full privileges.

  • You still get x reports n trollbuster even while winning your games? Your trollbuster penalty is extended.

This worries me greatly -- it seems the only penalty for someone being repeatedly verbally abusive is minor irritations and longer time between games. They don't lose anything but convienence.

I can also see this quickly creating an artificial Prisoner's Island scenario -- players aware of the system will simply avoid Normal Blind Pick to never get matched with toxic players, leaving Normal Blind to become a haven of punished players and new players who don't know how the system works. You're effectively sabotaging a queue just to be a dumping ground for toxicity, which I don't think is a good solution to the problem.

  • Trollbuster wouldn't affect AFK's and Intentional Feeding. There should be no tolerance for those issues and those systems should continue on as before. Feeding and AFK's can both be tracked numerically though and they should be easier to spot at times, but unless you start watching games, you can't catch everything.

Out of curiosity, why do you consider AFKing and feeding worse than behavior designed to ruin a player's game experience? All three are very detrimental to the community's enjoyment of a game, and, of them, AFKs are the only behavior that can truly be outside the player's control.

I get what you're going for here, but, ultimately, this system doesn't really do anything to prevent toxicity -- it lets a toxic player be toxic in more games than the current system, will likely eventually push them to a point where they simply make a new account anyway out of frustration, sabotages the Normal Blind Pick queue, might create a community-created Prisoner's Island, and doesn't really do anything to encourage reform, since all the penalties are pretty easy to tolerate, ESPECIALLY if your goal is to simply troll people from your account.

Further, there's an issue where you HAVE to win to get out, which seems like it might encourage more toxicity in games that you end up on the losing side of.

In short, I can't support this idea as written -- I'm not fond of the idea that the most verbally toxic, abusive, hate-speech spewing player is "penalized" by having to wait 20 minutes between games and being queue-locked for a few games, upon which he's free to go back and continue exactly what he was doing before.

I do appreciate the thought you put into this, but ultimately it softens penalties for toxic players and doesn't do enough to improve the game health for non-toxic players, which means I don't think the proposal is strong enough to merit implementation.

Do you have any ideas on how to further address the issues I've raised?

Cocho3/21/2017, 9:38:39 PM1 votes

Sounds like a good idea. Only problem i see is an increase in false reports when a player performs poorly. Basically inting but in reality he's just tilted/playing poorly. I mean, either way, people that get put on it would probably have it coming one way or another xD upvoted

With leaverbuster I see people saying 'i got leaverbuster for one afk because 'x' happened.' When in reality, there more to it. They got put on it for a reason.

OnlyYouCanHearMe3/22/2017, 10:09:15 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Great Muta,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=4JUlAbmE,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-03-21T21:30:47.261+0000)

  • Players consistently report people and rarely get a message saying that person got punished. This makes players think "if this guy could do that and not get punished, why can't I?". It creates a wild wild west scenario where rules are broken and where the reporters even get punished by losing report weight. People start to think their reports don't matter and sometimes don't even bother reporting, because nothing happens.

Will players still only receive the notification that a player they reported has been punished if they are the last person to report them? Or will all players who submit reports be sent the notification?

  • Trollbuster also would require you to win x number of games to get out, to promote positive gameplay ala Dota's LPQ. This would ideally be 3-5 for the first time trollbuster and it would increase to require more wins if this keeps happening.

I really like this idea. Both aspects of it. It does seem that by making players have to win a certain amount of games, it really would encourage them to work together and play to win. And I very much so like the idea of increasing the number of games needed to win if a player earns their way back into the trollbuster queue again. It makes sense to increase the severity of the punishment with a repeated infraction. Magical Player raised the question in another comment as to what would happen if one of the trolls began to troll while in the trollbuster queue. What would you propose in that case? If they were actively trying to ruin another player's or players' chances of getting out of trollbuster. Do you think there should be another level of punishment beyond the trollbuster for those players who do not respond to this level of reformative encouragement?

  • Trollbuster would also only allow you to play in normal blind pick. Ranked play should be an earned reward since trolls can do the most damage there.
  • Finally, Trollbuster only lets you play from the free champion rotation. This is an extra annoyance that still lets people play, just not with full privileges.

Agreed with both of these and the rationale behind withholding them. Ranked, and access to all those fancy champions could be viewed as a privilege. But instead of simply taking them away permanently from players, this gives players a taste of what they have to lose, but acts as a true encouragement for them to behave differently. While I do personally find it easy enough to keep my mouth shut in games, one thing that I have often disagreed with, is how players will receive a 14 day ban as their first punishment, and then have a permanent suspension issued within a matter of weeks. Those situations, while not the most common, make it seem as though those players were never truly given a chance to reform. They were simply pushed so far onto the edge that the slightest nudge toppled them over into permaban. And that has never sat well with me. So something like this setup, which actually will take away certain privileges, but will give them back to the players if they meet the criteria of not earning further reports, and can work together to win the games, thereby demonstrating reform... this? This I like.

  • You still get x reports n trollbuster even while winning your games? Your trollbuster penalty is extended.

Very much so in favor of this, as it is the clearest way to demonstrate reformation for behavioral infractions.

Ada Wong3/22/2017, 10:28:21 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Great Muta,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=4JUlAbmE,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-03-21T21:30:47.261+0000)

Since League doesn't want to go the Low Priority Queue/Prisoner's Island approach, but does use leaverbuster, I've created a new behavior system called Trollbuster.

Trollbuster is an idea for the League of Legends behavior system that takes what works about leaverbuster and extends it to other toxic, verbal and negative behaviors.

Let's face it, the current behavior system just doesn't work that well. We see that banning players becomes a game of whack-a-troll, where a player gets banned then creates a new account. I do not feel that banning players is really that effective and due to League being so addictive, I think a lot of people couldn't quit easily even if they tried.

Players consistently report people and rarely get a message saying that person got punished. This makes players think "if this guy could do that and not get punished, why can't I?". It creates a wild wild west scenario where rules are broken and where the reporters even get punished by losing report weight. People start to think their reports don't matter and sometimes don't even bother reporting, because nothing happens.

  • Once you hit x amount of reports, you receive a Trollbuster penalty. Trollbuster requires you to wait 20 minutes before playing the next game when in penalty. Just like leaverbuster, if you cancel out or aren't there when it goes off, you go back in.

  • Trollbuster also would require you to win x number of games to get out, to promote positive gameplay ala Dota's LPQ. This would ideally be 3-5 for the first time trollbuster and it would increase to require more wins if this keeps happening.

  • Trollbuster would also only allow you to play in normal blind pick. Ranked play should be an earned reward since trolls can do the most damage there.

  • Finally, Trollbuster only lets you play from the free champion rotation. This is an extra annoyance that still lets people play, just not with full privileges.

  • You still get x reports n trollbuster even while winning your games? Your trollbuster penalty is extended.

  • Trollbuster wouldn't affect AFK's and Intentional Feeding. There should be no tolerance for those issues and those systems should continue on as before. Feeding and AFK's can both be tracked numerically though and they should be easier to spot at times, but unless you start watching games, you can't catch everything.

  • No more whack-a-mole bans. No one's going to get banned for being toxic or verbally abusive in this system then create a new account and continue on, but they will be punished and if it keeps up, punished consistently.

  • Players get punished and still can "reform". Chat restrictions are a blessing for some people.

  • We already know League likes the leaverbuster system and not the Low-Priority Q system, so this is an extension of that. Anyone who has been in leaverbuster can tell you that it is an incredibly annoying punishment and is something you don't want to be in.

  • The game wouldn't affect Q times, since players would still be in the same Q, just have a penalty before entering Q.

  • After completing trollbuster, you are free to play on as before, until you hit the required x amounts to go back into troll buster. I think there could be an option as well for players who haven't reformed after their first trollbuster to go into a longer trollbuster, but I don't think people are going to want to.

  • Trollbuster only goes by x reports, not x reports in x time. Anyone can play bot games if they had a bad few games to let their levels drop a little, but not in trollbuster. All reports are created equally here.

#Time for some Q&A

You don't say. These people are ruining games. Helping them out only makes them more willing to keep doing what they are doing because there's no real punishment at the moment. I look at chat restrictions as a blessing and a 2 week ban just gives me time to make a new account and get it up to level 30, which only takes a week.

Banning people really ruins their experience though, and this wouldn't do that.

Good point, basically a little bit of haggling and negotiating. I feel that this at least lets Riot keep some of its goofy behavior system in play and uses Riot's own already in place systems to create something better.

Every system and rule ever has been abused. You can't make or have any rules under that logic. But this would crack down on people making new accounts since they would never get banned and need to make a new account unless they are smurfing.

League is known bar-none as the most toxic game on the planet despite having the most measures taken behaviorally. I see multiple threads per day here wondering why people got banned and how others got away with their actions. There's issues with the system.

Then you aren't really contributing to the forum and are abusing the downvote system

Doesn't work unless every report is 100% Verified, (DOTA2) does this yet you get players who simply don't agree and you get forced into like 5 LPQ games that can take like 15 games to get out of unless duo with others and so on.

People like to rage report like just having a very bad game for trying the support role like 1 out of 100 games, and the ADC immediately flames me at champion selection and I told them if I listen the game would go bad, he sits around just attacking CS doesn't follow up, or do anything useful and spreads toxicity...

When it could have all been avoided but shutting the fuck up at champion selection and not arguing there....

The solution is to add an option to allow players to dodge or vote kick people / remake at champion selection.

No one gets penalty unless a player is toxic.

Randomonium3/23/2017, 2:06:55 PM1 votes

I could see this being viable if you figure out a way to weed out false reports.