Boards›Player Behavior

Is the Punishment System Fair?

LeiRaion·11/13/2018, 4:46:05 PM·3 votes·3,154 views

EDIT: Riot has opted to give players an opportunity to recover if their behavior was only negative in one instance. The climb from Honor 1 to 2 can be made in 3 months as long as you don't display negative behavior. For those against this, if a player continues to be negative I have seen multiple red posts stating that even ONE instance of negativity can greatly hinder honor progress in level 1. This means that the great majority of people effected by this change will only end up being those who were generally non-toxic and legitimately slipped up once.

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/TGYs0hwO-2018-end-of-season-rewards-and-honor

Hello everyone!

I am trying to create a constructive environment here so please try to keep it friendly in the comments.
That being said, I would really highly appreciate some feedback and I want to hear your opinions.

I recently made a very detailed post outlining my experience with the Punishment system. You can find that here: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/player-behavior-moderation/QXQRrA7X-punishment-system-confusion

One sentence summary of that post? I did something stupid and feel that the punishment was too harsh. I didn't feel it was appropriate to start a poll on an older thread so here I am.

My basic opinion of the Punishment system from my experience over the last few days, reading through this forum, talking to the support team, etc... Is that this system works fairly well. It's not bad, it's not perfect. It's ok. The problem I have with it is that the support team is not even enabled to judge cases truly on a case-by-case basis. They are required to look at an instance of bad behavior and seemingly go down a checklist, if enough marks are present. That's that.

In order to illustrate this, let me provide an example: Mandatory minimums. This is a highly debated topic that requires you serve X time for Y crime. Regardless of circumstances, situation, or any other factors. A judge could look at your case and decide, "this person has not committed a serious crime in this instance" but still has no choice but to sentence them to 5 years in prison. Because by law, they have to do so.

A lot of people feel this is not right...

The punishment system in place by Riot right now definitely emulates this situation.

  1. Punishments for yelling at your teammates are the same regardless of if instigation was present.
  2. Punishments are not looked at based on any other factors than the exact words used ONLY by that person.
  3. Judges (Support Team), are not allowed to make a decision based on anything other than the specific guidelines above.

Is it beneficial to the community to dish out punishments without real consideration to circumstance? I would argue that in some cases.. it simply serves to increase people's frustrations... leading them away from chat but into behaviors such as bad mannering through game-play. Examples:

  • Spamming MIA pings on someone whenever that player is viewed as misplaying.
  • Abandoning your lane to follow the jungler around and attempting to steal their camps because you feel you aren't getting enough attention (ganks)
  • Grouping for a teamfight so it appears you were still playing the game in a replay or on a plotted map, but then tapping "s" and standing still until that fight ends. No auto-attacks/ability usage.

The list goes on, I'm sure anyone of us could think of many more examples... Let's have a discussion about this, perhaps there are perspectives I am not considering here. As with the post I linked above, I still truly want to understand this system and why these points listed above are as they are.

12 Comments

Brotha11/13/2018, 5:06:12 PM3 votes

First time offenders can potentially take months to restore their honor from 0 to 2 without having any repeat offenses. That's months of punishment for a 5 game chat restriction. I've been playing since Season 4 and I haven't seen this many complaints about the honor system even when we had the more colorful honor badges. I expect a lot of people are going to be leveling new accounts and probably trolling more this season than ever before.

rujitra11/13/2018, 6:09:07 PM3 votes

In real life, mandatory minimums do not work because there are a plethora of mitigating circumstances which can make a crime merit lesser punishment.

Riot, based on the community’s desires as obtained through surveys and the old Tribunal system, has determined that there is no mitigating factor for flaming. Ever.

Dr Dog11/13/2018, 7:24:33 PM2 votes

well first off i heavily disagree with looking at both sides for a punishment, they are and should both be treated as separate cases. "he started it" has never been a good argument and doesnt in any way excuse what you did as a individual especially when theres a mute button, the entire purpose of it is to shut someone whos toxic up till you can report them after game, if you break the tos the reason doesnt matter, you still broke the tos. the main issue i have with the punishment system is how lightly 0 tolerance words are taken and them being called "0 tolerance" is just an outright lie, the other issue i have with the system is the way riot support handles things, if you send in a replay with someone clearly inting (not a bad game just actually running it down a lane) they will look at it and continue to do jack shit about it which makes it even more frustrating to deal with trolls, idc if the bots are bad at picking it up thats no excuse to ignore clear cut trolling with logs to prove it when it is directly handed to you, riot support can be useful but when it comes to reports they are completely incapable of doing their jobs just giving you the age old "just report it in game" even tho you know thats gonna do absolutely nothing most of the time. they intentionally make trolling a bigger problem than it could be while actively blowing smoke up our collective asses with how "hard it is to detect them"

R107 Games11/13/2018, 5:10:09 PM1 votes

The punishment system is not fine becuase it punishes verbal toxicity

siilentdeath11/13/2018, 10:25:08 PM1 votes

the system dose not effectively punish afk players severely enough. those players that wait until after 3 minutes in to go afk need to get 7 day ranked bans after a 2nd offense. on a 3rd offense it gose to a 14 day ranked ban. and on a 4th offense for afk in a ranked game its a 30 day ban from ranked only. and you must show proof of how solid your internet connection to get reinstated if it happens a 5th time in a ranked game. after you provide proof of a solid connection you can resume ranked play on a zero tolerance level. penalties reset after 45 days of good behavior. i think that is fair enough. PLEASE NOTE i said a ban from ranked play only not a permanent ban.

Eleshakai11/14/2018, 12:51:09 AM1 votes

Every system has flaws. But no, I don't believe me swearing at you gives you carte blanche to start swearing too.