Intentional vs. Careless Feeding

Anyone who's been playing this game for a while has been in a game with a careless feeder. I'm not just talking about someone who occasionally dies because they forget to use an item active; I'm talking about the folks die once every two minutes, ignore any and all pings and wards, have no kill participation to speak of, and spend entire minutes standing in place typing "gg", "darius OP", and "trash jg".

I know Riot is concerned about the player experience, hence their policies about AFK'ing, flaming, intentionally feeding, etc. Each of those things ruin games, vastly worsening the player experience. The thing is, though, if a player goes 0/13/0 in a 28-minute game, it's going to wreck the game whether or not those deaths were "intentional".

I put the word "intentional" in quotations because the line between intentionally feeding and carelessly feeding is blurred. Yes, I know that some deaths aren't reasonably preventable, but getting one death every two minutes is not only preventable, but almost impossible unless a player simply doesn't care how much they die--i.e. isn't actively trying to stay alive. Just how wantonly does a player have to charge 1v5 into the enemy team in order for that death to be considered intentional? What if they do it two or three times? Or ten? Or twenty? Surely an 0/8/0 AP Nasus who has pushed 4,000 units past all allied turrets, champions, and wards, and who has ignored allied pings to retreat, knows he is going to die. How is that not an intentional death? Why is that not punishable? Just because he didn't type in chat that he did it "for lulz"? Is that really where we're going to draw the line? This is why the distinction between malintent and carelessness is arbitrary.

To put this in perspective, a player who DC's at 3:01 and never reconnects doesn't contribute to their own team, but at least they don't contribute to the enemy team. In contrast, an extremely careless feeder not only contributes nothing to their team, they actively contribute to the enemy team. Yet, the first player will be reprimanded, and the second won't. I guarantee that if Riot ran a statistical analysis on 4v5s vs. games where one of the players had a mid-match score of 0/10/1 or worse, the underdog side would win more often in the 4v5s. There's a reason people refer to the latter type of game as a 4v6.

My suggestion is as follows: during a ranked game, if a player has at least one death for every 100 seconds of up-time, a kill participation rate of less than 10%, and deals less than 2000 raw damage (including damage dealt by ZZ'Rot and Promoted minions) to structures (this is about 1/3 of a turret's health bar), they receive a strike. If it is their first strike within the last two months, they receive a warning, and some mandatory reading on how to contribute to their team even when behind. If it's their second strike within a two-month period (effectively meaning that the strikes expire after two months), then they get a two-week ban. For additional strikes within two months of their most recent strike... I'm not really sure. Suggestions are welcome.

Please note that I say this should only apply to ranked games. People have a variety of motivations for playing normal games, and can still have a great time even if their team has no chance of winning. Therefore, for the sportsmanlike player, an extremely careless feeder should not utterly ruin the play experience during a normal game. On the other hand, people play ranked games to win. If a player has fed the other team to the point where it's impossible to win, then it does justifiably ruin the play experience.

I anticipate two primary objections to this post:

1. "A player can die a lot but still contribute to their team." Agreed. This is why I think it should only be punishable if the player falls below generously low KP and structure damage thresholds.
2. "Git gud. These players only exist in low elo." Not true. I'm currently in Gold V (the 80th percentile of players at the time of this post--see link a), and three of my last five games had teammates with mid-game scores of 0/5/0 or worse (see links b, c, & d), and it's happened plenty of times before.

In short, not trying to live (carelessly feeding) is not meaningfully better than trying to die (intentionally feeding).

To those who have read through the entire post, I'm grateful. GL, and HF.

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a: http://www.leagueofgraphs.com/rankings/rank-distribution b: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/2401519419/213645104?tab=overview (Darius) c: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/2402058832/213645104?tab=overview (Singed) d: http://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/2402112441/213645104?tab=overview (Nasus)

EDIT: I have edited the original post to clean it up a bit and better explain why I think this should apply to ranked games, and only ranked games.

EDIT 2: Changed the splitpusher protection clause to be based off of raw damage dealt to structures, since "number of structures destroyed" isn't a reliable way to measure a player's impact.