No one is arguing that you need the team's permission to play an off-meta champion in a certain role. But you do need to get the team's approval to play an off-meta role, because that requires the entire team to play differently to accommodate you.

If the adc isn't comfortable playing solo bot, you shouldn't play double jungle and leave them solo.

[{quoted}](name=Cardinal Sinveil,realm=EUW,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=79aGu3wR,comment-id=006b00010000,timestamp=2016-11-16T21:27:05.891+0000)

What about (and I quote) " literally hundreds of games the player inflicted a huge amount of disruption on players who didn’t agree to their chemistry experiments" and THEIR lack of flexibility?

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

In other words; Don't troll.

[{quoted}](name=Riot Gromp,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=79aGu3wR,comment-id=006b00020003,timestamp=2016-11-17T06:36:31.355+0000)

Mm. It's not really the pick we're talking about, it's the lack of social agreement and cooperation on the approach to the game across hundreds and hundreds of instances. So let's stress test the logic and apply the standard to a roaming Bard player. Because Bard roaming like crazy is a broadly understood gameplay concept, we probably never ever reach a situation quite like this one.

So does this mean that if proxy singed were invented today rather than a few years ago the player would be permanently banned by Riot instead of allowed to continue? Because if you look back at the old threads from Druiddroid EVERYBODY hated his strategy A LOT and basically considered it to be trolling/intent feeding. But, back then, Riot actually manually unbanned his account after it was auto-banned due to reports. Is it fair to say that the stance has changed?

"it's the lack of social agreement and cooperation"

You realize that is literally how solo queue is right?

I've played hundreds upon hundreds of games where not a single word was said in champ select or in-game.

get rid of the support role

thank you for your lengthy reply. i think i finally understand the issue. i will be more mindful of my impact on other players in future games.

{quoted} We don’t have a specific system or feature that moderates this kind of behavior. Incidents like these are reviewed by Rioters only after they are flagged to us by a variety of possible variables we look at in League matches. We would never ban an account based off something basic like unusual picks, unusual builds, or weird roles. To be honest those kinds of things might get complaints from other players but they are not the kind of things that make a measurable impact on how painful a match might be for our players. However, players that feel ignored, disrespected, hijacked, or marginalized do report increased pain and frustration with League.

In your case various factors we use to monitor pain in League were being set off in the matches you played. Your strategy was leaving a wake of discontent and frustration in a consistent pattern of games you played. If this happens again it’s possible your account may be flagged again. Should that happen; you (and anyone else who may be flagged in a similar way) are always encouraged to write us back. Since these are hand reviewed cases we will re-review the circumstances if you contact us.

Thanks for taking the time to type this out. An official response is a good start to addressing this. I would like to look at your underlying philosophy. Your response can be (somewhat reductively) stated as "a bunch of us looked at your account and agreed there was a problem despite not having a clear rules justification". There's a problem with this, mostly because there's no way forward from this rule/decision. There's not a clear behavior to avoid. It means that players have to guess what's okay or what's too far etc. For example, a situation taken directly from your post. Two players demand that one of them gets blue, I disagree. In what situation is it okay for me to ignore them and when do I have to do what they say? Alternately (now my own hypothetical to build on what you said), I would like to play (for example) Azir in the bottom lane. My team disagrees. Am I in the wrong by picking him? What if I pick first, but my team hovers AP champions, have I failed to communicate with my team? What if I pick last and they already picked those champions, does pick order somehow determine who gets to play what (and wasn't the whole point of team builder/dynamic queue to get rid of that exact issue)? What if it's graves or kindred? How close to the meta is okay? What if my team demands I play Caitlyn or Jhin? Or what if I want to support my top laner, who has to agree? All four of my teammates, just my top laner, just my bot laner?

I'm not asking these questions because I need an answer to all of them, I'm asking because it seems that your official stance (at least as far as I can tell from your post) seems to be "we'll look at it eventually and decide" and that's a terrible position for us players to be in. We don't know and never can know how much we have to listen to what our teammates tell us to do. So please, reconsider, have a meeting, whatever it takes, but come up with a very clear official stance and communicate it to us. Because as it stands currently, the next time someone tells me that my champion is trash and not to play them, I will seriously have to ask myself whether they're right and I could get suspended/banned/etc. for playing it.

EDIT: I missed your earlier post where you spelled out somewhat more clearly riot's stance (not having a rioter rundown caused a bit of confusion for me). I will leave this post here because I think the ideas still express very clearly a relevant concern but I am much less worried seeing part one of your post. Part two still worries me because it's pretty nebulous (especially your anecdote about teammates in promo series) and still leaves open the question of what constitutes the line between communication and capitulation?

Thanks for the post. I have a few questions. I tried to phrase all of these questions out of pure curiosity. I apologize ahead of time if any of this comes off not in that light.

1. What worth does the unusual have over the usual? A lot of the aspects listed here can be true for someone playing a usual pick. Does that mean similar disruption from someone who is playing a usual pick also equally reportable as it can have the same affect? Is that more akin to trolling (which I'm not sure if I've seen someone actually receive a punishment for trolling)?

{quoted}

At one point they asked you to leave blue for mid, but you took it anyways; an important part of your strategy perhaps, but failing to acknowledge how the rest of your team is playing.

2. Who does Blue belong to in a match? What rules are around to whom the blue or red buff belongs? Who gets to decide to whom the buff belongs? Does it belong to the jungler by default since it is in the jungle? Blue is important to a lot of people in the game's strategy. Why does a Support taking it seem to be more disruptive?

{quoted}

Another example is one particularly unfortunate match where your team’s jungler was unhappy that you had killed friendly jungle creeps, starving him of XP he needed for his jungle rotation. Later in the match this led the jungler to going to mid lane to get some minions, which made the mid unhappy that they were now sharing XP.

3. When is it disruptive? Is taking a camp from your jungler have a limit to where you can start taking it? I don't think anyone would ever say like after 30 minutes that it is bad. Where is the boundary line for when it is acceptable? Is a jungler 'taxing a lane' by taking farm reportable? The same question for just standing near lane to soak up XP from some laner.

4. Is the support on the bottom of the totem pole for decision making in the game or even champion select? Which makes sense, as they are there purely to support everyone else as the name would suggest. I'm just curious if that is the case. Is it more of a democracy?

For example, some mid laners () rarely stay in their lane but roam constantly (this can cost mid tower... which is probably the most important T1 tower and I have seen some people get highly tilted because mid tower is down). I believe that a pod cast Scarizard mentions that Talons pretty much never want to lane. While a mid leaving lane doesn't leave a player alone on his team, but a tower is left alone. You lose all XP and gold (setting the team further behind since an ADC can stay and farm xp/gold under tower most likely) in the Talon leaving mid alone circumstance.

I'm a support main so I'm highly interested in this mainly because I want to know how much agency I actually have as a support.

Communication is def key here. But keep in mind that there is a difference between communicating AT someone vs communicating WITH someone. In many games I reviewed you would inform your team mates of what your plan was but you failed to adapt to what was being said by your team mates in response.

Aren't you conflating communication with compliance? and in addition to that, you're faulting him for lack of skill and lack of success. This is unfair.

The unusual strategy ends up backfiring; not because it may fundamentally be flawed, but because the human element of League wasn’t addressed and your team fell into disarray.

It is reasonable to expect Skyhart will struggle with some elements of implementing his strategy. It is expected - he is neither Gorilla nor CorJJ.

And so, since unskilled low silvers like me want to also do new things once in a while - it is important that the skill by which these stratagems are implemented is not the measure by which the players engaging in them are judged in the report system.

find ways to mitigate the frustrating experience that is being created.

Story time. I play caster type supports: Lulu, Nami, Karma and bard. Time and time again I am told by the team: tank sup. Thresh or leona. Braum will be great.

I used to think: why are all these players taking liberties with my pick? It really tilted me a lot.

Then I realized: These other players, they are just telling me what they want, and what they think. They are not trying to pressure me, or to coerce me, they are just being nice and polite and telling me what they think. I thought they were all a bunch of douches but _actually _they were trying to be helpful and informative!

So now since I don't think they are trying to pull one over the support, I am quite happy to hear "can we have a braum here". I don't play him, but i don't mind hearing it either. And since they are taking their time to type what they want in chat, I do the same and get them to switch from Khazix and Rengar to Hecarim and Amumu (both OP).

Imagine that: once you don't think first that they other guy is out to get you, that he's a troller and a feeder and a junk person who just want you to suffer alone in a 1v2... well you don't have a problem with the other guy going smite singed and into the enemy buffs anymore.

I don't think he does understand the issue hear and this is why.

You guys at riot are saying that he is bannable for communicating at teammates and not with them. The problem here is that he'd have to give in to whatever his teams desires are. if mid says he wants blue then skyhart has to give it over, but then mid lane is communicating at him and not with him. A far worse issue especially at my elo is when someone picks lee sin or yasuo. Not only does the team not want this but it also generates lower win rates on average than skyharts support singed, something that'd obviously frustrate teammates.

Another problem I have with this post is how you guys at riot are laying down the worst case scenario, where bot lane gets stomped. They influence other lanes and it's gg where you could also say the positive effect skyhart has. he puts there jungler way behind so he cant gank and has no minions to farm, this frees up their jungler to gank mid and top which in turn frees them to party down in bot lane. The fact that an adc demands for him to be in lane means he is the one now communicating at someone and not with them. Any time a regular jungler takes blue from mid can now be regarded as bannable by riot from these posts technically speaking. As long as he's still trying his best to win and not flaming etc then I don't see the problem.

TL;DR:

Like I've said before this is an edge case. Who should be considerate of whom and under what circumstances? If there is a line, that when it is clearly communicated, puts the "onus of consideration" on the "other side" than we're certain to see it used time and time again whether it is or is not justified.

for instance, last pick "cant support", "don't own any supports", etc. remember that?

What we have here is a case of the desire for achieving team harmony being weaponized, armed with the power of the report system and used to bludgeon an unconventional player into submission and conformity.

The correct approach is this: "we desire for players to attempt and achieve harmony within the team, and we will promote this as best we can. But ultimately it the right of each player to solely determine his way of playing the game, and this is what we will enforce".

Point by Point:

It’s also clear the player struggles to effectively communicate intentions and strategy to teammates.

But also it is clear that he makes an invested, wholehearted attempt at engaging in said communication. Therefore, you are faulting him not for not communicating, but for not succeeding in communication.

Which can result from his lack of skill, lack of flexibility of mind of personality, or simply because his team will not listen.

We can all sympathize with the lonely Miss Fortune facing down Lucian and Alistar at her own turret, and it makes sense to us when they report this Singed player.

We feel for the lonely MF. However your previous analisys leads to one single conclusion: the singed is playing in a legitimate manner which should be allowed. Therefore the onus is on the MF to not get pissed and not lash out in rage with a "report". She should, in other words, suck it up, and you owe it to the singed to throw her report to the trash bin.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that counterjungling support is shown to be a super effective strategy. Suddenly all supports CJ and all ADCs are pissed all the time. The possibility of this discovery is desirable.

Q: Do unconventional picks/strategies increase the burden of communications for the player and their teammates? Y: Yes.

And the follow up question is: "by how much". Which means you're faulting a player not for lack of effort, but for lack of success, or lack of skill. Essentially, this argument leads to: "different play styles OK in diamond and challenger, experimenting bronzes will be banned on sight"

but a good chunk of teammates across hundreds of games just don’t want to sign up for the plan.

I feel you are conflating "communication" with "consent". that team mates fail to accept your plan does not mean they have not been given information on it. More than that: failure to agree implies very strongly that successful communication has occurred.

If a teammate in champ select says, “pls no, this is game 5 of promos”

Which will invariably happen in 95% of all the games an unconventional player plays, especially if he makes an honest effort in communication. Therefore this is the same as "team consent or go home". You're just siding with compliance to the team's wishes under the guise of consideration.

Like I've said before this is an edge case. Who should be considerate of whom and under what circumstances? If there is a line, that when it is clearly communicated, puts the "onus of consideration" on the "other side" than we're certain to see it used time and time again whether it is or is not justified.

for instance, last pick "cant support", "don't own any supports", etc. remember that?

experimenting players need to clearly communicate intent and win conditions to their teammates.

The problem here is that in banning him you have conflated "communicating with the team" with "successfully attaining the team's agreement." Communication has clearly occurred; so why the ban in the first place?

Let's prevent the next time he or any other non-traditional player is banned: say you've made a mistake. Apologize.

For what it’s worth, we believe the penalty was warranted because in literally hundreds of games the player inflicted a huge amount of disruption on players who didn’t agree to their chemistry experiments.

you've spent half a post writing that differing play styles are desirable. From that you reach a conclusion that the punishment was warranted? how does that even work?

oh, i get it. Tons of reports, punish. Let's make up the reason why. The morals and summoner code are an unrelated issue. Do i get it?

in retrospect the threat of a perma in the Player Support response was a bit much

If there is no intention to perma ban this player for continuing his positive and desirable play style, than why the 2 weeks suspension? Either you've made a mistake, we get it they happen, say you were wrong and made a mistake then we move on it's just two weeks suspension no harm done, OR you really intend to "reform" skyheart and any other deviant in which case you say the ban was warranted and then everything you say about differing play styles is an empty PR facade since we know what will happen to the next "smite singed support".

The line here is the player repeatedly showing no flexibility in the face of resistance to their strategies, and consistently forcing teammates into a wildly different bot lane experience hundreds of times.

We deal here with an edge case. The core game-play of both styles is so different that it is either coercion from one side or coercion from another. The bottom line is that if you demand flexibility here, it is the same as demanding to mostly abandon this different play style since lack of agreement is going to be much, much, much more common than agreement.

Therefore your demand is unreasonable and I respectfully request that you rescind it.

it's the lack of social agreement and cooperation on the approach to the game across hundreds and hundreds of instances.

I.E. your team is allowed to coerce you into the play style desirable to them. And if you don't comply, big bad riot will give you a 2 week suspension.

there's a rule laid out that 80% of players in your games must agree to a pick. Frankly, that's bullshit, and a rule like that is as draconian as it is arbitrary. I don't want to play in a world where Riot lays out exact rules on when and how you have to communicate picks and strategies at the risk of penalties.

If you don't want this reality, don't support it with your actions. Simple as that.

I understand the desire for specificity because it's easy to understand when a rule is broken or not, but I strongly, strongly believe it's counterproductive, weaponizable, and overly-restrictive for this type of case.

What we have here is a case of the desire for achieving team harmony being weaponized, armed with the power of the report system and used to bludgeon an unconventional player into submission and conformity.

And what we also have here is the mechanism that should have kept that player safe from this sort of abuse fail because the people who apply them believe that the spirit and the letter of the summoner's code should be bent if there are enough reports.

Here is not the case of the edge case being in some gray area. It is evident that the rules have been completely adhered to - both in spirit and in letter. You've bent them to mean he is in the gray and now they look like a pretzel. Why do you think there is so much backlash against you?

One of the biggest reasons we wanted to share our thoughts around this was to come down firmly on the side of experimentation and innovation.

I cant decide where your opinion is, honestly. Either you are for innovation, in which case ban is unwarranted, or you are for conformity, in which ban is warranted. Now I understand i'm being a douche by portraying you in a black or white situation where you can't really come out clean thought claiming the half-way point. But I think this is where we are - at the end of the day you are either for the ban, with everything this entails, or against it.

Now let's talk about that human safety net of manual reviews, because that's a part of why we're talking about this too.

I think it is clear that either they safety net is faulty by design, or it has failed. I want to assume the latter: but your justification of the ban worries me.

Again, the issue isn't the pick. Duo jungle is fine. I've done it plenty of times. I've done it with Cho'Gath. I've done it with Kayle. I've done it with Fiddlesticks. It's hilarious, it works, it's allowed.

In this case, the problem isn't that there's a double jungler. With your example, the problem arises when a player holds a pick and then changes to a jungler and picks up smite at the last second and says "I'm jungle now" (bonus points when both junglers try to contest each other for camps). The way you choose to communicate (or not communicate) with your team determines the atmosphere of the game and affects the match's win conditions.