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Riot is the "Why" in Toxicity

Orgasmic Octopus·3/18/2016, 9:31:41 PM·9 votes·2,279 views

My intentions of writing this is mainly to raise awareness of this topic and to hope that a Riot Inc. employee will see this and actually provide me with insightful information, although Riot Inc. probably won't give two shits because that's just how their reputation proceeds them. The classic, unprofessional “nope, you’re toxic” response comes to mind.

With that in mind I want to present to you my idea on why I believe that the permanent ban feature is not a justified punishment for solely toxic language. It is about as extreme as sentencing someone the death penalty for jaywalking. It is a punishment unrelated to the crime. I can understand if someone was permanently banned for cheating, but for talking smack I think is fairly childish on Riot's behalf. If you are going to deal with children, why not act a little more mature than the people you deal with instead of making irrational decisions -- such as Donald Trump.

In addition, your Instant Feedback System cannot accurately decide why a player should receive a chat-restriction or a perma-ban; this is because your system heavily relies on the quantitative feedback (much like the United States justice system in regards to private prisons) and cannot measure the qualitative aspects as to why the person may be using inappropriate language. That being said, if your team is antagonizing you in some way that frustrates you enough to begin using inappropriate language then you have essentially just sealed your own fate. This leaves you in a lose-lose situation.

Furthermore, with the introduction of the perm-ban feature you have emphasized the use of the report button, when there was already a simple solution which has been there for decades on every platform that has any type of online chat interactions, the mute button. So, why is it that in just the past few years Riot Inc. has deemed it worthy to implement a permanent ban feature? Either way it promotes trigger happy activity instead of establishing a more logical feature such as a permanent chat restriction. Now Riot Inc. has made it clear to us in the past that using chat is a privilege -- it is therefore not a core aspect of the game -- so why do they favor out-right bans for chat related behavior. The only reason why I think that Riot Inc. has insinuated this behavior is because that when someone makes a purchase with RP it is a one time purchase. If the person who was banned genuinely enjoys playing the game, then the odds of them making that purchase is relatively high. If this is not the case and they truly do care about the community, then they have proven my point further. With this new feature I have introduced (permanent chat-restrictions) there is no undesirable collateral damage for both parties; it solves the issue of toxicity while allowing the player to continue playing the game, and the victim of the 25 to life sentence (permanent chat restriction) still has the ability to make in-game purchases which still makes Riot Inc. happy economically speaking.

After writing this, I realize the deep flaws that exist in the current system, and the relatively simple solutions to fix them. I often hear from other players that playing League of Legends is a frustrating game – we should not be trying to compound this feeling any further

142 Comments

LostFr0st3/18/2016, 10:04:59 PM8 votes

Permamute won't do anything. It just hides the toxicity a bit. They will still find other ways to aggravate their teammates (spam pinging, following someone for no reason etc.) It will also further frustrate the person that's trying to vent since they seem to have no clue that what they're doing/saying is wrong.

Many people who play League aren't children, and even if they were they need to know that such action isn't acceptable in the real world.

Anyway, that's my p.o.v.

disregardable3/18/2016, 9:46:12 PM7 votes

So here's the thing. Fair is a really subjective and ultimately irrelevant concept to the punishment system. Basically, Riot is a company that is trying to make money, and they make less money when people dislike their game and quit. Toxic encounters in League make people dislike the game and quit. So it's only natural that Riot wants to try to remove the problem that's making people quit. Riot first tries to do so without making that player quit the game, but when that proves impossible the toxic player just need to be removed for the sake of the greater playerbase (and subsequently Riot's profits).