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Loot/Chat Restrictions and the Facade of Punishment

PunyGong·10/28/2016, 6:14:01 AM·3 votes·578 views

So, a few days ago I had a bad day and was beyond toxic in chat pointing out how my team died on average once every 49 seconds and explained in not so nice words that when you're behind, stop trying to be good and make plays, etc etc. Pointing out the obvious but not nicely. Got a 10 game chat restriction, whatever, I accept that, I spammed bot games and got rid of it. Now I've come to realize there's a complete restriction on earning any sort of loot or rewards after games which, again, whatever that's fine. That's not my problem. There's a MASSIVE flaw in the mentality behind this and the arguments I've heard from people that are proponents of this system.

I've come to understand that it's a punishment in a sense that they want you to reform your behavior and show you what you're missing out on when you're toxic. I get that. However, the psychology of earning rewards after a well fought game (win or lose) is a powerful motivator to keep playing. I'm sure Riot understands this and this is why they restrict rewards and chat; they want to make it un-fun for toxic players to play and their mentality seems to be that the lower the amount of toxic players, the more new players will want to come into the community and play.

Now that I am unable to receive rewards for an in-determinant amount of time (I've heard from days to weeks to months), I actually just want to create a smurf and level it up to start getting rewards again. I know I can level up a brand new 30 (I don't buy skins and don't play but 5-6 champions anyways so I'm not losing out on anything) before this loot restriction ends. Now imagine a few thousand of me who are less able to control their toxicity than I am creating smurfs and absolutely demolishing the quality of low level games. I can guarantee you that puts off more players than the veterans who would face toxicity on their main accounts who have been through it all before and know what the toxicity is like. Even in games on smurfs where I don't talk (which is most of them) I guarantee you I've made multiple players rage and possibly quit just by being so much better than them that they have no fun and are unable to learn and progress at a rate that they enjoy. And I know there are more smurfs out there.

I would honestly rather not pretend to be overtly nice and cooperative with people who don't deserve it but are able to dodge punishment because they're able to troll, play like ass, and BM through "?" in chat and pings whenever someone does something they don't like. It's not my personality; I'm not a nice person, generally, and don't chat in most games because of it. Like I said, I had a bad day outside of the game and took it out on people that (mostly) didn't deserve it and was rightly punished. I don't play ranked because I can't stand the mentality I've seen so far during the ~7 placements I've played so I really don't care about starting a new account and starting over and I don't think this is what Riot was aiming for.

Well, thoughts? What could be done about the auto-punishment system to discourage smurfing?

TL;DR It is my opinion that Riot's current method of auto-punishing toxic players (myself, on occasion) in an attempt to entice new players by lowering the toxic population is actually achieving the exact opposite; encouraging toxic players to create smurf accounts and ruin an infinitely higher amount of lower level games played by people who aren't as used to the level of toxicity the LoL community can provide.

3 Comments

Sarutobi10/28/2016, 6:31:50 AM3 votes

But the fact remains that this is suppose to be a punishment. If you were able to get rewards the moment you were done with your punishment it wouldnt mean anything. And in most cases youll just act like that again because youll just wait it out like the last time. You dont want to get punished the most logical thing to do is no break the rules. You understand this is a punishment but it seems to me you arent learning from it since you want to get reward despite clearly breaking the rules from time to time.

AraMoOse10/28/2016, 9:07:17 AM3 votes

They are not punishing you in an attempt to entice new players. They are punishing you in an attempt to get you to modify your behavior.

I'm sorry you had a bad day. We all have them, some are worse than others. What we don't all do, is take out our bad days on strangers who happen to be playing a video game with us.

Telephone Booth10/29/2016, 4:41:50 AM1 votes

I think the mentality is that it should motivate you to stop being toxic on your main account. There's nothing they can do about people who don't care about their accounts being punished. If you find it fun to keep making new accounts until they are punished, then that's what you're gonna do. But they're gonna keep punishing them and eventually you'll probably get sick of pointless blind pick games where your only motive is to piss people off. You don't have all the masteries, runes, you can't get champ masteries up because you constantly get banned and make new accounts, you will never get in ranked unless you play nice until 30 (their goal... to play nice or at least neutral) and all of your games are gonna be mixes of newbs and smurfs where there's no real competition and you never know where you stand skill-wise. If that's all you wanna do then Riot can't stop you. Most people find it funner to play an account where they can build up champs, skins, masteries, runes, ranking, etc.

Know what I'm saying? It just sounds unfun to make a new account, be toxic until you're banned, make another new account, get banned, and just keep starting the process over.