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Improve the toxic League of Legends community in 7 steps?

Im knawt a smurf·5/26/2016, 1:25:09 AM·1 votes·1,423 views

Hello everyone! I have a couple ideas for improving the league of LoL community as a whole. Please hear me out and read the entire post before commenting just in case I post a counter argument :D

1. Remove the tribunal/report system entirely

Yep, remove the entire reporting system and the reporting, here's why. Players that get perma banned, even Riot has admitted, most likely do not reform and do not deserve a second chance. By banning a player you have no faith that will reform and sending them to the new community...is a terrible start for some players that truly have no understanding of the game.

Just as psychology 101 says about nurturing newborns (new players).

Also, the report system itself is "tilt" worthy. A lot of the people I play with or run into playing will admit that they stay quiet due to the fact that they fear the ban hammer and will just stick with pinging. Riot Games has even admitted to saying they prefer a neutral playstyle as opposed to positive. Meaning they prefer less talking and more pinging.

The report system is abused and isn't used as intended. Most of the players who report someone for toxic behavior doesn't even remember that person the next day unless they run into them that same day or have a ridiculous name like "im knawt a smurf." Though the argument could be made that: "i'm reporting him so that other people don't get him," but that person could be having a bad day or going through some serious stuff in their life and he is being judged for that.

Even with the report system and punishments and bans and all that, the community still doesn't see any improvement in the "toxic" community. Reporting only gives an individual that "warm fuzzy" that someone is being punished for ruining their game. If it was removed, and the future steps were implemented, I feel the community would see a change for the better instead of a change for the more easily offended.

In a perfect world a player would just mute and report a truly toxic player at the end of the game and call it a day. Most people are raised to defend themselves and not put up with "bullying" as opposed to staying quiet and letting the bully bully. I believe Riot Games should enforce and stronger independence within the game just as the international communities advertise to stand up to bullying (which I'll talk about again in the steps to come :D).

Also, people are being banned for saying someone is an idiot while people that hack, boost, pilot, and give out death threats are being put on the same level. I definitely believe that the people put in potentially hundreds of dollars and hours into the account and are having it PERMANENTLY taken away because they called someone an idiot or a noob. Yes the death threat racists get banned faster, but I firmly stand that the banterers and the "noob-sayers" are performing a minor offense in comparison that isn't ban-worthy.

Now that the report system is removed entirely, now lets improve the community:

2. Implement voice-chat in-game

Voice communication can add IMMENSE positive vibes within the community. With voice chat also implemented, people will be much more inclined to mute that unnecessary noise within the game. Also, what people say won't be miscomprehended due to a lack of voice tone. Players that are tilting can receive fast positive enforcement from a teammate, or will be more inclined to mute someone giving them crap. On the same side, that person raging will be taken 10x less lightly via voice, since that stuff is hilarious.

We look at popular online games such as CS:GO, DOTA 2, World of Warcraft (most end-game content requires voice comms), etc. and we have encountered a much more cooperative community and a much more positive teamwork oriented community in these games because communicating is THAT MUCH easier.

This could possibly be implemented by partnering with Curse Voice and creating 2 chat servers for each individual game and populating the five individuals into those servers. I don't know how much that would cost...or ever what it would take to get that....just a guy with an idea.

Now that the people have a voice, lets add one to the other side of the house!

3. Invest in a customer support phone line

Most of the community who have dealt with Riot Games customer support can comfortably agree that Riot Games support is one of the worst customer supports in the gaming community. I've had numerous occasions where I have gotten that template email with "Greetings summoner" when I specifically asked to be addressed by my first name.

Showcasing you care for your community can also improve it's likelihood to enjoy the game more. Sounds far fetched, but let me turn to an example. I played World of Warcraft for 7 years and part of it was due to how amazing their customer support was. They are sympathetic, personable, friendly, and that one on one conversation makes you truly feel appreciated as someone that has helped a franchise grow, such as Riot Games. One Blizzard employee actually listened to me rant and told a crappy GM joke just to help cheer me up. Easily stopped my tilt right there as opposed to waiting 24 hours for an unpersonable email.

4. Edit the Summoner's Code

With the reports being removed, the player behavior section will need some work. To emphasize on the use of the mute feature. Nothing else to really say about this...

5. Open the Gates

When I say open the gates, I mean lift every single perma ban, chat restriction, and general ban that has been given out in the entirety of League of Legends. This will promote a massive amount of happiness, joy, and appreciation to Riot Games from those, potentially still, toxic players and may cause some reform purely based on that.

With Riot Games turning a new leaf, it would only be fair to turn that leaf with the rest of the League of Legends community.

6. Implement CS:GOs grading structure in Ranked.

For those that haven't played CS:GO before, in competitive (aka CS:GO's version of ranked) a player is graded on several things: team's performance, team's overall performance (meaning the number of won rounds difference), and individual performance. Meaning a player that loses a game still has the potential to be rewarded. This would get rid of SO MUCH toxic behavior and flaming from that one person that is 15/2 on a team playing with a team full of players that aren't as fortunate. The fed player will simply say to himself: "meh im doing fine." Some might argue that implementing that would take away the team aspect of the game and encourage less team-play. This would actually be the complete opposite, we look at CS:GO and how they reward players, but we also see that it is one of the highest competitive team games out there. With the help of in-game voice-chat, League of Legends can become the pinnacle of teamwork and cooperation within the community.

I'm not sure how this would be implemented, but basically you won't lose a set number of points just because you lost, or gain a set number just because you won. Then, players who truly belong to be at a higher rank...will actually get to that point. "ELO Hell" would be nonexistent (if you believe in it).

**7. Still administer bans **

With all of this being said, there are still players who 100% deserve to be removed from this game (IE: Boosters, piloters, hackers, scripters, and death threat/racist individuals). Make reporting available via email or through the phone support to where Riot can just see a past game (potentially watch it too) and deem judgement based on that as opposed to a system that reads a chat and makes a decision or punishes that one person that keeps dc'ing from a game but still gets leaver bustered due to not moving due to connection issues.

Once Riot Games emphasizes the extreme behavior will be punished and not that random person that calls you an idiot, monkey, noob since it's not toxic in comparison to what it could be. Once Riot stops caring about the people calling you an idiot, the community will soon follow and start to brush off that behavior and not feel obliged to stay tuned to it in order to report it.

With all of that being said...this is purely just ideas on how I think this could be improved. The community focuses too much on "toxic behavior" and not enough on how well we could improve the game for everyone to help encourage a more positive community.

If you have any ideas or things you'd change here, feel free to comment. Also upvote this post so Riot can potentially see our ideas and hopefully try to implement them. Also, no trolls, passive aggression, or blatant sarcasm. This is purely to encourage positive constructive opinions.

IF YOU DOWNVOTE THIS, PLEASE HELP ME UNDERSTAND WHY BY COMMENTING.

11 Comments

Astôlfo5/26/2016, 8:53:36 PM2 votes

Nah, deal with it.

  1. lolno
  2. Yeah and then you have people just telling others they're [insert whatever offensive term of your choice] instead of chatting it.
  3. Sure, but that's an entirely different matter and has nothing to do with punishments or appeals of such, which mean nothing, because there's nothing worth appealing, because people that got bans deserved them.
  4. No need to, because there's nothing that needs changing.
  5. Hell no, those people all got banned for good reason. No one gives a crap about toxic players nor should they. They don't deserve to play, nor have they obviously even attempted to reform. That's why they were permabanned.
  6. Eh.
  7. Current ban system is fine, so this point is irrelevant.
JustMonika135/26/2016, 1:55:16 AM1 votes

I decided to downvote once I read #2... I even don't want to imagine how chaotic League will be if it's implemented. If something is true, then the reverse is true as well; communicating with other players would just be hell and teamwork might heavily suffer.

Then again, I'm a very cynical person despite my generally chipper tone online, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt~

EndGamer115/26/2016, 10:40:06 PM1 votes

My first and only Voice Chat experience in Dota was 3 Filipinos speaking an incomprehensible language and hard-feeding Bloodseeker.

There are many reasons that the punishments in LoL are formatted in the way they are. For one, Voice Chat uses significantly more resources than text. Second, that would exclude people without a mic. Third, it is easy to moderate text with a network such as Riot's. Voice chat would require manual review of the logs from tens of millions of games daily. Impossible to do.

Riot's support line is fine the way it is. All first-line tickets will naturally be bots, because of the volume of responses needed. An escalation of your ticket will get manual input.

Riot's ranking system would not benefit from changes like those proposed. That would lead to people trying to pad their KDA, ignoring team play. The way it is now, if a player is skilled enough to lead their team to victory, they will win and climb. If they aren't, they won't.

Shadowatom5/28/2016, 4:44:47 AM1 votes

I think you're right in the point about how people usually don't remember who they reported the previous day, but the same could be said about the amazing players we meet in-game. I do think that an automated system isn't the best way to go about monitoring a player base, because everyone is going to get pissed off at some point, and they should have the right to do so, but I also think that it wouldn't be ideal to have a phoneline, simply because there are so many players (I don't know how many players were around when you were playing WoW, nor do I know how many players they have now, but I'm only assuming that LoL has more so correct me if I'm wrong on that). Personally, I think an ideal system would just be through email and have an actual person reading them, it would take time obviously, but everything does when done by a person.

The other point that I disagree with is to open the gates. I'd be fine with letting a few back in at a time, but letting all of them come back at once, could potentially be like having a trash bag tear from the bottom just after you finished cleaning. As far as voice chat in game goes, I don't think many would use it anyways tbh, only serious players who already have other ways to communicate anyways. You should keep in mind that while Dota and CS:GO might have voice chat implemented, Dota I know for a fact is far more difficult than league and more for a hardcore gamer (no idea about CS:GO, so I can't say), League has been created for both casual and hardcore gamers. Casual gamers don't want to hear people talking to them, and hardcore gamers have their own means of communication as I've already stated.

Is an automated system good? Not really, it has no sympathy or common sense and takes everything at face value (which can also be an advantage), but it's also difficult to keep up with and judge every single report that comes through as a person and I don't know if Riot is willing to spend the money for that.