Consider these changes to Toxicity Bans

Hello everyone on the boards. I am just another player who loves playing the game but have had a hard time loving the players who also play the game. This may be kind of long but filled with a lot of information that can be discussed about changing the way punishments are given. I have an account that was banned 2 years ago named NTCDevo because I was being toxic to the players around me and have tried in vain to talk to Riot about changing the way their ban system works since it clearly has no effect on any kind of toxic behavior in game. The way it currently works is by bots targeting specific words and phrases people use to bash on other players negatively and after enough reports an alert is sent to Riot to check the account and will punish it if they see foul language and other toxic phrases. However those players who know this get around it because they start messaging things in game like "afk you'd be more useful to the team" or "stop playing your making us lose" or anything negative but not something the in game bots will pick up even if you report the guy. I know this for 2 reasons. First because for almost a year now I have been saying this to players I genuinely thought either needed to de-rank because they were pretty bad or were trolling and have had not one punishment inflicted on me. And I have said this in a lot of games. Secondly because Riot foolishly stated too specifically what they would ban for when they first changed the banning system 2 years ago so everyone knew what not to say anyway. When I say a comment intended to get someone to stop playing, like the 2 I mentioned above, those should also be flagged as toxic behavior.

If you who are a better player sees another player struggling it is your job and duty if you are trying to win that game to tell that player what he needs to do to play better and not to AFK in base. Things like "hey dude you need to stay under turret and wait for jg to come gank you cause your feeding top lane or mid lane" or "remember it's ok to miss CS as long as you do not die to the enemy laner, just be patient." These kinds of comments make it clear to your teammate they are helping the enemy team win if it was not clear by their feeding and encourages them and helps them to play better for that game and probably for future games to come. More often than not, especially in bronze and silver and gold, you get countless players almost every game talking like the first 2 phrases I listed above that are all and only negative. How on earth is this ok? It makes the game more of a headache than anything else.

I have tested this on 4 accounts I have leveled to 30 and ranked in bronze and silver and gold and have on purposely had them all banned to verify what I am saying. I will post the chat logs from the 4 accounts chat history at request of anyone commenting that the game banned me for if anyone is interested to see them. The only way you can get banned from toxic behavior is nonstop and consecutive negative comments that directly target the player or players family or something about them in real life like "go die from cancer" or "go kill yourself" or something relating to sexual acts to them or family or using any kind of profanity or profane terms of any kind.

For those of you who are unaware this is how the ban system currently bans. After an account is flagged and verified as toxic, that account gets a chat restriction for a number of games. This happens 3 times then a 2 week suspension is put on the account. Then after that they ban the account. Riot will claim that this is just and right, but allow me to raise some problems with this. First off this does not stop the player from playing League of Legends. Those players who are toxic love playing the game because it is a lot of fun and usually these players have better mental game mechanics than the other players they are playing with in whatever elo and are too impatient to deal with these players who play less than that of the toxic players expectations so that when the toxic players communicate to other players it is out of anger that those worse, so to speak, players are ruining their game. Some toxic players enjoy being toxic while others wish they could control themselves but express themselves too much. For all toxic players I have the answer further down.

Riot responds to my emails saying to disable chat or to move the box off screen and communicate using pings only. This is all well and good for the toxic player trying not to be toxic except that people like to not ping at all in bronze and silver and sometimes in gold too and tend to ask or say lots of comments as way of communication. Imagine if that was the answer to everything so that every player removed chat. Congratulation you just made the team game of League of Legends into 5 solo players not playing as a team but solo all the way through. So that kind of answer does not help.

Now lets start discussing what actually is the purpose of banning. Understand that League of Legends is a free game; because of this, to ban a player really has no effect at all besides pissing off the player who got banned and making the whole matter worse seeing how you can just make another account and be just as toxic and nothing will have changed no matter how many times you ban this player except that now the banned player loses all his money dumped into the account. It takes a week by the way for anyone who is unaware to level an account to 30. The purpose of bans are to stop the problems that are cause by the player but this only works for games that you must pay for to play because in those games people will be a lot more careful to not break rules if they need to buy the game over again for 50$ like most other PC games. However in those other PC games the developers punish by literally turning off the ability for the account to use chatting instead of banning the account itself. This is the system Riot needs to be using. It not only keeps everyone on their original and first accounts that probably have a lot of nostalgic and great memories associated with it with friends but will also contain those toxic players on their restricted accounts. I personally would rather have that, the ability to play the game unable to chat, than have the freedom to chat and ruin other peoples games while I am so caught up in my ego and self consciousness that I make matters worse for myself and others around me. This is how you control problems. Completely disable the chatting feature on accounts instead of suspending the entire account and banning the entire account. Riot should implement the system where after the 3 chat restrictions instead of suspending or banning the account just suspend or ban the accounts chatting ability. In doing so Riot literally disables the player from being toxic so that the toxic player even if he wanted to couldn't but still plays well throughout the game because they want to win. This is what I thought Riot would do when I first had that account banned when they claimed to be trying to help toxic players become less toxic 2 years ago. I also think that this chatting ban should be held until an appropriate length of time has passed for behavior change. The purpose of this is to have the toxic player have an opportunity to look forward to something again after an ample amount of time to fix their behavior. Just like how children who are punished by their parents have things taken away and given back after the child shows improvement on the problem. Imagine how growing up would be if parents never ever gave anything back to the child after showing improvement on behavior. They would grow in hatred and rebellion as they grew and that is exactly what happens in games that do not punish properly. This is exactly what is wrong with the League of Legends ban system right now for toxicity.

Riot claimed for a long time shortly after they reworked the punishing system that they are trying to help toxic players and that banning them will somehow stop them. Like I explained above these toxic players are hooked to your game because they love it. Riot wants us to think or thinks themselves that toxicity has gone down because of the rate at which bans are happening, but this is not true. It is true that bans are becoming less but that is only because toxic players are learning how to be toxic without bots catching them. When my accounts were banned it says in notification on the accounts every time you log in that I am among the .006% of all players toxic enough to be banned. Let us do the math to see how many people are actually toxic enough to get banned then. If there are 600,000,000 (600 Million) players who have League of Legends accounts, which is probably a lot less than how many people actually play, then that means 36,000 players of the 600 Million are toxic enough to be banned and that does not even count those players who get around the system. I sincerely believe that number can be reduced significantly with my suggested change to the system. Please understand that currently by banning for toxicity you have given that toxic player the freedom that he or she does not deserve to continue to ruin other peoples games with their toxicity without restriction by forcing them to make a new account.

Last point I would like to ask Riot personally. Why do you insist on keeping banned accounts banned? I can list apps and PC games and Console games where I have either had or know someone that has been banned or restricted and in every single case on every console in every game after some time had passed, the player will ask the developers of the game if they can release the account from restrictions or bans and apologize for what was done and say it will never happen again and the developers did release it and the player never made a mistake again. When people want something they behave accordingly to their word. In the same way I have apologized for the way I behaved 2 years ago and have also shown that I am not toxic at all anymore by playing on my WhiteEyesBlueSol account for an entire year without any problems. What more can I do to show you that I deserve that account back with all the memories, time, and money associated with it?

NTCDevo