Chat ban from a single game. No slurs, one fbomb not directed at a player but at the situation.

ratki11er·Nov 26, 2019·1 votes·1,605 views

Logged into league today to a chat ban. Single game of chat logs. I did respond to a troll but the worst things I did was call him out for boosting/account sharing after he admitted it in our chat.

I guess my questions are: If calling out a troll is toxic, why not ban the troller and not those on the receiving end? Seems like you would have fewer bans and a happier player base. I don't understand my ban when I see homophobic and racist chat every other game. I have a game where I engage a troll and get a chat ban? Is there something I missed in the chat logs that caused me to get banned? Or do the bans not take context into account so people can literally bait you into responses that generate a chat ban automatically while staying safe themselves.

5 Comments

Umbral RegentNov 26, 20195 votes

If calling out a troll is toxic, why not ban the troller and not those on the receiving end? Seems like you would have fewer bans and a happier player base.

First of all; Riot has to determine whether or not the player in question is actually a troll. The playerbase in general is notoriously unreliable at determining actual, legitimate trolling or intentionally feeding, and what some players will readily brand a troll is typically actually someone who's underperforming.

Secondly; in order for Riot to even investigate whether or not the player in question was trolling, you'd need to report them. 90% of the time, people "call out trolls" (I.E, flame players) first before thinking of reporting, since you can only report after a match. Simply banning trolls (regardless of how valid the ban is) wouldn't change that order of operations much.

Third; Riot does ban trolls. You can act like they prioritize Chat punishments over trolling/intentional feeding all you want, but at the end of the day, trolls do get punished; they're just difficult to accurately detect, partially due to how many ways one can troll and partially due to the community crying "wolf" over pugs.

Fourth; At some point, you need to recognize that you yourself are part of the problem. Y'know the Internet adage of "Don't feed the troll"? Well, "calling out a troll" is feeding the troll. If the player is in fact a troll, you're just validating their behavior and giving them more reason to troll. Rather than put the impetus on Riot to "just ban the trolls", you should recognize that you are a contributor to the problem too, and that if you think that someone is trolling, do not talk to, of, or about them. Don't even give them the time of day. Report them post-game, and don't fall for their shenanigans.

I don't understand my ban when I see homophobic and racist chat every other game. I have a game where I engage a troll and get a chat ban?

You don't have to be homophobic or racist to get a punishment; in point of fact, homophobia and racism demand escalated punishments, but there's still a whole breadth of other misbehavior that Riot doesn't allow in their game. And, no. Just because other people break the rules frequently (ignoring the likelihood that they get punished for it) does not give you liberty to break the rules yourself.

Is there something I missed in the chat logs that caused me to get banned?

It's probable. If you want a peer review, you can submit your chat logs here and the community would be glad to weigh in on your behavior. Most people typically break the rules without even realizing it (such as with defeatism or passive-aggressive remarks), and it's not entirely uncommon for some people to be so inured to other misbehavior that they regard it as perfectly normal.

Or do the bans not take context into account...

The IFS does not take context into account. It does not matter why you flame or misbehave, if you break the rules, you get punished. You alone are responsible for your own actions.

ratki11erNov 26, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=Umbral Regent,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=BHrp5h1q,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2019-11-26T17:29:17.796+0000)

First of all; Riot has to determine whether or not the player in question is actually a troll. The playerbase in general is notoriously unreliable at determining actual, legitimate trolling or intentionally feeding, and what some players will readily brand a troll is typically actually someone who's underperforming.

Secondly; in order for Riot to even investigate whether or not the player in question was trolling, you'd need to report them. 90% of the time, people "call out trolls" (I.E, flame players) first before thinking of reporting, since you can only report after a match. Simply banning trolls (regardless of how valid the ban is) wouldn't change that order of operations much.

Third; Riot does ban trolls. You can act like they prioritize Chat punishments over trolling/intentional feeding all you want, but at the end of the day, trolls do get punished; they're just difficult to accurately detect, partially due to how many ways one can troll and partially due to the community crying "wolf" over pugs.

Fourth; At some point, you need to recognize that you yourself are part of the problem. Y'know the Internet adage of "Don't feed the troll"? Well, "calling out a troll" is feeding the troll. If the player is in fact a troll, you're just validating their behavior and giving them more reason to troll. Rather than put the impetus on Riot to "just ban the trolls", you should recognize that you are a contributor to the problem too, and that if you think that someone is trolling, do not talk to, of, or about them. Don't even give them the time of day. Report them post-game, and don't fall for their shenanigans.

You don't have to be homophobic or racist to get a punishment; in point of fact, homophobia and racism demand escalated punishments, but there's still a whole breadth of other misbehavior that Riot doesn't allow in their game. And, no. Just because other people break the rules frequently (ignoring the likelihood that they get punished for it) does not give you liberty to break the rules yourself.

It's probable. If you want a peer review, you can submit your chat logs here and the community would be glad to weigh in on your behavior. Most people typically break the rules without even realizing it (such as with defeatism or passive-aggressive remarks), and it's not entirely uncommon for some people to be so inured to other misbehavior that they regard it as perfectly normal.

The IFS does not take context into account. It does not matter why you flame or misbehave, if you break the rules, you get punished. You alone are responsible for your own actions.

This is a really good answer and definitely helps explain to me why i was banned. I guess my counter is why even have chat as the other option is the mute all at the beginning of every game which I see more and more people having to do.

As a player it feels like playing solo queue is more an exercise in being able to take punishment from your own teammates than it is in playing the game or having fun anymore. The fact that I can't even defend myself or encourage the team to win in chat is pretty disheartening.

rujitraNov 26, 20191 votes

I wouldn't say people have to mute all. I wouldn't even say a lot do. In fact, in my past games (from the past two days), I can remember a total of 1 person who didn't say anything the whole game (but they still used pings). I'm not sure if they were restricted and self-muting, or whether they had muted all - it seemed they were still coordinating with us but that could just be luck, not necessarily them reading our chat/pings.

My point is that most people don't actually mute all - at least not by default at the beginning of the game. If my team is tilting the fuck out of me I'll do it, but that's incredibly rare and only later in the game when it becomes clear to me they aren't doing anything useful in chat.

Overall, I'd say 90-95% of my games my experience is chat is completely positive, carefree, and helpful to the team. Another 5% ish of games it's mostly positive with maybe a couple tense exchanges or one bummer player. Very few, as in much less than 5%, are this "toxic cesspool".

I have friends who see it differently. They think that toxicity is all over and super prevalent and everyone is toxic. You know what I found a few years ago? I experienced more toxicity when playing with these friends. It's so long ago I don't wanna estimate percentages, but I'd say it's easily 2-3 times the amount of toxicity. It's not like I was acting any differently and we were at a similar rank/MMR... the only difference is that one friend in particular tried to be really good at "avoiding the system" to still be toxic - things that they thought wouldn't get caught by the systems, and/or things that aren't technically prohibited like spam pinging, using emotes, intentionally taking first buff, etc.

I stopped playing with that person after I realized they were the cause of the toxicity I was experiencing in my games. The moral of this is that if you find yourself getting tilted and experiencing toxicity in a lot of your games, it's more likely than not that you're doing something to cause it. You may not be doing anything wrong - but it still may be causing something to happen. One example is that comes to mind is getting rear-ended at a stoplight. You aren't doing anything wrong by braking a little hard because the light is yellow and you don't think you'll make it. But had you not braked, the guy behind you wouldn't have had the chance to run into you. This actually has happened to me in real life before - and while I'm still careful near lights so I don't have to brake hard, I'll freely admit that I've accidentally come very close to running a red light (if I haven't actually, not sure the exact rules town/state level and stuff) because in the back of my mind I'm thinking about whether the person behind me will be paying attention. Doesn't help that half the drivers in my town have their phone literally rubber banded around their head in front of their eyes (ok, not literally, but hopefully point is getting across lol).

So, the moral of this whole thing? While you may not be doing anything wrong to cause games to become negative/toxic, it's worth taking a look. Remember that everyone opens up League with one mission - to enjoy themselves. Whether that enjoyment comes from playing with friends and dicking around and not really caring, or whether it comes from "tryharding", everyone wants to have fun. There's going to be trolling people - but there's really no way for you to know they're trolling unless they say it in chat. Give people the benefit of the doubt. People make mistakes, accidents happen, buffs get last hit by a Darius support bleed after the jg got warned "please smite it watch for bleed"..... shit happens. Hell, sometimes shit literally is being dumped on you from buckets repeatedly above your head. Don't sit there and wallow in the shit - move on from it and don't let yourself get tilted.

Fuck, now that I say that, it sounds really.... cliche. "lol just dont tilt bro hahaha wow gl with that". It's not easy, I know. What helps me is just asking yourself why. Why does it help to get mad at the buff getting taken? Are they going to magically give the buff back? If they did it intentionally, they want me to get mad, so why should I give them what they want? And if they did it accidentally, I'm sure they feel just as bad about it as everyone else does, so what good does it do to just keep everyone feeling bad.

Last thing I'll leave with - I was playing Ashe support recently because a teammate intentionally banned my Senna and repeatedly called the teammates names when they (not me even, because idgaf really) asked him why. So I figured I'd play another marksman support that's fun for me and could still win us the game. Enter the player intentionally trolling our team by doing bad ganks, intentionally wasting smite on dragon before the end of it (i.e. they didn't do it for the health regen or anything), and AFK at multiple points in the game. They were trying to piss me off. I didn't care. Said nothing in chat. Actually ended up getting the ADC super fed (I think combined we were like 11/2 in lane or something with a decent number of assists too). We lost that game, which is probably what that jungler wanted. But you know what I bet you tilted that jungler even more? How the rest of us just kept playing and didn't give him the attention he wanted. He could've reported any/all of us all he wanted - but he will never get the satisfaction of knowing he "baited" us into responding.

So I guess if it helps you... just be petty in knowing that by you not being a jerkass, not only are you avoiding punishment, but you're also giving a big 'fuck you' to anyone actually trolling because they won't get the gratification of pissing you off.

BladeSteelNov 26, 20192 votes

If you’re harassing players you get punished. You don’t need to swear or say slurs to get punished, just be constantly harassing others.

ratki11erNov 26, 20192 votes

Game 1 In-Game ratki11er: doubt ratki11er: fuck ratki11er: this is going to be bad ratki11er: tf 4 deaths by 5 minutes ratki11er: fuckkkkkk! ratki11er: called it ratki11er: in select ratki11er: but was flamed ratki11er: for telling the truth ratki11er: GM TF can't pull a gold card? ratki11er: rofl ratki11er: you gave up a solo kill to morg ratki11er: as a GM ratki11er: how much did you pay for boost? ratki11er: reporting you for boosting ratki11er: GM TF has no map awareness and can't pull gold cards ratki11er: I'll play like he is bronze now ratki11er: since pings don't register with him ratki11er: tf you are much worse ratki11er: please don't talk ratki11er: when you can't play ratki11er: like you and a brand new person ratki11er: I would take the brand new person ratki11er: keep talkning shit TF ratki11er: it seems to work well agaionst us ratki11er: what team? ratki11er: our tf is GM didnt you read? ratki11er: solo carry from mid ratki11er: also their jax is trash ratki11er: didn't you hear? ratki11er: dude don't be so hard on yourself ratki11er: its ok ratki11er: first step ratki11er: stop paying for boosts ratki11er: grats on having a mid ratki11er: report TF for boosting please ratki11er: he admitted in chat he had a Gm play his account ratki11er: and ty morg ratki11er: I did ratki11er: learn english language comprehension ratki11er: our 'GM' TF literally walks in and feeds your team for no reason ratki11er: but tells the team they are trash when he can' pull a yellow card to save his life ratki11er: vbg

Chat Log, I understand I was hard on TF, but last time I checked that doesn't warrant a chat ban for doing it in one game. Note this was the only chat log they gave me.