My thoughts on how I think the ban system works based on my own study (Warning: Long Post)

First of all, I do not care for what anyone here think of me as I probably do not know any of you or wish to do so. The purpose of this post is to provide insight into what I have found to be true for me personally. Riot can either agree or disagree with my statements and/ or reply but that's up to them. With that being said, here we go.

Context: I've been playing this game since season 4 and over the the years I've noticed that toxicity have increased as well. Now this can be due to more people playing hence more toxic people but in my experience toxicity has increased at a much higher rate compared to playerbase. This includes both verbal and gameplay toxicity. I'm a very competitive and stubborn person by nature so therefore it's hard for me to not reply back to people flaming/ harassing/ trolling/ etc that hinders my chances of winning. This has obviously got me into trouble and got my first account banned after 3 years of playing so I wanted to find a solution to my problems. Being an accountant and analyst major, I decided to do some experimenting about how riot's system works and try to gauge how much toxicity is banworthy. Over the last 12 months I got my hands on 12 accounts(whose names I won't share obviously) through various means and did various tests. My focus was mainly on verbal toxicity because gameplay toxicity is way more subjective and have to take into alot more variables to come to an accurate result and I won't be addressing it. I personally do not troll/ int/ grief and find it worse than verbal toxicity.

I decided to test out a few different scenarios. Low/ mild flame/ harass, heavy flame/ harass, 0 tolerence words/ sentences and passive aggressiveness which are the most common reasons for getting hit by the banhammer.

I'm not going to provide complete data from my findings as its already hard to get exact numbers and privacy reasons but I will give estimates and probabilities.

Low/ mild flame: This includes this words and phrases such as fk you, you suck, bad player, boosted. Things that most people will find more of an annoyance than offense. This type of behavior won't get you in trouble unless you do it excessively (10-20+ lines every 2-3 games or something) Highest level of ban this behavior got was a permaban over the cours of 200+ games. You really need to be looking to get banned for this.

Heavy flame/ harass: Strong use of curse words, offensive name calling, personal/ direct insults(basically anything below the 0 tolerance line) This is the most interesting out of them all and what I had gotten banned for. Do it occasionally/ frequently and you will get banned. However, do it semi-frequently(like one game a week) and you won't get banned. This type of behavior is is pretty easy to detect and punish obviously but do it in small semi-frequent doses and you will sneak under the radar. Higest punishment was indeed a permaban as expected.

0 tolerence: I personally didn't play on these accounts as im not fked up enough to tell someone to end themselves but I heavily monitored the chatlogs of what was said. Things inclde sexism, racism, death threats, etc. 2 out of the 3 accounts used for this was permabanned but the interesting thing is how fast they got banned. Fastest ban was within 2 days from 0 punishment history. Another account got a 2 week suspension first before the permaban but however the last account is yet to be permabanned(higest was 2 weeks) after 200+ games of playing. The key here is not to repeat these words more than once per game and not say it again within at least a 10 game timeframe.

Passive - aggressiveness: This was the hardest to properly analyze as it it the most subjective and highly dependent on the individuals/ groups being directed towards. Examples: lol jg can't smite, why did u not ward/ gank/ etc and haha so bad. This for the most part won't get you banned but like the 1st topic do it excessively and you will get banned.

General Conclusion from all of this:

• Frequecny matters more than severity. How often you say things and much of it matter more than what you say. Type less and play more. You'll be fine if you let loose occasionally but make it a habit or write novels everytime you do so and you'll get the banhammer.

• Problems with report: Report basically adds some sort of a multiplier to your chatlog. Even if you aren't really toxic and only flame sometimes but get reported everytmne you do flame, it will count the same as a frequent flamer in terms of determining how likely you are to get banned. Another issue is people are more likely to report after a loss than they are to report after a win. So even if someone is toxic but managed to carry their team, they probably won't get reported that often.

• 0 tolerance words aren't completely 0 tolerate contray to popular belief. You're way more likely to get the banhammer if people report you for them as I've explained above.

• Lastly this is more so opinion based, rules will bend for you if you're good enough. You can get away with a lot more toxic/ unacceptable behavior if you're a Smurf / really good player that hard carries your team. In fact the 0 tolerance account that didn't get banned climbed from bronze to diamond and reached honor level 4 before getting 2week ban and is now already honor 3 this season. This was accomplished by only typing no tolerance words and some occasional strategy aspects.

**If you do read until this point, alot of you will be wondering, why do all of this? ** Well there is no simple answer to that. I like studying systems and finding loopholes/ patterns. I'm also quite fond of studying body language/ behaviors/ psychology. And lastly I realized I was having a problem in trying to fit in within this game the way I wanted to and I also didn't want to stop playing either. So, I wanted to find a middle ground for myself. All these factors combined gave me the perfect opportunity to do something that not only fits my interest but also my studies. Does what I did make me a hypocrite/ lunatic/ (inserted any otherr description here)? Maybe, but that's not what I'm here for nor will I care for what you think of me personally. I just wanted to share my findings about something that interested me and maybe Riot can even use this information to better their system.

Final thoughts This isn't some sort of an evil masterplan to enact vengeance upon riot. I do understand their system isn't perfect and probably never will be due to the nature of the problem it's trying to solve. This is merely something that I wanted to find out for myself cause of something directly related to me and so far it has been working with a 100% success rate(haven't gotten a single punishment on my real account) and wanted to share with the rest of the community. Im not trying to endorse more toxicity, even if that is what is might suggest. And if it does end up doing just that, then it gives riot even more incentive to improve their system which I think the majority of us will agree is a good thing. Or I can be completely wrong and this is completely uselss information. Either way if you got this far, thanks for reading and have a nice day!