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Banned for MMR boosting, Looking for an explanation?

Lova·11/30/2016, 5:49:12 AM·11 votes·5,555 views

Attempted to log in today and was greeted with a nice two-week ban, I wasn't sure what it was for so I created a ticket because I did not receive an email prior to the ban.

"Hello �ova,

Your suspension was only issued after an extensive investigation was run to ensure your involvement in MMR boosting. As explained in the email you received in response to your suspension, the following actions have been taken on your account:

-A two-week suspension has been issued to your account. -All previous Season rewards (Victorious skins, borders, season icons, season ward skins) have been stripped from your account. -You are ineligible for any 2016 Season rewards"

Do note: I changed my name from L0va to Łova, which includes a symbol through the L (just to make sure we are clear). They say I should have received an email explaining the ban, but I haven't. My account finished Plat 3 this season, with over 800 games played. I'm not great at league, but if I actually wanted my MMR boosted don't you think I would've gotten help to Diamond 5? I feel I was incorrectly banned, any insight would be great. Still waiting on a reply from Riot.

UPDATE: So I got transferred by Riot support to the Player Behavior team, Riot Bombadil and this was his reply.

Hello Summoner,

My name is Bombadil and I'm with Riot Player Support and I'll be helping you today. The investigation was based on conclusive evidence. I have personally reviewed your case and there is no error. I'm not able disclose any additional information as it may compromise further investigations. We will not be lifting your suspension, please consider the matter closed.

Let me know if there is anything else I can help you with.

Bombadil Riot Games Player Support "Not all those who wander are lost"

My reply:

Hi Bombadil,

I just can't seem to understand the logic behind the fact that the investigation was based on "conclusive evidence," that you can't seem to share with me. I absolutely understand right from wrong and accepting consequences for actions but I don't understand what I could have done wrong. I've played a ton of games this season, and previous seasons for that matter and never been banned before. I took pride in getting gold in season 3 and slowly working my way up to Plat in the following seasons. I have a very average winrate, across many champions and I do see this as a big mistake and you are giving me absolutely no evidence to justify this case besides the fact that there is "absolutely no error" in your research. This is absolutely absurd and if this is how this case is handled then you've done a great disservice to a longstanding customer.

Just frustrating to lose previous season awards and achievements based on "conclusive evidence that holds no error." I've taken the time to learn this game, I follow the competitive scene, and take pride at being somewhat decent. If I did in some unknowing way "boost" one of my friends or "get boosted" like the user AnCa suggested, then riot shouldn't allow duo queue's purely for the fact that you might run into this problem.

34 Comments

Youre Mom11/30/2016, 3:42:02 PM2 votes

shit support at its best

Friendly Ram12/1/2016, 1:29:47 AM2 votes

hopefully you can get your rewards reinstated. good luck with getting support off their bums though.

CrazyBear198711/30/2016, 6:00:52 AM2 votes

Nothing suspicious that I can see so far in your games, even the sudden use of Katarina didn't give you all wins.

Not sure what's going on, maybe a conflict with your name change with another account.

but it does sound weird.

Wiggle Dat Butt11/30/2016, 6:38:32 PM1 votes

The only thing worse than Riot support is the Path of Exile trading system.

Lova11/30/2016, 8:28:14 PM1 votes

Just an update: Still haven't gotten a reply and I haven't bumped the ticket since my first reply to them last night explaining the name change. Super frustrating if I don't get an actual reply and support just overlooks it.

AnCa11/30/2016, 9:16:03 PM1 votes

Granted I cannot do extensive research into who you played with and if those you played with was involved with MMR boosting. So for arguement sake I will just ASSUME you are telling the truth that you are not involve in such act of MMR boosting, and was banned with injustice.

Eventhough you said you aint good at this game, but you are in plat, thus in truth you are better than alot of people in this game already. So, boosting someone to gold for the season reward is comepletely not out of the question. I am not saying you did, but I mean it is not a reason which WON'T get you flagged. Moving on from this.

What I think MAY have triggered this case is, you played with someone, possibly a person/a few people on your friend list for a multitude (I do not know how much would trigger the Riot's alarm in such case.) of games. In which they have a generally lower MMR/rank in the previous season/seasons. I would assume that have helped them gain more wins, i.e."boosted" the winrate of said person/people. AND if said person/people ALSO have other friends or parties that does the same as a favor for him/her. OR worst case scenerio, they ARE actually paying someone else to boost their account.

That said person/people would be flagged as being "boosted" and unfortunately since maybe you were just helping out your friend for a few(as i said i do not know how many would flag this) games. It flagged you as being involved in boosting someone.

Another case, would be on some unfortunate case where alot of your loses are just so happen to be against/with a random booster who sometimes lose on purpose with the boosting regiment to avoid detection and you are unfortunately landed in there. (This is even more complicated, I only heard a little about such practice explained by some streamers of how to notice a booster. So I cannot explain this too well myself.)

In any case, you should think back if there were such case where you played with someone who were clearly under your rank in this previous season in dynamic rank queue could possibly flagged you "boosting". And hopefully you can provide a detail and well explaination that you weren't in fact boosting said person.

Good luck rectifing the case if you were punished injustifingly. But if you are lying, I hope you get banned more RAWR! (Cause you wasted all our time :l )

OnlyYouCanHearMe11/30/2016, 10:58:22 PM1 votes

Please do not send in repeat tickets. It will actually drop yours back to the bottom of the list and cause further delay in having it looked at. Try to be patient, they will get to it.

Myrmiron11/30/2016, 11:09:45 PM1 votes

Do you share an account with a friend? If so that could have been the reason, aka you didn't get boosted, but you "boosted" the shared account. Obviously boosting sites are so in need of employees they hire Plat 3 players these days. /s

vOmvbrawfU12/1/2016, 2:15:00 AM1 votes

Then don't cheat.

Lova12/1/2016, 2:36:25 AM1 votes

Well they closed my ticket because they "concluded their investigation." I doubt I'll ever get an explanation, Riot support is absolutely no help at all.

OnlyYouCanHearMe12/2/2016, 2:39:12 AM1 votes

I'm really sorry that this happened, Łova. Might be a bit naive of me, but I do tend to presume innocent, at least in the cases when the person posting on the boards doesn't come in and incriminate themselves with their own post. From what you've said, it certainly seems like you haven't done anything wrong, and again, I am very sorry that this has happened to you, and that Riot support hasn't been able to give you any idea of why.

I'm by no means as skilled as the other guys at looking through match histories and such, but I looked through all the games visible going back all the way to April, trying to see if I could find anything that might have been a red flag. Nothing really pops out as being suspicious. I see a couple things that are odd, but probably due to individual game circumstances, and not something that would make me suspect any sort of boosting. Like using cleanse in some matches on Jhin, when you would expect heal... but I suspect that's a Jhin mid, so it's not that unusual. There's also a pattern of using red versus blue trinket, but that might just coincide with the changes they made to blue trinket, and I wouldn't consider that to be anything big by itself either. The only other thing I noticed is that you have a distinct pattern from the middle of June where you pick certain champions and stick with them for quite a few games before moving on to a new champion. Before that, you bounced around much more. But all that is purely circumstantial, and I wouldn't have even looked twice at any of it with regards to possible boosting.

As they have closed your ticket out, you may want to consider opening a new one (just one). With some of the websites that they have now, they have awesome records of league stats. You can literally go through and list for them your main champions for the past few seasons, the ones that have gotten you to where you are, showing the kda, csing, any relevant game stats. I would reiterate that there was a name change, and that it might have caused a glitch, I would point out again that you have been plat for the last 2 seasons, and that there was no need for you to be boosted to the level that you had been playing at for years. It's entirely up to you whether you want to try again with Riot support. I don't think anyone would blame you if you were frustrated enough to want to simply wait out the 2 weeks and just move on with things once it is over.

One last thing, I do not know how the punishment system works with this, whether having this 2 week ban puts you in the automatic third tier, where any future reports would put you into potential permaban territory. You might want to find out about that one, just in case! I mean, clearly, you do not have a history of any behavior problems, I just would hate to see anything else happen to you, and if this makes you skip the chat restrictions, it might be good to know!

Kei14311/30/2016, 11:56:49 AM1 votes

When was that email sent to you?

I find it weird how they'd say you'd be not eligible for 2016 rewards when it has passed already.

IPinPC11/30/2016, 5:42:15 PM1 votes

Wondering how did they come up with the idea of boosted account ? "extensive investigation" - does that mean they checked IPs or smth else ?