I got a 14 day ban in a game where I was flamed harder than I have ever been flamed before

Sexy Man Child·Mar 19, 2018·3 votes·1,034 views

I just played a ranked game and of course there's only a one way conversation but it's listed below. I died in lane and our Rammus said, "Worthless mid." Then he attempted to gank me again and I died again in the fight so he again said, "You're worthless trash." He then proceeded to call me a choice series of foul words and called me worthless at least another 15 times that game. After going 0/6/0 I collected myself, ended 8/9/7 with 390 cs in the 43 minute game. I got a 14 day ban.

Game 1 Sexy Man Child: yeah it is Sexy Man Child: it has a pretty big tell with the ult though Sexy Man Child: srs? Sexy Man Child: neat Sexy Man Child: getting camped hard Sexy Man Child: yeah im done with this game Sexy Man Child: you should buy a ward every gank has been from your side of the jg Sexy Man Child: yes Sexy Man Child: yo are Sexy Man Child: rammus Sexy Man Child: same meaning Sexy Man Child: rammsu! Sexy Man Child: ffs Sexy Man Child: ty for reporting rammus Sexy Man Child: lol instead of fb turret you get nothing Sexy Man Child: im happy for you Sexy Man Child: wtf is your problem Sexy Man Child: i'm excited for your ban rammus Sexy Man Child: i hope you learn something Sexy Man Child: can you go to your lane? Sexy Man Child: you know you've motivated me to not care right rammus? like i stopped trying the moment that you flamed me Sexy Man Child: it's essentially a 4v5, because you flamed me Sexy Man Child: report me for getting flamed from 5 min into the game pls Sexy Man Child: iu had 380 ms Sexy Man Child: couldnt get there Sexy Man Child: no tp Sexy Man Child: ty for flaming Sexy Man Child: nah man im just a worthless scrub Sexy Man Child: just farming up Sexy Man Child: bad fight top Sexy Man Child: ive done 1500 damage the entire game Sexy Man Child: total Sexy Man Child: sry xayah Sexy Man Child: i hate toxic teams Sexy Man Child: you ate mne Sexy Man Child: why would you do that nan Sexy Man Child: it really wasnt Sexy Man Child: most toxic team ever

It sucks. You can't see the other half of the conversation but I was getting flamed harder than I ever have in my life. Now an account that I've spent well over $800 on is banned for two weeks.

38 Comments

ChermorgMar 19, 20184 votes

You can't see the other half of the conversation but I was getting flamed harder than I ever have in my life.

So, the reason for this is because, quite frankly, it doesn't matter. Well - it does - just not when we're discussing your account standing and punishment.

Your punishment is based solely on things you have typed in chat. You cannot control what others type - you can only control what you type and press enter on. Similarly, nobody else forces you to be toxic in game - it is all you. That is why Riot only shows you your own chat logs with a punishment.

Given your constant harassment of multiple teammates - flaming them for being toxic - as well as your admission to giving up, this punishment definitely seems appropriate. I am assuming you have had chat restrictions before, in which case a 14 day suspension would be the next step.

Keep in mind that the message you got with your ban that states "the next punishment may be a permanent suspension" (or worded similarly) is not a joke. If you are negative - regardless of "why" you are negative or "how bad" it is, your account may be permanently banned after this.

Sexy Man ChildMar 19, 20181 votes

When people are calling me the N word, telling me to kill myself and saying that I'm worthless, that I should uninstall, etc, I hardly think that anything that I typed over that 40 minute period is unjustified. I reported him as well, but despite the intensity of the words he sent me, he received no punishment. He reported me not for toxicity, but because he thought I was a bad player. Ultimately, he belittled me, thought I was bad, reported me for being bad, and now the actually toxic player is continuing on while the victim is not. I have supported this community since season 3. I have had chat restrictions in the past and have learned from them. Giving someone a 2 week ban in a game where I didn't swear at anyone, I didn't say anything obsene and only asked to stop getting flamed at is not a fair punishment in the least. It's already disgusting that RIOT did away with the tribunal and bans are generated by robots now. If this game went to the tribunal I never would have been put in this position

ChermorgMar 19, 20183 votes

If others are abusing chat, you are free to utilize the mute and report features to both mitigate the effect of their chat on you, and to ensure that their account is looked into. You are not, however, free to harass them in return for their toxicity. You further have no way of knowing whether any other account was punished or not - you will not always receive a notification if an account is punished.

You were not the victim here. You ceased being the victim the second you started being negative and toxic in chat yourself. It is never acceptable to be toxic, regardless of anything anyone else is saying or doing. If you feel the urge to be toxic due to their chat, mute them and move on.

As I said (and you confirmed), you had a chat restriction (or multiple) before this - and those messages made explicitly clear your next punishment may be a suspension. You claim to have learned from them but quite frankly if you are still being negative, harassing others, and trying to coax others into reporting other players, you have not. Your chat restrictions were a warning that any form of harassment or negativity is not allowed - not just "well he started it" or "well he was worse" - never. I strongly recommend you do not blow off this suspension as it is likely the final warning before your account is permanently suspended if you continue this sort of retaliatory toxicity - or any toxicity for that matter.

And from someone who did participate in Tribunal with quite the stellar accuracy rating on my votes, yes, your chat would certainly have been punished in Tribunal. You may not have voted punish on it, but the vast majority of the community would have.

Sexy Man ChildMar 19, 20181 votes

Here's where I don't see the issue. There wasn't any rage or angst in anything that I had typed. There aren't specifics in any of the response. There is only, "You have been banned, figure it out." I don't what I did wrong. I don't. I didn't swear, I didn't call names, I didn't single anyone out. I momentarily mentioned a point of weakness, 12 minutes into a 43 minute game. After that there was nothing on my end, and another 31 minutes of hate and discontent from the Jungler who initiated the entire scene.

ChermorgMar 19, 20183 votes

You were negative the entire game - constantly commenting on how others were toxic, going to get banned, etc.

Toxicity is not just flaming - it is negativity that detracts from the game as well.

Also.. you didn't single anyone out, but:

Sexy Man Child: i'm excited for your ban rammus

Sexy Man ChildMar 19, 20181 votes

I was, genuinely. That chat restriction was fairly recent and I am genuinely reformed. If you saw the previous chat you would understand. So yes, I was excited for him to learn something and for the community to get a little cleaner. That's why I'm confused about this entire thing. I felt myself going down a bad road, and I stopped. The worst part is, we WON the game. Handily. At no point was there any threat of losing the game. There are 38 lines from me in a 47 minute game, 30 of which happened before the 12 minute mark, at the height of getting flamed from more than one player. That's a 35 minute period at the end of the game that I didn't say jack. A 35 minute period where I was mindlessly insulted over and over again. If there is a "helpful tip" before games that specifically states that players are more likely to do well when they aren't getting flamed, then why punish someone who got flamed, sent some chat and stopped. I get it. "He was worse," is a bad mentality. This chat log is tame though and you know it.

AraMoOseMar 19, 20183 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sexy Man Child,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=BvHIy5rt,comment-id=000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2018-03-19T22:28:27.900+0000)

I am genuinely reformed.

Evidently you are not...

Sexy Man ChildMar 19, 20181 votes

When you go from cursing people out and saying provocative things to people just to see them squirm to mildly typing non expletives at the someone who is advocating my death, I would called that reformed. I do not, and never will believe that anything in this game rendered a report.

ChermorgMar 19, 20182 votes

This is what the other player means when they say evidently you are not reformed.

The fact you think this is okay because it's only "tame" toxicity is the problem here. If you were truly reformed, you would understand that it is never okay to be any bit toxic or negative in the chat box of the game.

Sexy Man ChildMar 19, 20181 votes

So how does the robotic response system work then? It doesn't search for curse words, it doesn't search for triggered responses. Does it just look for a total number of things typed in an entire game? If I didn't say a word, ran it down mid repeatedly and actually intentionally fed, would it look at my total number of deaths, run it through some algorithm and decide that yes, I indeed did intentionally feed? How does it work? I get it, I can't type, period, dot. I understand that. But now, with an account that is on the radar, am I at risk of losing everything if I have a bad game? I am legitimately scared that I am going to lose this account. The robots have obviously been turned onto "ban everyone" monster mode forcing us all to play on our various smurf accounts instead. I was an avid member of the tribunal and see the various benefits of it. Allowing robots to handle players' accounts is not the way forward.

ChermorgMar 19, 20182 votes

No, the robots haven't been turned onto any "higher" mode or "more stringent" mode recently. The only change that has happened in the past few years is the addition of a few things that are absolutely zero tolerance - such as homophobic/racist slurs as well as telling others to kill or harm themselves or others.

The IFS (Instant Feedback System) operates on a machine learning principle - most likely an artificial neural network or similar algorithm. Basically, to train the system, it was fed millions of chat logs that Tribunal voters deemed punishworthy - as well as many logs that were deemed not punishworthy - along with what each log was deemed. Basically the dataset for training had sets of two elements - the log itself, and the (expected) result - punish/not punish.

The IFS then began to learn what was considered toxic and negative behavior. Computers are very powerful nowadays - they can recognize patterns in words, they can recognize sentence structure, they can recognize the difference between "fuck you" and "fuck me" and "wow fucking great play" and "wow fuck that play". The IFS is continually audited to ensure that only valid punishments are being issued, and it has a much less than 1% failure rate (i.e. failing to punish someone who deserved it, or punishing someone who did not deserve it).

I really do not understand where people get this whole "I can't trust this to a computer" notion from. We already trust our credit, our livelihoods, our money to computer software ran by banks and merchants. We trust our safety to computer software ran by phone companies, internet companies, and the government. We trust our power grid to computer software. We trust our healthcare records to computer software. Yet we can't trust software to do a relatively simple and mundane task that it does for many other businesses without fail?

On the topic of if you have a bad game, yes. Your next punishment may be issued upon any further instance of negativity until your account is back in good standing. To return to good standing usually takes over 3 months of active playing without valid reports - and is not tied to honor. You will not be notified when you are in "good standing" again.

It's really honestly counterproductive to even think like this - your focus should not be "can I have a bad game", it should be "I am never going to be toxic again - ever".

Hoenheim777Mar 19, 20182 votes

It is hard to trust the system because the system is not transparent. If they released a specific rule set that updates itself just like the system does then it would be much easier to trust it and to accept guilt when one breaches the rules of the system.

ChermorgMar 19, 20182 votes

There is not a specific rule set that any human would be able to read. Your brain, for example, holds up to 40 terabytes of data. Artificial Neural Networks don't tend to use 40 terabytes, but they do tend to have rulesets and programs that extend over multiple gigabytes of data.

Per this link, not including the fact you would have to know the programming langauge that the IFS stores its data in, you could be looking at a lot of data:

There are roughly 900,000 ACSII text pages per 1GB of memory. (from that site)

It is simply not possible to publish the ruleset because nobody would actually read it. And even if they did, people would use the IFS' detection ruleset to avoid detection methods.

Hoenheim777Mar 19, 20181 votes

As per your description of the system, if people are somehow avoiding the system's detection methods it would update itself and start detecting them because people would report those behaviors. Besides, people already do that with the current system. Some people are just sarcastic every time somebody misplays and others ask if certain player is afk even though he is clearly in the game trying to win. Those are a few among may other behaviors I have seen first hand.

As for the rule set being incredibly long, I would argue that if it is so long its unreadable then it is too strict and too sensitive in its detection methods. If my account is in danger of being permabanned I would take the time to read a list of what to avoid saying even if it was pretty damn long.

ChermorgMar 19, 20182 votes

There is no list of what to avoid though. It's a holistic review - you won't ever get banned by saying "wow you suck" once in a game, but that in combination with other things may very well get you banned.

The ruleset is the Summoner's Code - follow that and you will not be punished - plain and simple.

The ruleset the IFS uses to detect violations of the Summoner's code is complex - think of it like this - we know the word "rule" to mean "a guidance that is to be followed, regulation, etc". But if we were to try to map out the exact neurons in our brain that made us know that... it'd be way too complicated. The word "rule" is the Summoner's Code. The map of the neurons is what you are asking for.

Hoenheim777Mar 19, 20181 votes

I think the Summoners Code is so vague that following it is definitely not plain and simple. It's like saying: "Be a good person". What being a good person entails is not the same to everybody. Riot's player base is definitely big enough to have people in it with different enough cultural backgrounds where they have different perceptions of what being a good person means.

LordofStoneMar 20, 20181 votes

Hence, why some of us have left. If you are too much of a cry baby to play a competitive game, then dont

AraMoOseMar 19, 20182 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sexy Man Child,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=BvHIy5rt,comment-id=00000000000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2018-03-19T22:36:06.240+0000)

When you go from cursing people out and saying provocative things to people just to see them squirm to mildly typing non expletives at the someone who is advocating my death, I would called that reformed. I do not, and never will believe that anything in this game rendered a report.

Yes, YOU would call that reformed. But when you get to choose the definitions of the words, you are also a king, a superhero and a champion.

I would NOT call you reformed, as evidenced by your chat logs.

ChermorgMar 19, 20182 votes

This chat log may be "tame" in your eyes, but I wouldn't want to play with you and nobody else wants a negative nelly in their games. Negativity, if repeated over time, is just as detrimental to the community as the "n word" or "f word" are.

It doesn't matter if it's "tame" toxicity - it's still toxicity and not acceptable.

LordofStoneMar 20, 20181 votes

Dumbest argument I have heard yet. Stupid, straight up.

LordofStoneMar 20, 20181 votes

Not the greatest argument in the world.

Kei143Mar 19, 20183 votes

People are judged individually by their own behavior in that game and punished based on their behavioral history alone.

The only context that matters is whether or not you were toxic. Verbalizing your will to give up demoralizes the team and is generally shunned upon in the community. Your passive-aggressiveness of avoiding playing the game doesn't help you.

If they were toxic, they will be judged for that game and punished if they had a poor behavioral history.

Sexy Man ChildMar 19, 20181 votes

That's the issue. I didn't at any point in the game actually stop playing. I typed words, they had been said and there was nothing I could do once send was hit, and I continued to play the game. I stopped typing and focused on finding a way back into the game and I ended up playing a very good game. At no point did I afk, actually int, or do anything that warranted the language that was sent my way. I'm not the kind of person to sit back and get talked to harshly without trying to stand my ground. Call me ridiculous, but if someone said the words to your face that they said to me in text would you not be inclined to try to stand up for yourself.

Kei143Mar 19, 20183 votes

Why would I need to stand for myself if I can just walk away and they'll just be talking to themselves?

It really is not necessary to stand for yourself as you aren't in any harm. You can walk away from them freely without consequence by muting them, and once you do so, you won't hear them any more. So why do you need to stand your ground? Infact, what kind of ground are you trying to stand for and protect?

I mean, you can choose to continue the argument by standing your ground, by being passive-aggressively toxic, just be prepared to pay the consequences.

Afterall, it takes 2 hands to clap.

Hoenheim777Mar 19, 20182 votes

I they are not harming you by being insanely toxic then why is Riot even taking a stand against toxicity at all? Words can harm and they can cause a negative reaction in another person. They are not just characters on a screen, they have a meaning behind them that meaning may or may not offend you. It is only human to get annoyed or offended once in a while; to have emotions.

The fact that his immediate response in an emotionally charged situation was to respond to his flamer does not make him just as guilty as the person who was hard flaming him all game.

Kei143Mar 20, 20182 votes

Just because I can walk away from further harm doesn't mean I didn't take any harm in the first place. I certainly do agree with you there, but there really is no need for a player to stand their ground and put more fuel to the flame war. Walk away and the fire will blow itself out without any fuel.

In regards to whether OP is less guilty than the other players, it really doesn't matter. You are treating this as if it's a court system where A's toxicity is compared against B's toxicity and they are judged and punished for 1 game.

The system does not work that way, but instead it punishes players based on consistency x severity. To put it in simplier english this is how the system works:

Recieve a report
Review the game for toxicity
Assign a grade to the reported game, 0 = no toxicity and 100 = used hate speech.
Accumulate the grades with the grades from the player's behavioral history. If the reached a grade of 100, the player will be punished. Grades from the same game are not stacked together.

OP's chat is mild, if this was all there is (meaning, the chat is not edited and there wasn't more toxicity in pre/post game chat), it means that his toxicity grade must be in the 90s, and this game was the one that pushed him over the punishment threshhold.

Other people will be judged and punished based on where their toxicity grade is and their behavioral history.

Hoenheim777Mar 20, 20181 votes

I am aware of how the system works, I just think that i should be updated or changed. Zero tolerance policies always seem fair to those that are never involved in whatever is not tolerated. Anybody who actually has to see the consequence of such policies feels they are unfair. Also there is a lot of controversy as to whether it is even effective. Here is a study that says why it may not be effective: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19086747

Definition in case you don't know what it means. "Zero-tolerance policies forbid persons in positions of authority from exercising discretion or changing punishments to fit the circumstances subjectively; they are required to impose a pre-determined punishment regardless of individual culpability, extenuating circumstances, or history."

Yes, the system takes history into account. However, the circumstances and individual culpability is not taken into account.

Kei143Mar 20, 20182 votes

hmm.. I might be misunderstanding you, so here is a foreword warning that I may be trying to make a point that is totally irrelevant.

The zero tolerance system in the current behavioral system reference to the simple chat filter check on whether you used hate speech / encouraged self harm. Those that used such words will get punished with a 14-day ban. Then again, Rioters have reduced or reverted punishments on those that have had a good behavioral history, esp for those that were ban baiting.

I get the feeling that you are using zero-tolerance in a different context, as in "once the system says it is toxic, it will be toxic regardless of how you try to twist the arguement", which is kind of true, seeing that 99.8% of the punishments applied from the system are considered as "correct punishments". People can still msg player support and get them to manually review the punishment.

Keep in mind that the community makes the rules and Riot's IFS is a learning machine that learns from community reports and we are the ones determining what is punishable.

While I'm here firing blind shots as I'm slightly confused by your posts, we also need to take in account OP's behavioral history. The IFS would pardon a couple of games of a player blowing up, but if the player has shown the inability to control themselves consistently, then I'd certainly agree that they should be deemed as a repeat offender and thus should be punished.

Hoenheim777Mar 20, 20181 votes

I am referring to the main gripe that this thread brings up where the other players were so toxic and tilting that he himself engaged in toxic behavior when he responded to them. The end result being that he got banned for engaging in the not tolerated action which in this case was being toxic in chat. He got his punishment regardless of what the other players did to provoke him. The circumstances were that he was getting hard flamed. That fact was ignored when he was given the punishment for being toxic.

It is like when a student is getting bullied and he fights back against the bully. They will both get detention because they both engaged in the non tolerated action which in that case was fighting. The student who fought back and his family will feel it was unfair, that he was just defending himself. The school will justify this by saying that the zero tolerance policy reduces fighting in general and that his specific case is an acceptable loss in the war against bullying or fighting in school.

I am arguing that zero tolerance policies are not even proven to work. There are studies like the one i cited in my previous comment that indicate that they are not lowering the occurrence of the non tolerated action. Therefore, the people who are unfairly punished because of this policy aren't tolerable casualties in the mission to eliminate a certain behavior. They are merely people who were unfairly punished.

Kei143Mar 20, 20182 votes

but if the student consistently fought back when he had the option to just walk away every time,

shouldn't that be taken in account as well?

Sexy Man ChildMar 20, 20181 votes

How would I go about getting my review manually reviewed?

Kei143Mar 20, 20181 votes

https://support.riotgames.com

And ask for a manual review on the punishment.

Hoenheim777Mar 19, 20183 votes

Something similar just happened to me, got hard flamed for several games in a row by multiple people and I got punished for simply replying to them with less than a fraction of their toxicity. I see no point in posting on these boards though. The only replies you will get are people saying you deserved your ban and that you are toxic. Also they will suggest you just mute toxic people and report them. They get triggered by toxicity but are not willing to sympathize with others who find it annoying just because they chose to respond to the flamer.

The punishment system has gotten multiple times more strict this season and this seems to be happening more and more often. Every suggestion on how to make it better gets down voted immediately and you get called toxic for simply not being satisfied by and wanting to improve the current system. The only hope is that the system gets so draconian that Riot inadvertently alienates a significant enough portion of their player base. Then the player base would start to dwindle and they will finally see it as a problem and do something about it.

Sexy Man ChildMar 19, 20181 votes

You make me happy

Pandemic PunchMar 19, 20182 votes

{quoted}

Something similar just happened to me, got hard flamed for several games in a row by multiple people and I got punished for simply replying to them with less than a fraction of their toxicity. I see no point in posting on these boards though. The only replies you will get are people saying you deserved your ban and that you are toxic. Also they will suggest you just mute toxic people and report them. They get triggered by toxicity but are not willing to sympathize with others who find it annoying just because they chose to respond to the flamer.

The punishment system has gotten multiple times more strict this season and this seems to be happening more and more often. Every suggestion on how to make it better gets down voted immediately and you get called toxic for simply not being satisfied by and wanting to improve the current system. The only hope is that the system gets so draconian that Riot inadvertently alienates a significant enough portion of their player base. Then the player base would start to dwindle and they will finally see it as a problem and do something about it.

Sums it up pretty well. Don't forget the fact that the superior toxic players likely won't receive any punishment at all. That should be relevant but is always overlooked. If that player doesn't deserve a ban, then neither should the person who responds once or twice.

SwiftKitten88Mar 19, 20182 votes

i honestly dont see a single toxic thing in that log.. i have no idea why u were banned.. am i am a player who has never been banned or even chat restricted

LateCustomerMar 19, 20181 votes

For what it's worth, when you get your account back, try this:

-Don't type anything in chat, except maybe "gg", "gj", and "ty".

-If someone shows any signs of being toxic, mute them. Do not reply.

Replying to toxicity with toxicity, in the end, makes you toxic. And that's that. You're not defending anything. You mute toxic people then all they can do is shout in the wind at nothing, while you're free to focus on your game. It's that easy.