Bonobo: A tale of unfair punishment, disillusionment, and potential recovery

Bonobo

Overview The intent of this post is to better understand the reason for my 20 game chat restriction as well as to voice my complaints and offer solutions. I understand and accept my 6 game chat restriction.

I have played league of legends since Season 2 on a couple accounts (RIP the names and passwords i forgot). I have never had any punishments or restrictions before, despite the fact I have a poor internet connection and sporadically dc. I have dealt with plenty of toxicity, trolling, and attempted religious conversions and survived it all. However, until today, I have never had any issues with the game or community that might stop me from playing outright.

Today I received what I believe to be an unjust 20 game chat restriction after just getting rid of a 6 game restriction. I will cover what happened to get the 6 game restriction before covering the 20. I only have my chat log from the 20 game restriction and will post separately below. In addition I will make a summary of each section to allow for a quicker read.

Edit: I have moved the Summary from each section here for those not biologically disposed to reading a thicc rant Edit2: This was a horrible attempt at a joke but I'm going to keep it, please forgive me. Edit3: I looked at some other board posts and they often link the match history so here it is: https://matchhistory.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/#match-details/NA1/3259418922/218695825?tab=overview

Summary: 6 Game Chat Restriction

1. Encountered trolls in 2 games who inted and flamed me
2. I called them apes

20 Game Chat Restriction

1. Jungle trolls my lane, support steals buffs/revenge reports/refuses to surrender, mid afks and revenge reports
2. I try to prevent myself from being wrongfully reported

Chat Restriction

1. I dislike the fundamental policy and believe it is over policing speech Solutions:
2. auto-mute all
3. parental mute controls
4. Increase leniency

False/"revenge" reporting

1. this type of reporting is still relevant and I believe not efficiently handled Solutions:
2. Increase # of games/timespan (details listed below)
3. Remove reports from punished accounts w/ accompanying overview system

Afking/Open

1. Sometime justified
2. Other Times for "bad" reason
3. Everyone is annoyed but it is too game/person specific

GAMES The 6 game chat restriction was due to 2 normal games. In the first game, in which I was jungling, our blitzcrank support decided to troll after I failed to gank bot in a high enough frequency to meet his standards. Apparently this is more than 3 times in the first 10 minutes of the game. He then followed me around in the jungle last hitting all the jungle creeps he could. The rest of the game he continued to farm all my xp and gold and refused to do anything else. We eventually lost despite a 12 kill lead early game due to the 4v5 and lack of jg xp. In the second game our mid laner decided to repeatedly run it down mid after losing the early game. In both of these games I became frustrated with these trolls and called them apes after they repeatedly pinged and flamed me. I feel obliged to point out the types of primates I compared them to are very intelligent and closely related to humans unlike prosimians or monkeys. I may also have politely (and I mean politely) requested blitzcrank not propagate for the good of the human race. I then also may have said I was going to steal his grandmothers 401k. I understand and accept this chat restriction.

The 20 game chat restriction was due to a single normal game. I was supposed to be top, however our amumu jg didn't take smite and went top instead without telling anyone. I tried to jg instead (without smite) but had our janna support purposely steal the initial buff from me. I know it was on purpose because she used her zephyr (damage spell) to take it when it was below 100 health. I then, in my own lane, went a support item and did my best to win. At roughly 8 minutes in I rotated mid and last hit 6 minions under turret due to our talon mid backing at an awkward time. He took this as an offense and decided to afk in fountain after "warning" me to never steal his farm again. Our janna support blamed me for this, as well as saying I falsely accused her of stealing the buff, and asked in all chat for the enemy team to report me. I then spent the rest of the game in a very frustrated state repeatedly trying to defend myself from being reported in the fear that I may be banned or recieve another chat restriction. We tried to surrender the obviously hopeless game (no jg no mid) however janna refused to surrender keeping us hostage and continued to ask people to report me as "revenge" for what I did. I survived this hell 3/4/2 without ever trolling or saying anything mean or against guidelines. This is why I believe my second restriction to be unjust.

Complaints and Potential Solutions I understand why I received the 6 game chat restriction, however I disagree with the fundamental policy because I believe it is over policing speech. The mute button is there if you do not want to hear what other people have to say. I understand that younger kids (myself included in the past) and people who dislike trash talk also play this game. The solution that I offer is that on game startup all players should be auto muted (or at least all chat) with an option to reverse this choice. This would make it easy for parents to lock this option for younger kids. I believe trash talk to be a fun part of the game and dislike the restriction of speech. I understand that threats and certain words perhaps should not be allowed, however messing with an opponent's mental through words is no different in context then emoting or dancing after a kill. I have frequently been on the receiving end, however I don't think a few bad experiences or hurt feelings should dictate the agenda for the entire playerbase.

My other primary issue is with false reporting. I am still unsure why I was chat restricted after my second game and am hoping a response will shed some light as I currently believe it to fall under this category. The situation I found myself in where someone is "revenge" reporting you (which they literally admitted word for word in game) I see only two options. You either attempt to explain your case for why you should not be reported or be silent and hope your team backs you up. Since the majority of my team was already trolling or afk I did not trust them to back me up. Therefore I took into my own hands to defend myself for the fear that I may be banned or recieve another chat restriction due to false reports. This obviously did not work. I have two solutions for this.

The first, and easier to implement, is to require a larger number of games (I would recommend 5 instead of 3 or in the case of my 20 game restriction only 1) that violate rules in a certain timespan in order for punishments to be enacted. Since making the timespan purely time based would allow players who don't play often or use multiple accounts to avoid punishment and making it purely game frequency based would allow those who occasionally troll avoid punishment, I believe you should combine the two to lump reports together over a 2 week period. I am not too well versed in the actual specifics of the reporting software so some version of this is probably already in effect.

My second solution would be to get rid of reports from accounts who are repeatedly reported or receive punishments. This would be much more difficult to implement due to the repercussions of "Revenge" reporting. In my case I would no longer have reports against me from janna and talon (from whom I instantly received the report feedback you reported someone who was punished blah blah) which would be good. However, both the blitz and mid laner from my 6 game restriction (who are still playing as we speak) as well as the talon and janna would have my reports against them removed which is bad. The easiest workaround would be utilizing machine learning (cough you hiring? cough) and/or having a team dedicated to overviewing this system.

A separate issue that annoys me greatly is afking. Some games, for those of us who do other things outside of league, are a waste of time playing out due to poor gameplay at the start that sets us far behind. We could win, however that requires the enemy team to repeatedly make significant mistakes. According to a friend of mine this would require playing in a manner similar to a, uh, type of primate perhaps. Are we positive government labs aren't forcing caged primates to boost players? Other times people purposely afk when the game is easily winnable due to anger or lack of game knowledge/willingness to play it out. I understand that it is hard to say this situation it is okay and in this one it isn't, however the open mid policy of the korean servers is (to my knowledge) not present or as accepted in the NA servers and I wish it was more often utilized. I have no specific solution I deem fair so I will end this section here with this tirade.

Final Words

Currently, even though honestly I probably shouldn't cause I personally have more fulfilling and useful ways to spend my time like planking, I will continue to play league due to all my fond memories over the years and my unbreakable addiction to it. However, I am disillusioned with certain aspects of the game and disappointed in the way they have been handled. Thank you for all the good times, I hope there will be many more.

Sincerely, a Bonobo