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No video game has enough resources to have a full court and trial over a player behavior issue

Gall·6/21/2018, 4:03:58 PM·45 votes·14,241 views

In real life, if you do something negative towards another but it was out of self defense (i.e. hitting back), then you will probably get off the hook after a thorough investigation and possibly a trial depending on the severity.

Video games cannot do this for everyone. It would take far too much time and resources to individually review each offense, see what the opponents said, peer review with each other to decide who was in the right and wrong all while trying to decide if a self defense clause is deemed applicable. Since they could only possibly do this for a few cases and not everyone, it would be entirely unfair to the majority who are never able to get their "case" reviewed before receiving the initial punishment. And since that is the case, the only way a large gaming company can operate is by having a zero-tolerance policy rather than a it's okay sometimes but depending on context policy.

So before crying to the boards saying that it's unfair because they started it, try to keep in mind that the rules were pro-actively set and made clear to be zero-tolerance, you accepted these rules, and you broke them.

42 Comments

La Belle Sauvage6/21/2018, 4:04:55 PM11 votes

Love this post. Well written.

mrchipopo6/21/2018, 8:40:53 PM10 votes

What if I told you that this game had a jury of one's own peers deciding these things as well? And that they did so when they had even more players than they do now? What if I told you they intentionally removed this system so they could install an automated one that doesn't take any context into account? What if I told you they intentionally disabled a system that appropriately punished people to install one that didn't, but would punish more people? What if I told you that they did this, not to make the game community better, but to simply reduce the amount of naughty things that were said in chat so they could have data to suggest they are "dealing" with toxicity?

I'm fine with ignorant cop-outs for corporations, as long as we aren't excusing them from the ability to do something they've already done! I know for fact this is not beyond their ability, because they did exactly that for 5 friggin seasons.

It is not that they cannot have context, it's that they do not want to have context. They do not want to reduce gameplay toxicity, or care about reducing actual toxicity, they just want to be able to say they are, and have data to prove it. How do they do this? Simply make a system that bans people for saying x,y, or z and now they can claim x,y, and z have been reduced.

In my opinion, I much rathered when the tribunal would give a guy a break if he was being blatantly trolled, or would be able to identify someone being a jerk intentionally without saying naughty words. Since the tribunal went away, at least half my games have a griefer in them and I know that I can neither say anything to them, nor will Riot take any action against them.

But thanks for excusing them from the responsibility to do the moral and reasonable thing, you corporate puppet.

Chermorg6/21/2018, 4:43:13 PM6 votes

I'd also point out that not just in League but in every online community I've been a part of when you ask the community "is it okay if X" where X is the "he started it" or "he was worse" or related arguments, the community virtually always confirms they do not think toxicity is ever okay - not "if X" - never.

Troll for Trump6/21/2018, 5:19:36 PM5 votes

Efficient system doesn't make it any less crappy.

Had a game yesterday. Everything was going fine. Enemy Yas got tilted and started inting due to jg ganks. Rest of game was filled with all chat flaming, and the post-game lobby literally had multiple people telling each other to kill themselves.

Doesn't feel right for everyone on the enemy team to get punished off one inter, but that's what happens in a zero-tolerance system.

It's shit.

Sewer Side6/22/2018, 1:19:42 AM4 votes

Only 26 votes in almost 10 hours, Boards is pathetic.

They can upvote liars who present partial chat logs up into the 100s within 5 hours, but a well articulated post gets next to zero attention.

I’m done with this place. +1 to you OP but you’re preaching to a crowd that only demands Riot’s head on a pike.

mlm olo mlm6/21/2018, 4:57:46 PM4 votes

Rumor has it, some large gaming companies don't have any player behavior systems.

Anarchy is more fair than automated.

Snowman Arc6/22/2018, 10:06:28 AM2 votes

I do agree, but I also have a slightly different scenario in mind.

The penalties need to be much much harsher. We don't need multiple warnings. 10-game chat ban, then 25 games, then 14-day suspensions and then a permanent ban. No. You are being a complete dick in the chat and flame people? 14-day suspension instantly. Let's see if you will ever be a dick again, if the next time you even spew anything else you get permabanned.

Or, if someone is trolling, inting etc, perma ban them. No need for something like this to be in the community. It's not the heat of the moment or anything. It's pre-calculated and done with intent in mind. In the case of flaming, maybe we can give them ONE CHANCE, because of the benefit of the heat of the moment. MAYBE. But trolling and generally actions that are predetermined and precalculated need no chances.

With that said, the part about trolling or inting can be hard to punish. There is no reliable system that will 100% guarantee if someone trolls, for example. That's why I do believe that we need manual monitoring of cases. We can have Riot employees watch games themselves and consider if someone is trolling or not. But that would only cover a very very tiny portion of the games played, right? Yes. Sadly, it's true. You can't cover up all games, you can't hire enough people to do that. What you CAN DO, though, is have someone watch for example 10 games a day. If the penalty is gonna be harsh, then you will get 10 people perma banned on that day. Next day, you do it again. Imagine having 10 people watching 10 flagged games daily and also assume that the community is decent enough to flag actual cases of trolling. This way, you will have 100 accounts getting permanently banned every day.

With this in mind I'd like to guess some outcomes.

Accounts will get indefinitely suspended and be 100% fair. Good riddance.
Other players will look at that and say "oh, what if I just get unlucky and get caught? I will definitely be banned." This will dissuade them from thinking about trolling.

As it stands right now, you can have machines operating 24/7, but it doesn't do much. Apart from the easy cases of racial slurs, which are cases that get penalized pretty instantly, the system can't really identify much of anything else. The only way that a troll will get penalized is if they get reported repeatedly and over a good percentage of their games. This means that, once a month, I can probably go ahead and completely troll a game and get away with it, which is unacceptable.

Right now, the chance of being penalized about something is very low. Also, the penalty you receive is also pretty trivial in most cases. I'll give you an example: I have a friend who has an alt account. He delibirately lost all his 10 placement games this season to try and get to bronze. He didn't int, he didn't flame, he didn't AFK, he just didn't press his active items, didn't press R, wasn't around when teamfights were happening, he wasn't farming or ganking. From a system perspective, this will never ever be recognisable, even the players themselves might think that "oh, this Nunu is actually doing well, he has 0 deaths". So, how do you punish this case from an automated system? You can't. My friend got away with losing 10 games that he intentionally wanted to lose, but found a way to easily trick the system.

This season, I started being very toxic, because of the game state and matchmaking. I just can't hold back anymore. It's sad, but it's true. I flame people in about half of my ranked games. The moment I see someone doing something extremely stupid that I ping them away from, and end up granting an advantage to the enemy because of it, I just flame them. And I do that a lot. Do you know how many punishments I've got? ZERO. FUCKING ZERO punishments. I go into passive-aggressive chats, I go into a lot of aggressive chatting with allies. I do seem to resemble some cases that appear on these boards occasionally about people wondering why they get chat restricted, and I see their chat logs and I see them literally spamming the chat with irrelevant garbage targeting other players and I 100% justify the penalty. Guess what. That's what I also do in half of my ranked games, and I still have not been penalized.

This just proves that the system just doesn't work. I'd like to point out at this point that I have never said anything offensive that regards sex, races or homophobia, or threats / death wishes etc. Regardless, the system just doesn't work.

mlm olo mlm6/22/2018, 1:22:12 AM2 votes

Majority of "old" games, 1980-2000. Some games didn't even police cheating.

Despìca Bìll6/22/2018, 8:58:18 AM1 votes

You make excellent points. I think the biggest contributor to overall dissatisfaction with the system is the lack of transparency. It makes it very hard to know whether it's working when all you can do is click a button and hope Riot does something. I can count the number of instant feedback messages I've gotten on one hand, while the number of reports I've sent is much larger. That means I'm either doing something wrong, or the system is, but there's no way to know which. As it stands, the only one who knows something happened is the player who was punished, and the specialist (if there was one) who handed out the punishment. Everyone else who had to deal with their crappy behavior is left completely oblivious as to whether anything was done or not, and that leaves everyone feeling like nothing was done at all.

That being said, I agree, self-defense is not a valid argument here, as no one is actually in any danger of being attacked. I have my own zero-tolerance policy: if someone deliberately screws me over in-game, I find creative ways to screw them over as well. But I certainly don't expect to be let off the hook if someone catches me. I'm only marginally less guilty than the person who started it.

Nanolathe116/21/2018, 9:28:05 PM1 votes

wait a sec... if you have discord and/or a mic and talk shit to a teammate through that, is that punishable? does riot get a printout of voice spoken words? hmm interesting

SalBunny6/22/2018, 1:53:01 PM1 votes

one of the only zero tolerance game in what comes to flame but still the most toxic game in the world retarded riot

rtbf2216514126/22/2018, 5:27:05 PM1 votes

Allow me to note that if you retaliate in real life towards something unjustified done to you, you are off the hook socially and a lot of the time even via other outlets. Even when not off the hook, the instigator always get punished harder than the retaliatory. This post you just made completely ignores the fact that social norms and rules exist.

You want an example of a game that does it?

Hockey.

"a player who by his actions or demeanor demonstrates any/some of the following criteria: distance traveled; gloves off first; first punch thrown; menacing attitude or posture; verbal instigation or threats; conduct in retaliation to a prior game (or season) incident; obvious retribution for a previous incident in the game or season.” If a player is assessed an instigator penalty, he racks up 17 minutes in penalties: the two-minute minor plus 10-minute misconduct for the instigator on top of the five minutes for fighting."[1] The rule goes back to 1937-1938.

Online non-game outlets? How about forum moderation for one? There is NO excuse.

Every game I've played ALWAYS punished the instigator. Especially when brought to attention AFTER you got temp suspended or banned. I haven't seen this specific type of complaints about behavior moderation in game to the extent this game does it. A game that doesn't punish the instigator but punishes the retaliatory is backwards.I don't know what games you been playing. I do NOT want to know if you have been drinking, doing drugs, or smoking as a defense to this post.

[1] https://www.wingingitinmotown.com/2015/2/9/7482207/getting-to-know-the-nhl-rulebook-fight-instigator-rule

Risen296/22/2018, 6:26:11 PM1 votes

You're describing what right justice looks like, but then making excuses for why it's ok that LoL is unjust.

But there is never an excuse for injustice. It never starts being right to be unjust to people.

The responsibility is on Riot to act in a right and just way towards it's players.