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How Devs should rethink the way they deal with toxicity

BigDiDaddy·1/30/2018, 9:45:14 PM·1 votes·772 views

I'm a loud mouth. I've always been. It has its ups and its downs. However, I've never raged at another player for being bad, I've never steamed behind my screen repressing my thoughts being scared of a ban because of a player's behavior, I've always hated, with a deep passion, people raging at video games: that is my trigger point. Whenever my girlfriend is playing while in the same room as me, I get genuinely upset whenever I can feel her frustration at other players, yet she never says a bad word in-game. Then you have toxic players, ranging from call other bad, trying to tilt them with small little remarks, feeding, etc. You get the idea. Nobody wants that guy on their team, nobody thinks it's fun but the guy raging on the other hand. That said, I used to play this game, a lot, a few years ago. From season 2 to 4, I was on everyday, playing dozen games a day and just grinding my ass off to reach the highest rank I could. I was pretty proud of myself when I reached my goal, then I lost interest in the game and just quit playing. Then I met my girlfriend, who wanted to play games with me, so she got me back to playing and I'd play maybe two or three games a week. That was about two years ago. Then there was this specific game, we matched with a two-men premade (like us), and they were raging hard on the fifth player. I let myself go and defended the guy, even though he was dragging the team down, but I didn't care, I still don't. I was perma-banned for it (as I had previous situations beforehand). I didn't really care either, I even laughed about it, as I didn't really enjoy LoL anymore. At first I believe it was because of my attitude, but at the same time, it made no sense I would get perma-banned for being a good sport in all my matches (beside a few banter here and there, but that's always in good fun). Recently, I was bored and decided to play a few games of league on an account I used to have a long time ago. Same exact thing happened, perma-banned and everything. I opened a ticket (I didn't remember I had previous offenses on this account, so I was a bit shocked) and I had my answer. This time and the last, I wasn't banned for putting toxic players back into their place, but rather for using specific words. For example, in my last instance, I was baited into saying the N-word, as the guy raging was saying "nagger" instead of it and I told him to use to real word instead of hiding behind false ones. I also told him to "stop acting like a f*****", as he was acting like a child. Maybe the term wasn't appropriate, maybe I should have used another word, but I'm not here to justify my actions, I take full responsibility for them. My point is, after two years, riot still has the same problem it used to have back when I was first banned. So, obviously, something isn't going as planned. It got me thinking, going back to the use of the word "nagger", toxic players know they can't get banned for their attitude, at best they'll get suspended. However, they know, if they say the wrong words, it's instant actions taken against them. So they know how to go around these bans (I know too, but I don't care enough not to speak my mind, read my first statement). So you have this situation where "clever" toxic players just keep roaming the games and just making the experience worse for everybody, while players with no filter, get banned for saying specific words. Then, I asked the moderator (or whatever their title is), why they would allow me to say these words in the first place. By that, I mean, why not put a filter that can't be removed so nobody has to see these words? Wouldn't it make sense to do that rather than banning people for saying these words? I don't want to get into conspiracy theories or anything here, but something doesn't add up. After two years of ineffective measures, I would have thought riot would have backed up and rethought their strategy to solve this problem that has been plaguing LoL for its whole existence. Yet, they haven't, instead, it seems they have doubled down on it. I think the video made by videogamedunkey explaining this very issue is quite detailed on the situation, as i don't agree with him justifying his rage, I get where he comes from. In the end, I would recommend three things to developer:

  1. Let us say what we wish, the game, in itself, was made to talk shit. If you don't want to take that route, I perfectly understand, then go for the two following ones:
  2. Put a censor that can't be removed, no matter what, if you don't want specific words to be spoken;
  3. Give us an option to remove chat all together Anyway, some inb4 You shouldn't have used these bad mean words, no no no I know and I'm not trying to justify myself, this is beside the point and my examples are used as to put yourself in context Lol you were banned, get rekt, you won't get unbanned Beside the point, again I'm glad players like you aren't allowed to play Superb, but are you fine with actual toxic players playing in your games, if not, what should we do about it?

Anyway, have a great one, I hope League comes back to what it used to be: a fun place to hang around with friends and have a blast. Edit: People seem to be missing my point, so tl;dr version: toxicity is still here after two years of drastic measures, something's wrong. Wat do?

29 Comments

Timethief491/30/2018, 9:51:01 PM7 votes

Chat is part of the game, it shouldnt be removed entirely, not even as an option. Riot shouldnt have to cencor players, they dont expect you to be an angel, they expect you to just be a decent human beeing or atleast not to be an asshole.

AeroWaffle1/30/2018, 10:08:30 PM3 votes
  1. Put a censor that can't be removed, no matter what, if you don't want specific words to be spoken;

Nope. For there to be a review of a person's behavior in this system a player must be reported. A group of 5 friends is free to talk as much shit to each other as they want in teamchat. If nobody is offended and if nobody in the game thinks that the behavior was unacceptable, there is no harm.

Auto censoring words would not actually help in the first place. Even if the player doesn't creatively avoid the censor by changing a letter or two (and most people do this when they want to piss someone off), the intention still goes through. For example;

"WuKong you ******, stop stealing my CS you piece of ****"

Even censored, the behavior is still unacceptable. Even small situations like this;

"Sona is being a ******".

The reader knows that the *'s mean something that's rude enough to be censored, so it's still pretty unacceptable. Censoring helps people who don't want to see colorful language.

"**** me, I'm losing the lane hard up here."

No negative behavior here, just a swear.

ModThe Djinn1/30/2018, 11:06:03 PM2 votes

So a few things.

Firstly, the lack of filtered chat actually helps identify problematic people. If you can't get through to people using, say, hate speech, the sort of person who wants to use that offensively will find other ways to express the same sentiment that might be harder for the system to identify. That doesn't really reduce toxicity -- it just makes it more difficult to detect.

Secondly, some words are fine. "That was a fucking amazing play" is 100% okay. "Fuck, they got Dragon" is 100% okay. "Fuck you, kid" is NOT fine. The only times the words themselves are the issue is with pejorative language.

Removing chat and/or letting you say whatever you want also aren't really options. Removing chat means that important communication may not be occurring, and the idea that you shouldn't communicate with your team is not something Riot wants to encourage. Letting all chat go creates a more toxic game environment, which is a big problem.

Riot can't (nor do I think they believe they can) ever eliminate toxicity. What the system does, however, is somewhat minimize it, which I feel is a good goal.

I hope League comes back to what it used to be: a fun place to hang around with friends and have a blast.

League still is this. If your definition of fun includes behavior or language Riot has deemed toxic, you can still use the /whisper command to friends, queue as a 5-man and just treat the enemy respectfully, or use Discord and say whatever the bloody hell you want. The game is still the game, and its rules on behavior aren't that much different than they were back in Season 2.

Telephone Booth1/30/2018, 11:10:56 PM2 votes

Their system detects words like nagger. These "clever" toxic people you speak of, are not getting away with it just because they switched the I with an a. Lol, Riot isn't THAT bad at what they do. They've reassured people several times that they detect misspellings, languages, most of the ways people THINK they can avoid getting caught, they actually detect. So that whole premise behind censoring it is just flawed. People will always find ways to spell something differently. Imagine how many thousands of ways they would have to censor words, and then how that would affect actual real words that people say all the time.

I would support just letting people say whatever they want, though. Obviously that ain't gonna happen.

Colgate Gator1/30/2018, 10:15:54 PM2 votes

No thanks, I don't care for listening to unfiltered "loud mouths" without repercussions in each game I join.

Primaquarius1/31/2018, 12:09:46 AM1 votes

I'm a loud mouth. I've always been.

Guess Ill stop reading there

Mordius1/31/2018, 4:10:16 AM1 votes

Please consider: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/player-behavior-moderation/yGWOlKIK-unofficial-discord-for-permabanned-players

If you ever plan to come back to league

jpguy9021/30/2018, 10:12:50 PM1 votes

I feel like its pretty easy to get around chat filters. Whether it be be spaces between the letters (e x a m p l e) or periods (e.x.a.m.p.l.e) or any other variances of those.

Butt Ρlug1/30/2018, 10:37:55 PM1 votes

I want my teammates to focus and do everything they can to win the actual game, i don't want them missing cs and hiding under turrets while writing pointless stuff in chat !

ModUlanopo1/30/2018, 10:38:39 PM1 votes

but are you fine with actual toxic players

"Toxic" means different things to different people. You clearly have different priorities when it comes to the behavior systems. That's okay, but it doesn't mean that other people are wrong.

HalcyonDweller1/30/2018, 11:38:16 PM1 votes

I see where you are coming from, so I'm actually inclined to upvote your post. I had that problem too for the longest time, I can tolerate bad teammates to the ends of the earth, but when another player makes a conscious choice to try to make another person feel like crap I used to go rabid.

That said, in the end it does not help things to cuss out or do any other things to those players to put them in their place, because in actuality our reaction (with it's high magnitude) is actually more likely to reinforce their behavior. This is why Riot punishes flaming even when the flame-ee is utter shit and deserves it.

I feel your pain and it's awful that people can say things like that and seem to not be punished while the people who react to them are punished, but it's not that Riot does not care about this issue, it is more that they have to work really hard for even a small step of progress against toxicity. In the end punishing people for providing fuel to toxic players is more effective than trying to actually censor those toxic players. And so Riot does both, they punish toxic players and they also punish people who react to them.

At this point I'm just rambling and I can't remember where I was headed with this so I'll just conclude it with this:

It sucks that people sometimes get away with being toxic, and it can be immensely satisfying to 'put them in their place.' But at the end of the day, taking justice into our own hands only makes the problem worse and it's not worth it. Better to mute report and move on, and allow Riot to use the data-point of our report to eventually improve their systems.