Boards›Player Behavior

Banning players is (mostly) an awful business strategy/solution

The Great Duck·2/19/2018, 9:04:11 AM·3 votes·654 views

Death threats and intentional feeding ought to be the only bannable offenses. Many players invested hard-earned money into the game; it's damning to ban them and force them to practically get on their knees and beg. In a competitive genre like a MOBA, trash-talking is often much of the fun. If someone is so easily offended/tilted by someone saying "ez," then perhaps this isn't the genre for them. Chat's hardly ever regulated in FPS; though I'm not that great, it's refreshing knowing I can talk shit or at least defend myself against another rambunctious individual. It's sort of like hitting a pillow, although that hardly works for anyone, and most of us would rather keep the violence to words rather than rehearsing its physical form.

Anyway, what's the point? For all the pseudo-therapy you play (lmao, you honestly believe banning someone in a game will reform their personality) you sure miss the mark. All that does is anger the player even more. And since you revamped the leveling system to the point where everyone's on equal footing at summoner level 1 in terms of stats, you've only fostered more smurf accounts to hijack themselves into new games and ruin experiences for newer players who'd have otherwise been interested in investing into this game.

I've played this game since season 3. I sucked, but the game was a hell lot more fun. Toxic players didn't hinder me because I'm a competitive individual. I strove to improve mechanically and learn more game knowledge. The focus shouldn't be on moderating what's said within the community, but improving the game dynamics itself, and proper balance.

26 Comments

EL HAMSTERO2/19/2018, 10:03:48 AM4 votes

yeah im actually impressed with this continuing war on toxicity riot is taking on. i dont agree with it but i am impressed.

it shows they really believe in what they are trying to do. because as you say it is a terrible business decision. not only are the people who get banned or even chat restricted less likely to play or buy stuff, their friends are also less likely.

its like a chain reaction. your friend quits or (he believes) is wronged by riot. he plays less and buys less. with him not playing as much his friends have less fun without their friend. they play less and buy less. and their friends. i am pretty sure riot is losing A Lot of money on this. but they do it anyway.

i question how effective it is too. most people who get banned have other accounts or can buy them. some learn what keywords to avoid and continue to be toxic while being more careful about their language. others know they cant rage so they instead troll when they get upset which is not an improvement.

but at least riot is trying.

TrulyBland2/19/2018, 10:26:22 AM4 votes

If someone is so easily offended/tilted by someone saying "ez," then perhaps this isn't the genre for them.

And there I thought a game's genre was defined by the design of the game, and not the behaviour of a minority of players, that isn't even condoned by the people who actually made the game and the rules...

Hey, here's an idea: If you cannot be respectful towards others, then perhaps this specific game is not for you.

deathgod52/19/2018, 10:24:06 AM3 votes

I have gone into more detail in a series in which I detailed the history of the reporting system(which I really should finish sometimes), but it comes down to the following.

There are several reason why I think that riot games would never get rid of their chat ban system.

Marketing wise, having a game where they let toxic players run freely has a lot of problems:

Media would negatively blast the company for taking no stronger actions against all toxic players;
E sports would have trouble finding sponsors because nobody wants to sponsor the most toxic game in the world, don't underestimate the amount of marketing money that is in e-sport;

Player wise there are 2 groups that leave the game if the game changes certain things around the chat.

The first group is the group that flames out loud and that wants to have his environment to do the same
The other group is the group that leaves the game if it turns out to be toxic.
keeping them both happy is impossible so you pick a group you want to keep happy and focus on them. In the time of player run multiplayer(servers run by players) this wasn't a problem as these people often ended up finding servers that had their type of players. If you have company servers you pick one of these groups to keep happy. They chose the group that was more marketable.

Outward appearances are more important then actual success rate. Even if the ratio of succes is as terrible as you claim it is, it only matters that it looks like they get a result.

Also a quick note regarding the reform system, the system is meant to warn the player 3 times(with punishments) before kicking them out. They want this player to rage and not return because he effectively goes against their business policy. The reform part only reference to the fact that they give you 3 chances. They also tailored the levelling systems in such a way that smurfs get matched against smurfs in no time, they just hope they get kicked out again before they even reach level 30.

TL:DR: I don't think they will get rid of it.

ModPeriscope2/19/2018, 3:36:55 PM3 votes

I don't think you can be banned just for saying GGEZ. Sure it's negative, but it contributes to a punishment.

I've never seen anyone here punished solely for that.

Quinzley2/19/2018, 11:12:11 AM2 votes

The mute button is there for a reason.

My opinion is that they try to keep the game rating as "12" even though most of the players are above the age of 16.

Telephone Booth2/20/2018, 12:47:12 AM1 votes

You are obviously entitled to that opinion. Others have the opinion that more things should be bannable. Others think that death threats should NOT be bannable. I don't see why you think your opinion should be what dictates the rules of the game. Idgaf about death threats, so shouldn't they be okay? Oh. No, because you think they should be bannable. Anyways, my point is that all of your points are based on your own personal opinion.