Boards›Player Behavior

Punishment System

Kxnlei·7/29/2019, 7:41:45 PM·2 votes·2,276 views

[Please don't vote if you don't intend to read my explanations/suggestions - it's a waste of your time, and mine]

Before you comment, I would like you to note that I believe a punishment system is a great idea to at least prevent toxicity for a period of time and hopefully that player will reform in some way. However, what's more notable is that players almost never reform after being punished. Secondly, I'm not among 0.006% players to get banned. If you count the smurfs, I'm probably among the 90% **unique **players to get eternally banned.

What I think Riot could do is:

Either balance the game properly and to a better standard - It is extremely tilting and frustrating to play against these unbalanced, safe-pick champs. Playing almost anything into Zed feels like Riot telling you to go AFK.
Or change the punishment system - My main focus here is on toxic encounters. Yes; someone flamed in chat. Probably for a good reason, if we're going to be honest in this discussion. Lets be completely real in this context: you have someone 0/3. Logically, you wouldn't have to say anything to them because you would automatically expect them to at least try and stay safe. Maybe farm under tower, stop overextending and quit engaging in fights until they get a gank. Regardless, they don't. At all. They run it down their lane because they know Riot won't ban them since it's not intentional, it's just stupidity. If you start flaming one of these people in my games? I'm not gonna stop you. Can I join in? Although restricting chat is a great idea (it's going to help them get used to not using chat at all), I believe that banning, regardless of time period, is completely stupid. What is that going to teach them? How to make a new account? Can you not just eternally increase the penalties until their honour resets? It would be more beneficial to both the player and the people they encounter if they just couldn't use chat, rather than have them make a new account to ruin some new player's day.

14 Comments

GatekeeperTDS7/29/2019, 7:51:59 PM5 votes

I voted, in the negative, without reading your post.

Because you know why? You shouldn't start off a post in an antagonistic fashion.

[Please don't vote if you don't intend to read my explanations/suggestions - it's a waste of your time, and mine]

If you don't want opinions, don't come to a public forum.

rujitra7/29/2019, 8:00:50 PM3 votes

There are champs that are stronger than average. There is not a single champ that is a guaranteed lost lane/game. Learning to play against all champs and learning to counter/be countered in lane is part of the game.
Your frustration doesn't give you the right to make other people have a worse time by being negative in chat. Banning players succeeds in making a majority of them leave the game, which is the goal if they refuse to behave.

KFCeytron7/30/2019, 11:22:15 AM1 votes

{quoted}

players almost never reform after being punished.

This is factually incorrect.

{quoted}

Secondly, I'm not among 0.006% players to get banned. If you count the smurfs, I'm probably among the 90% **unique **players to get eternally banned.

I don't understand what you mean by "90% unique players to get eternally banned."

{quoted}

Probably for a good reason, if we're going to be honest in this discussion.

Only children think there's a good reason to flame in a game, which is why the way society generally functions is that parents teach children how to behave.

{quoted}

Lets be completely real in this context: you have someone 0/3. Logically, you wouldn't have to say anything to them because you would automatically expect them to at least try and stay safe. Maybe farm under tower, stop overextending and quit engaging in fights until they get a gank. Regardless, they don't. At all. They run it down their lane because they know Riot won't ban them since it's not intentional, it's just stupidity.

If you freely admit that you know it's not intentional and they're just bad, what's the point of saying anything beyond "hey, try to play a bit safer" and then clamming up if they're obviously not listening to you?

{quoted}

banning, regardless of time period, is completely stupid. What is that going to teach them? How to make a new account?

The ability to play on a new account doesn't negate the benefits of permabanning toxic players. If every single one of them did that, then it would at least be a minor punishment, taking away their unlocked skins, icons, champs, and so on. Any who don't do that are removed from the game and the problem is solved in at least those instances. Quite frankly, Riot and 99.994% of the playerbase (people without permabans, according to Riot's figures on this, which I see no reason to doubt) don't give one whit for how permabanned players feel about being ejected from the game for consistently appalling behavior. Most permabanned players stop playing the game. It's extremely rare for a permabanned player to be so oblivious and/or unbalanced that they accumulate multiple permabans on a series of accounts. Riot does not have the wherewithal to prevent that except when a highly-visible player (such as a popular streamer) engages in this behavior, in which case they may issue an ID ban (Riot employees manually ban any account that such a player is seen to use).

{quoted}

It would be more beneficial to both the player

You're missing a key fact: as I said above, nobody but permabanned players cares about what would be beneficial for permabanned players. All we care about is that they go away.

{quoted}

and the people they encounter if they just couldn't use chat, rather than have them make a new account to ruin some new player's day.

Riot's punishment system used to hand out stacking chat restrictions, such that consistently toxic players basically had a permanent chat restriction. Unfortunately, it turns out that such players used their few chat opportunities to be toxic, and, when they couldn't be as toxic as they wanted to, they resorted to committing non-chat offenses such as griefing (following someone around and taking their farm, using wall abilities to interfere with their play, etc.) or inting. The purpose of the punishment system is to eliminate rule-breaking, not make it worse. Thus, if a couple chat restrictions don't make any difference in a player's misbehavior, the system ramps up the punishments until the player is permabanned and thus unable to use that account to break any more rules ever again.

Riot used to give toxic players a long series of gradually-increasing suspensions. However, they found that players who got more than a few punishments would never stop misbehaving and receiving punishments. As the goal of the punishment system is to eliminate rule-breaking and Riot has absolutely no interest in coddling toxic players, the system was changed to eliminate this long tail of irredeemable players. Compared to the hundreds or even thousands of typical players who are bothered over dozens or hundreds of matches ruined by a toxic player, that one player's ability to annoy people merits no sympathy or concern. The preferred outcome of punishing a misbehaving player is reform: according to Riot's figures, most players who get one punishment never get another. However, when a player refuses to stop breaking the rules after a few warnings (punishments), they are removed from the game with a permaban because Riot no longer believes them capable of reform.