Player Behavior board, Gang Mentality, The Sinner's Burden, Self Fulfilling Prophecies.
The Player Behavior Boards
The league community has a few issues that are quite major. First off the Player Behavior board has literally no suggestions on how to improve the systems that govern player behaviour only one of 3 threads exist.
- I am banned
- I was banned
- Why aren't they banned
there is a fourth but its such a minority it barely counts
- How not to get banned.
The player behavior board has become more of a terminal for what support should be doing and worse off it leads to the other issues with the League Community. I am going to actually adress some of the issues I see with the league community, you may agree or disagree but please do not simply come in and explain "The community is fine you're the problem" That disgusting response doesn't start a discussion it prevents one from happening, all things good bad or indifferent evolve through discussion if you think league is perfect then offer counter points and make an argument don't just use your quick and handy "OH WELL YOU'RE TOXIC SO YOU WOULD THINK THAT" magic bullet and shoot this discussion in the face... now then
Gang Mentality
League as a game is actually focused around group mentality, meta and understanding team objectives. However this extends outside the game, what was a team becomes a group. On the forums there are many groups but in player behavior there are basically a group of people who are the 'arbiters' a group who posts and votes on discussions effectively making them thrive or killing them. I personally have no issue with this, if someone wants to devote time and energy into becoming the lord of the land good for them. The issue is that these people start to amass influence and their votes become more weighty than just one vote. Gang mentality sets in and someone who gets downvoted recieves a downvote on every comment they make, regardless of context. Gang mentality is dangerous because it prohibits free thought and consideration for what is being posted. Not everything in player behaviour warrants consideration or even discussion some things are straight up complaining or should be taken to the support desk. Though as long as gang mentality exists discussions can't because discussions can't survive a gang mentality if one or two people control the sway of the entire board.
The SInner's Burden
There was a story called the Scarlet Letter which told of sinners who were punished with a scarlet letter being woven into their clothes or skin forget which version is more known to let others know that they had sinned. The effect of this was essentially being shunned eternally by the community among other possible outcomes. League has a very bad case of scarlet letter, if someone is ever identified as toxic, then they can never, ever, ever, ever actually be reformed. This would be like if someone served a minimum sentence of jail time and never got off parole. Every single discussion is "be careful, watch yourself" Or worse marked community members are basically persecuted with their opinions devalued and their voices stiffled. League as a community needs to learn to judge based on recent behaviour and displayed behaviour, context, essentially. Reform can not exist in a community where if you are marked you are marked forever unless you undergo some born again level of rebirth. Truth be told most people would rather start a new account than actually reform because of how involved and tedious reforming is, but that is beyond the point that inside the community a marked member can be as 'reformed' by not displaying any toxic behaviour but never be truly forgiven.
Self Fulfilling Prophecies Riot Lyte made a crucial error in his player behaviour philosophies. If you say there are toxic individuals in league or misrepresent the number of non 'toxic' individuals you will inevitably create toxic people. League as a community needs toxic players because they serve as a standard of what not to be, but in recent years that standard has been raised. Before simply not being phobic of any kind was enough not to be 'toxic' then we added negativity to the mix which is completely subjective but again, another conversation. The problem with raising this standard of what a 'non toxic' player is is that people who weren't toxic before become toxic by proxy. They aren't doing anything different from when they were earning honor ribbons and having the occasional bad game. Now you can get reported in 1 game. I Have personally tested this, without using homophobic slurs or racial language you can be punished for being 'toxic' in 1 single game as a level 3 new player. Not that long ago there were four types of bad league players, trolls, ragers, tryhards, and inters. Without going into an explanation those four types have now been replaced by the unilateral 'toxic' player. The issue is that ragers aren't a problem, they don't impact the game anymore than people let them, try hards don't either besides failing misserably. Trolls and Inting players were the worst offenders because they actively made the game impossible to play, but they were hard to punish because how do you determine. So riot switched their focus and started punishing tryhards and ragers because they were easy to identify by giving value to 'negative' players being a burden on the game. I personally play many online games, negative people do not hurt a game, they are a small annoyance but they do not make the game unplayable. At some point riot needs to remember this is a T rated game so we should have developed some form of 'flame' protection at our ages. Too often people are allowed to destroy a game and if you get upset and retaliate you become the target of the system. The report system is broken and abusable, riot will never admit this but too many cases exists to just dismiss it. Without any insight into how the system actually works the best we have is face value being told that it works.
I don't have any examples of how to make player behaviour better, honestly I don't think the board should exist and instead they should replace it with a peer review tribunal style where if someone can get enough Innocent votes a rioter will personally look at the case and see if the punishment was warranted. Human insight is needed to fix this automated system and if people are involved in condemming or absolving a player of their past sins perhaps the community could heal and learn to forgive by looking at things critically. At the very least it would make people feel better if they do auto condemn every person who's ever been toxic once.
I look forward to the discussion that may or may not follow, please keep biases and prejudice out, this isn't meant to flame people who come forth as toxic or formally toxic its an open and honest attempt at a discussion with the issues in league's community and player behaviour particularly.
