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What exactly is the "Negative Attitude" griefing category and how does Riot confirm the behavior?

5 Dollar Holler·12/13/2019, 3:33:39 PM·2 votes·2,380 views

Verbal abuse seems clearer, and hate speech clearer still. Negative Attitude is defined as "Griefing, Giving Up" but how can those behaviors possibly be discerned unless the player announces that they've given up? We know that simply being "off meta" in terms of champions in a certain position (Leona Jungle) or play style (Support who spends most of the game roaming as opposed to majority helping Bot) is not actionable.

Perhaps upon a preponderance of the evidence, if you watch a game unfold, you might think yeah there's a 51% or higher certainty that this person has stopped trying, but obviously Riot is not going to watch game replays and they've nuked the tribunal.

The phrase "soft inting" seems to hint at giving up. Like in my last game, where I watched my 0-5 mid and 0-6 top intentionally charge into 3 fed enemies despite warning pings from allies (they died immediately, obviously, and there was no other possible outcome). But even still, one might shrug and say "well maybe they thought they could win that as two super far behind players against three super fed players."

I'm not sure how you can prove that someone has given up, or how you prove that they're griefing and not just off-meta. Even when I see people rage at jungler and just follow him around, stealing his camps. Is that griefing? Or has that ADC simply decided they can get better farm jungling. You can make seemingly endless excuses for the behavior.

Have people actually been punished for this? Has Riot established how the behavior is identified so as to improve those of us wishing to report?

11 Comments

Quiet Dude12/13/2019, 3:40:04 PM5 votes

Negative attitude: "Why aren't we forfeiting, top and mid lane fed all game, they clearly aren't good at the game. I just want out. I'll just split push until we lose."

Pretty hard to diagnose if the player is nonverbal, easily spotted when the whiner decides to type something.

My brother actually got punished for this. Went on a week-long spree of complaining and blaming others in chat.

Sinful Succubus12/13/2019, 3:46:12 PM5 votes

"open [insert lane]" is an example of griefing/giving up

wether they actually decide to give up the lane , that can only be found out through a manual review that you can get by opening a ticket and asking for one

SnowFlame oh yea12/14/2019, 12:50:40 AM3 votes

I'd like to add repeatedly "calling out" your teams "mistakes". Doing a billion pings after something happens. At the start of the game complaining the team threw in champ select. Just barragung the game with negative remarks and behaviors that each by themselves dont constitute a toxic action when taken as a whole are a problem.

Umbral Regent12/13/2019, 4:14:31 PM2 votes

As the other commentators detailed, Negative Attitude, despite having "griefing" in its description, largely comes out to general, overbearing negativity and defeatism. Basically, all the negative chat that makes the game worse without directly harassing any individual player.

Calling early "GG's"
Trying to coerce your team to Surrender
Excessive, pointless complaining
Calling to open lanes

Etc.

So, basically, if you see that kind of low-key excessive negativity that - while it doesn't target other players - still winds up with everyone feeling that much worse about the match, that's what you use the Negative Attitude category for.

Metal Janna12/13/2019, 5:24:43 PM2 votes

Splitting alone is not punishable - i've had matches where my ADC is awful and nobody else wants to make plays with me either, so I just go splitpush top as Supporianna. BUT that's not giving up. I've given up on making any plays with my team, so I resort to the only type of play I can make despite a non-cooperative team: pressuring a lane so the enemy has to devote resources away from my team, hopefully giving them the edge they need to actually get something. Since I didn't actually give up on winning the game I don't type anything to that effect in chat, and so I don't get punished.

Also i've been playing Orianna support since season 7, and haven't been banned so offmeta is definitely not punishable.

I posted the other day about some negative nancy mid player who gave up despite his lane going well and our botlane being fed just because top and jg sucked, and the IFS feedback I got showing he received a punishment... but I can't really be sure it was his spamming "GG" "FF" and surrender votes for at least 15 minutes that did it. It could very well have been his flaming at me in chat for pointing out our fed botlane and trying to rally him to try.

It'd be cool if we got told which specific report category the player got punished for.

Yin Yang Taoist12/13/2019, 8:04:48 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=5 Dollar Holler,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=Jkq0cWHt,comment-id=,timestamp=2019-12-13T15:33:39.972+0000)

Verbal abuse seems clearer, and hate speech clearer still. Negative Attitude is defined as "Griefing, Giving Up" but how can those behaviors possibly be discerned unless the player announces that they've given up? We know that simply being "off meta" in terms of champions in a certain position (Leona Jungle) or play style (Support who spends most of the game roaming as opposed to majority helping Bot) is not actionable.

Perhaps upon a preponderance of the evidence, if you watch a game unfold, you might think yeah there's a 51% or higher certainty that this person has stopped trying, but obviously Riot is not going to watch game replays and they've nuked the tribunal.

The phrase "soft inting" seems to hint at giving up. Like in my last game, where I watched my 0-5 mid and 0-6 top intentionally charge into 3 fed enemies despite warning pings from allies (they died immediately, obviously, and there was no other possible outcome). But even still, one might shrug and say "well maybe they thought they could win that as two super far behind players against three super fed players."

I'm not sure how you can prove that someone has given up, or how you prove that they're griefing and not just off-meta. Even when I see people rage at jungler and just follow him around, stealing his camps. Is that griefing? Or has that ADC simply decided they can get better farm jungling. You can make seemingly endless excuses for the behavior.

Have people actually been punished for this? Has Riot established how the behavior is identified so as to improve those of us wishing to report?

Anything which is negative. Argument, extensive discussion on whose fault it was. Blaming. Asking for reports. Being a jerk without using offensive words. Like calling someone a 'dog', 'rat' etc. Talking down to them while addressing them so and being an ass. Anything that doesn't pertain to the game and isn't a positive reinforcement towards winning.

Stopped trying, that's different. That's like soft inting and its harder to tell. That's completely separate from displaying Negative behavior and falls under the category for Griefing. Following your jungle, stealing his camps etc. is Griefing. There are no obvious excuses for doing this. Unless the player just started out and is brand new to the game. Yeah, people get punished for such things all the time.

XAltinaOrionX12/13/2019, 3:47:38 PM1 votes

My first ever account got perm banned for this negative attitude. 3 of my teammates were obviously trolling and went 0-12 respectively.

I kept saying this is a waste of my time etc. Why not ff etc. my teammates refused to ff and kept dying on purpose. When i see a score 25-0 i know someone doesn't care/ A.I bot/ Poor Matchmaking against diamond+ smurfs/ or a real life newbie.

So why continue to play the same match when its a lost cause? Why try at that point? Usually at the end of the match my whole team reports me for wanting to ff so that's 9 reports directed at a useless match that real players know when its a loss cause.