Boards›Player Behavior

An in depth Analysis on a Flawed System

Ignore The Carry·1/5/2020, 11:10:40 PM·1 votes·2,425 views

Good Evening Support team at Riot Games and all Players on the League Forums.

Let me first start off by introducing myself as I feel such a situation requires a bit of more personal information. My name is Paulo Oliveira, I am 23 years old, from Portugal and I own the account Ignore The Carry.

I've recently been permanently banned from the game due to toxic behavior in the in-game chat. I'm not writing this message to attempt dodge any responsability for my actions, I own up to them and I'm fully aware that I am indeed a toxic League Of Legends player.

I'm writing this Post not in hopes of being excused but in hopes of being able to provide some feedback that I believe is important about the situation that lead to my ban, and that might change the way you guys look upon toxic players in the community and the punishments dished out on those individuals.

Upon being banned I was presented with the in-game chatlogs which attempted to demonstrate what I had done wrong that lead to my account being banned, upon further inspection of the provided chatlogs I hardly felt like I could see in them a clear reason for a ban. 90% of those chatlogs are mostly me and my teammates engaging in actual friendly banter without the intention of offending one another, maybe the words utilized might not of been the most correct and that might have triggered the system and left a red flag on my a account.

To be truthful, I have no issue in admiting I'm a toxic player, however, if you are to examine my chat logs and my games properly it will become obvious that it's quite rare for me to be the one to initiate a conflict. A great deal of times when I express toxic behavior I do so in my defense or as retaliation against someone who initiated said argument (again, I'm aware this is not the correct way to deal with these situations). Which is actually the reason why I wanted to send this message in the first place.

Your system for monitoring incorrect in-game behavior is heavily flawed. The penalties are clearly biased towards toxic people in the in-game chat but there are hardly any penalties applied upon the people who served as a trigger for these behaviors.

I'll use my last game before the ban as an example: I got into Champion Selection and got put into Top Lane, I proceeded to ban a Champion I didn't want to face, as did the rest of my team, this is where the dillema began, my jungler banned out Shaco, which my support intended to play, which made the Support player angry and led him to banning the Champion that the Jungler wanted. This made the Jungler tilt and led him to refusing to play together with us as a team. Resulting in us losing a game that was pretty much already a guaranteed win at about the 15 minute mark.

This led me to flame the player in the Jungle role, as we were basically forced into playing a 4 V 5 and since the support player was also mad for not being able to play his desired champion, he abandoned the ADC in the botlane making a 3rd person on the team mad, the ADC also started to refuse to group up and attempt to win the game, which further led my temperament into the toxic mindset. My point here is not to attempt to push the blame onto others for my negative words and insults, it is merely to highlight the fact that the report system never issues punishments versus these kinds of players.

The 0/8 Support Yasuo, who is clearly trolling, will never get a single suspension, but the player calling him out on his attempt to ruin a game might, very well, end up being Chat Restricted, or having his account suspended. This is common knowledge and has been a motive for debate on the League of Legends Forums, as well as Reddit, for hundreds, if not thousands, of times.

Everyone in the community is aware of your flawed system, the attempt at letting an A.I control what was once controlled by the community in the form of the "Tribunal" has led to nothing but a drop in quality for the system that you had placed to monitor abusive behavior.

This leads me onto my second topic - having actual people re-evaluate the bans that have been dished out by this clearly flawed system. I'm not saying that I deverve to be unbanned, that would come down to the analysis, but I'm aware of so many people who have lost their accounts permanently due to a fundamentally flawed system and that deserve at least one shot at getting back into their original accounts, where they have invested such a long amount of both time and money.

I believe it was last year that the people over at Riot decided to launch an experiment to see if toxic players could better themselves in order to recover their former accounts, this was meant to be a private experiment and got some parts of it leaked out onto the internet, which gave a great deal of people one tiny last bit of hope. However, there has been little to no information about what conclusions were taken from this experiment and if they will attempt it once more in the future.

Another important part to this issue is the Tyler1 Problem. Tyler1 was classified by many members of Riot Games as being the most toxic player in the NA Server. Tyler1 spend huge amounts of time harassing, belittling and offending countless players on Summoners Rift, a player who was well known for raging if his Champion (Draven) got banned or picked by another player, a person who would regularly run down a lane in game to provide the enemies with the advantage and give his team a really hard time in game, and eventually, the system caught up to him.

So far there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this situation, upon being banned Tyler attempted to do what most of us players who get banned do and made another account, he kept this up but never bothered to change his behavior and eventually was issued an "ID Ban" as Riot would call it. A Ban described by Riot Games as being quite more severe than a regular Permanent Ban.

A Ban which consisted not in banning Tyler1's accounts from the game, but in banning him, as an individual from playing the Game. In fact, this ban escalated to the point where people watching LCS streams would be banned from the chat for simply mentioning his name.

So far nothing seems wrong here right? A Player, considered by many to be one of the most toxic individuals in the game, got a punishment fit towards the level of misconduct that he was regularly getting busted for.

The problem begins in the aftermath of the Ban and in the way that Riot as a company decided to handle it. The purpose of a permanent ban is quite obvious, it serves to punish the player by permanently removing access to the account by the player who behaved in a matter not allowed by Riot and this is perfectly acceptable, if not for the Tyler1 situation. A while after being banned, and having social network campaigns in his favor, Tyler1 was unbanned and allowed to return to Summoners Rift. This creates what can be known as a Precedent, a solution to be applied in specific cases similar to the one where the solution originated from.

Which is where I see the main problem, if a person is banned, the rules at Riot dictate that a ban WLLL NOT be lifted, unless it was made by a mistake in the automated system they utilize. And yet, Tyler1, a man who Riot Games clearly disliked, to the point of prohibiting any reference to the person in a stream chat, to the point where a Riot employee went on Discord to talk badly about Tyler and how he would die of a Drug Overdose or to the point where an LCS Comentator, by the name of Phreak, would go on to talk badly about Tyler1 in his own stream.

It's clear he wasn't adored by Riot, in fact it seems that Riot wanted nothing more than to distance themselves from him... However, after a year, Riot allowed the ban on Tyler1 to be lifted. This Ban was not issued by a system error, meaning Riot went against their own self imposed rules to allow this Player to be unbanned.

This brings me to the final point, upon allowing a player such as Tyler1 to return to League of Legends, Riot has basically created a Precedent, as I previously mentioned. This Precedent, legally speaking, would require Riot to allow every player that has been banned in the past a chance at showing them they have reformed, just as Tyler1 did. Because, not following through with this precedent would mean that Riot sees their player base as being 1st grade players (The ones they favor, possibly like they currently favor Tyler1) and 2nd grade players (The ones who don't have 300,000 viewers on Twitch and as such don't matter to Riot Games, despite how much money they might have spent on League).

Ignoring this situation, and claiming that they can't do this for the community would be nothing short of immoral and quite dickish, not to mention possibly illegal, as rules can't be bent simply because you wish them to be so.

I'll conclude by shortening up what I've said in the entire post. The current A.I controlled system put in place to determine toxic behavior and punishment is clearly flawed. The Troll Player will never, or very rarely be punished, but the Player who acted rudely because he got mad due to the fact that he just wasted 45 minutes of his day in a game that was automatically lost from the moment he entered Champion Selection will end up with a possible permanent ban, in an account where he spent so much time.

The Tribunal was a great system, allow League of Legends players to judge League of Legends players. Because an A.I will never be able to understand the whole big picture that leads people into toxic behaviors, no one will understand these situations better than other league players. I also feel that the current state of punishments is wrongfully designed.

A Chat Restriction, evolving into a 14 Day Suspension and finalizing in a Permanent Suspension is poor design. Since the majority of people who get Suspended do so based on problems regarding the In-Game Chat, why not issue a permanent Mute? The current state of the game allows for players to effectively communicate without the need to resort to the chat, the pinging system we currently have doesn't make miracles, but it's more than enough. This way, we could maintain the accounts where we've spent so much money and time, and the game would progress towards a better, more calm, less toxic environment.

Thank you for taking the time you did to read this, sincerely, a Player who wants nothing but for the game to improve.

33 Comments

KFCeytron1/6/2020, 2:18:30 AM8 votes

Summary of the OP for those who want one:

  • "but he started it!"
  • Tribunal was better
  • T1's lifted ID ban is a precedent for lifting permabans
  • rito is legally required to allow permabanned players ANOTHER chance because T1
  • rito is a dick and breaking the law by not letting me play
  • IFS bad, Tribunal great
  • permanent mutes

And now my responses.

So, it has come to this: someone displayed misbehavior in a LoL match in flagrant disregard for the game's rules, ToS, EULA, and Summoner's Code. That's unfortunate, and I'm sorry you had to deal with it. If this misbehavior happened in chat (including emotes or ping) and they don't respond positively to a single, courteous, constructive request to focus on the game, your best option is to mute that player. Submit a report after the match. This is equivalent to dealing with a noisy person in a library by asking them to keep it down and then notifying library staff and moving to another area.

Do not respond with misbehavior of your own! If you do that, your teammates may report you, and those reports would be valid. This is equivalent to dealing with a noisy person in a library by getting into a shouting match with them. Just because someone else started it doesn't justify you in continuing it. I'm sure you're familiar with the "s/he started it" trope, where two children get into an argument or fight and then try to claim innocence of any wrongdoing by claiming that they didn't instigate it. As any parent, teacher, or other supervisor of children will tell you, that excuse doesn't fly. When Dad is trying to drive you to Disneyland and your annoying brother starts making faces at you as he's previously been told not to, you should calmly ask him to stop, and then, if that doesn't work, calmly notify your parents of the problem. Making faces at him or shouting at him has never been a good way to get him to stop, and it makes you just as guilty of that as he.

Riot doesn't care who started it. Someone else's misbehavior does not justify your own.

From Riot's support knowledgebase:

  • Simply speaking, retaliation is not an acceptable or justifiable behavior. An argument between two players can easily create a negative experience for the rest of the players in the game with you. Regardless of the other player’s actions, this does not justify your own behavior. You alone are responsible for your actions within the game.If you encounter a toxic player like this, the best option is to simply report their behavior and move on.
  • Reports are a vital piece to the puzzle. If you are not sure of what sort of behavior is reportable take a look at the Reporting a Player FAQ

Many years ago, LoL's behavior system used something called the Tribunal, comprising player volunteers who logged into a system that showed them chat logs from reported players. Those volunteers would then vote on whether to punish or pardon the reported player's case. This system's main flaw was that it simply took far too long due to LoL's huge playerbase. Participants would often be reviewing chat logs that were several months old, with a growing backlog. In addition to that, not every participant took the task seriously: some would spam the same verdict for every case without even reading the chat log, or even invert their verdicts on purpose.

The current system, called the Instant Feedback System, or IFS, is automated software that uses machine learning to determine what behavior should be punishable and when a player's behavior should be punished. It started with data from the Tribunal, and has been learning and adapting for years. It operates on the same basic principles as a spam filter: get a corpus of data (emails/chat logs), have humans categorize each item as acceptable or unacceptable, find patterns within each category, and then finally look for those patterns to automatically categorize new items without direct human evaluation. Each report is like clicking the "spam" button. When a new pattern starts to get lots of reports, the IFS recognizes it as a new form of toxicity.

The IFS is efficient and unbiased. The Tribunal was not.

None of Tyler1's accounts were unbanned. He was in the unusual situation of what's called an "ID ban" (not IP ban). This means that Riot employees would watch his stream and manually ban any account he was seen to use. It's a very rare punishment that's usually used only on high-visibility players (like streamers) with ongoing toxic behavior which viewers are encouraged (either explicitly or implicitly) to mimic. ID bans may be reversed if the player meets a variety of special conditions, which Tyler1 eventually managed, and his ID ban was reversed. He is now able to play LoL on stream once again. However, once again, none of his individual accounts were unbanned. He has never had a permaban revoked.

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.

According to Riot Tantram:

It really breaks down into two categories.

1.) Helping players reform 2.) Shielding others from the behavior, at a cost.

We used to issue chat restrictions that essentially scaled indefinitely.

We were able to determine that after a certain point the penalty no longer helped with reform. The 10-game and 25-game counts for chat restrictions are based on data that they were both light enough, and felt strict enough to encourage people to understand their behavior is unacceptable in game and change it.

We also saw that the players in this 'large restriction' category defaulted to gameplay altering means of harassing their team. It caused an increase in feeding and trolling.

The sample size of this population and time frame is huge. Essentially the time spanning from the introduction of chat restrictions to the introduction of IFS.

So my question for you is, would you rather have more feeders and less negative chat?

Riot is breaking no laws by keeping misbehaving players from accessing the servers and systems that Riot owns and operates. "Being a dick," as you put it, is also not illegal. But it can get you permabanned from League of Legends.

Arcade Lulu1/5/2020, 11:12:21 PM7 votes

It would be better if this wasn't just a wall of text People ain't going to torture themselves by trying to read that

MrFawknSunshine1/6/2020, 12:29:16 AM6 votes

you say your chat was friendly banter , however it wouldnt of been punished if someone didnt report it. so someone you communicated with didnt enjoy your banter for whatever reason and reported it. riot reviewed it and based on their findings found you guilty.

now your 1st punishment isnt a permaban , you were warned with previous punishments and continued to show the same behavior.

tyler 1 never got his accounts back, they banned 23(? if i remember correctly) and was the only person to be submitted to a ban on sight punishment. so you will never get your account back.

Kei1431/5/2020, 11:58:33 PM5 votes

Hmmm ... seems your whole arguement is based around that you can't see what is wrong with your chat, so therefore the system is flawed.

How about you let the community review your chat logs and we'll tell you whether you premise is correct?

Also, how do you define trolls? Can you give us some examples within your recent match history?

AeroWaffle1/5/2020, 11:57:14 PM3 votes

Your system for monitoring incorrect in-game behavior is heavily flawed. The penalties are clearly biased towards toxic people in the in-game chat but there are hardly any penalties applied upon the people who served as a trigger for these behaviors.

Game behavior is far harder to detect and catch because of the fuzzy line between playing poorly intentionally and unintentionally. Chat is 100% in control of the player 100% of the time.

Everyone in the community is aware of your flawed system, the attempt at letting an A.I control what was once controlled by the community in the form of the "Tribunal" has led to nothing but a drop in quality for the system that you had placed to monitor abusive behavior.

The transition from the Tribunal to the current system is a raise in quality, not a drop.

The huge gap between the behavior and the punishment for the behavior caused far too many problems to it be considered a good solution. Players would look at the chat that they were punished for and not remember the moment. Or worse, might snap and behave poorly then decide that the account was marked for death. An account marked for death (in the eyes of the player) has no value and so would be much more likely to disregard the rules.

Punishments need to quickly follow the behavior that causes them. This time it took for the Tribunal to resolve cases alone make it nonviable as a long-term solution.

Which is where I see the main problem, if a person is banned, the rules at Riot dictate that a ban WLLL NOT be lifted, unless it was made by a mistake in the automated system they utilize. And yet, Tyler1, a man who Riot Games clearly disliked, to the point of prohibiting any reference to the person in a stream chat, to the point where a Riot employee went on Discord to talk badly about Tyler and how he would die of a Drug Overdose or to the point where an LCS Comentator, by the name of Phreak, would go on to talk badly about Tyler1 in his own stream.

It gets really tiring explaining this. But Riot explained that they would not be lifting Perma-bans that they believe were not made in error.

Since Tyler's ban was an ID ban Riot was free to pave new rules for it since it was a pretty unique case. The case set the precedent that if you find yourself with an ID ban you can ask Riot to consider lifting it after a period of one year.

Riot didn't reverse any of the perma-bans on Tyler1.

The Tribunal was a great system, allow League of Legends players to judge League of Legends players. Because an A.I will never be able to understand the whole big picture that leads people into toxic behaviors, no one will understand these situations better than other league players. I also feel that the current state of punishments is wrongfully designed.

The current system used the cases from the Tribunal as test cases to build the AI. Judgments in the Tribunal was not unlike the judgments in the current system. I know, I volunteered a lot of time voting on cases in the Tribunal.

A Chat Restriction, evolving into a 14 Day Suspension and finalizing in a Permanent Suspension is poor design. Since the majority of people who get Suspended do so based on problems regarding the In-Game Chat, why not issue a permanent Mute? The current state of the game allows for players to effectively communicate without the need to resort to the chat, the pinging system we currently have doesn't make miracles, but it's more than enough. This way, we could maintain the accounts where we've spent so much money and time, and the game would progress towards a better, more calm, less toxic environment.

Something like a permanent mute was already tried. Previously, you could constantly build up games of chat restrictions for poor chat behavior. Some people were running around with hundreds or even thousands of games before their chat restriction ran out.

Riot revealed that many of these players would often find other means to behave poorly when they were unable to do so through chat, such as griefing. As I pointed out previously, griefing is harder to catch. So the problem wasn't really getting solved for these players. They were getting punished but it was just plugging a single outlet of the poor behavior, they ended up just using a different outlet.

So why bother? If players showed that they would misbehave regardless of how many times Riot warned them not to it's time to start encouraging them to go elsewhere.

Modi1/6/2020, 1:20:04 AM3 votes

why not issue a permanent Mute

I'll copy a comment I made a day agon on this exact very topic, which also happens to be a comment by the architect of IFS, Riot Tantram

It really breaks down into two categories.

1.) Helping players reform 2.) Shielding others from the behavior, at a cost.

We used to issue chat restrictions that essentially scaled indefinitely.

We were able to determine that after a certain point the penalty no longer helped with reform. The 10-game and 25-game counts for chat restrictions are based on data that they were both light enough, and felt strict enough to encourage people to understand their behavior is unacceptable in game and change it.

We also saw that the players in this 'large restriction' category defaulted to gameplay altering means of harassing their team. It caused an increase in feeding and trolling.

The sample size of this population and time frame is huge. Essentially the time spanning from the introduction of chat restrictions to the introduction of IFS.

So my question for you is, would you rather have more feeders and less negative chat?

zPOOPz1/5/2020, 11:23:24 PM2 votes

I don't know how you expect to gain an audience if they will be physically hurt (their eyes) reading that big wall of text. It literally takes less than 5 seconds to press Enter key twice every few sentences. Try that.

Beerstein1/5/2020, 11:17:43 PM2 votes

Aint no one gonna read that, try at least using paragraphs dude.

It's not about the amount of content, it's about the format. I read over 100x that a day but still won't read a wall like that.

Arammus1/6/2020, 1:02:30 PM2 votes

it didnt take long... "and i own the account ..." no you dont. riot borrows you the account.