Boards›Player Behavior

A better cure for toxicity

CasualEmperor·10/31/2019, 6:50:49 AM·3 votes·2,249 views

Hello everyone! I know the introduction seems long, but I really encourage you to read it, so you get better understanding of the problem.

It is a well known fact that players with negative attitude and those who tend to verbally abuse others are affecting the enjoyment one takes from playing League of Legends. Being a great game it is, it really has a problem with toxicity in it's community - especially at lower levels, which can drive new players away. Also, it can put a lot of stress on higher level players, and also in ranked play - everybody knows that flaming affects one's gameplay, but most importantly their mood, which should only be better, and surely not worse, after leaving the Summoner's Rift.

Reporting system is a vital thing for the League, but after talking to my community about the problem, I started to realise that many poeple don't report toxic players, because they don't believe it's going to make any difference. They think that even if they report a player for verbally abusing others, negative attitude, hate speach etc., they, in the best case, get a "warning", because, when considering the report, those who check it will come to a conclusion that he or she was just having a bad day.

Now I know that's not always the case and that toxic players really get bans, but it doesn't change the fact that many people don't believe in the reporting system. I really like that game and I don't want to see it's community growth stopped or delayed, I want people to think better of it - that's why I came up with idea to make Reporting System something people believe in and use EACH TIME they encounter a toxic player (because it's supposed to be that way).

Thank you for getting through this introduction. The idea is fairly simple:

A player who reported another player should be NOTIFIED about him getting a penalty, and what kind of penalty that was. He should also be notified about warnings the reported player gets.

It will really erase the feeling that reporting doesn't change anything - with that you would know that your reaction mattered. And the reaction is what's most important when it comes to bullies and - sorry for the expression - other types of douchebags.

I would like to point out that I really care about the quality of the game community. I stream League of Legends so I really want to see it healthy and happy - I really believe that each game needs new players to stay alive, and many of them can be frightened by the early (first 30 levels) toxicity they get, and the others may grow tired of reading "I f***ed your mom" for the 10000 time and just quit. I KNOW there is a mute option, but should we really need to use it THIS frequently? I also know that we shoudn't care about what other people write, but not everyone has the right amount of toxicity resistance.

I would really appreciate RIOT's opinion on this idea, for which I wanted to thank in advance.

Best regards! CasualEmperor

14 Comments

Sinful Succubus10/31/2019, 6:59:21 AM6 votes

They think that even if they report a player for verbally abusing others, negative attitude, hate speach etc., they, in the best case, get a "warning", because, when considering the report, those who check it will come to a conclusion that he or she was just having a bad day.

the sistem is automated. outside of a ticket, no human checks anything.

and seeing as the errors occur rarer than images of faker crying, they don't have to.

A player who reported another player should be NOTIFIED about him getting a penalty, and what kind of penalty that was. He should also be notified about warnings the reported player gets.

the reason riot doesn't do that is because doing so will enable flamers to reverse engineer what makes the system tick and find ways to still be toxic without triggering any alarms, forcing riot to update it again...and again...ad infinitum because the human imagination when it comes to flaming is boundless. there are people doing this shit already.(people like a certain pie) why make it easy for them?

it's not our job to get punishment satisfaction because some random person annoyed us that one time. our job is to play the game. no more. no less

If a player that deserved a punishment gets it, the one that reported him should get a REWARD.

we do. the reward is the one who broke the rules gets either chat restricted or banned. if that's not enough for you then don't report. someone else will.

It shouldn't be great reward - a key fragment could be sufficient. That would REALLY encourage people to report those who are being negative and ruin the game for others.

no, dude

that would encourage everyone to always report everyone they play with "just in case", causing the system to check all the reports and make the overall process slower.

it's a great way to encourage trolling if anything. not enough to get yourself into trouble, but enough to get a reaction. and some reactions will translate into key fragment. people will abuse it! you know they will!

GatekeeperTDS10/31/2019, 11:28:33 AM2 votes

I started to realise that many poeple don't report toxic players, because they don't believe it's going to make any difference.

Stopped at this gem of an unsubstantiated claim. Have you read these boards lately. People get punished. A lot.

Nightsky Pirate10/31/2019, 7:34:06 AM1 votes

The huge, glaring problem with the idea of rewarding players for getting others punished is... obvious, I would hope. First, only one report per game actually matters. Then, players will start to expect rewards for punishing people, and start looking for inane reasons to report. THEN, if it actually gets that far, the only healthy player will be one that says pretty much nothing or sounds like The Dijin. I can't sound like he does on my best days, and I think more players appreciate me than otherwise for my banter in game.

(I know I'm not on the good list for most of you because I bluntly disagree with the general attitude in the player behavior forum.)

If anything, a player should be rewarded for HELPING a toxic player turn around from the behavior. Become their friend and encourage them to learn how to play from behind, and how to help work toward the most likely way to victory without being a carry.

CasualEmperor10/31/2019, 8:43:19 AM1 votes

Edited, removing the rewarding option. I suppose people could really abuse that and also it may sound kind of disturbing.

KelmirOsue10/31/2019, 7:02:53 AM1 votes

I want to vote Yes. But also want to vote no. There are players who would, and will, actively abuse the report system if they can get a key fragment. They completely would. But I do like the idea of getting a notification at the very least. So if there was a voting option for Kinda, I would vote that instead

Kei14310/31/2019, 2:29:20 PM1 votes

Take a read at Riot Tantram's post from 2 years ago;

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/player-behavior-moderation/JEj6EsWh-a-more-transparent-report-system

One thing that pops out in that thread;

[{quoted}](name=Riot Tantram,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=JEj6EsWh,comment-id=0002000000010000,timestamp=2017-11-10T06:46:29.915+0000)

There is a time limit of sorts on this, to ensure the feedback loop is within recent memory.

Riot has found out that if players are getting punishment notifications from out of recent memory, they won't care that much about the notification, some even get annoyed by it.

I think a better clarity option for the system is to let people see their report-punishment ratio, or the accuracy of their reports. That way people will know that their reports are doing something, regardless on whether the other player got a punishment.

Tele II10/31/2019, 10:05:44 PM1 votes

Its pretty easy to tell if reports actually matter or not. I dont think they need a personal message from Riot. They can just find out for themselves if they want to. Also, I totally dont believe theres a massive amount of players who dont report anything because they fear it will do nothing. It takes like 3 seconds to report. And maybe 5 minutes of looking through the boards to find substantial evidence that reports do indeed "do something".

Also, you left a huge flaw in your made-up arguement that people dont report. You claim they know so little about the system that they dont report, yet they think that when their reports are being checked, "those who check it will come to a conclusion that they were just having a bad day". Now how the fuck would they assume that? They know so little about the report system, but they know the conclusion the person checking it will come to? Youre talking to idiots man. Lol stop trying to build solutions for idiots. They will always be idiots and nothing will fix that. They could EASILY inform themselves, but they choose to stick to making baseless assumptions. And if youre just referring to people who troll and go "hahaha go ahead and report it will do nothing", then thats a whole other thing. Theyre trolling and taunting people to upset them.

CasualEmperor11/1/2019, 11:18:34 PM1 votes

I'm very happy to see that the system works much better than I've heard! Still, there has to be some kind of problem (and I talk about low-levels) if so many people think of reporting system this poorly. These are mainly players who have played the game for a long while - maybe they just don't realise that thing got much better, or they had a particulary bad expierences? Or maybe one can jump into conclusions just because they encountered toxicity in 3 games in a row - and that can just mean bad luck.

I still think that notification wouldn't hurt, but I certainly no longer feel like it's an very important feature. After all, we launch League of Legends to play, and we should focus on that. Reporting is in fact a very quick process, I would be difficult to make it simplier. Also there are those tips appearing which encourage people to "make this game better for everyone" by reporting toxic players.

Thank you for all the comments.