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Suggestions on the Punishment System

Krysti GG·12/5/2019, 4:09:25 PM·1 votes·2,134 views

League of Legends: One of the most toxic games currently on the internet today, and at the same time, one of the most played games in the world. We both love League of Legends, but hate playing it in one way or another, but like Tyler1 famously said, "I CAN'T STOP PLAYING BECAUSE I'M F****** ADDICTED!" While most of you would outwardly say "Oh, I can stop playing at any time, I'm not addicted!" Unfortunately there are players out there, aside from pros and streamers that take up to 9 hours a day of League, and honestly, those can be considered rookie numbers for some.

Since this is one of the most played games in the world, and by far the most played MOBA in the world, there should be a much better system to reflect punishment. The current system doesn't punish people for toxic play, only toxic chat. Rarely do we see people who claim to be reformed to actually be reformed. (See: IWillDominate, L9 group, Tyler1, etc) All of these players at one point or another were banned, and came back, or currently hold multiple banned accounts. Yes, a couple did reform, and T1 did a pretty good job of coming back from what he was, but reform is incredibly rare.

I have a couple suggestions based on my personal opinion, as well as things I've seen work incredibly well in other games. I'd like to go over them here.

Reform System

Now, I know what you're saying. "Krysti, we have a reform system. You get the chat restrictions, X day ban, and then if you don't reform, you get permanently banned." Okay, great, but that doesn't work. The permanently banned accounts, I can only imagine, number in the few hundred thousand. And if not, are still incredibly high numbers. A reform system would be good for this, so people aren't losing accounts they may have spent hundreds, if not thousands on, and can continue to play in some aspect until they improve through reform. What would this Reform System look like? Well, literally a system that takes you through a Reform program. In order to unlock your account, you must speak to a Riot representative after watching a video series that takes you through toxic behavior and why your toxic behavior has a negative effect on the community. Once you complete this video series, you would be expected to take a randomized "test" of sorts, answering questions that would make the player currently locked down to answer questions based on the videos followed by some sort of written apology for their toxic behavior and the steps they can take to fix that behavior. Talking to a Riot representative would be the next step, where the rep would talk to the player about their toxic history in League of Legends, explain why it isn't okay, and find out the players point of view as to what brought on the toxic behavior. Once the Riot rep believes the player has finished the "course" so to speak, their account can be unlocked, and they will be allowed access to the game again with restricted allowances of what they are able to do. This could be a number of things. Restriction from ranked for X amount of games dependent on levels of toxicity, permanent chat ban, seasonal queue ban, etc. The options for this are endless.

Queue Specific Ban

This is definitely one that I believe could be implemented super easily, and with a lot of success. Toxicity in ranked is at an all-time high, and with the player punishment system a mere shell of what it was when the Tribunal was a thing, nothing is actually being done to stop these people from playing Ranked, and trolling without saying a single word, or if they do talk while they're trolling, they usually say something along the lines of "I'm sorry, I'm trying my best!" Yet, they're running it down each lane, feeding free kills, following the jungler around sapping XP or trying to last hit the jungle minions because the jungler wouldn't switch roles with them. This is completely unacceptable behavior, and behavior that could be stopped by allowing there to be queue specific bans. It could start as a 10 game Ranked ban, followed by a 25 game Ranked ban for continued abuse of the queue as a way to ruin other people's games because you didn't get what you wanted, so you decide to act like a child. If the behavior continues after the ranked ban, they could be semi-permanently banned from that specific queue until they complete the aforementioned Reform System.

I did have more ideas, but I've forgotten them while typing these two.

What do you think? Ultimately, this is completely up to Riot, but the current system needs work in more ways than ever, as allowing an AI to make decisions isn't very responsible, considering the AI makes consistent mistakes, and permaban is way too easy to get to with very little said. I believe the current system is unacceptable, because it doesn't allow for actual reform, and with proper improvements, it could actually reform toxicity, turning the League of Legends community into a much more positive community, but as said, it entirely depends on Riot since they make the decisions, and they made a really bad decision with their current iteration of the system.

Thanks,

Krysti GG

11 Comments

GatekeeperTDS12/5/2019, 4:16:49 PM3 votes

Forcing toxic players into other queues isn't fair to all the other people in those queues. This is a video game. Ranked is a game mode with a number attached to it. It's no more "important" than any other League game mode.

Chat restrictions and then get them out of the game if they can't reform.

Imperial Pandaa12/5/2019, 5:11:56 PM2 votes

Some things that come to mind.

  1. Riot has tried at least 2 unban experiments in the past. One we know failed for certain, with over 90% of people returning to their toxic tendencies. The other, we haven't gotten publicly released information yet, but we have seen some people post about being banned after getting unbanned from a perma.

  2. Comparing the IFS to the prior Tribunal is, well, silly. The Tribunal didn't handle gameplay cases, only verbal if I recall correctly. They also took data from the Tribunal while designing the machine learning algorithm that is the IFS. So the IFS is an upgraded version of the Tribunal that doesn't take months to handle a case.

  3. Gameplay isn't the easiest thing to judge for griefing/trolling. Which while on the subject. Trolls and Inters do get banned. Is it as often as we may like? Probably no, but see opening about hard to judge. We have people who think Sion Support or Ivern Support is troll. We have people who think Leona Jungle is troll. We have people whining about ignite taking a kill or somebody taking 1 measly minion. The only feasible way to improve that system would be for Riot to go "champ x MAY ONLY be played Y or Z. They must build this way too." Which Riot won't do because imo would be a dumb move.

Posui Gart12/5/2019, 4:36:53 PM1 votes

The current system doesn't punish people for toxic play, only toxic chat.

Because you can't be 100% sure if someone does toxic plays, unless its literally running down mid. Meanwhile its easy to make sure if someone is toxic in chat.

you must speak to a Riot representative after watching a video series that takes you through toxic behavior and why your toxic behavior has a negative effect on the community

Sure, Riot representatives have nothing to do except talking with toxic players daily, and listening all the same shit from them. How about no? There is supposed to be a point of no return somewhere, where you can't just say "I'm sorry, it won't happen again". Permaban is that point. There are enough indications for you to stop, eventually a real punishment should happen

they're running it down each lane, feeding free kills, following the jungler around sapping XP or trying to last hit the jungle minions because the jungler wouldn't switch roles with them

Yet there is nothing that can be done with them. We can't just ban players for non-meta plays or bad decisions, even if it is done with intention to lose, because we can't check the intentions of a player. That's bad but nothing can be done with that

allowing an AI to make decisions isn't very responsible, considering the AI makes consistent mistakes, and permaban is way too easy to get to with very little said

Allowing a human to make decisions is much worse because humans are much slower, inconsistent and use emotions instead of strict rules. With AI its "dont break rules=don't get banned", human can do the "i think you are at fault, no actual 100% proof needed, enjoy your ban"

Saezio12/5/2019, 4:43:37 PM1 votes

How is dom toxic? He almost never types in chat lol.