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How to properly rework the player moderation system, by a guy with 30+ perma bans

EverythingIsGone·3/9/2019, 5:29:24 AM·3 votes·2,657 views

I want to make one thing perfectly clear before I start. I have absolutely no input to give on the current honor system. I have never in my entire life been above honor level 2 and I am almost always honor level 1 or 0 when I play league. I will say this - it has not affected me at all, and I could care less about it. I literally don't even know what it does, or what it's for. I do, however wish I had a PBE account and I will say that is a decent incentive for the honor system. Though, I think the honor system would be indirectly buffed by improving the actual penalties handed out to toxic players. On another note - I believe that any non-related offense such as intentionally feeding, real world trading, or using third-party software should be mandatory for manual review and upon confirmation, the only suitable punishment is a permanent suspension. That is my opinion on that.

As far as we know Riot has no intention of changing the system. They have not addressed these issues since the Tribunal was removed several years ago, however everything else about the game has been vastly updated. This is the most obsolete aspect of the entire game - the behavior punishment system. Now if you're a player who has never been banned, you're probably thinking "what issues? I don't see any issues". Yes, YOU don't see any issues. Pretty much every single person I have ever had on my friends list in league have been permanently banned at least once. It happens much more frequently than you might think. Since 2015 I have received approximately 30-35 permanent suspensions across all of my accounts. I've gotten used to it at this point. It doesn't bother me when it happens anymore. I don't get upset. I'm just disappointed. However, the purpose of this post is to better the game. I believe I am one of the most toxic players in the world. So if anyone's got anything useful to say about the penalty system, it should be me. I have the credentials necessary to make statements about the system, and that's why I believe Riot should hear me out. If you don't believe that I have this many instances of permanently banned accounts, I am not going to show proof. This is because showing proof of my accounts would condone being permanently banned and consider it as some kind of achievement. I am not boasting. It is not an achievement. Anyway, with that little rant out of the way, this is how I believe the player moderation system can be improved, and as a result, improving the behavior of toxic players:

One popular method was disabling your enter key or keybinding it to something else to prevent yourself from being toxic. You might think, "why don't you just stop being toxic? then you don't have to worry about being permanently banned!" okay, but what if you can't? "then you have no place in this game" okay, sure. but I COULD, if the player moderation system was improved. Toxic players like myself COULD have a place in this game without ruining anyone else's experience by implementing an improved penalty system, which would make Riot more money and strictly increase the player base.

. .

With a top-notch penalty system, you could even turn toxic players into non-toxic players. The current system in place is not capable of doing that, and I can say that with a lot of confidence. Long story short, the ways Riot has tried to address player behavior is... poor. "you can't get ranked rewards!" I really don't care. "you can't get hextech chests!" I really don't care. You know what I care about? That feeling of dread having to queue up for a 20 minute wait because I AFK'd. The penalty is the key. The reason this penalty works is because YOU made someone else's 20 minutes a waste of time, now YOU have to waste 20 minutes of YOUR time. That is how you properly penalize a player. When the penalty has nothing to do with the offense, it accomplishes nothing.

I don't believe this is some insanely huge discovery. I think it would actually be fairly easy to change the game for the better, and this is how - . .

FIrst of all, let's look at the punishments that are available;

  • Chat restriction - This is the most petty punishment I've pretty much ever seen in any game, and it's not because of the punishment itself, it's because of the duration of the punishment. Usually a chat restriction lasts 5-20 games. This is not enough to change a player's attitude and they usually won't even give a shit at all about this penalty. This can still be an effective punishment, and I say this because when I receive a chat restriction, while I don't really care that I am chat restricted,_ it feels good to have it finally lifted_. I understand the current purpose of chat restrictions is to give players a warning. I think that's a solid idea. I think the current chat restrictions are actually a decent misdemeanor punishment, but could perhaps be a little bit longer, increasing exponentially for each occurrence within a certain amount of time eg. 5, 25, and 125 games. I do not think going over 125 games is a good idea because it can reinforce a 'prison mentality' where the player believes their punishment will never be lifted so there is no incentive to reform. However, I have never been banned while having a chat restriction. This is important to note, because it indicates that chat restrictions effectively reduce toxicity and this is why I believe this is an appropriate minor penalty and the duration should definitely be much longer than it currently is.

  • 14 day suspension - For serious chat-related offences, this is the standard penalty. As a toxic player, especially a new toxic player, going from chat restriction to 14 days of no league is incredibly drastic. And I agree, it should be drastic. However it doesn't fix anything because the penalty is unrelated to chat. Players WANT to reform. Nobody likes being toxic. Give them a way to reform, and they will. But because this is a competitive game and not an MMO, people get angry. If you want to fix your players, fix them, instead of removing them from the game altogether. I believe a "time out" is necessary. A player might be on a massive grind and going on perma-tilt. That player clearly needs a break. But how long do you need a break for? Most people do not need a two week break. 3 days is more than enough time to get over something, so that's the number I'm standing by. It is also important to remove players like this from the game for a certain period of time because this will decrease the amount of the toxicity in the game. By reducing the length of the punishment, you can hand them out more freely, and reduce toxicity even more than you could with the 14 day suspension. Force the player to take a break, long enough for them to get over whatever petty thing it is that they were upset about. Upon returning to the game, the real punishment should begin. I'll talk about that later. TL;DR 3 days, not 14. It's too overkill and redundant.

  • Permanent suspension - Simply put, I believe this should not exist in the chat-related offenses category. It is too severe of a punishment, and solves literally nothing. The player will, inevitably, create a new account. This also encourages people to buy accounts, and a large majority of the real world trading business relies on permanently banned players looking to quickly get back into the game. I should also add that the manner that this penalty is handed out is incredibly aggressive and hateful towards the player. After reviewing my proposal to changing the way suspensions work, this penalty should no longer be required, so obviously my proposal is to completely remove this penalty.

So what's the conclusion here? Chat restrictions are an effective way to reduce toxicity. 14 day suspensions are irrelevant. Permanent bans are unnecessary. So, what's left?

The 3 day suspension. Force a player to take a break while simultaneously reducing the overall toxicity in the game. Like I stated earlier, reducing the length of the punishment allows you to dish it out more frequently, resulting in a less toxic game as a whole. For example, let's say right now there are 2000 players with a 14 day suspension in NA. If you implemented a 3 day system, you could instead have anywhere from 4000-8000 players (these are just ball park numbers) undergoing a 3 day suspension because you are simply allowed to morally dish out the punishment more frequently. I know this might not make sense to you right now, but just keep reading.

Typically my 14 day suspension reform cards have 3 games worth of chatlogs to show me the evidence of why I got banned. Why didn't you ban me during the first game? Why wait until I have 3 games worth of toxic chat logs before penalizing me? And this is where I make my point.

  • For those of you who don't know, suspensions are handed out based on how toxic you are in a certain period of time. After a certain amount of time (I'm not too sure on how much time, but roughly 3 months) of no incidents, it resets. If you chalk up 3 incidents of toxic chat logs within this timeframe, you get the ban hammer. It can potentially be less than 3 if your chat logs are severely toxic (such as hate speech or homophobic slurs), but generally it's 3. Chat restrictions work almost the exact same way, but for less serious chat-related incidents.

The problem with this incident stack is that it forgives players for being toxic. You should be punished each and every single time you are toxic, instead of being toxic for an extended period of time. This makes players feel like they can occasionally be toxic and get away with it if they haven't been toxic for a while. This is why you constantly see toxic players in your games and it makes it feel like the community as a whole is just insanely toxic. It's because they know they can get away with it. . . . . . . . .

------------------------------------------------------------------Here is my full length proposal:------------------------------------------------- Before I begin, each instance of suspension should be manually reviewed. Chat restrictions can be handed out with the same automated system they have been using, with the exception of the lenience. . .

Chat restrictions should be implemented in increments of 25 and 125 games. 25 game chat restrictions can only be delivered once per account. 125 game chat restrictions apply when you have been reported and the automated system verifies you were toxic. This should have much less leniency than the way punishments are currently dished out. You will no longer have a certain amount of "damage" you can take before you receive a punishment. You get reported, the system verifies the report, you get the chat restriction. No lenience here. All chat restrictions should remind the player that they will be severely punished if they repeat this behavior and there will be no warning. The chat restriction is the warning. 125 is a big number. Big warning. This will portray to the player the sort of 'drastic' approach Riot has chosen to take towards the player moderation system.

If you have received a 125 game chat restriction within the last 6 months you are eligible for suspension, regardless if you have finished your chat restriction or not.

Upon any instance of being reported, and verified that you are indeed toxic by the automated system, you should then immediately receive a 3 day suspension.

Returning to the game, you should be confronted with a reform card. There should be three types of reform cards. One for general chat-related incidents, one for serious chat-related instances (such as homophobic slurs or hate speech), and one for a multi-time offender. The multi-time offender penalty is issued to a suspended player who has received at least one serious chat-related penalty.

  • general chat-related incident reform card - If you were currently undergoing a chat restriction at the time of the offense, you are unable to type in chat for the remaining duration of your chat restriction. So if you had 70 chat restricted games left, you can no longer enter messages in chat for 70 games. You are then issued an additional regular 125 game chat restriction. This penalty can reset infinitely and doesn't count towards a multi-time offender penalty, but does not stack.

  • serious chat-related incident reform card - If you were on a chat restriction at the time of the offense, you cannot enter messages into chat for the remaining duration of your chat restriction, plus an additional 125 games. You are then issued a regular 125 game chat restriction. Receiving this penalty leaves you eligible for a multi-time offender penalty on your next suspension, regardless of the severity of the offense.

  • multi-time offender reform card - You cannot enter messages into chat until 6 months has passed since your last suspension in addition to any remaining amount of games you are currently unable to enter messages or chat restricted in (eg. 3 months + 95 games, in that order). You are then placed on a 125 game 'major' chat restriction, where the amount of messages you start with is reduced from 3 to 1 and you can only store up to 3 messages. After completion, you are then issued a regular 125 game chat restriction. Any instance involving a player being suspended while on a multi-time offender penalty will reset the penalty to the exact punishment it was originally and add an additional month of being unable to enter messages into chat. This process can stack infinitely. So to clarify with an example, if a player is suspended for a second time (with a history of a serious chat-related offense in the past 6 months) and had 50 remaining games of being unable to enter messages into chat, and his last suspension was 2 months ago - He can no longer enter messages into chat for 4 months, and once the 4 months is completed, he can no longer enter messages into chat for 50 games. He is then placed on a 125 game major chat restriction, and then a 125 game regular chat restriction. If he is punished while on a multi-time offender penalty, he is then unable to enter messages into chat for 5 months, + 50 games, then the 125 game 'major' chat restriction, then the 125 game regular chat restriction.

If 6 months has passed since your last penalty, your karma is reset and you will receive a regular chat restriction warning regardless of the severity of the next offense.

If you are too lazy to read this wall of text, TL;DR; force players to be unable to type when they type bad things. the action must have a direct connotation to the penalty. If you punish a player with a penalty that has nothing to do with the offense, you will have accomplished nothing. enforce penalties that promote a less toxic game overall.

If you did bother to read this post, I appreciate it because I spent too much time on it.

27 Comments

AeroWaffle3/9/2019, 5:49:47 AM13 votes

I'm going to be honest here, if you have 30-35 permanent bans why should Riot be listening to you about any advice that you claim is made with the intention of making the game better?

Your 30-35 bans is evidence to the direct contrary to that. You've been actively making the game a worse place over many more accounts than almost all other players. If you were interested in making the game a better place the first and easiest place to make that happen is with your own interactions in the game. Riot has already tried a punishment system that didn't involve permanent bans for chat related offences and it didn't pan out. It involved ever greater stacking chat restrictions.

When players showed that they had no intention of behaving themselves, removing chat wasn't likely to suddenly make them behave. They just found other means to show malice towards the other players. These other means, such as intentional feeding or trolling, are much more difficult to detect, prove, and hold someone responsible for.

Some people simply choose to not be civil towards others no matter what sort of punishment Riot could feasibly give. Under such circumstances it's best to just discourage them from playing entirely. You spinning your wheels for 30+ bans, with nothing to show for it other than that number, is not the standard. It's an oddity.

Umbral Regent3/9/2019, 6:56:58 AM5 votes

In regards to your preface;

  1. You call the punishment system obsolete, but I'm fairly certain that that's a misnomer. Obsolete would imply that there's vastly better options available to achieve the same goal; reforming or removing toxic players. The system and punishment progression have largely worked well enough to not demand changes, and if they truly are obsolete, then you'd have to make a hell of a case for whatever new system you propose.

  2. That you have 30-35~ permanently banned accounts does not really confer any import to your statements over anyone else's. All it reads as is "I've been on the short end of the punishment stick for a really long time and haven't changed to fit Riot's expectations for player behavior, and want to propose changes to that expectation/the enforcement of it."

And, sure, I will give that having so many punishments to your name would invariably give you some understanding of the punishment system; you'd likely be more acutely aware of what's punishable even despite your decision not to change it. But, then, that raises an issue; you know the problem, and you should know that it's a problem on your end. Riot can't fix your problems for you, and frankly, it's hard to put stock in propositions from someone with such an outstanding issue.

You might think, "why don't you just stop being toxic? then you don't have to worry about being permanently banned!" okay, but what if you can't? "then you have no place in this game" okay, sure.

The biggest issue with this argument is the presence of the word "if". "If" you can't change, then yes, you generally will not be welcome in League. But, here's the kicker: Everyone can change. There's no "if"s. If you are a human being, you have the capacity to change yourself. There are a blue billion people out there in the world who stand as examples of such.

The issue with change and reform, though, is that it relies on the person who needs to change to actually want to change. If you don't want to change, you're not really going to put in the effort to do so, no matter how many incentives you're given to do so. To quote my late grandmother; "Nobody can change you but you."

Long story short, the ways Riot has tried to address player behavior is... poor. "you can't get ranked rewards!" I really don't care. "you can't get hextech chests!" I really don't care.

That you don't care doesn't mean other people won't care. And believe you me, especially in the case of Ranked Rewards, people do care. I saw the influx of complaints at the end of the 2018 season when people realized that their misbehavior held tangible consequences, and that competition was not an excuse to be toxic.

Hell, Riot even made a one-time reform offer because those people realized too little and too late that being toxic doesn't pan out well.

You are one of a scant few people - and I really do mean scant few, since Riot's data says that roughly only 0.006~% of the playerbase receive a permanent ban, and you, as an individual, have had 30~ - who has made a consistent effort to return to the game without making the effort to reform. Being blunt, you are a perfect example of an outlier. You are not a common individual, and that some of the reform incentives don't work for you specifically does not mean anything compared to the playerbase as a whole.

You know what I care about? That feeling of dread having to queue up for a 20 minute game because I AFK'd. The penalty is the key. The reason this penalty works is because YOU made someone else's 20 minutes a waste of time, now YOU have to waste 20 minutes of YOUR time. That is how you properly penalize a player. When the penalty has nothing to do with the offense, it accomplishes nothing.

"When the penalty has nothing to do with the offense..."

I want to italicize that and point it out here, because I'm fairly confident I know where this is going. Bans for chat-related misbehavior. It's the only logical end conclusion from relating punishment directly to the offense. 20-minute LPQ penalty for wasting other peoples' 20~ minutes, restricted chat for chat misbehavior, inability to play the game for trolling and feeding/gameplay misbehavior.

For your statements on the punishment tiers;

Chat Restrictions - There isn't really much to cover here, save to clarify that the chat restriction tiers are 10-game and 25-game. Generally speaking, any punishment being lifted or cleared is going to provide some degree of catharsis, and I think in this case, the catharsis for clearing a chat restriction is primarily from the personal input to how quickly you clear it. You're still playing the games and making your own impact on the progress in the punishment, so naturally, you're going to feel relief when you do finally clear it.

As for incrementally escalating chat restrictions, I don't think that would really be feasible. After a certain point, Riot has to put their foot down to try and get the player to stop misbehaving, and simply adding more chat restriction tiers wouldn't really solve that. That's largely why they settled on the two tiers before a temporary ban; as you said, they're effective as a minor punishment for a minor infraction, but consistent misbehavior has to be met with something increasingly harsh.

14-day Suspensions - In regards to your views on the punishment itself here, I do somewhat agree. I can definitely see 14 days being a bit overlong following the two lighter punishment tiers, but I also have to add the caveat that with the combined rough durations of the previous two tiers, a 14-day ban is still a natural step up in the punishment tiers.

Since, assuming a person averages 3~ games per day, it'd take roughly 3~ days to clear the 10-game CR, and 8~ days to clear the 25-game CR, making for a sum-total of 11~ days of punishment. While doubling down does seem a bit much, I reckon that it's merited, given the circumstances.

With your viewpoints on the other stuff, not pertaining to the punishment tier, I disagree, both generally (in regards to toxic players not liking being toxic) and fundamentally (competition breeding anger/toxicity, + the idea of "fixing" players > removing bad apples.) I've already mentioned that people can only change if they decide to - Riot can't "fix" someone who doesn't want to be fixed, no matter how many incentives or specially-curated programs they work up.

At the end of the day, the problem isn't Riot's decision not to "fix players" or an inability to do so, it's the player's decision not to change.

Permanent Suspensions - Again, I have to invoke your status as an outlier; while there are certainly some people who will simply create a new account, and, worse still, those out there who'd make the short-term focused gamble of buying an account, the amount of people who get to that point is still comparatively low, and you are, as mentioned before, an even more isolated percentage of the playerbase.

That said, the permanent ban does, in fact, accomplish something. It sends the punished player the message "if you can't play by the rules you agreed to, we can't have you playing at all. Please don't come back.", and gives a massive, tangible punishment to people who invested anything into their account. All their hours of progress, their skins, their hard-earned Champions, etc. - gone.

Of course, such a punishment will have no effect whatsoever on someone who simply ignores the penalties and just keeps coming back despite the permanent ban, but not every player will be like that.

Before I start discussing your proposal, I do want to clear up some information regarding the punishment system.

For those of you who don't know, suspensions are handed out based on how toxic you are in a certain period of time. After a certain amount of time (I'm not too sure on how much time, but roughly 3 months) of no incidents, it resets. If you chalk up 3 incidents of toxic chat logs within this timeframe, you get the ban hammer. It can potentially be less than 3 if your chat logs are severely toxic (such as hate speech or homophobic slurs), but generally it's 3. Chat restrictions work almost the exact same way, but for less serious chat-related incidents.

This is not entirely true, but not entirely false, either. Punishments are handed out based on consistency and severity; there's some general, underlying math to the system where misbehavior will definitely turn up in valid reports, but the punishment will come based on those two factors mentioned above; how severe your offenses were, and how consistent your misbehavior is.

Consistent, low-key toxicity (calling early GG's, passive-aggressive remarks, light insults) will ultimately earn the same degree of punishment as infrequent, inflammatory behavior (flaming, insults, harassment, etc.) - though not within the same timeframes, due to the nature of one being aggressive and the other one being less obtrusive.

The IFS will generally try to bring up 3 games worth of recent behavior that validated reports for a punishment, but this is where that timeframe thing actually comes up true, since you could have been punished for consistent misbehavior, but only got one game's logs of acting out. This has led to the perception that Riot is needlessly strict with even minor offenses due to the misunderstanding of how the reform cards work.

TL;DR, you're punished for the severity and frequency of your offenses, and the IFS will try (but not always succeed) to produce 3 game's worth of chat logs to back up the punishment.

I'll have to continue this response in another comment in the string, as I've reached the character limit. Bear with me for a little bit while I write the rest up.

KFCeytron3/9/2019, 7:15:46 AM2 votes

30 permabans doesn't lead me to think that you consider other people with your behavior. It actually makes me suspect that any changes you propose are meant to harm others for your own benefit.

R107 Games3/9/2019, 7:30:54 AM1 votes

Not sure why you included the amount of bans you've had through your time playing League, as people here will nitpick that part, and will use it to dismiss/invalidate your arguments -- as you're seeing already, lol.

Just let this be a lesson for your next potential thread

Nik Nikerson3/11/2019, 9:56:06 PM1 votes

If you have 30+ banned accounts, I think you may have less insight into the system than you think.

Also, it's amazing how everyone that has banned accounts suggests a "fix" that involves them not losing their account, while still doing the same thing that got their account banned in the first place.