Boards›Player Behavior

Riot's tendency to punish the victim and let the bully go free.

DNFVixen·6/1/2018, 3:33:26 PM·5 votes·1,715 views

Riot has a tendency to punish victims of flaming and bullying, which in itself is wrong and shows a general lack of understanding of human nature and how the general populous acts.

You see Riot has had a trend of late on punishing those who react to getting flamed and bullied in game, everyone I know (except 2 but they give no fucks what anyone thinks ever and they are generally jerks themselves) reacts when they get flamed and/or bullied in game including my friends who are diamond. You see what Riot tells us to do is to just mute them and move on which morally is the correct thing to do but that itself is a problem, I will get back to that. I took a semester of Human Psychology at Algonquin Collage and one of the first things we learned is how a person first reacts to a hostile situation. Now can you guess what the initial reaction of the average populous is to a hostile situation? If you guessed to lash out and meet hostility with hostility you would be correct. You see the average person meets hostility or any challenging situation with anger and tend to lash out at the situation or meet it head on. We all know we are to mute them and to move on but in the moment that we start to get flamed our first reaction is to get angry and in that anger 90% of us tend to forget what we should do and meet hostility with hostility. Generally when a person gets flamed and bullied it unfortunately tends to turn into a match of name calling and degrading each other. Which is not right but unfortunate that's human nature.

There in lies where the problem is, instead of punishing the ones that starts the problem riot punishes the ones that react to being bullied/flamed and tells them "Well you should have muted" which actually is putting your standards way higher then the average populous, if Riot only punished the bully and not the victim Riot would actually start solving the toxicity issue in league.

The situation has gotten a little out of hand, I have made posts before and actually said on other peoples posts who got punished for reacting to a bully/flamer how Riot is going about this the wrong way.

More often then it should be I see that the ones that got punished where the victim of flaming/bullying, and the bully/flamer got away without a single punishment and they are starting to realise that they can get away with it.

You might say "you dropped out after 1 semester" , I left because I realised I would not be able to handle working in the field of psychology with my anxiety and depression, not because of my grades.

Riot I fully recommend that you consult with a few psychologists and get their help modifying how your team approaches cases where your system punishes the victims, because how you expect the average populous to react when they get flamed/bullied is setting your expectations higher then what the average populous will do.

You don't even say "well that's the low elos", I have observed my friends who have been Master tier react to a flamer and act exactly what I have seen any other rank react. you may get less toxicity in the higher ranks but they react the EXACT same way to it. You just have a lot less people who start it in the higher ranks.

Also Riot your excuse of "well we mute them so can you", 1. You hire people because they have trained to/are able to get past the common human reaction to those situations. 2. I have seen videos and once OBSERVED a Riot employee flame someone back, it wasn't bad but it wasn't very nice. You can't have double standards if you are gonna have crazy standards.

You gotta stop punishing the victims and punish the bullies. (unless the victim takes things way out of hand and starts telling them to kill themselves kind of thing.)

Please Riot I am begging you, consult with specialists in psychology and LEARN about the average human reactions to situations. You are the ONLY game company I know that punishes the victims.

17 Comments

Oleandervine6/1/2018, 4:12:35 PM8 votes

Only idiot "victims" who react to bullying with equal flaming and toxicity get punished. You are no longer a victim if you're resorting to the same kind of hostility and flaming that the bully is using. At that point, you're both on even ground.

And yes, psychologically, people do lash back with hostility initially. However, as someone who KNOWS THAT, you should be self-aware enough to NOT DO THAT.

There's also the matter of reports logged against your accounts. If the troll is purposefully trolling in a way that isn't flagged by the system as offensive, they won't have valid reports logged against them if the system can't determine that they're using speech that's report worthy. So a troll doing things in this manner may have, let's say 4/10 reports needed against them to trigger a punishment. If you have a history of using inflammatory language, and you have say 9/10 reports needed against you to trigger a punishment, when you unload on the troll and they report you, you will get punished because of your behavior in the past. But if you, as the "victim" react hyper aggressively and tell them to kill themselves for trolling or spew hate speech or slurs, BOOM, you get reported and instantly punished for the no-tolerance language, even if you don't have a history of inflammatory comments.

Common sense, even for those that are upset, can still be used. You can still censor yourself because you HAVE to press Enter to submit what you typed to chat. You can still convey your upset at someone without resorting to flaming or toxicity, and can do it without having language that would trigger a report, or do it without qualifying as harassment. Of course, muting trolls when you determine them to be trolls is the most effective way to deal with them, because as I'm sure you learned with human behavior, escaping a situation is often the number 1 reaction when presented with conflict, with fighting being a last resort. So if you actively choose to fight instead of escaping the situation, it's on you.

Karunamon6/1/2018, 4:57:47 PM8 votes

Counter-trolling means you've stopped being a victim and started being another abuser yourself.

Now can you guess what the initial reaction of the average populous is to a hostile situation? If you guessed to lash out and meet hostility with hostility you would be correct.

Which is why people aren't instabanned for their first offense. You have to show toxicity over a long period of time to meet that fate. In the real world, slugging a guy in the face who says something mean towards you will net you an assault charge and jail time. "Initial reaction" is no reason for people to not moderate their behavior.

Furthermore, this is online. If someone's getting under your skin, you're a mouse click or a quick command away from never having to see anything that person says again. THAT is defending yourself, not filling the chatbox with your own toxic waste.

EvilDustMan6/1/2018, 3:48:38 PM6 votes

Flaming a troll is only going to escalate the situation and make it worse.

Kei1436/1/2018, 6:05:43 PM4 votes

System punishes based on consistency x severity. Typically, people have to be toxic for a few games before they get punished.

When the victim counter -flames the bully, he is also engaged in unacceptable behavior. When the victim is toxic and passes the toxicity threshold, they will be punished. If the bully continues to be toxic, they will be punished when they pass the threshold.

Xidphel6/1/2018, 11:38:40 PM3 votes

Once someone retaliates, they stop being the victim and become another bully.

koochario6/1/2018, 3:38:23 PM2 votes

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/player-behavior-moderation/0JIhtyBM-the-trolls-have-won-and-are-immune-to-criticism-punish-the-victims-instead

even responding at all is dangerous

redniwediS6/1/2018, 3:59:25 PM2 votes

Got any evidence to go with those claims?

Azure Hamster6/1/2018, 5:06:25 PM2 votes

No real data, no case.

Caitlyn

nobligation2play6/1/2018, 5:12:43 PM2 votes

You have to find ways of dealing with the trolls by not stepping to their level, but psychologically going so much further underneath them, they don't even know what you're doing.

These guys' primary goal is to get under your skin. There is a very good percentage of these guys that are not interested in winning the game whatsoever, their primary purpose is get YOU to flame, report you, and get YOU punished for Riot's extremely piss poor RAP functionality.

Bullshit them as much as possible and try to get them to get evidence on their own RAP sheet by verbally admitting to what they're doing.

1: Sorry i'm a new player, I didn't understand "x / y / z - what you were doing / etc". 2: Hmm, you might have to try a little harder, that's not going to put me on tilt. 3: Well by golly-gosh darn it, I kind of feel like you are leeching my experience and gold while not contributing on the same level" 4: Yeah eh uh, i'm still not on tilt.

They will break, eventually, keep it up. They are trying to break you, but if you can notice it coming, you can completely revert it around on them. This is not actually trolling, this a response to bullying, which is maturity.

Sometimes just randomly talk to yourself, like you are talking to an audience, and pretend you are streaming / recording this particular match, it might actually get them to realize that they may or may not be recorded and other people can visually see their performance and convict them for adamant trolling.

Gabresol6/2/2018, 8:42:40 AM1 votes

Riot does not give a damn about who started what. Just like in school lines like "I only broke his nose because he hit me first" will not get you off the hook. Rules are rules. And if you cannot manage to follow simple rules as "not acting like an asshole", then maybe you should not play a game, that makes you agree to not act like an asshole to play it.

There are jobs out there lik cashiers, doctors or even lawyers who get harassed every now and then on their job. Cashiers, because its their fault if the customer tries to handle in a expired coupon. Doctors, because thes tell you should do the exercises you are supposed to do and won't get painkillers instead. And lawyers have to handle getting called murderer and other stuff, because they are defending actual murderers in court. None of these is allowed to fire back at these people or there will be consequences.