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 mute and 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
If you misbehave but a teammate or opponent does or says something even worse, you should definitely report them after the match, just as someone reported you for your own misbehavior. Yes, that's certainly possible. Reports are not a limited resource. Any time someone believes that another player violated LoL's behavioral standards, they can report that player. Punishments are similarly not limited: if more than one player in a game merits a punishment, they can both get a punishment. This can happen even if the players in question were antagonizing each other. The IFS doesn't need to weigh the severity of all reported players' actions and then "award" the "winner" with a punishment; it's not a contest.
Think of it like dealing with a noisy person in a library: ask them to keep it down, and then notify library staff and move to another area if that doesn't work. If you get into a shouting match with them, you're just as likely to be removed, even if you weren't shouting quite as loudly as they were. The goal is a quiet library.
The only chat messages included in your chat log are your own for a single, extremely good reason: they are the only ones taken into account for your punishment, because they're the only ones in your control. The things other players said and did in your match might produce in you an impulse to do certain things that may include breaking LoL's rules, but your behavior is your own, and you are responsible for it. If you really think about it, this is a good thing. If a toxic player's goading could exempt you from punishment for your flaming them, calling for reports, etc., then it would logically go the other way as well, resulting in punishments for players who didn't necessarily break any rules but weren't quite as friendly and positive as their teammates. Can you imagine a world where "didn't participate in the dance party and ignored all of our jokes" was a valid report that could get someone suspended for two weeks? We don't want that situation anymore than we want "called our support a braindead waste of space" to be considered an invalid report just because, say, the support was telling their team to harm themselves while they merrily ran it down mid.
Your opinion of the rules is of zero relevance. When a cop stops you for going 40 in a 25 zone, you can claim "I think the limit should be 45 here" all you want. You're still getting a ticket. If a librarian asks you to keep your voice down while you use the facilities, shouting that libraries should be loud will simply get you escorted out. If you go to a friend's house who insists that you remove your shoes while you're in their home, "that's a stupid rule and I do what I want" will lose you a friend. If you are using someone else's services, facilities, equipment, etc., you abide by their rules or you deal with the consequences. If you think the rules should change, that is a completely different conversation (and I wouldn't give a plugged nickel for your chances at convincing Riot to change their rules to allow behavior like yours).
From Riot's support knowledgebase:
We work with the overall community and within our own company guidelines to identify what disruptive behavior is and what the consequences for those behaviors should be. We understand that it can be difficult to know where the line is, which is why we provide chat logs and we have a few tiers in the ban process in order to allow for you to learn and grow.
There is nothing in Riot's behavioral rules that excuses toxic chat as long as it's factual. It's technically possible for someone to literally be matched with the worst player on the planet, but there's no reason to spend the match calling them the worst player on the planet. It won't make them better at LoL, it won't make them feel better, and it won't help you win the match. All it will do is make them feel worse, annoy your team, and get you punished for breaking the rules, "facts" or not. It's technically true that 2+2=4, but if you announce that fact to your team every four seconds, that's spam and it will annoy them until they mute you, followed by a report and a punishment. It's a true fact, but spamming it is still punishable. Announcing a struggling teammate's score every time they die might be a recitation of fact, but all that does is harass the teammate by calling attention to their poor performance. It won't improve their performance; it might actually exacerbate the problem by tilting them. Scores are factual, but that doesn't make it okay to harass someone.
You weren't punished for misbehaving in one game. You were punished for misbehaving in one more game, in a consistent pattern of negative behavior that breaks the game's rules. Additionally, the reform card doesn't always show all the logs that led to your punishment: it randomly selects up to several logs. You might see three logs, but you also might see as few as one, even for players whose punishment stems not from a small number of egregious infractions but rather from dozens of instances of mild toxicity. The purpose of the reform card is to tell you how to reform, so it shows you an example of the behavior that prompted your punishment and explains that such behavior is inappropriate and should be avoided if you want to maintain an account in good standing.
Usually, one transgression by itself wouldn't be enough to bring such a punishment to an otherwise clean account, but the IFS works on an escalating punishment system. Breaking a minor rule, like engaging the team in useless arguments, has a minor punishment: a chat restriction. Breaking that same rule over and over again, however, doesn't prompt an endless series of chat restrictions. The severity of the punishment ramps up over time, because the goal is to eliminate the punished player's willingness to break the game's rules. If two chat restrictions don't stop the useless arguments, the system will increase the punishment to a 14-day suspension and deliver a very clear message that the continued rule-breaking is becoming a serious issue and any further instances will result in a permaban. Again, the point is to put a stop to this misbehavior. If a player is more interested in repeatedly breaking the rules than in maintaining access to their account, they'll lose access to their account.
Of course, it's possible to break major rules, like cheating, threatening people, or using chat for hate speech, and skip punishment tiers so that a clean account ends up with a 14-day suspension or even a permaban.
From Riot's support knowledgebase:
PUNISHMENTS GENERALLY FOLLOW A BASIC ESCALATION PATH:
- First Offense: 10 Game Chat Restriction
- Second Offense: 25 Game Chat Restriction
- Third Offense: Two Week Suspension
- Fourth Offense: Permanent Suspension
However, it is possible to skip to a Two Week or Permanent suspension based on the severity of the behavior in the game. Excessive negative behavior can result in a Two-Week or Permanent suspension at any time without having a chat restriction on the account.
