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History of reporting in League of Legends: part 2 the wasteland(Restricted Chat program).

deathgod5·10/30/2017, 2:15:05 PM·19 votes·1,681 views

My first post did really well and I am glad it did( https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/player-behavior-moderation/vueExmqN-history-of-reporting-in-league-of-legends-part-1-the-tribunal ), with that A few small updates:

  1. I am sorry I didn't answer any comments in the first thread, I had surprisingly little time the past few days and I apologize for that.
  2. Some of you had suggestions in the comment section for all kinds of report systems. I will take my time to investigate them and make an extra chapter to this series to address common report ideas. I am also going to talk about different company policies of other companies.
  3. My stance on the reporting system is as follows: I think it is interesting. I haven't been chat restricted for the past few years and haven't been banned in forever so I don't have to deal with it. This series is not going to achieve a huge revelation at the end. It is mostly meant for notation purposes and to show people the advantages and disadvantages of different systems that riot used.
  4. This is a rewritten re upload. I had made some errors I noticed too late so I decided to remake it.
  5. for some reason I can't get quotations to work right now, Ill be doing my quotes within:

With that let's get into the wasteland.

#The wasteland Started in: 2014 Ended in: 2015 Main goal: seemingly endless chat restrictions. Succes rate: Next to nothing.

Sources used :

  1. http://tribunal.euw.leagueoflegends.com/en_GB/maintenance.html The official tribunal page
  2. https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/player-behavior/upgrading-tribunal The official post regarding the ending of the tribunal
  3. http://forums.euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1925036 a chat restricted player post
  4. https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/37w0xn/just_finished_my_1900_chat_restrictions_played_a/ a reddit post on his chat restrctions
  5. http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4737274&page=3 riot lyte on the forums
  6. https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/Boqd81O0-upcoming-upgrades-to-chat-restrictions?show=rundown
  7. http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=4737274&page=4

What was the wasteland?

The wasteland is the name I have decided to give to the period in 2014/2015 between the tribunal and the more strict IFS. I consider this period to be an area where riot games implemented one of their least effective punishment systems. I also consider it to be a chapter of riot games where they failed in communication as many people still expected the tribunal back.

if you look at the page of the tribunal right now, you can see that it still gives you the following message:

We are busy making changes to the Tribunal and expect to have things up and running again in the future. Thank you for your patience!

This message, seemed to show that the tribunal would be up and running again somewhere in the future. The same goes for this message from riot lyte that said the following:

To sum everything up: we want to spotlight and encourage positive behavior through the Tribunal as well as improve the speed of the system. We’re taking the Tribunal down to make these improvements and will use systems like Restricted Chat and an enhanced LeaverBuster while we upgrade Tribunal. Share your feedback and your questions below, and we’ll see you in game!

Considering the Fact that the tribunal never came back, you can see how these messages might have given you the wrong Idea. Many players that already had been toxic during the last months of the tribunal(the system was so far behind that months of reviews were never checked) would now think that they could get away with even more. But riot games started giving out punishments in the form of thousands upon thousands of chat restrictions. There are some old post on reddit and the forums that go into more detail about this( Source number 3/4 for example).

This system felt really bad to a lot of people, players felt like they were being punished for close to no reason and they were given chat restriction on top of chat restriction a good example of how a chatsystem would take it too far is from a reddit post(source 4) I will quote now.

Title: Just finished my 1900 chat restrictions. Played a game, 7960. Why am I not banned instead???

http://imgur.com/INh4uUO

I just really don't understand. I know I talk back a lot and im short tempered, but this new instafeedback system not doing anything to me was kinda the sign of me not being among the worst of the worst, only the worst. I really did not expect not to get another set of restricts, but 7960? Seriously. Not even a ranked restriction!!!

I can still play ranked: http://imgur.com/nViuTE9

This is hilarious. I completed these 1900 like in three quarters of a year. I don't think I'll ever complete this set. :D

(There is absolutely no need for me to get chat logs, I know where i fail to be a "good person" in this game, but this is abnormal imo.)

It's not automated, they said.

A lot of people started thinking that riot games actually just did report stacking. This practice is done by some companies and consist of banning people with a lot of report without checking the validity. This would then impact players on losing streaks and players who played off meta picks and this bothered some people. The other thing that bothered people is that the chat restrictions did about as much as nothing to solve the problem. The truly salty players would use the lines they had to flame and rage other players.

There was still a system in place for as far as we know because there were some 2 week bans given out as riot lyte referenced to it on the old forums(source 5). For as far as I have been able to find out the escalation only happened to people that used hate speech.

The system felt extremely pointless at some point because the punishment became kind of a joke. If you just had 1000 chat restricted games, does it still feel like a punishment if they add another 7960? It felt like threatening a prisoner with a life sentence to a life sentence in prison. I had friends in my friend list that proudly talked about the restrictions they had and how they were probably getting more. Overall, as a punishment system, it looked pretty pointless from the outside looking in.

##What was liked about it

  • The punishments were given out faster;
  • People that wanted to say whatever they wanted thought of it as an improvement over the tribunal(that system gave out bans);
  • The afk system that was introduced with it actually did it's job rather well and is still used to this day.

##What was disliked about it

  • it seemingly did nothing to prevent toxic players from playing anything(even ranked remained unlocked);
  • people thought that report stacking was being used;
  • the chat restriction punishment became increasingly less threatening as the amount of punishments got ridiculous;
  • people really wanted the tribunal back and riot really never came with concrete information.

##the cancellation With the post from source 6 the league restricted chat came to an end. They started to trust their bot system more and even trusted it to the degree that they wanted to use it to properly get rid of toxic people. They forgave all punishments that weren't bans and set the following for steps to getting banned.

  • First offense: 10 game chat restriction

  • Second offense: 25 game chat restriction

  • Third offense: 2 week ban

  • Fourth offense: Permanent ban

I will get into that in post number 3: The Instant Feedback System

##Conclusion Where the tribunal was too slow for it's own good, the Restricted Chat program just seemed pointless to me. I can flame in 3 sentences about as well as I can in 20. Where it served as a decent warning to some(source 7 says it had a 75 percent less reoffenders then first time offenders, which is significantly better then the tribunal did(if this is true)), others just kept stacking punishment upon punishment without ever really changing.

There is an argument to be made that this system is better then the current one if you consider toxicity not bad and want to be freely able to use it, but even in that case it would just be better to get rid of the system completely(I will make a later post about alternatives to a punishment system).

Overall I consider this system to have failed in it's purpose.

Deathgod5 Karthus

26 Comments

HalcyonDweller10/30/2017, 4:54:12 PM4 votes

Great analysis, I'm really enjoying this post series!

My thoughts on the current system are as follows:

Overall I think the system is headed in the right direction, but I don't think it is good enough yet. There are edge cases where players are given escalated punishments for different behaviors than their initial behavors, so for example a player could be extremely toxic initially, get a 14 day ban, make a genuine effort to improve and manage to cut out all the behavior they thought was toxic, but they still get permabanned for other less severe toxicity because they were on 'probation.' This can be a problem because they were not given an opportunity to learn or improve the new behavior.

As such I think the system needs a few changes.

First of all it needs separate levels of punishment for separate types of toxicity. First offenders of passive aggressiveness should not be handed the ultimate punishment simply because they recently came off of a 14-day ban for using hate speech.

Players should have separate punishment tracks for separate types of behavior. This could work better than the existing system because the types of punishments could be matched to behaviors they work better with in order to more effectively curb toxicity of all types.

It would also reduce cases of players not understanding their punishment or feeling unfairly punished. This is because they would receive successive warnings separately for each behavior they exhibit, instead of being punished for different behaviors each time until they just receive the ultimate punishment.

Second, we need a tilt detection system. Something that can identify when a normally non-toxic player is becoming agitated and behaving/playing worse.

It should warn (or even force) players to take a break (could be short, like 30 minutes for tilt, or 24 / 48 hours for toxicity) when they begin to show behavior patterns consistent with tilt and toxicity.

This could help twofold, because it would identify for the player what sorts of behavior are unacceptable so that they know they should stop, and it would remove them from playing while they are tilted, saving them from further stress and saving their future teammates from their tilted playing and poor attitude.

I believe this should kick in before the normal punishment system, as it would work to prevent intermittent toxicity while still leaving the punishment system in place to deal with consistent toxicity.

What are your thoughts on this?

Kloqdq10/30/2017, 4:49:25 PM1 votes

I remember this time period the best since it was around when I started to play. I could remember people typing in chat "Sorry I got a chat restriction" and it worked somewhat well. It was a far from perfect system, that's for sure but it did seem to work somewhat well enough. I do like how the chat restrictions did carry over somewhat from the old system to the current one.

Oakleaf Ranger10/30/2017, 6:26:31 PM1 votes

damn I wish I played in the waste land period.

All the hype and hope for the honor system seems to have fizzled feels like its having a similar impact like the old honor system.

The amount of players with a flair have died down from when this started and most of the players I see with honor 4+ are players who are premade who I presumably just honor each other. I wish I was here during the waste land time...

Owyn10/31/2017, 12:46:19 AM1 votes

1k games chat restriction? hm... I think I haven't played that much games AT ALL thru all these years... [sg-miss-fortune]

Liquid Poro 10/31/2017, 3:52:23 AM1 votes

Please make more!!

Grim Reaper 810/31/2017, 4:31:42 AM1 votes

rito SYSTEM SUCK BECAUSE THEY DONT CARE ABOUT PLAYERS THEY ONLY CARE FOR ONE THING AND YOU ALL KNOW WHAT IS IT.ONLY THING YOU CAN BUY :) AND THEY WILL NEVER FIX SYSTEM BECAUSE THEY DONT CARE.AND TROLLING AND FEEDING PLAYERS ARE FREE TO PLAY AS LONG AS THEY SPEND WHAT ? YOU ALL KNOW WHAT

CreampEye10/31/2017, 4:45:45 AM1 votes

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xXPeterNorthXx10/30/2017, 3:43:02 PM1 votes

the system in all it's different forms is the worst game regulation system ever in gaming history. the current iteration is the absolute worst. millions of dollars spent and what do they have to show for it? the only benefit this system provides is a "shelter" for sanctimonious kids to make a living while protecting them from the evil society outside

needHymn11/1/2017, 3:06:07 PM1 votes

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