Boards›Player Behavior

Punishment System Confusion

LeiRaion·11/11/2018, 10:00:13 PM·8 votes·9,227 views

EDIT: Riot has opted to give players an opportunity to recover if their behavior was only negative in one instance. The climb from Honor 1 to 2 can definitely be made in 3 months as long as you don't display negative behavior. For those against this, if a player continues to be negative I have seen multiple red posts stating that even ONE instance of negativity can greatly hinder honor progress in level 1. This means that the great majority of people effected by this change will only end up being those who were generally non-toxic and legitimately slipped up once. Thank you for this opportunity Riot! https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/TGYs0hwO-2018-end-of-season-rewards-and-honor

I am posting here at the behest of Mochigirl from Player Support.

Honestly, it is very depressing that I'm here in the first place... I would appreciate honest feedback, sorry for the length but I feel it is appropriate to correctly convey my full thoughts on this incident.

Ok, here goes...

I have been playing league of legends since I believe early 2011, nearly 8 years. I have north of 3000 normals played, hundreds of dominion (we all remember that one right? :P) and I have no earthly idea how many rotating game mode matches. Oh, of course, approaching something like 1000 ARAMs as well. :)

So, I've been playing this game for almost 8 years and I have many thousands of matches played. I have never received any form of punishment on this account in this time. I am typically the type of player that either doesn't speak or speaks very little in a match. I never use my pings to taunt players (Spamming MIA on a player when they misplay), I do not engage in behavior that would be detrimental to the team.

However, no one is perfect. I finally made the mistake of playing a match when I was in a very bad state mentally. Suffice to say I was having arguably the worst day of my life. Nothing really seemed to be going my way and I just wanted to sit down and play a few games. I played a few matches and lost every one, very unfortunate. Then for some reason... I decided to queue again. During this match I was at my lowest point in as long as I can remember. A player on my team decided it was appropriate to follow me around the jungle attempting to steal any camp he could from me because "I didn't gank his lane". This same player would also run up to engage in a team-fight and then tap "S" and stand still until everyone was dead. No auto attacks, no ability usage.

Now, we've all likely seen something like this happen, it isn't news. This definitely isn't the first time I've seen it. However, in this state I was vulnerable and snapped. I actually engaged this player in chat. Something that I would never normally do. I swore at this player a few times saying things like "shut the f&@% up" and "you ruin games with your horses$%t bad attitude"

What came next? My very first chat restriction. I was upset but honestly after that game had ended I was already telling myself, long before the restriction hit me, that it was stupid to engage him "I need to log off for a bit" I told myself. There is no reason to engage in situations like that, all it does is draw attention away from the game play and into the chat window. Which is detrimental to the team. So when the chat restriction hit me I thought that was very unfortunate but ultimately it will serve to remind me to keep to the practices I've used all 8 years playing the game. Don't queue if you aren't in the right mentality. I didn't know of the OTHER impacts receiving this punishment would have....

I haven't played league a lot the last year. Not because of the game itself, I love the game. I just haven't had the ability to play a lot. So rewind to about a week prior to this incident... On the launcher I checked out the end season reward at a friend's place and noticed it was a skin for Orianna, I have always been extremely fond of this champion and have never cared for any of the skins currently on the market for her. This Victorious skin immediately clicked with me though! I loved it! I readjusted my schedule and made a lot of time for league in the last 2 weeks in order to obtain this. I put 100% of my free time into studying the meta, watching various related content on youtube, and practicing in normals to prepare for the ranked climb. I then made that climb and landed in gold league! Yay! That beautiful Orianna skin is all mine!

The next morning I was playing with some friends who brought up the honor system. I was checking my profile and noticed I was still level 1 but I recalled getting a honor skin in previous seasons for higher levels. They then mentioned it resets every season and that you can not obtain end season rewards if you aren't at least level 2.

I took to google to figure out what I could do to correct this with the mere days I had left in the season. Already preparing to clear my weekend. Turns out, normally it resets to level 2 but when you receive ANY form of punishment no matter how big or small... your honor level is set to level 1.

This disables end season rewards!

This is the part of the story I really need help with. I poured a lot of time and effort, planning, preparation, and many hours of practicing in normals in order to obtain gold league. This is extremely depressing to me, however, barring the culmination of events that have brought me to where my life is presently, objectively I do not feel this is a fair punishment.

I have played thousands of matches in league over the nearly 8 years I have played the game. This was a punishment given to me from ONE match. I did not receive any warnings of any sort and as a result for this one instance were I was too upset, too foolish to not engage with that player... I received the following:

  • 10 game chat restriction
  • Honor level set to level 1, disabling any potential honor rewards.
  • End season rewards disabled, regardless of current league placement.

I opened a ticket to contest only the last point in the above list only to be told that can not be done. This punishment does not at all fit the crime. I poured my soul into this. It was my goal, something to make me feel valuable again and it is very upsetting that there is no chance what-so-ever of me fixing this. I encouraged the support team to look at my chat logs for any other game played before or after the one in question so they could better gauge my behavior but this did not matter.

Please help me understand why this is an acceptable punishment.

41 Comments

disregardable11/11/2018, 10:15:02 PM6 votes

I read the whole thing, and I understand you're upset that you aren't getting season rewards.

So here's the thing you're not understanding. The chat logs that appear are examples of negative behavior. This one game is not the only reason you are punished. You were already on the edge of punishment from prior negative behavior, and that was the game that pushed you over the edge. The examples have to be recent, but all of the games you were negative in counted towards receiving this punishment. The timing is unfortunate, but if you weren't breaking the rules, it wouldn't have happened.

I'm sorry you missed the season rewards. On the bright side, you'll have a border next year, because they're changing the way borders work. At the end of the day, it's only one cosmetic, and honestly you can purchase a better one.

Bansheenoir11/12/2018, 2:03:56 AM5 votes

Riot doesnt care about good players. They care about_ bad_ players :(

LeiRaion11/11/2018, 10:20:10 PM4 votes

I am confused about this... If there was more examples then wouldn't they all be listed? I've seen people on streams and even my friends get chat restrictions before and have seen multiple games chat logs listed. I have never seen only 1 game listed before.

In my coversations with the support team they did not suggest anything about other instances. I specifically asked them about that.

A support team member named Legendary told me the following

"The way I would think of it is that we look at instances of negativity for the game itself and if there is a pattern in a game like this then yes it can go to a penalty even for one game. There isn't any requirements that there needs to be multiple games before a penalty is issued."

Again, I am not saying a chat restriction for 10 games was unfair punishment. I am saying that disabling end season rewards for a first time offense in 1 instance in thousands of games over nearly a decade of play is very unfair punishment.

It should also be noted that I only returned to the game roughly 2 weeks ago... So if other instances existed, which I'm confident they do not, they would be very recent.

BONUS DMG 2NOOBS11/11/2018, 11:06:39 PM4 votes

I love seeing RIOT losing customers for their terrible player behavior system.

See, its working as all you SJWs wanted, just one misstep when you're getting trolled and you lose all your "good behavior" rewards. LOL! RIOT is such a great company !

LeiRaion11/12/2018, 7:11:15 PM2 votes

Something has come to my attention and I have to say I am even more disappointed with this situation after finding this out...

The chat system use to have a warning feature that would go out to players and pop up a warning box they had to accept. This no longer exists.... Why? :
The Leaverbuster system still has a warning feature that exists in this game.

https://imgur.com/a/akGSads

This is even more upsetting than before... So Riot had a system in place to warn players to check themselves in the past but then decided it was more reasonable to not give them this opportunity??

LeiRaion11/12/2018, 5:32:59 AM1 votes

I would really appreciate an explanation of why this is a reasonable punishment. This is very upsetting to me and I simply do not understand. This meant a lot to me on a personal level.

To me, this feels like getting stopped for jaywalking and then being sent to jail. or - a more suitable example would be if a professional football player being unsportsmanlike for one play then has his contract immediately terminated.

In a situation like this... I feel extremely de-valued as a player by Riot. I am having a lot of difficulty understanding why a punishment this harsh should be issued from one instance of poor behavior.

For clarity, I have probably played less than 10 games in total between January and October of this year. I only recently started playing again and the chat restriction only cited the one game. I am confident that there are no other games to cite... as I said, I am typically a positive player. This instance occurred because of extremely bad circumstances on my side which caused me to be more vulnerable to another player's behavior. I should not have engaged with that player and took steps to return to my typical self.

LightningShado11/12/2018, 7:23:50 AM1 votes

I empathize and wish I could do something.

Fegone11/12/2018, 2:44:21 PM1 votes

TL;DR

and

Chat Logs or didn't happen.

Hollowchazz11/12/2018, 3:33:26 PM1 votes

This happened to me over ONE game of extremely bad behavior (i was inting in one for all because i was sick of irelia every game it was only like 2-3 deaths at the beginning)

I know my games aren't toxic at all so yeah the system does punish hard over one game.

We need a strike system, that way good people can get a fair warning that says "hey this is just a warning but next time you will be honor 1 and lose season rewards"

mlm olo mlm11/12/2018, 1:03:45 AM1 votes

You broke the rules. Riot isn't going to just forgive you because of the timing.

That said, I personally feel you should get a warning before punishment.