Positive Player Feedback Tribunal
I received a 10 game chat restriction. I fully understand and agree with the punishment.
After completing these 10 games, I received a 2 week suspension.
I emailed Riot to get a better understanding of what was going on with my account.
"Sorry for the confusion. The chat restrictions you received were from the Instant Feedback System. This is different from that system. This was a manual audit done by the Player Behavior team. It wasn't just these few games but a lot of games. I just happen to pick them out." - Jenny711
WHAT?! A manual audit. Essentially meaning that Riot has the option to filter through all previous played games, and select the ones that have Summoner's Code hiccups, and then proceed to punish you for it. Seems like Riot is invoking Big Brother. It just seems ridiculous. Riot now has employees searching through your games to look for punishable offenses manually. Insane.
I am taking an oath from this moment forward to never type a single word into League of Legends chat box ever again, for fear of losing my account. This is extreme, but necessary. And I would assume there is a good majority of the player base, who understands completely. My only concern, is to be reported for "poor communication" or worse, have the NSA manually audit my chat logs.
With that said, the Tribunal system has been around for about 4 years now, and has been nothing but a thorn in the side of the League of Legends community. The tribunal system existing, is negative and toxic all on its own. The tribunal system gives an incentive, a reward, and positive reinforcement to a negative and toxic player interaction. Where is the incentive, reward, or positive reinforcement for being a friendly, helpful, teammate? An emblem at the end of the season? Woo? Worth? Where is the incentive, reward, or positive reinforcement for reporting? Instantaneously. "Thank you for your report. XXXX player has been punished. Send more reports! We love trashing our "valued" customers accounts!"
All the Tribunal does, is give validation and incentive to reporting another player(negative interaction). There are 9 mute buttons available in game, yet Riot places little to no value or responsibility on the player to utilize these tools. Again, the Tribunal reinforces and supports the role of the victim. Be a victim, report a player, get rewarded. Where is the reward for being friendly, helpful, and a teammate? There is none, really. And especially nothing as satisfying and rewarding as reading the confirmation notice, that you have just gotten another player's acount(time + money investment) thrown in the trash forever. HOW COOL!?!?! I feel so good about myself, I think I might just report another player next game. Why be a friendly, helpful, teammate? Do you see the problem? It is in the design of the system.
The game is becoming more about who will be reported at the end, than who wins. It would be interesting to see a stat of % of games with reports out of total number of games played in a given week. If I had to guess, based on personal experience, it would be somewhere in the 80% range. This alone, should jump out at Riot as an indicator that the system does not work. Why is there no incentive or reward for being a helpful, friendly, teammate? Again, the problem is in the system.
There is no reward for being a friendly, helpful, teammate. Sure, at the end of the season I believe you get an emblem. But, this is in no way as rewarding as being notified that the player you reported, was punished. There needs to be a shift towards a new system. The system needs to give incentive, reward, and positive reinforcement to being a friendly, helpful, teammate. Maybe we could create a positive system where say each week an account is given x honor points(or could be earned by being a friendly, helpful, teammate the week before) and the player is then allowed to dish these points out to players in their games of that week. Players with more than xx amount of "positive points" will receive some other benefit for being a supreme player of that week(will obviously fluctuate week to week). This is just an idea.. but the point of it is to give more incentive to be positive players, rather than giving incentive to send negative reports and woe is me attitude.
Making this shift will create a more positive community because the focus, incentive, and reward will be put on positive players, rather than the current model, which highlights negative players and rewards people for playing victim and not being able to manually mute the player they do not wish to interact with. Can't we hold each player accountable to use the mute button? It would seem that if you had a problem with a player, after checking the mute box, you would no longer have a problem with that player the rest of the game? And then guess what? You will get the chance to play a new game with a new player!!! No report necessary. And all it took was a simple click of the mute box. Did we really need a virtual teacher to go tattle to? The mute button has been there the entire time and it would seem (and prove) to be a lot more effective at handling toxicity than the Tribunal. Mute a "toxic" player for 1 game. Move on with your life.
I believe that the Tribunal has made League of Legends a more toxic community because it gives incentive, reward, and positive reinforcement to a negative interaction(reporting), with a victim mindset and gives no incentive, reward, or positive reinforcement to being a friendly, helpful, teammate.
I believe this is all I have to say. But, I just can't get over how counter-intuitive the Tribunal system really is. It has just created a new problem whilst solving none.
