I would really love to talk to someone in charge (on a goodish note i mean)

Hey guys, I wanted to start this out by saying that mechanically and fundamentally i love your game and its engine. The controls, the design are all great, but there is a pretty big flaw with the game that actively undermines your amazing efforts and honestly dissuades many of my avid gamer friends from coming within a million miles of league of legends

That of course (Since i'm in this board) is the generally unbridled toxicity and how it negatively impacts your 'street cred' so to speak as a fun and healthy gaming environment

ok so i'm here, I have to be honest, the rigid rules and guidelines revolving around toxicity are so spelled out that i feel that their implementation is inherrently going to be ineffective. This being said, maybe there are a few things we could work together, between the community and riot games, to come up with a solution.

My take, if it at all matters to you guys, is that the rules being so heavily enforced in some regards actually leads to people thinking of getting banned as a meme. I've seen people banned for blatent (offensive) jokes (Such as when reading the chat logs), and I've seen people skate away with telling others to commit suicide for months at a time if not years.

In the minds of the jokesters, they're trying to be funny, they crossed a line but it's not exactly the same thing as the true toxic players who are avid ragers, true trolls, and quite frankly a drain on the willingness of others to actually enjoy the game.

Now because of the rigid guidlines and such, I'm going to replace derogatory words with the word "bunny", Y'all can infer whatever but this is for context, so here are some examples

"Darn you got me you sneaky bunny" Is offensive and by rules and regulations would warrant a ban, and would probably result in one. The issue with that is if you equate that to the following

"All bunnys should die, you're a bunny, you should die, please kill yourself you filthy bunny, you suck at this game and therefore should no longer live"

Well, that's a whole different story right? Now there's an argument of perma ban but the nature of this game as a free to play title, along with the mmr system in play leads to someone who is used to the banhammer just making another free account and toxifying up the ladder again pretty quickly.

I'm not saying group A shouldn't face repercussions, but i'm saying that there should be levels of repercussions. The main issue with this is that with such a large player base it's hard to regulate everything without the use of bots, which undoubtedly leads to many accidental bans (As i've seen here on the forums). That being said, it's inadequate.

Riot i love you but your entire approach to this issue, that has become meme status with the rest of gaming culture, is ineffective and quite frankly at this point, stupid because of its lack of effectiveness.

Dissuasion only works on people who have actual ramifications to their actions. You can't dissuade someone from losing their zero effort troll account, and you can't treat every infringement with the full heavy weight of the banhammer, it's just... too harsh.

I've seen a few suggestions that to my knowledge have had success in other titles, I'll bring them up again just for the sake of it

• Bring back the tribunal system so that context can come into play, therefore through demi-democratic appeal players will have more fair repercussions
• Consider troll island again, while yes many players reform, troll island isn't actually a death sentence to an account, it can be used as a second tier punishment in place of temp bans, this can be essentially a place where trolls go to pay their time, but they still get their accounts which they paid for, and they're only being toxic around other toxic players
• Consider warnings/pink slips, with volunteer player support staff to talk to people who have questions, this game is full of dorks, nerds, and other socially awkward types. Not all of us are awkward in pleasant ways, some are unknowingly vulgar, this is a truth that i've seen in my immediate family and with myself. I've crossed red lines a few times not intending any harm. And while I felt sorry for offending someone, I also felt personally persecuted for what is a clinically diagnosed impairment, I'm not the only person like this. It's common with people who suffer from various social disorders such as Asperger syndrome or even Adhd. Some darker humor is also a cry for help, if someone says "Shoot i lagged" and the response is "you should probably kys XD" that's clearly intended as a joke (to me at least) but if it is a prevalent theme in that person's humor maybe... idunno, maybe check in on them?
• Consider including more PvE or even FFA content: many players fall out of this game because of the level of tilt that is commonly seen everywhere from bronze to challenger, I've seen toxic players while watching amazing players stream, and i honestly don't think this is an issue of MMR/Elo. The fact is simple, people need a way to unwind, bots is boring and designed for learning. This is a game commonly played by people as an exclusive title, many don't even touch other games and whatnot. So with that in mind, maybe something zen like a grindfest, or even a roguelike minigame where you see how far you can get in randomly generated dungeons. I don't know, you're some of the best game designers on the planet and I have faith you know how to make sometime as simple as a rewarding grind fest.
• General chatrooms, like whats seen in titles such as Path of Exile, Starcraft II, or Warframe. These rooms often show a good representation of the various types of players in a game, they also often spawn the popular memes that let companies have better insight into the community they created.
• My last thought is to actually build this rabble into a community. League has forums, reddit, but not an actual community. We have essentially a hypercompetative game atmosphere where noone knows eachother and will honestly just unload on eachother. There isn't anything that feels communal about this game. I rarely see the same players twice unless they're on my friend list, I rarely see positive interaction in all chat, and i never see anything else. I'd love to watch more dev stream type material like i can see in warframe every friday at 7, with cool little giveaways of mundane crap that noone actually wants but they're more than happy to shove into their account hoard. I'd love to get to know meddler and the rest a lot better through active talks, maybe even watch them discuss balance changes with eachother? What's going through your head riot? I never know. I'd love to see you actively making a decision, I'd love to see you guys interact with a twitch chat, and I'd really love to have this game turn into a community like it really can become.

so yeah, these pillars of my approach seek to pragmatically fix issues while actively improving the community, I'm not sure how great it is to everyone else or if i'll just get a bunch of people nitpicking, but i hope just the baseline of this attempt to reach out to you scratches the surface and plants some seeds for you. Because if you don't pull the salt off the foundation it'll tear apart all the concrete eventually and ruin this game in the long run.

and again if you'd be willing to chat, I'd love it.