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Suggested changes to bans and low level play

Cecrops13·8/7/2018, 7:54:38 PM·2 votes·1,380 views

RIOT, I had this discussion with a support rep on a ticket of mine they said to post here if I want anyone to ever see it. I still doubt anyone will but here it goes. There are a few issues with your game that I think can be easily fixed and will help solidify the longevity of League of Legends. First, new player experience is truly awful I started a new account since I was banned and talked with a lot of new players and almost none of the new players I befriended have continued to play. In chatting with them I think this is due to a few things:

  1.  Banned users leveling new accounts, a lot of truly vile toxic players who are banned create new accounts to get back to the ranked grind. These players don’t care that new players are new, and they treat them truly terribly. Many of them enjoy harassing new player or trolling at low level because they have nothing to lose. 

  2.  Smurfs, whether it is because they peaked and can’t win at their ranked level, or because they want a low-level account to practice new roles and champions. These smurfs are so unbelievably discouraging to play against as a new player. You are not sure what you are doing wrong but the enemy Zed is up 150CS and insta kills you constantly. It makes you feel like you will never match up as a player and makes you want to quit. 

  3.  Bots, low level games especially ARAM, twisted treeline, and AI games are full of what are clearly botted accounts, these accounts come about as a desire for players to "illegally" gain access to new accounts and so people use bots to level and sell accounts.

I believe that a series of small fixes to the game can fix or mitigate all these issues:

  1. Get rid of permabans except for players that are actually toxic. Players that use racial slurs, make death threats, tell players to kill themselves, etc. players that you do not want to play your game ever again. Add harsh, non-permaban penalties to address of repetitive "toxicity" those players who maybe are rude or mean or yell at a player for playing poorly. Season bans, multi month bans. Save true permabans for people you DO NOT WANT EVER PLAYING AGAIN. As a side note, I think you need to differentiate the rules and punishments for Normal vs. Ranked games. As someone who has played competitive sports all my life. In competitive environments you can’t expect everyone to be happy go lucky all the time, people get attached to the rank and get competitive and will act differently. Being hash when team mates screw up is expected in a competitive environment and shouldn’t be punished the same as a “for fun” environment where it is less tolerable.
  2.   Add two factor authentications, it’s about time, really. In addition, if players must tie a phone number to an account then when you perma ban a player you can ban the phone number and prevent them from using a secondary email to create an account that will ruin the experiences of new players that you want to play your game. It is still possible to side step this, I know, but it will make it more challenging and will at least reduce the problem especially in combination with the other things outlined here.

  3.    Allow level 30 players with 1 full ranked season of play to buy level 30 accounts that all tie to the same phone number for authentication. Then smurfs have no reason to level accounts ruining games, botters will have no reason to bot as their revenue stream disappears. And when you ban a player all their subsequent accounts get removed to fully eliminate the toxic player from the game.

All these things are easy to implement and will cause almost no change to the way players currently operate. Riot's half commitment to banning toxic players is strange and frankly, pathetic. If I am truly so toxic I need to be banned so others aren’t exposed to me, then just BAN ME. Don’t half ass the ban so I and other toxic players go ruin the low-level games. Make it so if you don’t want me to play, I can’t play without significant effort. I really do like LoL, the pro scene the ranked climb etc. and I want it to survive, but I think you will start to dwindle as new players like so many I know quit, because they feel so utterly terrible playing at low level.

Thanks for reading, I know I’m just a banned gold player, but sometimes the best ideas come from the unlikeliest places.

Best Wishes, Cecrops13Heimerdinger

3 Comments

Trundamere8/8/2018, 2:33:53 AM1 votes

{quoted} 2. Add two factor authentications, it's about time, really. In addition, if players must tie a phone number to an account then when you perma ban a player you can ban the phone number and prevent them from using a secondary email to create an account that will ruin the experiences of new players that you want to play your game. It is still possible to side step this, I know, but it will make it more challenging and will at least reduce the problem especially in combination with the other things outlined here.

I don't agree with this. In fact I try to avoid using any phone based two factor authentication whenever possible as it haves its own security risks. And I would not be to happy about the situation if I was forced to do so. The only two factor auth that I will use and I would like to be seen added to more games, is the RSA SecurID or something similar, or FIDO U2F by Yubico. Mobile Telephones are insecure and as such I do not and will not use them for anything security related.

Furthermore not everybody wants to use 2 factor auth, and not everyone haves a mobile telephone either.