Greetings fellow summoners! Recently my account was banned for Abusive & Toxic comms, and I felt "harsh" was an understatement to describe this penalty in the context of the reports. I've had a lovely conversation with a Player-Support Agent who helped clarify how my actions added up to a ban, but it's not within an Agent's power to actually judge if the situation was truly just: only if there was truly content that would trigger the bot. So before getting into my situation that got me here, I'd like to reiterate the subjects of this post / discussion.

1. Was banning my account really the fair penalty?
2. Could the current system be improved to better target toxicity and incite reform? (And yes, I understand this board has no guarantee that it will effect either my penalty or the system) That said, anyone who's not interested in my personal situation is free to skip passed the first section to read about my thoughts on the system in the second section. Feedback and discussion on either subject is appreciated.

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1. My reform card chat logs - brief context - related penalties - thoughts on the matter

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So this journey begins actually a year ago. I don't have an exact date since there wasn't any pre or post game chat, but my Agent mentioned it happened last year so I'm estimating between october and november of 2017.

Pre-Game Chat No Post-Game Chat In-Game Chat [4:25] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): i got em dude [10:37] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): lol, that's not what salty means, scrub [10:41] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): low tier troll [10:42] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): good tru [15:25] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): lol you kids are trash [15:59] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): calling you trash and laughing at you isnt mad bruh [16:03] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): low tier trash troll [16:05] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): good try [24:33] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): throw it in the trash [27:42] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): that's cause you're autistic [27:44] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): the items are done [28:16] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): it's a normal, im doing whatever the f%%% I please [28:23] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and look, its working [28:31] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): I'm not [28:39] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): you kids are literally all chatting to me [28:43] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): trying to get a responser [28:48] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and then calling me salty [28:50] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): for responding [28:51] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): like [29:00] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): shut the f%%% up you stupid pug andrew credit face head idiot [29:07] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): go ride your f%%%ng sleds all day fa%%%% [29:15] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): literally kill yourself irl [29:22] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): ill 1v1 you and all your f%%%ing buddies at the same time [29:24] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): 1v12 [29:31] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): 12 being me, because you dont have friends [29:40] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): eat sh%% you pug fa%%%% c%%% piece of sh%% [29:43] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): kha is above you [29:49] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): hes beyond your capacity Post-Game Chat No Post-Game Chat

So right off the bat I'll say, I'm not refuting the legitimacy of this instance and penalty.

The context of this game is that the entire enemy team (4 or 5 of their players) were incessantly spamming the all chat and harassing me and my team for literally no reason; your typical baiter-troll squad. Now, the smart thing to do would be to disable all chat at the 10.5 minute mark when I'd initially determined they were being trolls. But I did not, I'm Stubborn to a Fault, like . Puns aside, I withstood their verbal onslaught quite well for another 5 or so minutes before finally calling them out on their behavior. It didn't stop though, and became worse over time. By the 27 minute mark they had started harassing me about my build, and by this point I'd had enough of their shenanigans and snapped out at them, since respect wasn't anything they valued. But at the 29 minute mark I decided to change my tune from "Reasoning with the unreasonable," to "Parodying the unreasonable," where I fought troll fire with troll fire. The first couple of lines were quotes from an old youtube video from '06 called "The Life of a Youtube hater," which is a satire or the vile things people used to regularly post on youtube comments, followed by some classic middle-school style Call-of-Duty smack talk. That is to say: no rhyme or reason, all made up smack talk.

Now, that was the first time my account of 8 years received a penalty for anything, and it happened in the latter half of year 7. It deleted my honor level from 5 to 0, and gave me a 1 week chat restriction (or whatever the short chat restriction is). This penalty was completely just, and the amount of grinding required to revive that honor level combined with the chat restriction was plenty of time to reflect on that behavior and incentive to better censor myself before letting my thoughts go out to other players.

Moving along in our journey, several months later on 3/19/18, and very shortly after finally breaching that honor level two state of normal honor rewards;

Pre-Game Chat No Post-Game Chat In-Game Chat [6:36] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): swain oom and just sitting there for years [6:39] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): now his flash down [8:15] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): ty [9:58] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): gw [17:08] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): f%%% [17:09] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): she would [24:11] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): stop being afk in the f%%%ing base when theres 4 top [24:38] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): im not flaming you are [24:45] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): you're afk when im making pressure [24:50] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): idc if theres 4 on mee [24:53] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): thats not the point [25:02] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): since there was 4 top and you werent doingt anything [25:03] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): thats when [25:04] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): stfu [27:30] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): gw [28:41] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): he used pred [29:30] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): ty [31:01] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): gw [32:57] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): lkmao [35:15] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): 1 by 1? you must not look at your own damn screen XD [35:23] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): just cause you died before me doesnt make it 1 by 1 [35:45] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): you said [35:46] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): 1 by 1 [35:47] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): when [35:50] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): me and you went in at once [35:52] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): thast makes it 2 [35:57] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): so you're wrong by default [36:16] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): wrong again [36:58] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): mute all you kids if you're just gonna make shit up and waste my time XD [37:32] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): literally how dumb are you [37:37] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): no one other than riven had to die [37:41] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): but yall wanted to afk in the bush [37:42] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): lmao [39:03] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): mmkay you tards group as 4, ima bring 3 or 4 of them top so you can do something useful [39:14] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): gw veig [39:17] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): off to good stat [40:16] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): gg Post-Game Chat [2018-03-19 00:20:06 PDT] Clandestine Fox: learn to group as f%%%ing 3 before trying to manage a 5 man group [2018-03-19 00:20:10 PDT] Clandestine Fox: you guys are silly AF

Now at a glance this one looks very aggressive, but comparatively it's much more tame than the first instance. It's also important to note that the toxicity started at the 24 minute mark (the 17 minute was me frustrated about an enemy gank), when I first defended myself at all from my angry jungler. Up until that point, he'd been everywhere on the map except top, and had some incendiary comment about me everytime I got 3-4 man ganked and dove. Eventually I'd had enough, and gave him some legitimate criticism. Angry, but legitimate. After that, I continued to try my best to play the game and assist the team and give positive reinforcement, and then 10 minutes later the bot lane joins the conversation to assist the jungler by fabricating some story of a failed gank that happened bot lane that was also my fault. At that point I gave up on reasoning with those players, but still tried to play the game and strategize with them. Angrily, but I was still trying.

Like the first one, this penalty was another great learning experience about how sensitive the system is. Literally any sign of anger in your word choice groups you, the abusee, into the same toxic penalty crowd as the abuser. While cherry picking only my text out of a chatlog can easily paint me toxic, it does nothing to actually address where the toxicity was coming from.

This one comes from the night after, and I find to be very questionable given the situation. A Brief pretext for this one is that I was duo queue with my higher rank friend who was playing adc at the time, while I was top.

Pre-Game Chat [2018-03-20 10:31:07 PDT] Clandestine Fox: sick amarite? [2018-03-20 10:31:29 PDT] Clandestine Fox: the lee got so memed XD [2018-03-20 10:32:33 PDT] Clandestine Fox: http://plays.tv/video/5ab06c3858e9e4c3cc/that-was-cleaner-than-oxy-clean [2018-03-20 10:32:35 PDT] Clandestine Fox: a funny clip [2018-03-20 10:33:11 PDT] Clandestine Fox: camille's a tough cookie to lane tho, hopee shes not some baller camille player XD In-Game Chat [0:43] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): tru [0:46] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): ty [1:02] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): shee so fun [1:12] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): he was [1:17] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): thats why i was laughin the whole time [1:18] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): like [1:23] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): "is he gonna let mee do it?" [2:42] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): oh sick she took a silly rune fo camille [4:50] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): im glad vi can just hold her Q [4:52] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): for 5 seconds [5:51] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): lmao [6:26] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): if vi didnt flash that was a double XD [6:48] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): i know [6:52] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): thats not how this works [7:03] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): but she took silly rune XD id be more worried if she had grasp over that thing [7:12] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): in lane anywayt [7:17] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): teamfights shell be anoyiung [11:47] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): i got fb tower ina sec [14:55] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): wow wtf [15:00] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): 4 second stopwatch [15:47] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): what [16:27] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): sometimes i win games for him [16:30] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): sometimes he wins them for me [16:33] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): sh%% happens [18:10] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): i wish camille's hitbox didnt eat my stun when i tried to slam vayne T_T [19:28] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): no ones boosting [21:31] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): the f%%% are you talking about kid [21:33] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): im like silver 2 [21:39] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): thats not really high in the leasty [21:46] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and you havent even pretended to gank top [21:48] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): ive been winning 1v2 [21:52] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): do something somewhere [22:00] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and yet every other lane lost [22:00] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): so [22:03] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): what did you do? [22:06] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): what makes you so good? [22:08] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): its not about [22:11] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): if i "need" [22:12] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): a gank [22:13] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): free as f%%% [22:14] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): kills [22:16] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): top [22:18] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): but you afk mid [22:19] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and b%%%% [22:20] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): so [22:23] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): muted and reported [22:26] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): i wasnt losing [22:30] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and you didnt gank [22:30] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): so' [22:33] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): you're r%%%%%eed [22:40] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): exactly [22:45] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): muting this trash jungle [22:52] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): i got to their f%%%ing inhib turret [22:54] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): 10 minutes in [22:55] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): 2v1 [22:57] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): no help from jungle [22:59] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and IM [23:01] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): the bad one [23:01] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): ok [23:36] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): like this loss is 100% on you lee [23:41] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): if you wanna throw my game im down for your plan [23:43] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): go ahead [24:13] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): bot lane didnt afk from the FREEST F%%%ING 10 MINUTE TOP INHIB [24:18] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and then bitch about everyone in chat [24:21] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and then bait bot lane to die [24:24] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): by saying he was coming [24:27] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and then not coming [24:31] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): and then afking Post-Game Chat [2018-03-20 11:00:08 PDT] Clandestine Fox: lmao lee's such a scrub

In short, this game was another lee sin incessantly harassing me and my duo because my duo was doing very poorly, and for an entire 20 minutes I quietly ignored him and let him go unchecked. But it was around that time that he changed from complaining about my duo's K/D/A, to telling everyone in all chat to report me for boosting. He started trying to convince my team of it, and at that point I couldn't ignore it any more. He spent the entire game griefing the chat, and then I go punished simply for defending myself in a heated situation. While this response may not be "productive" toward the toxic jungler's behavior, I don't really feel like directing an angry stranger towards a calm state of being is in any way my responsibility. It's not like my behavior in this situation caused Lee to attack me, he had been doing so aggressively the entire time. Why punish me for responding in kind? At what point is self defense considered Abusive & Toxic?

Six months later in September, is the one real black sheep of all these logs. This instance is very short, and I make no excuses for it. It's the instance that earned me a 2 week suspension, while the previous ones were only chat restrictions.

Pre-Game Chat No Post-Game Chat In-Game Chat [9:38] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): fa%%%% [10:28] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): i got camped [11:16] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): fa%%%% [31:56] [All] Clandestine Fox (Poppy): gg Post-Game Chat [2018-09-25 15:02:44 PDT] Clandestine Fox: ez [2018-09-25 15:03:06 PDT] Clandestine Fox: i do enjoy playing perma poppy [2018-09-25 15:03:07 PDT] Clandestine Fox: lol [2018-09-25 15:03:07 PDT] Clandestine Fox: what

While this one was very upsetting to me at the time, since the enemy team was basically ban-baiting me by doing those cheeky irritating things like /All chatting "?" repeatedly or spamming emotes, laugh, etc. etc. at the end of the day my reaction was very over the top and I feel like a temporary account suspension after extremely incendiary reactions like this are a very reasonable punishment as it sends a clear message that that behavior is not tolerated. In instances like this one, where I just happened to be rather angry to begin with that day prior to playing the match, a suspension of play altogether provides plenty of time to cool-down and reflect. Although this particular report isn't in the same league as the rest, it's still an important example of how the system works for discussion later on.

And finally, this last one comes from quite recently, on Christmas Eve of all times. The pretext of this instance is that I was playing my Twisted Fate adc in the bot lane, and my entire team flamed and griefed me the entire game for my pick and less than stellar performance. On top of all that, compared to every other report instance here, this chat log is incredibly tame. Summoners, here is the last straw that set the system over the top:

Pre-Game Chat No Post-Game Chat In-Game Chat [1:06] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): a yo yo man [4:35] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): lol [4:36] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): gw [4:43] [All] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): you got spotted [7:23] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): TY [8:17] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): why're you so toxic [8:30] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): im not trolling [8:33] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): im being camped [8:36] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): and you watch until im dead [8:50] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): and you're muted [8:52] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): and reported [8:54] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): whats your point? [9:45] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): i cant move without xerath blasting me from anywhere [9:56] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): and you act like my champ is the reason he's shooting me [9:58] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): you're dumb XD [10:07] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): if I was Jhin, he'd still be doing that [10:33] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): quit doing thta [11:10] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): christ this troll sup just wants to blow any chance of recovery [11:14] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): shove my lane when im gone [11:16] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): no money or exp [11:19] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): then they dive me [11:21] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): wonder why? [11:26] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): useless sup [11:56] [All] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): report this velkoz, inting the lane and shoving the wave and just watching as i get dove [12:25] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): fucking hacker [12:34] [All] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): literal wallhacks. [12:48] [All] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): reporting xerath [13:20] [All] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): lul in caps all you want hes been blind shotting me at max range over 3 layers of wall [13:23] [All] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): nothing but hacks [14:07] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): easier said than done, ziggs. both teams plot against me every game. idk why [15:11] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): velkoz literally cleared my wave so many times [15:13] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): he has more cs [15:14] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): so helpful [15:25] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): then he goes mid [15:29] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): its adorable [18:52] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): no idea [18:54] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): nothing hit me [18:55] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): at all [18:58] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): and my hp dropped to 0 [20:14] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): kayn is such a cool champ [20:19] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): does nothing and your hp goes down [21:16] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): hes the one doing it [21:18] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): you chill [35:06] [All] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): sick hacks [35:39] Clandestine Fox (Twisted Fate): reported Post-Game Chat [2018-12-24 14:24:39 PST] Clandestine Fox: reported [2018-12-24 14:24:42 PST] Clandestine Fox: l2p

Now this one is a bit special, since I still have the entire playback of that game. This is the actual in game context to all of this chatlog. https://plays.tv/video/5c2683eb8be68dd247/got-banned-for-toxic-abusive-comms-against-my-team-lets-take-look- While I can understand where the system flagged my behavior as "Toxic," is permanently banning my account for such mild toxicity really the best course of action? Under the current system, you get a mere 4 instances of bad behavior of any grade, and then you get the boot. If, after an earlier offense you behave really really good like I did for quite some time, the system will take this into account to some extent and grant you a little leniency. That's why my reform card here has 5 instances, rather than 4. But remember, this is 5 instances over the course of a year and a half. Not 5 instances over a 3 month span.

This of course brings us on to the second section:

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How could the system be improved to better incentive reform within players being penalized?

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The system as it currently stands utilizes a lot of the right ideas and concepts, but in some rather wonky ways. The system understands that there are various degrees of toxicity, and some get penalized much more heavily than others. It also recognizes "the small stuff" like name calling and generally arguing with your teammates, but doesn't penalize you on them until it has built up over time. This means in some way, the system is able to keep track of that too. But the strange part of the system I find, is the way penalties work. While I understand the premise behind the current one is that 50% or more players typically reform after each tier until the 4th where you're simply banned, and according to riots statistics the % of accounts banned is extremely small (0.006%), I don't really understand why that alone is enough of a reason to suspend my account of access to the game and everything I've purchased over 8 years of dedicated service. If such a large % of toxic players reform after each penalty, why does the system stop at 4? That's such a tight ultimatum reform window to expect from someone.

But the solution to this is actually incredibly simple. Why not disband the blackmark system altogether? The punishment system would better protect long term average-joe players like myself from inevitably being banned over the course of years just because one day, in one game, you had a heated argument with someone over the internet. Rather than using a system that considers any and all instances of toxicity as the same, we should use a system that doles out punishments (the same ones we use now, in fact) but the punishments severity actually correlates to the instance at hand, rather than checking only for a number of black marks.

For example, in hind sight looking back at my reform card now via these chat logs, the very first chat log (The All-chat one against the premade team) I would say realistically should have been punished for the same severity as the 4th one (The very short one where I called the enemy laner a couple angry words) with a two-week suspension. While I wasn't literally as angry in Log 1 as I was in Log 4, the content of what I said was on the same level of zero tolerance. In spite of this, Log 1 only warranted a short chat restriction (because it was only my first offence). In a system that looks at the severity of an offense and not at black marks, I would have received a suspension for that first offense regardless of it being my first. The system would basically run on a tier system, putting "the small stuff" like arguing and name calling for example, on tier 1 (the lowest), and when a valid tier 1 toxicity report goes through the player will receive a tier 1 penalty. For light toxicity like name calling or negative sarcasm, there's really no need to go further than a chat restriction. Repeat offenders of tier 1 offences would still be able to stack penalty and therefore gain lengthier restriction periods for toxicity shortly after coming off of a restriction. But on the flip side, players who aren't toxic and show honorable behavior in games over time will lose penalty levels by maintaining that good behavior. It's to my understanding that the current system does indeed consider your honor when punishing you, though how it actually does that is still vague to me. But with an actual visual meter of some sort for each penalty tier, it would be very easy for players to keep track of how other players are perceiving your behavior in game, especially if the system is keeping track of "small stuff" that you're being reported for, but not actually informing you until it has already built up enough to penalize you.

Another benefit to such a system is that by not banning players who may very well have just been put into unfortunate situations like I was, the system isn't outright closing the doors to reformation. If the Player-Reform system is truly built to reform players, why is being banned even considered a reasonable penalty? Being banned by a black mark system for such minor offenses simply doesn't feel just. If the absolute source of my toxicity is that I'm abusive on the comms, wouldn't the reasonable response be to ban my comms? Under a system that penalizes by severity rather than consecutive marks, Banning accounts would fall under a tier 3 or 4 offense (depending on how many are added). Bannable offenses would be things related to the account itself like buying/selling accounts, sharing accounts (if that's against the rules, I forget the policy on it).

Additionally, repeated short-term Tier 2 offenses (account suspension penalties) if not reduced through honorable behavior can stack up and give you a tier 3 penalty. In essence; receiving multiple tier 2 offenses (racial or homophobic slurs, telling people to do self harm, and other zero-tolerance things) within a short period of time showing little to no effort to reform, would be a tier 3 offense and be potentially bannable.

So that's my story and my thoughts and feelings on the current Reform system. What do you guys think,
1. Was perma-banning me really a just punishment? 2. Do you think the system could be improved by my ideas, or have any ideas of your own for the devs?