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Politely informing someone of their behavior?

Atlantian Tiger·10/25/2019, 1:05:56 PM·1 votes·1,960 views

I have been thinking

Is it alright to politely inform a player on your team that they are breaking a specific rule and that they should stop this behavior?

I know it's recommended to just mute and report after game but some people don't mute such players for psychological reasons I understand but won't explain here as it's not the topic.

My quarrel is, whether or not there's any meaning to this from a practical standpoint or if it'll just make the players behave worse in chat? I mean in that case it wouldn't matter.

What I'm thinking is that there's a small percentage of cases where reminding the player that they're doing and bringing them back to the ground would help them and make them stop.

From my own experience I know it's possible to have a really rough few weeks which reflects on behavior in-game, even if otherwise the player is well behaved.

On another note, does it break the rules to remind the player of their actions in this way? Is it reportable? I'm thinking along the lines of:

"Hey, {player name}, it's not okay to be saying such things to your teammates, and it's against the rules too. Be nice and let's have a good game okay?"

(I've legit used that sentence before)

So, what do you think?

PS: I never threaten to report and only say this once, then I just mute and report

3 Comments

AeroWaffle10/25/2019, 1:18:16 PM2 votes

The biggest issue with confronting someone who is obviously upset or on the edge of blowing up is that any criticism likely will just anger them further.

But if you're going to try and encourage someone from behaving poorly it's better to not bring up the rules at all and instead just try and calm them down the normal way. Bringing up that what they're doing is report-able will often come off as being snooty.

If the source of their anger is that the game is going poorly, try mentioning a strategy that might help the team win ("let's focus on the end game, and try to play safe for now" or "lets save [essential abilities here] on [enemy carry here]").

If they're upset at someone else being a jerk, try to nip it in the bud by encouraging them to mute or convince them that it's not worth getting upset about (it is just a game afterall).

If you don't feel confident that you can give a good argument why they shouldn't be upset or if you think they're too angry to listen to any argument it's often better to say nothing at all. The best you can often do is to stop yourself from giving them more things to rage at.