Boards›Player Behavior

Reform System for Banned Players

Randomonium·2/5/2016, 3:15:53 PM·2 votes·728 views

I've played League since Season 1 and I've never received a chat restriction or a ban. That said, I don't think I'm better than people who struggle to control their anger in this game. While I am strongly in favor of Riot's Terms of Use, Summoner's Code, and banning system, I feel that this system is flawed and needs to be improved.

The major flaw in the system is that there is no reform system that encourages toxic player to reform so they can regain rewards that they have lost. In essence, the system is all stick and no carrot. This causes toxic players to never reform and just make new accounts over and over, ruining the experience of many new players.

In order to truly develop a positive community there needs to be a reform system that allows players to prove they've changed and a support network to help players who are struggling to change. That's the real goal after all, turning toxic players into healthy ones, not just banning all of them over and over again.

The system I have in mind would be this:

  1. Riot implements a way for positive players to assist toxic players who want to change. Ideally I'd like to see Riot implement a mentorship program in League where mentors devote time to help other players in exchange for some type reward (like honor banners.) There can even be a feedback system where players can rate mentors and let Riot know who is really serious about helping people and who is just looking to get the reward.

  2. A banned player makes a new account and gets assistance from positive players.

  3. If he can play on this account for a year straight without ANY form of punishment (i.e. no chat restrictions or temporary bans), he may initiate an appeal process.

  4. The appeal process is very similar to the account recovery process. The player must provide evidence that he is the owner of the banned account and provide information about his new account.

  5. If Riot can confirm that the player in question owns both accounts beyond a reasonable doubt then the banned account will be unbanned.

  6. The unbanned account will start at the 14-day ban level, meaning that a single offense will again result in a permanent ban. If the player continues his good performance he can drop one escalation tier every 3 months until his account is not at risk anymore.

Upvote if you like the system and let me know what feedback you have. Obviously there will be ways the system can be exploited but I think we can find ways to minimize this exploitation and actually help people reform.

6 Comments

Korillo2/5/2016, 3:45:20 PM3 votes

Ehhh you get multiple warnings and punishments before being perma-banned. Basically if you get perma-banned they see you as a lost cause who cannot reform. If these players truly wanted to reform they would have attempted to reform wayyyyy before getting perma-banned.

The only "reform" process for perma-banned players is making a new account and that's probably a good way to go about it. They lose all of their time/work/money/rewards due to their behaviour and hopefully it sends a strong enough message that if they want to continue playing league that type of behaviour will not be tolerated at all.

Zielmann2/5/2016, 3:51:32 PM1 votes

It's not worth the time and resources to implement things like that. And they have solid evidence that it wouldn't actually work.

Years ago, they had what they called The Level 20 Challenge. The premise was simple: If a permabanned player could start a fresh account and level it up to 20 without receiving a Tribunal punishment, they could contact Riot and get their old account back. Not a single player was successful at this challenge. And that only requires getting to level 20, which takes far less than the full year you propose.

Even beyond that, Riot has extensive data showing that reform rates plummet with each successive punishment tier players hit. Basically, the vast majority of players who are going to reform, will correct their behavior after just the first punishment they receive. A few players will still reform after a second punishment. But very, very few will reform after a third punishment. Historically, almost nobody would reform after a 4th punishment.

What they really need is a better system in place to reward positive behavior to begin with.