Boards›Player Behavior

Fixing League Of Legends - Hopefully Correct Board This Time

CarpeConundrum·6/9/2019, 11:57:07 PM·4 votes·2,463 views

If you want to skip directly to my idea instead of reading the preamble, scroll to "THE IDEA" #1 PREAMBLE

This post is very important. I have my fingers crossed that a Red will take notice which is why I need YOU, my fellow players, to bump the hell out of it.

Almost every single issue in this game (excluding balance, items being removed, changed, added, champs being 'renovated' etc) comes down to one very large problem: Assholes.

Every game has assholes, trolls, intentional feeders, and people who go out of their way to ruin the experience of others. This isn't an issue exclusive to League of Legends. Every MOBA has this problem, it comes with the territory. Games take a lot longer to play than a 5-10 minute COD match or a 10-15 minute Battlefield match. The longest game I've ever played in league (back in season 3 or 4) was over an hour and a half long. The longest match I've played in DOTA 2 was close to 2 hours and 45 minutes. But I digress. The time factor and often the anxiety/stress felt towards the ranked system by players who desperately want their promos to go well and end up demoted again and again appeals directly to the troll's instincts to ruin a good time. I don't think I need to go any more in depth with the psychology of trolls but suffice it to say... League and games like League attract trolls like moths to a flame.

The current system does nothing, really, but I'm not suggesting a replacement for the current system. Currently, the system punishes people for "toxicity", and while I disagree with this, and have no problem with a bit of banter in an online game, I understand where Riot is coming from and why this is an important issue for them.

What I've been thinking about is a way to make the system even better and more effective, particularly for people who exclusively play ranked matchmaking.

As I've mentioned. Trolls and assholes flock to games like League of Legends, and lets be honest with ourselves and each other, prolonged exposure to games like League of Legends and Dota 2 can turn once decent players into trolls and assholes out of sheer frustration. I don't agree with this, but I've seen it happen time and again both with randoms and with friends who "snap" and start feeding or trolling or playing like an asshole to "punish" other people for their previous suffering, I won't ramble on about the behavioural psychology behind this, but 99.9% of people have the capacity to "snap" and stop thinking rationally. The rational thing to do is to turn the game off and play again the next day and many people can do this, other people hit their breaking point and "snap" and take, in their minds, revenge on players. This is a fact of life we all have to deal with and the current system does not really punish this behaviour.

#2 THE IDEA

This is why I propose augmenting the punishment system and changing certain elements of it. As it currently stands the punishment system operates like this:

>First Offense: 10 Game Chat Restriction
>Second Offense: 25 Game Chat Restriction
>Third Offense: Two Week Suspension
>Fourth Offense: Permanent Suspension
>https://support.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/207489286-Instant-Feedback-System-FAQ-#h1q2

And that's all well and fine for consistently "toxic" players who scream slurs and insults.

What about feeders? Trolls? Assholes? What happens to them? Is a 10 or 25 game chat ban going to effectively curb a feeder's behaviour? Of course not, they will be in the next queue ready to troll your ranked match into the dirt and cause you yet another loss. What can be done with them? Low priority and reform pools. I do not believe that people should be banned for having a bad day. For intentional feeding, trolling and being an asshole there should be a second tier of punishments. For example.

First Offense: 5 low priority reform pool WINS
Second Offense: 10 low priority reform pool WINS
Third Offense: 25 low priority reform pool WINS

What would this"Low Priority" game be? Simple, the matchmaking system would prioritize their account LAST, maybe it takes 3-5 minutes to find a game.

What is this "reform pool" about? Simple. The players account is flagged and ranked matchmaking, SR normal blind pick, normal draft, ARAM, etc are all locked except for normal blind-pick twisted treeline. Ideally the system would force people to play against other people with the reform flag unless there are none who can be found after 5-10 minutes.

#3 HOW THIS HELPS

This is the perfect system for everyone, even those being punished.

Say, for example, someone is having a bad day and they choose to take their frustrations out on the player base. This person would be removed from ranked matchmaking and lose the ability to play and ruin other people's gaming experience. Second, it protects the player being punished from being banned as I believe it's only fair that players in the punishment pool lose the ability to report other players and to be reported. Let them scream at each other in the containment zone. In fact, not only is it preferable that players lose the ability to report other players who are also being reformed, it's necessary that the reform pool be as toxic and awful as possible. The idea is to make genuine players who simply had a bad time feel like they NEVER want to end up back there again. They will reform themselves or their next stay in the reform pool will require even more wins, prolonging their punishment.

Secondly; this will isolate people who have no intention of playing seriously in ranked. As an aside, trolls, intentional feeders, bots and assholes will lose interest in trolling and ruining the game. Some might just make a new account to bypass the punishment but obviously this second account would be ineligible for ranked matchmaking until level 30 and therefore would have zero impact on players who want to play the game seriously.

Most MOBA games have a system like this in place. Dota 2 forces players to win random draft games where you can choose between 3 randomly selected heroes and every other game mode is locked. I believe this will be equally effective in league of legends.

If you've read this post and agree with it, please upvote so Riot might take notice

21 Comments

ModUlanopo6/10/2019, 12:34:19 AM6 votes

What about feeders? Trolls? Assholes? What happens to them? Is a 10 or 25 game chat ban going to effectively curb a feeder's behaviour?

Intentional feeding starts at an escalated 14-day suspension. It's just harder to detect with machines, so it happens less often and is therefore less visible.

The rest of your argument has been suggested many, many times before. One of the core problems with it is that it rests on a perceived value to ranked play that is probably not what you think it is. Ranked participation is actually less than 50% of the active player base, at least according to the numbers I heard a couple years ago.

Also, by locking them into blind pick TT, you are not only creating a "prisoner's island", which is something Riot has long been dead set against, but you're also ruining that format for people who actually enjoy TT.

GatekeeperTDS6/10/2019, 12:45:39 AM3 votes

You write well, but there are still a lot of assumptions, anecdotal evidence, and misinformation here.

What about feeders? Trolls? Assholes? What happens to them? Is a 10 or 25 game chat ban going to effectively curb a feeder's behaviour?

This type of behavior, when detected, receives a 14-day suspension and then a permanent ban if it happens again. I don't think we need to waste time putting these people in low priority queues that will piss them off more. For the sake of the rest of us, get them the hell out of the game.

Secondly; this will isolate people who have no intention of playing seriously in ranked.

And this is something I have a huge problem with. There have been several posts this week of people exhibiting what I call, "ZOMG IT'S RANKED" Syndrome. There is a huge gap between intentional feeders and people who don't take ranked as "seriously" as someone else might. Nobody's motivations for playing any game mode are more important than anyone else's motivations, and Riot isn't going to make it more difficult for people who are playing for fun and playing to win, vs. those who take ranked "seriously," which usually means (to me) that this person has declared themselves leader of the team and spends the whole game shotcalling and annoying everyone.

not only is it preferable that players lose the ability to report other players who are also being reformed

Just because someone was punished doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to report others.

it's necessary that the reform pool be as toxic and awful as possible

This is prisoner's island, and Riot is vehemently against it. Those who get permanently banned have had enough chances, why expend resources (time, money, development) on maintaining separate queues for these people that are geared to piss them off even more. Get them the hell out of the game.

You're rehashing a lot of ideas that have already been thrown around. This is another post (albeit a well written one) about how to keep incredibly toxic, unreformable people playing the game. Why? Again, get them he hell out of the game. Spare the rest of us.

DuskDaUmbreon6/10/2019, 1:01:17 AM3 votes

Two problems:

  1. You made the false assumption that all penalties follow the same punishment path.

Toxicity goes through the mute steps you listed above. AFKers go through LPQ steps (Warning/5/10/20 minute timers, I believe). Feeders and actual trolls go straight to tempban for their first punishment.

  1. Forcing them off to any queue is just pushing the problem to someone else. Yes it'd be nice if there was some way to force reform but the thing is people in TT or in blind don't want to deal with them any more than people in ranked do. This would be the final nail in the coffin for TT.

And that's not even considering that TT is a completely different mode with different expectations, strategies, and an entirely different meta. Do you know which champions are strong there? Do you even know how you're supposed to play your main there? What about what strategies are best? Do you know if it has two solo laners and a jungle or a solo lane and a duo lane as the meta? When's a good time to get Vilemaw and how strong do you have to be to kill it? When's the time for an aggressive play to grab the far altar?

Forcing them to just blind picks would be bad enough, but you're forcing them into a mode they likely know nothing about. They'll unintentionally feed in their games then because they know jack shit about the mode.

Kei1436/10/2019, 1:35:29 AM3 votes

The hardest part of your suggestion is not deciding what should be the punishment for those players that engage in disruptive gameplay behavior, but actually being able to detect them in a timely manner.

The verbal detection part of the system can determine toxicity intent within 15 minutes of being reported and will punish those player when they cross the punishment theeshold, there is no code that can determine intent behind disruptive gameplay. Are they just having a bad game? Playing an unfamiliar champ? Getting matched in lane against someone better than them? Is it a strategic plan to take objectives while giving kills? Do they just suck at the game? Even the human brain have a hard time determining intent, let alone codes.

ModUlanopo6/10/2019, 10:57:09 AM3 votes

Everyone here is being contrarian without offering an alternative idea.

That's a logical error. You made a suggestion - one that's been made many times before - and people are pointing out problems with that suggestion. Having done so, it's not their responsibility to make a counter-suggestion.

rujitra6/10/2019, 12:09:39 AM3 votes

Just want to add that to my understanding it looks not like a separate queue but that the account will be passed over for another account if one is available.

Still same matchmaking pool, but possibly taking longer to match.

KFCeytron6/10/2019, 4:52:37 AM1 votes

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CriticalResearchFailure

{quoted}

What about feeders? Trolls? Assholes? What happens to them? Is a 10 or 25 game chat ban going to effectively curb a feeder's behaviour? Of course not, they will be in the next queue ready to troll your ranked match into the dirt and cause you yet another loss.

Offenses that aren't chat-related skip the chat restriction tiers.

{quoted}

What can be done with them? Low priority and reform pools. I do not believe that people should be banned for having a bad day. For intentional feeding, trolling and being an asshole there should be a second tier of punishments.

This idea is called "Prisoner's Island." It gets suggested on these Boards very frequently even though Riot rejected it long ago.

{quoted}

This is the perfect system for everyone, even those being punished.

Say, for example, someone is having a bad day and they choose to take their frustrations out on the player base. This person would be removed from ranked matchmaking and lose the ability to play and ruin other people's gaming experience. Second, it protects the player being punished from being banned as I believe it's only fair that players in the punishment pool lose the ability to report other players and to be reported. Let them scream at each other in the containment zone. In fact, not only is it preferable that players lose the ability to report other players who are also being reformed, it's necessary that the reform pool be as toxic and awful as possible. The idea is to make genuine players who simply had a bad time feel like they NEVER want to end up back there again. They will reform themselves or their next stay in the reform pool will require even more wins, prolonging their punishment.

The perfect system for players who repeatedly and/or egregiously break the rules of behavior is a permaban, because that's what better for the 99.994% of players who don't get permabanned. There is absolutely no need to protect toxic players or spend any kind of resources on accommodating them in any way.

Briefly: no.

CarpeConundrum6/10/2019, 5:29:58 AM1 votes

Everyone here is being contrarian without offering an alternative idea. I think we can all agree here that the system is flawed when there's a troll or feeder in more games than isn't.

If my idea is bad, and you're just going to mindlessly repeat "riot said XYZ therefore it's bad" then what's a better solution. Frankly, I think Riot is wrong. This system works in every game that has implemented it. Ask yourself this. Why doesn't riot want to segregate trolls and feeders from decent, serious players? Why doesn't riot want a "prisoners island"? The only answer I can come to is "money and numbers", it has nothing to do with creating a supportive, positive community of gamers who are dedicated to a company and their product, if Riot cared at all about that then they would definitely have a system in place to clean up the literal bots, the intentional feeders, the trolls and everything in between that contributes to a negative playing experience, if that means segregating them for the sake of the positive, good, honourable players then so be it. Hell, I wouldn't even be complaining if honour factored into matchmaking instead of essentially being a cosmetic for dick measuring.

At the end of the day, every system has a downside. Anyone who has ever micromanaged a small group, or operated an IRC/discord channel/website/forum/etc knows that you can't please 100% of people and there will always be a few who try to find loopholes/exploit the system. That's a given.

If my idea is bad, what do you propose would fix the troll/feeder/afker/leaver problem?

MordridtheBlack6/10/2019, 4:35:39 AM1 votes

I may be repeating things already stated but you need to understand the full reasoning here

  1. No machine (or human for that matter) can 100% determine if a player was trolling/inting/etc. Machines work great for chat stuff, since they can be programmed to search for key factors and react accordingly (and if need be Rioters can step in and take it further). But a machine can view 1,000 matches and not learn what the difference is between someone who is "feeding" and a person that is "having a bad game/got counter picked/etc" Because no two matches are exactly alike. [Humans are the same way]

1a) And don't bother suggesting a player tribunal for stuff like that, it was done and failed.

  1. Forcing players into any one game mode just effectively creates a "prison" area, which Riot has stated they will never do, because it doesn't solve the problem (if anything it can make it worse).

2b) Even if they were forced into co-op vs ai only for those matches. It would just be easier to give them either a low priority queue, or a suspension of game time.

3)You say Most MOBA, and then only quote DOTA 2. Smite does not have this system (and don't say it does). Smite and League work off the same system roughly for ranked. You have to be a set level and own a set number of playable characters before rank becomes unlocked. Having League switch to a system that, as far as you have stated...only DOTA 2 has would be...well dumb. Because there is no guarantee it would work for League (if it could even be implemented).

None of what you suggested is really conductive to work in League in any real manner because it is either impossible or improbable.