The Chat Restriction is Coming

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I was hoping to avoid projecting too much of myself before other people had a chance to respond. That said,

• This system attempts to address a highly common problem: what do you do when people in randomly assembled groups can't get along? This is especially true when queuing for the daily heroic. They've had Vote-to-Kick for a really long time and the /squelch commend has been around from the beginning, but this is the first time they're getting proactive on chat. I was on Zul'Jin for many years and, trust me, there were people in trade chat that would have been perma-silenced.
• I note that they haven't brought it out for Heroes of the Storm or Overwatch, which are two games that are similar to League (I play Overwatch, but not HotS). Clearly there's a reason for that.
• I also note that they're claiming reports are 100% manually reviewed. Can you imagine the player support infrastructure behind that? League is the most played game in the world and they can't do full human review. I wonder how quickly they'll walk that back.
• League went to the 4-step punishment volcano because of their experience with reform and the lack thereof. I wonder what institutional experience prompts Blizzard to ignore the published papers on the phenomenon.
• Blizzard's system eliminates the community's input. I like that Riot bases punishment on what the community wants, but I also wonder what benefits Blizzard's system holds.
• How is the 24-hour/doubling forever system different from how League does it? What aspects are preferable?
• Blizzard is doing full silencing except in premades. Given that the ping system is pretty robust and is being made more so this patch, could permanent silencing come to League? Lyte always said that toxic players would act out in other ways, but he's gone now.

I'm still curious what you think, by the way.

votekicks in my opinion could be a valuable tool in league. even if it punishes off meta players

theyre experimenting with wow. im sure it will come to diablo/overwatch/starcraft/hots in due time

world of warcraft is a close 2nd. league and blizzard both have the capability to manually review. blizzard is just more willing to throw the money at it

blizzard doesnt care about toxic chat unless it's really bad. riot will ban you for telling someone "shut up" if you do it enough and get reported enough for it so im guessing very rarely will people escalate to the point of a permamute on wow unless they deserve it. in my opinion. league should have a tolerance for a few shut ups per game. if anything. blizzard is doing this to stop gold spam. not negative chat

ignoring the community's input on punishment eliminates the mob mentality that league currently possess and allows blizzard to make the decision on "what's toxic and whats actually toxic enough to warrant a punishment" and makes it so the players punished are the ones being the most negative. not just getting the most reported or the ones who get caught quicker

in blizzard's system. people are still able to play the game. just not talk. and there is no risk of a permaban for toxic chat. and im guessing you will still be able to earn achievements. which are skill based. and riot shouldnt be tormenting toxic players with retroactive punishments for skill based rewards like end of season/hextech loot in my opinion. it just breeds spitefulness

in my opinion. a full silence should be paired with a 14 day ban under the current system. and players can earn back hextech rewards and ranked rewards after the end of the season if riot really wants to take them away

Blizzard is doing full silencing except in premades.

They do not do full silences. If you were chat restricted in HotS you would still be able to talk to people that are on your friends list in game. IE, the people who actually know you instead of strangers who would be offended by you. Riot never implemented this to their chat restrictions.

I also note that they're claiming reports are 100% manually reviewed. Can you imagine the player support infrastructure behind that?

Blizzard actually lets players call their help desk to answer whatever questions they have regarding the game or their punishments. Considering it's far more efficient to talk to the player and far quicker to answer questions than to read each ticket individually and type. (Copy/paste same generic answers) You can check their boards and see that plenty of people are quite happy with having actual people to talk to and not wait days for someone to copy/paste a response to their ticket with Riot that may or may not have anything to do with the question they asked.

Lyte always said that toxic players would act out in other ways

True. What blizzard did to combat that was to take away the things players would do to act out. They took away the effectivness of feeding by making objectives and creeps more rewarding instead of champion kills. They took away afking by replacing the afk'd/dc'd player with an AI to play for them. They play decently and it's better than having 1 less person on your team.

Blizzard's system eliminates the community's input. I like that Riot bases punishment on what the community wants, but I also wonder what benefits Blizzard's system holds.

• PLAYERS WANT TO PLAY THE GAME. Blizzard lets them play the game. They dont permaban players.
• PLAYERS WANT TO SAY WHAT THEY WANT. Blizzard lets them, just only to people in your friends list who have an idea of who you are.
• PLAYERS WANT TO HAVE FUN. Blizzard give that to them. They took away all the tools that toxic players have to use in game and made sure they would not impact games in any major way. Unlike Riot who only does something well after the fact and does nothing to take away toxic players tools to ruin games.
• PLAYERS DONT WANT FEEDING TO RUIN THEIR GAME. Blizzard took away the impact of feeding in game by making the objectives and creeps more rewarding and feeding a minor effect in game.
• PLAYERS DONT WANT AFK'S TO RUIN THEIR GAMES. Blizzard replaces AFK's/DC's with an AI player to play for them so that the team still has that 5 man team.

This sounds and awful lot like Blizzard is listening to what players want. Riot only does something about toxic players well after the damage is done. Blizzard takes away the tools that toxic players use to ruin players games and makes it difficult for players to actually ruin players games. Granted Blizzards HotS is not perfect with dealing with toxic players, they've had far more success than Riot has with LoL.

Oh dear god, the number of times I've seen a raid finder devolve into a few self-nominated leaders having a full-on meltdown is really something. And trade chat trolls. Gotta love those. Learn their names, they give a server personality! Of... a... particular sort.

Heroes, I've heard you can get muted and can't play ranked when muted already. You also can't talk to the enemy team at all -- so I guess it's got its own sort of system.

For all the things riot has, half-way decent customer support is absolutely not one. Blizzard's customer service/support/player behaviour staff is generally much better in size/staffing/infrastructure, so they might be able to pull it off, depending on the difference between WoW and League. Then again, how much of customer support staffing extends to ticket review and the like... that's harder to say.

The doubling system just seems weird to me. At some point, it just leads you to a de-facto perma, with... no particular thought as to when or why. It seems really arbitrary.

WoW doesn't have other ways to act out as much as league does. If you leave a battleground, then you get a 15 minute debuff and somebody else joins. Leave a premade, who cares? You can basically entirely block out somebody in WoW with minimal effort nowadays, as opposed to being stuck in a game with them for however long. Plus, everything rated/competitive in WoW is with full premades. You can't soloQ mythic raids, RBGs, or ranked arenas. As such, I'd argue that "acting out in other ways" is much less of an issue with WoW than with LoL.

Just random thoughts -- I don't have too much data to support me, which is why I'm not arguing the papers or research wrt punishment validity.