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I'm afraid to care about ranked this season.

Look Mom No Pc·11/21/2018, 9:27:50 PM·55 votes·14,726 views

I'm posting this from my smurf because I'm expecting a mountain of hate to be thrown my way, but I still feel the need to vent my frustration. I'm not here to flame you, Riot, or its employees. The entire post is clean and doesn't take a stab at anyone, so if that's what you are looking for then move on.

Two weeks ago my main was banned for MMR boosting to mid Diamond. I streamed every game played this season on my main, and have been playing for 8 years. I can and have played every champion, and in fact I usually never stick to a single champion for very long unless I go on a massive losing streak.

^ this is important to note because there are certain champions that I had extremely high KDA's on that I only played a few games on and then didn't play again.

When I submitted a support ticket, I got a response stating that there was proof that I'd been boosted and the ticket was closed.

I immediately re-opened the ticket and offered to provide evidence that I had played the games that I was suspected to have been 'boosted' on. The ticket response was that my evidence wasn't required because they knew I was boosted. Even if they wanted to provide evidence, they couldn't because they don't want boosting companies to become aware of their methods.

I opened another ticket and insisted that I had proof. The ticket was left open for the rest of the day with no response, so I then decided to move to the forums and attempt to offer my evidence where more than a single Rioter could see it.

At first my post received some traction and was upvoted enough to garner a response from a Riot employee.

The Rioter responded by pointing out 'evidence' found by a player on an earlier post.

The alleged evidence showed that shortly after reaching D5, I went on a giant losing streak and got demoted all the way into P2. Here is a graphic used to show this. https://imgur.com/a/rbQW4qN

If you look at the dates, you will see that I was never demoted into Plat. The rank of P2 is shown during the start of the season. I was placed in P2 after doing my placement matches. The highest rank you could be placed in was P1.

Needless to say, even though I responded to every critique of my match history. My post was quickly downvoted into oblivion and I decided to delete it because nothing good would come from a post with -200 points.

So here is my real concern:

I've interviewed for a job at Riot games before. I know several Riot employees personally, and I've been playing this game for over 8 years. My honor level was among the first to 5. I've never been banned, chat restricted, or even punished by the system in any other way until two weeks ago. I've got two other smurfs in Diamond 5, this one in plat with rediculous win rates on some champions even with me screwing around and trying to help my friends improve.

This season... I'm afraid to play ranked on my main account. I don't care about the season rewards... I care about my ability to work for a company that I fell in love with 8 years ago. Why would a company hire someone they think is a cheater? I don't think they would. Even after feeling belittled, I want to work for Riot and with Riot's employees. I care about my friends that work there, and what they might think of me for getting banned. I feel ashamed, despite not being guilty. In a small way, it reminds me of those who are wrongfully imprisoned for crimes they didn't commit.

So, I've vented my frustration. I feel a little better. Feel free to respond, flame, or whatever. I appreciate knowing that I can still play the game, but I don't think I'll ever try to improve or grind ranked to Master tier. I'll probably just get banned for my work, and I'll probably never get to work at Riot games...and it feels sad man.

37 Comments

Sorin Alucard11/21/2018, 10:23:54 PM14 votes

wow i really hope this gets reversed for your sake and the sake of any league generalist

ModPeriscope11/21/2018, 9:55:39 PM13 votes

If MirageofPenguins looked into your post, that’s about as high up as you can go with getting boosting looked into.

Best of luck this season.

AhriTentacleToy11/22/2018, 4:21:36 AM12 votes

Classic Riot. Refusing to give you a chance to prove your innocence, even if you record yourself playing every last ranked game and offer to provide any game they request. If you keep pressing, it may be reversed. I know two people they banned in the past, and absolutely out right told it would never be reversed. Both were reversed by not stopping the inquiries and not getting upset in the inquiries. Keep pressing.

Japan Logan Paul11/22/2018, 6:16:32 AM10 votes

Don't worry about cheating man. Riot banned my main for being slightly toxic, but we knoiw cheating is okay because Riot's CEO does it :).

https://www.12up.com/posts/3794232-marc-merrill-got-his-account-elo-boosted

Doin't worry man, if you get banned for cheating you can always donate money to a charity you're on the board for, that you donate to every year, and so that makes it okay! Just make sure you don't call someone you're arguing with a bad word is all.

Beacon Academy11/22/2018, 1:27:58 PM7 votes

Riot is on the path of being woke.

Practicing "Guilty until proven innocent" is just one of those side effects.

ı Sona ı11/21/2018, 9:56:19 PM6 votes

(hug) I hope it gets resolved quickly! Even when I was dealing with a polite Riot Support member on my erroneous ban they did give me the subtle impression that they didn't believe me. I wonder if they are supposed to be like that.

[sona-playing]

Did you at any time play on an alternate IP address than what you usually play on? Perhaps went on a trip or a friends house or college or library?

Prozzak11/22/2018, 4:32:34 AM4 votes

I will say it. What is the goal of this post? If you really are still trying to get a job at Riot I don't think this helps anything at all. I think if anything it hurts your chances. Unless some of your friends are higher up (hiring manager or above) and they can personally vouch for you and actually have it mean something then all this will do is potentially put a spotlight on you in a negative way (whether you did or did not get boosted does not matter).

Unfortunately I work in business and I know how this works. Posting this just raises questions about you and none of them are good ones. You could become the person who misses out because they have an equally strong candidate but they don't have this history.

I realise that the chances they link you to this are low but imo not worth the risk unless you are really actually here to just get another attempt at dropping the boosting "charge".

Vlada Cut11/22/2018, 9:13:11 AM3 votes

What kind of an dingus would ban someone who got one rank at placements the climbed up to a higher rank? That's just plain stupid. Sigh the amount of ignorrance... sorry to hear about it OP.

TraumaQueen11/22/2018, 12:42:47 PM2 votes

I think I saw your post when you got banned and I am so sorry.

Riot punishes Ranked Play. It’s their consequence... to be able to take all that away for anything they deem negative. Until there’s a better checks and balances/ warnings/ verification system, everyone should be nervous about caring about ranked...

Naalith11/22/2018, 7:50:18 AM2 votes

Honestly threads like these make me worry about playing ranked. Like you, I use lots of characters even though in ranked I tend to stick to a few jungle picks and a few picks in each other lane. In season 7 I had about an 86% winrate on Kayn from G5 to P5, at which point I quit playing because I met my goal of finally hitting plat after playing for like 8 years at that point in time. This season I just got placed in P4 and played a game a month to not decay, and still had a pretty healthy winrate with both Kayn and Evelynn.

I'm pretty sure I could hit diamond, I just hate the toxicity of ranked. I hate being pigeonholed into playing only a few champions, I hate flamers, I hate being a jungle when that's the role that gets bitched at most. Most of all, I hate the fact that if I indeed did pop off and climb to the point I probably should be at which I imagine is D5, I could get banned for boosting. Now I'm sure lots of people who say they were boosted on the forums wrongly are lying, but in this case I honestly just can't see that.

TwitchInMyPants11/22/2018, 3:45:30 PM2 votes

Frankly, Riot consistently is rating 3 stars on any employee rating site given there's some very high and very low reviews about work conditions. The negatives have cited sexism, disjoint between coworkers, slow growth, and other toxic problems. It seems like a company with a lot of pull and if you get a good position it could be a dream job, but you have to embrace a lot of underhanded things to be a Rioter.

The Home Depot I've worked at years ago managed that 3 star rating on job sites off of the back of rapidly firing/hiring new workers and leaving lots of unsatisfied customers. The way Riot has grown to have over 1,000 employees hasn't explicitly made them better at anything other than generating revenue. And frankly they're slower than ever to make changes with the largest team they've had in ages.

The company is clearly trying hard and deserve praise in some regards, but when they're throwing around millions of dollars for esports and skins I have a hard time buying they can't actually manage to hire people to review the games we're reporting. After dropping the Tribunal indefinitely they've left bots that scan chatlogs and gamestats to judge whether you're guilty or not. If just an MMR drop is enough to be punished, Riot's reporting system has failed hard. And the worst part is this won't be seriously investigated because that requires manpower.

Ferrinova11/26/2018, 6:44:36 PM1 votes

This is so insulting of riot. They have been doing a horrible job of maintaining the game. Hell, don't they know that loosing streaks happen? Oh, or do you have to be perfect in every god dam game? Screw riot. It is now confirmed that support from riot is braindead. I'm uninstalling league. If i cant climb without the fear of going on a loosing streak and getting PERMABANNED WHEN I SPENT OVER 200 DOLLARS ON THIS PATHETIC GAME, then i really need to find something else to spend my time on. This game will not take my life away with a cheap permaban. Thanks for wasting a year of my life with your crappy support. Feel free to respond to anyone in this thread riot. OH YEAH, you wont because your to busy RUINING THE GOD DAM GAME.

P.S I've noticed the rising amount of threads that are focusing on riots problems that they are not fixing. I Support most of these because i have spent my day reading most of them and found that it really does sum up what league is these days. Do you and your friends a favor, and take them to another game. This one needs to fix a crap ton before its enjoyable anymore.

Just the Lip11/23/2018, 8:49:20 AM1 votes

i get placed in silver every season, and climb back to plat every season.

I must be paying a booster because i play more than 2 champs.

Hope i dont get banned too for being decent at the game.

IanSilang11/23/2018, 2:45:27 PM1 votes

Good luck. You don't deserve this treatment from Riot.

CitrusRulez11/23/2018, 11:39:39 PM1 votes

bottom line RIOT doesn't care. They are like the phone company or cable company if you quit another new player starts today. They want your money bottom line, that is all that matter. You aren't to speak or have an opinion just a Cc =) try this make a new account post 3-5 positive things like hey jungler ( who is obviously trying to lose ) would you help us? Will gaurantee at some point you get banned =) Done it 3 times =)

AugustHeatHaze11/24/2018, 5:36:03 PM1 votes

Online games always have these issues, overwatch has had them since the start, the report system is basically enforced by the community via mob rule, you get banned for playing an off meta hero and support generally will uphold the ban.

Idk how to fix it but one thing that would help is if the games communities were less toxic, ban happy and didn't take a "guilty until proven innocent" approach to anyone who might have been falsely banned because these views do get into the companies, because the companies hire gamers with these views.

Vreivai11/25/2018, 4:40:44 AM1 votes

Don't worry, according to Rujitra there are near-infallible "biometric markers" that the game records based on your input that can definitively identify who's playing the account, so Riot knows you definitely weren't playing the account. They always get all the MMR boosters because of this method, and can instantly detect everyone that scripts because when the script inputs commands it's so clearly different from normal.

Oh, wait, that last sentence definitely isn't true.

The Trent11/22/2018, 11:09:20 AM1 votes

Why are you scared to post things on your main on the boards? I've gotten tons of hate on the boards for posting dumb/controversial/ troll things. No one really cares.