Boards›Player Behavior

Perma bans!

Average Ahri·11/6/2019, 11:45:30 PM·2 votes·2,846 views

This is a suggestion but i think perma ban should be removed and replace by an ever increasing ban time. I mean let's look at this objectively. A year of ban time is as bad as being permanently banned. So why not do 14 days, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, etc. I feel like the impact is as significant. As we know the inevitable will come eventually. Meaning league will one day become irrelevant, an object of the past. That's just how games are, It a normal phenomenon. So when that happens, our accounts will be worth nothing. Our sentiments are whats giving our accounts meaning. The hard grind, the joy, the anger, etc. Once league fades into the past so will our attachment to the game. There's also the possibility of someone moving on in their life and simply quit league. Thus we don't know what will happen down the road in 1 or 2 years. That's why a ban of such length is as significant as permanently banning an account. There's also a second thing i want to point out. We change as time passes so 1-2 years later our personality might shift into a more mellow way.

16 Comments

KFCeytron11/7/2019, 12:02:38 AM4 votes

Riot's punishment system used to hand out stacking chat restrictions, such that consistently toxic players basically had a permanent chat restriction. Unfortunately, it turns out that such players used their few chat opportunities to be toxic, and, when they couldn't be as toxic as they wanted to, they resorted to committing non-chat offenses such as griefing (following someone around and taking their farm, using wall abilities to interfere with their play, etc.) or inting. The purpose of the punishment system is to eliminate rule-breaking, not make it worse. Thus, if a couple chat restrictions don't make any difference in a player's misbehavior, the system ramps up the punishments until the player is permabanned and thus unable to use that account to break any more rules ever again.

Riot used to give toxic players a long series of gradually-increasing suspensions. However, they found that players who got more than a few punishments would never stop misbehaving and receiving punishments. As the goal of the punishment system is to eliminate rule-breaking and Riot has absolutely no interest in coddling toxic players, the system was changed to eliminate this long tail of irredeemable players. Compared to the hundreds or even thousands of typical players who are bothered over dozens or hundreds of matches ruined by a toxic player, that one player's ability to annoy people merits no sympathy or concern. The preferred outcome of punishing a misbehaving player is reform: according to Riot's figures, most players who get one punishment never get another. However, when a player refuses to stop breaking the rules after a few warnings (punishments), they are removed from the game with a permaban because Riot no longer believes them capable of reform.

Silent Gravity11/6/2019, 11:56:57 PM3 votes

Making perm bans into time length bans would be counter productive.

Perm bans are meant to remove people who don't abide by the contracts they sign.

A 14 day ban gives a person enough time to pause and consider their actions before returning. If someone were planning on 'returning' after a 3 month ban, they would instead just make another account to play until the time was elapsed.

rujitra11/7/2019, 1:04:38 AM3 votes

Meaning league will one day become irrelevant, an object of the past.

While sure, this is possible, there are many games that maintain playerbases (and even unofficial support) for dozens of years. Look at roller coaster tycoon, the sim city series, and many other games that have gone well over 10 years and maintain a relatively stable (but smaller than peak) playerbase. The future possibility the game ceases to exist is not a factor in deciding how to maintain the game today.

Our sentiments are whats giving our accounts meaning. The hard grind, the joy, the anger, etc. Once league fades into the past so will our attachment to the game. There's also the possibility of someone moving on in their life and simply quit league. Thus we don't know what will happen down the road in 1 or 2 years. That's why a ban of such length is as significant as permanently banning an account.

So you're saying that because it may not be a thing in 2 years, a 2 year ban is akin to a permanent ban because everyone's going to sit here and think "well, it may not be around so it's as good as gone"? That's a... fairly abstract and uncommon train of thought. While it may be your train of thought, most people will think "welp, got banned again, time to hop on another account and set a reminder on my phone/google/apple account/whatever for 2 years to go back to my normal".

Furthermore, what would this say to people who get a 2 year ban and are able to come back to their account? It'd say that Riot will never permanently remove someone - which is contrary to their goal. Riot does not want people coming back, ever, at all, when they're permanently banned.

There's also a second thing i want to point out. We change as time passes so 1-2 years later our personality might shift into a more mellow way.

Riot has run currently two separate experiments separated by a couple years where they unbanned accounts that had been banned in some cases for multiple years. The first of these had over a 95% failure rate (i.e. over 95% of players kept misbehaving), and the second abruptly stopped enrolling people and there has been no changes from it, suggesting it was a similar result.

Sure, some may change. But the bottom line is that most people who are toxic in a video game to the point of a permanent ban will never get out of their mindset that "it's behind a screen" and "there's no harm done" and "it's okay because i'm frustrated" and the like.

TrulyBland11/7/2019, 2:12:57 AM3 votes

This is a suggestion but i think perma ban should be removed and replace by an ever increasing ban time. I mean let's look at this objectively. A year of ban time is as bad as being permanently banned. So why not do 14 days, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, etc. I feel like the impact is as significant. As we know the inevitable will come eventually. Meaning league will one day become irrelevant, an object of the past. That's just how games are, It a normal phenomenon. So when that happens, our accounts will be worth nothing. Our sentiments are whats giving our accounts meaning. The hard grind, the joy, the anger, etc. Once league fades into the past so will our attachment to the game. There's also the possibility of someone moving on in their life and simply quit league. Thus we don't know what will happen down the road in 1 or 2 years. That's why a ban of such length is as significant as permanently banning an account.

This entire part of your post basically explains how perma bans and year long bans would be the same. Even if we assume that's true (which is a stretch by itself), that's not a sensible argument for a change to be made. In fact, if you actually thought they were the same, you hardly would have created this thread.

There's also a second thing i want to point out. We change as time passes so 1-2 years later our personality might shift into a more mellow way.

This is the only thing you write which actually offers some support to the idea of year long bans as a replacement for permabans… and it's honestly not the best argument. Just because your personality has changed doesn't mean any consequences from your prior decisions vanish. At that point the mature thing to do is accept responsibility for the actions of your past self and, if you still want to play lol, simply create a new account.

Durooooo11/7/2019, 11:39:47 PM2 votes

I want to keep this simple since people like to dilute things with complication.

Bans should not exist. Censorship should not exist. It's a game. If you don't like something somebody says you can mute somebody or leave. It should never come to this.