Boards›Player Behavior

Perma bans, toxic players, ban system, suggestion for unbanning accounts.

Frøst·7/1/2018, 2:50:18 PM·2 votes·1,630 views

Hello, a little less than a year ago my main account got permanently banned, I was playing on that account for about 6 years I think. I am still playing League and I think I deserve a chance to get my account unbanned because I haven't gotten any bans since then and I believe I have reformed. I never got any bans on any other game except League. I really hope Riots sees this and takes it into consideration, I hope they will be open minded while reading this. I am going to be completely honest and won't be hiding the stuff that I got banned for. This is going to be a long post but I hope Riot sees this. I'm going to be saying my own opinion and I don't expect everyone to agree with me. You should read this whole thing before commenting. I don't think Riot should even be perma banning accounts for being toxic, I mean it's the internet, of course people are gonna insult you, I think there should be a perma chat ban for that and a perma ban for trolling, but whatever. In this post I'm going to be talking about: - kinds of toxic players - what I think a toxic player is - why I got banned - ban system - suggestions about giving players access to their perma banned accounts

I won't be censoring any words because I don't intend to censor my own words.

1. Kinds of Toxic Players.

There is a lot of types of toxic players, I'm gonna be talking about some of them:

  • Griefers/trollers - those are the kinds of players who are really immature and if something doesn't go their way they are gonna go AFK, intentionally feed, steal someones farm and other stuff to make their own team lose.
  • Generally toxic people - those are the ones that blame you for their own mistakes, if you don't do what they want they will start flaming, if you're doing bad they will say "sell skin", report for inting or other stuff to tilt you but aren't saying any kind of of "bad" words so the system doesn't ban them that easily, to me those are the worst type of toxic players because if I'm already doing bad and I want to get better at the game I'm already pissed off at myself for doing stupid mistakes and I don't need anyone telling me I need to stop playing or other stuff.
  • People that flame hard when being flamed by toxic people - I was one of those, to me this kind of people isn't really toxic but starts flaming really hard when somebody tilts them.

2. What I Think a Toxic Player Is.

I think that toxic players are those who start flaming other people, not the ones who defend themselves with flaming instead of muting the toxic person. That's just my opinion because I am a jungle main and we all know jungle gets blamed a lot, so before when I saw someone telling me I'm boosted or shit, I really got tilted and I needed to write something back to them (that was me before, now when someone blames me and I know it's not my fault I just find it funny how stupid they are and I don't flame them I just mute them or write something that doesn't make any sense like "me too" or "ok" or when I am tilted from matches before I write stfu or something like that but I don't think that's really that bad).

3. Why I Got Banned.

I got banned for using "hard" and "offensive" words. I only got a two week ban and after that a perma ban. I think I mostly got banned for saying "kys %%%" and "kys %%%%%%" a lot, those were the only "offensive" words I used but I never say that anymore and I know it's been just a year but I think I have matured a lot in that 1 year, and I don't get the need to say those words any more. I never attacked anyone I just used those words and flamed the people that flamed me, I know that it's against the rules to say that, even if I don't agree with those rules, I know that I can get banned if I don't follow them, and I admit I was really immature back then, but come on, people change, and besides that, words are only offensive if you let them be offensive, when someone tells me to kill myself or stuff like that I don't really give a shit. I'm not saying I shouldn't have gotten banned but I think that there needs to be some way (like The Level 20 Challenge) to get my account back because people actually can reform.

4. Ban System.

I think that Riot's current ban system is really really bad and I'm going to tell you why. When I still had my main account I was playing on my smurf and said this in all chat: "fiora called me a %%%%%% %%%%%%", she didn't really say that I just wanted to see what will happen, in that game I was also kind of trolling but it wasn't ranked and I don't remember it that well but I think that I had a reason and that I didn't int, mostly chat trolling I think, after that I think I didn't play anymore on that account and when I came back to play I saw I had a 14 day suspension (that account is now my main and now I have to be really careful not to get a perma...). After that I wrote a ticket to Riot and they said that even though that it has been taken out of context they said that I was toxic in my other games and that they are not going to undo that ban, I admit, I was toxic but still the game that got me banned was taken out of context. You can say that I got banned for trolling but I have another example and that one is from today. Before writing this post I wanted to test something out, I went on my level 7 account and decided to write "offensive" words in all chat, not to players, just write them every 5 minutes or less. I wasn't trolling and we won that game, I was just writing words, not anything else and I didn't even include "you are" before those words, it was a game of ARURF. After we won I exited that account and I returned less than 5 minutes later and my account got a 14 day suspension, I was playing with a friend and I told him to report me to fasten up the process. That was the only game I was "toxic" on that account and I didn't even get a chat ban I immediately got a 14 day ban. But then there is so many games that players say that I should die from cancer, blaming me for their own mistakes, flaming each other and they still have their accounts, I rarely see someone saying "offensive" words because all the people that used them probably got banned, I'm not saying they don't deserve it but people who are still in my games and are, what I find, more toxic then I ever was, I think they deserve it too but I still see them in my games. I think wishing someone cancer is so much worse then calling them a racial slur, but then kys is really bad too because if someone is depressed they might find it very disturbing and that's why i don't say that any more. That's why I think Riot's ban system should be improved a lot, it only registers certain words and if you say them you will get banned immediately.

5. Suggestions About Giving Players Access to Their Perma Banned Accounts.

  • Why I think players should get a chance to get their accounts back - some people say that players already got enough chances to reform but trust me, it's not the same to get a 2 week ban and a perma ban, people say that after you get a two week ban, if you haven't reformed you deserve to get perma banned, but those people don't know what it's like to be perma banned, they don't know the difference between two weeks and permanent. Only after you get a perma ban you realize how much that account meant to you (at least for me). I spent so much time on leveling, climbing, getting IP/Blue essence, buying champions and I spent so much money too (please don't tell me spending money doesn't give me permission to be toxic because trust me I already know that, I heard that a lot of times, I'm only saying that because losing that much money means a lot too), I mean we're talking about 6 years, that's a lot of time, and then a couple months of toxicity threw all that time away. I know that I can make another account and play on it and I am, but it just doesn't feel the same. I also think that it's not fair that the people who participated in the level 20 challenge got a chance to get their account back and I can't get that chance. I think I was playing while the level 20 challenge was around, because I had another account before the perma banned one, I'm not sure when The Level 20 Challenge got taken down though.
  • The Level 20 Challenge - I know that Riot already tried this and that it was a failure but I think that it was awesome because players got a chance to prove they have reformed. I already passed 20 levels on my account which I played on after I got perma banned and I got to platinum without a ban but Riot doesn't care about that because The Level 20 Challenge doesn't exist anymore.
  • How I think they should redo the challenge - It doesn't need to be 20 levels, it can be 10, 15, 30, a certain rank or whatever, I just think they need to add it and I will suggest how, I don't know if that's doable or if it's too hard to do but this is my suggestion: they make a separate site where you can apply for the challenge, you make an account and link it to your perma banned account, after you reach a certain level that Riot said out to be the level to complete the challenge without a ban, your permanently banned account gets unbanned. You make it so it's all controlled by bots because I know it would be too hard for people to control it because there would be too many people trying, I mean if you can hire bots to ban people why can't you hire them to unban them as well.

That was all for this post, I know it was a long post but I think I said everything that I wanted to say, I hope this post changes something and I want you to know all I was saying was true, I wasn't lying about my ban reason and why the ban system is bad. I hope this gets seen by riot.

19 Comments

ModThe Djinn7/1/2018, 3:04:16 PM5 votes

I think that toxic players are those who start flaming other people, not the ones who defend themselves with flaming instead of muting the toxic person.

Riot disagrees, and their disagreement is based on the Tribunal, which was an old player-vote-run ban system. It showed that the community thinks that a toxic player is anyone who flames for any reason. This isn't a 100% held opinion, but it was strongly held by enough of a majority that it became policy. If the community opinion changes and our reports change to reflect that, people retaliating will cease to be punished -- the system does learn.

That's why I think Riot's ban system should be improved a lot, it only registers certain words and if you say them you will get banned immediately.

It actually recognizes a lot more than certain words. There is a word-detection part that runs the zero-tolerance system, but the rest of it is actually a rather sophisticated AI that's proven capable of identifying things like subtle passive aggression, attempted work-arounds to toxic behavior, etc.

How I think they should redo the challenge - It doesn't need to be 20 levels, it can be 10, 15, 30, a certain rank or whatever, I just think they need to add it and I will suggest how, I don't know if that's doable or if it's too hard to do but this is my suggestion...

The reason the challenge will not be coming back is threefold:

  • It had an astoundingly high failure rate, meaning that its existence ruined far more games than simply banning all those players.
  • Banned players have all had at least one chance -- and often 4 or more -- to show reform already.
  • Riot's official policy is that, if you are permanently banned, they would prefer that you stop playing the game. They understand that they can't reasonably stop someone from making more accounts, but a system like this would actively encourage players to keep playing. As a significantly percentage of banned players actually do stop playing League, this would go against their goals.
Umbral Regent7/1/2018, 4:22:37 PM5 votes

I am still playing League and I think I deserve a chance to get my account unbanned because I haven't gotten any bans since then and I believe I have reformed.

If you have reformed, good for you. But you can't change that your previous behavior got your previous account banned. It's too late for that, and Riot isn't going to consider allowing people to prove their reform to get their accounts unbanned - they tried it before, and it met with a catastrophic failure rate.

I don't think Riot should even be perma banning accounts for being toxic, I mean it's the internet, of course people are gonna insult you, I think there should be a perma chat ban for that and a perma ban for trolling, but whatever.

"It's the internet" isn't a valid excuse for misbehavior. Of course people are going to insult you, but that doesn't mean that those insults are going to be tolerated.

Permanent chat bans wouldn't work, as Riot did also test what was effectively a permanent chat ban (increasing chat restrictions), and they found that players on the longer-scale chat restrictions just resorted to trolling, which is much harder to detect, and would effectively ruin too many games to consider as a viable option.

So, they cut out the middle man and give you two chat restrictions, and two bans. 10-game CR, 25-game CR, 14-day ban, permaban. If you don't reform after the 14-day ban, your account is gone. Them's the 8r8ks.

Kinds of Toxic Players.

No disagreement here. Props for counting something that you don't personally view as wholly toxic, though, that's a pretty good sign of integrity.

Generally, I would define toxic behavior as behavior where people go out of their way to ruin the game for others - trolling, griefing, AFK, intentional feeding, those are of course on that list, with similar such chat misbehavior (insults, passive-aggressive remarks, hardcore flame) also being on that list.

I do at least consider mild flame and general negative behavior to be separate from toxic behavior, though, such as lighter insults ("this Yi is so bad"), the blame game, and general complaining.

What I Think a Toxic Player Is.

This, generally, is a point of contention on the boards, especially lately, where retaliation and back-talk is becoming a more apparent issue amongst players. By and large, I'd consider retaliation and back-talk to always be on the negative spectrum of things (though tact and good word choice can mitigate that nature), but the degree of retaliation can tip it from negative to toxic.

Why I Got Banned.

I suppose it's good that you're at least aware of what resulted in your punishment, if not the why. I'll say this plainly, people can consider me an SJW or a PC snowflake if they wish, but here's how it is:

Words can inherently be offensive. There are some words that are simply meant to offend, whether it's terms that have already had their turn on the euphemism treadmill (Idiot, moron, etc.), or those which have had a longstanding history of hate and prejudice behind them (those that fall readily under the definition of hate speech).

Sure, people can ascribe their own measure of offense to a given word or words - I, for example, will be completely and utterly unfazed if you call me an idiot, a dumbass, a moron, or a jackass. Hell, I even embrace those kinds of insults and make impactless, self-deprecating remarks about them. But, that only speaks for my sensibilities.

And in a likewise nature, I'm unfazed by hate speech or encouragements of self harm. I'm not the subject of any of the offending terms, whether they're racial or homophobic slurs, and I've enough presence of mind to feel no compulsion to hurt myself at another's demand - sincere or otherwise.

But not everyone is going to be indifferent. There are, absolutely, people who will take offense to racial or homophobic slurs, and you don't know whether or not the people you're telling to "KYS" are at-risk.

As for the last bit:

...but I think that there needs to be some way (like The Level 20 Challenge) to get my account back because people actually can reform.

So you know of the Level 20 Challenge - but do you at least recall that the people who undertook it were hand-picked by Riot, and Riot considered them the most likely to succeed after interviewing them? And that these candidates with such a high success expectancy, out of them, only 5% actually turned over a new leaf?

5% of the most likely to succeed actually did. Now translate that to the rest of the League community - at least, those who've had their accounts permanently banned.

I'd be willing to wager that the success rate for general perma-banned players reforming would be somewhere in the hundredths or thousandths, if not lower.

Beyond that, the permanent ban is meant to be a short and simple message: "We don't want you playing League of Legends anymore." To ever revoke a permanent ban, even under the premise of the player having truly reformed, completely runs counter to that message. Delivering a permanent ban is meant to be showing the player the door. Revoking a permanent ban is inviting them back, despite the toxicity that resulted in a permaban in the first place.

Ban System.

In that first case, you were trying to defame and lie about another player just to see what would happen, and in the same turn you used hate speech. Neither of those things are going to fly.

In that second case...You straight up went out of your way to just be as offensive as possible. Did you really expect a different outcome?

The ban system isn't broken. It's working as intended, and the running theme between your noted punishments should be full evidence of that. You were using hate speech and other offensive chat, which Riot doesn't want in their game, and it should be fully known that that kind of offensive chat isn't the kind of stuff you'd do in public.

At this point, you're starting to become less and less sympathetic. First, you pretend like the "why" of your punishments for hate speech don't matter, as "words are only as offensive as you let them be", and now, you're telling us that you've run experiments to see what would happen when you use offensive words and hate speech in chat...

And then tell us the system is broken when the results show that it's working as intended.

Besides, the IFS doesn't simply look at certain words and think "oh, he said this. Issue ban." - sure, that is part of how it works, but that's only how it handles hate speech and other zero-tolerance chat. When it's not looking for hate speech, it looks for patterns of negative chat, and it is impressively good at picking out players who are stepping over the line.

Suggestions About Giving Players Access to Their Perma Banned Accounts.

  1. Yeah, that saying "You never know what you have 'til it's gone" has a whole lot more weight now, doesn't it? If you truly valued your account, I have only one question: Why didn't you listen when you had the chance? The 14-day ban is the last tier of punishment before the permanent ban, and I'd wager that you must have come to the boards or looked somewhere to understand why you got banned.

That you didn't listen and still got the account banned is almost telling. Sure, you may have reformed after it, and now likely value your account more now that you know that all the progress on it can be taken away at the drop of a hat, but, there's another saying:

"A day late, and a dollar short."

  1. Read my comments above about the Level 20 Challenge. It wasn't just a failure - it was a catastrophic failure. 95% of players deemed "most likely to succeed" failed. If 95% of the most promising candidates can't reform, what can we expect from the rest of permabanned players?

  2. It doesn't matter what arbitrary goal posts you set, the ability to get an account unbanned after it's been justly banned is not going to happen. It's not worth the amount of toxicity it would enable.

...and I want you to know all I was saying was true, I wasn't lying about my ban reason and why the ban system is bad.

We've no reason to suspect you'd lie about the reason for your ban. If nothing else, you have at least that level of integrity, as you admit your account was banned for hate speech, and counted flaming amongst toxic behaviors despite your personal views.

That said, why you believe the system is bad is not perfectly valid. Your tests involved offensive speech and hate speech, and consequently earned punishments appropriate for those offenses. As mentioned, all that tells us is that the system does work as it's intended to, as per those cases.

CharDeeMcDenniz7/1/2018, 5:23:07 PM2 votes

im personally glad for the current approach RIOT is taking against toxic players and im equally happy they take a hardline on perma banned accounts.

you admitted to saying some of the worst things you can say, got suspended and still didn't learn, now we're supposed to feel bad for you?

take your medicine like a man

Yatol7/1/2018, 10:33:41 PM1 votes

Make a new account and dont tell people to kill themselves