Any other sensible game just mutes the player permanently. Absolutely unnecessary. You'd get a much better result from permanent mutes rather than permanent bans.
Riot tried what amounted to permanent chat restrictions before - or rather, indefinitely escalating chat restrictions. Players under those longer-scale restrictions typically used all of their allotted chat for hardcore flaming, and the others typically resorted to trolling or intentionally feeding.
And that's just for chat restrictions. Take away their ability to chat entirely, and that would almost certainly result in a noticeable uptick in trolling and intentional feeding, which is not a much better result.
If you were to collect the statistics of how much toxicity goes down during a chat restriction, you'd be able to clearly see that its way more effective than banning someone from the game...
Yes, Riot does have data that says that the vast majority of players who get chat restricted don't get punished again; and those that do seldom get punished a third time, and so on, and so on.
But that doesn't change the fact that there are people who are belligerent and will continue to be toxic no matter how many warnings you give them. That being said, the fact that a majority of players tend to reform after the first (few) punishment(s) doesn't serve as a good argument for removing permanent suspensions as a punishment.
And if someone who's perma muted decides to escalate it to inting/griefing, then ban their account.
You say that like it's just that simple. It isn't.
Griefing, trolling, and intentional feeding is pretty fuckin' hard to detect, blatantly obvious cases (like running down mid) notwithstanding.
And, of course, I have to reiterate this; employing permanent mutes would result in an uptick of intentional feeders and trolls. Do you really want more trolls and feeders in exchange for belligerently toxic players being allowed to play the game despite them breaking the rules several times?
Someone just saying toxic things in chat might effect the game too, but there's definitely something you can do about it. It's called the mute button.
Muting it doesn't prevent the player from typing, though. Even if you mute them, the odds are high that they're still going to focus more on typing up a storm of vitriol - however fruitless it would be - instead of playing the game.
And in that respect, you're just as powerless to do anything about a flamer as you are about an intentional feeder.
I'm not really sure when league turned into club penguin...
This is a laughable hyperbolic statement at best, and frankly, making such a statement really only serves to damage your argument. If you're going to start making mocking comments about the game and how Riot handles Player Behavior, then I have a hard time believing that you're here for a legitimate discussion.
...but if the goal is to reduce toxicity in league, then perma mutes is a good way to dampen it.
No, permanent mutes would be a good way to narrow down the toxicity into something that's altogether harder to accurately detect. It would not reduce the toxicity; it would generally just make it worse.
But thats not the actual goal, people just want to make the mad people madder.
- That's a strawman argument,
- You're also trying to superimpose what you perceive as the community's goal over Riot's goal as an argument against permanent bans. That doesn't work.
Riot's goal is to reduce toxicity; even if the community's goal was to make toxic players madder (which it isn't, unless you can speak for millions of players all at once), that wouldn't change Riot's goals at all, so it, as an argument, is invalid.
Now to answer the question posed from the title;
Why are we banning people for verbal toxicity anyway?
Because Riot isn't going to give people umpteen chances to continue breaking the rules. At some point, they have to put their foot down and show players that continued misbehavior won't be tolerated, and the permanent ban is frankly the best way to go about doing just that.
