Boards›Player Behavior

3 minor problems with the report system

DerMangoJoghurt·4/15/2018, 1:38:24 PM·3 votes·3,241 views

First of all, this isn't one of the "I got banned an now I'm mad" posts. The issues I'm describing are very minor, but can affect everyone, even those who will never receive a punishment. Second, some of these issues may not be easily resolvable without causing a bunch of other problems. Third, I don't work at Riot (obviously). I don't really know how the system works in detail and might get some things wrong. Please let me know if you notice any mistakes. That being said, before this gets too wall-of-text-y, let's begin.

Edit: Apparently reports can't lose value anymore, which solves problem 2 and 3.

  1. Hidden punishments Let's use somebody called 'Max' as an example. Max was mildly toxic in a game and got reported. The instant feedback system evaluates the report and decides it's valid, but not enough to warrant a punishment yet. However, since the report was valid, Max' honor progress is slowed. Max is completely unaware of his behavior being considered toxic and creates a forum post asking why he is still honor 2.

  2. Report after early mute By now Max has received a surprising chat restriction and after asking for help on the forum he's been told to just mute toxic people. In his next game he notices a Yasuo starting to blame others for his own mistakes and instantly mutes him. The game goes smoothly for Max and his team manages to win. After the game Max is faced with a problem. Does he report the Yasuo player? Max doesn't know if the Yasuo player continued his behavior and deserves to be reported or not. He doesn't want a potentially toxic player to go unpunished, but is afraid of lowering his report value and eventually render them meaningless by making false reports. Max doesn't know what to do and starts crying on the floor.

  3. Changing perception of toxicity Max recovers and starts playing again. He notices a lot of players typing "?" to mock their opponents and is annoyed by this display of toxicity. He knows that the instant feedback system adapts to changes in perception of toxicity, so if Max and enough other players report everyone using "?" the system will eventually consider "?" as toxic. Max makes an appeal on the forum for people to join his cause with medium success. A year later "?" is considered mildly toxic by the instant feedback system. Max and his followers did it! Too bad their reports have lost all their value because they've been issuing false reports for a whole year. Upon discovering this, Max cries on the floor again.

5 Comments

RallerenP4/15/2018, 2:33:26 PM2 votes

Let's use somebody called 'Max' as an example. Max was mildly toxic in a game and got reported. The instant feedback system evaluates the report and decides it's valid, but not enough to warrant a punishment yet. However, since the report was valid, Max' honor progress is slowed. Max is completely unaware of his behavior being considered toxic and creates a forum post asking why he is still honor 2.

Then max should read up on how the honor system works, or just Google and find one of the posts that already ask this question.

Riot removed warnings because they were so confusing that they were getting spammed with support tickets from new players.

By now Max has received a surprising chat restriction and after asking for help on the forum he's been told to just mute toxic people. In his next game he notices a Yasuo starting to blame others for his own mistakes and instantly mutes him. The game goes smoothly for Max and his team manages to win. After the game Max is faced with a problem. Does he report the Yasuo player? Max doesn't know if the Yasuo player continued his behavior and deserves to be reported or not. He doesn't want a potentially toxic player to go unpunished, but is afraid of lowering his report value and eventually render them meaningless by making false reports. Max doesn't know what to do and starts crying on the floor.

That's up to Max. My philosophy is that if I have to mute someone then they're deserving of a report.

Either way it doesn't matter because reports don't depreciate in value any more

Max recovers and starts playing again. He notices a lot of players typing "?" to mock their opponents and is annoyed by this display of toxicity. He knows that the instant feedback system adapts to changes in perception of toxicity, so if Max and enough other players report everyone using "?" the system will eventually consider "?" as toxic. Max makes an appeal on the forum for people to join his cause with medium success. A year later "?" is considered mildly toxic by the instant feedback system. Max and his followers did it! Too bad their reports have lost all their value because they've been issuing false reports for a whole year. Upon discovering this, Max cries on the floor again.

And this is probably one of the reasons reports don't depreciate in value anymore.

Beforehand they had to because each report costed a decent amount of resources to investigate, but now they're nearly free.

As such it enabled the community to just report what they define as bad behaviour and eventually the system will adapt.

Chermorg4/15/2018, 6:27:47 PM1 votes

  1. I think the issue here is that the more "insight" Riot gives as to what slows honor and how honor works, the more players will attempt to game that system to be "just as toxic as possible" without getting punished - skirting the line. And if they're skirting the honor line, they're also skirting the punishment line - so it's likely you'd have at least some players who decided to "soft troll" in chat - be as negative as possible without being detected/flagged.

  2. There isn't ever an "acceptable" amount of toxicity. Even minor toxicity can add up over games and games to result in a punishment - thus if this Yasuo was being toxic enough at any one time for Max to mute, Max should report. Obviously Max thinks it's reportable, so why wouldn't he report? There is no such thing as report value, and Max would know that if he had read anything about it on the FAQs/etc. rito update faq pls

  3. There's no such thing as report value. You can report all 9 others in every game you play and your reports will not "lose value".

slight edit there's that one FAQ page that's badly worded. definitely needs updated.