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Report baiting subculture, /mute all. and how riot's ban system may actually be counterproductive

scazzman·9/17/2017, 5:15:46 AM·7 votes·1,480 views

Ok we get it. negative chat "and honestly just the chat in general" is distracting to the actual game. however, i feel like how riot deals with it may actually make the problem worse. and here's how

currently, ANY negative chat will get you punished if you do it enough, even as minor as "shut up" or calling someone bad. leading to chat restrictions and an eventual permaban for people who refuse to conform. it's done by an automated AI. that refuses to acknowledge context or provocation. however, the AI is absolutely horrid at catching negativity outside of chat or hardcore intentional feeding "we're talking like 6 tears and 30+ deaths" and manual reviews are few and far between. I've seen videos of people going 400+ games of trolling without getting banned, "looking at you TahmKench Anivia duo"

this has created a subculture of trolls who will attempt to bait other players into getting reported by using passive aggressive, but "non offensive" chat. "soft inting" deliberately banning peoples champs, ping spamming, holding surrender votes hostage, or any number of ways to troll without being detected. especially since people get a popup if their report triggered a punishment.

riot claims only 5% of the playerbase is negative enough to earn a punishment. based on my personal experience this number should actually be much higher, and thats simply how many actually "get caught" why? because people have simply taken it out of chat, and have resorted to griefing through gameplay. which is not only harder to detect. but is more disruptive, and can't simply be muted.

in addition, riot has "likely unintentionally garnered among neutral players and competitive players a fear of the chatbox and a "/mute all mentality." even with the new honor system. more people would rather /mute all then try and communicate. this creates yet another source of frustration for players trying to climb. people fail to realize how mind numbingly tilting it is to have your chat flat out ignored. because you arent sure why theyre ignoring you. and in cases of players who have had run ins with the punishment system, can create "report paranoia" "oh god. he muted me. im going to get reported and probably banned again" this leads to frustration, and frustration leads to negative chat.

ALSO. another side effect, is that players who ARE prone to negative chat are FORCED to "bottle up" their feelings. to avoid getting reported. this ends up leading to less frequent, but more severe chat toxicity. as A. when people get sick of it. they tend to just explode. and when they realize they're getting reported anyway. they simply go full george carlin.

19 Comments

Serika Zero9/17/2017, 5:28:34 AM4 votes

currently, ANY negative chat will get you punished if you do it enough, even as minor as "shut up" or calling someone bad.

I highly disagree. I'm not the epitome of being nice and cool in chat. Yet I haven't got chat restricted even once, let alone banned. Yes, i never told someone to get cancer. But I did tell people to suicide or kill themselves. Mostly in aram, but its possible i've may have done this in other game modes too. Apparently the system didn't take it as an insult and that's it. hint: in aram you can't spend your gold unless you die, its also a good idea for the entire team to die near the enemy base and 'reset' if you are ahead or equal.

i've also outright insulted people before, still not even one chat restriction. Its just that i don't do that every single game...........

also, until now the 'biggest' thing that happened was me getting notification that i've been reported. As there was a time when i got reported in mass by different people for different reasons. But generally out of pitty. Like, there were these 2 guys feeding during a co-op vs ai on purpose. And we also had a new player and a sort of new player in the game. Because they feed so hard, the new player rage quitted. And they kept spamming surrender votes, so, i had to pretty much carry 1v5 as the other guy wasn't amazing, but at least he was pushing towers while i constantly defended and killed bots attacking our base. And we won, so, i got reported by the 2 premade trolls. that's the part i still remember.

So, no. You don't get punished for ANYTHING. That's a wild exaggeration and one of the main reasons none of your points have value. If you initial argument comes from a hyperbole, and all the rest of it is tailored around that. Then your whole argument is a lie, or not accurate.

While I agree that riot's way of banning via chat is stupid and retarded to the point that recently i've stopped using it almost entirely. I also dislike this heavy exaggeration from your part (and the rest of the community as a matter of fact) when you are trying to argue facts. Yes, feelings matter, but feelings aren't coded into the game or ban system.

You need proper facts and evidence about what has to get changed. At least, usually.

justsomeloser12/4/2017, 6:42:29 PM3 votes

i have to agree extremely much with the creator of this topic and i still think the punishments are extremely much over the top considering the actions of the community that you have to play with or in most cases just work around. will copy and paste what i wrote to another topic because i want people to read and i want people to think. i also want to support the people who share the opinion of me and the creator of this topic and some others who want things to change so that is game feels like a game again. it certainly does not feel like a game when almost everything is enough to get you punished as if there was no negativity in this game and because of that no reason for the creation of further negativity. that is just hilarious.

i know that this topic is old. but eventhough this topic is old the things i wrote fit into it perfectly and i want to support the opinions of people who are totally ignored and oversadowed by people who only live in the boards and try to defend their trolling/try to present themselves as suprior human beings who have to enforce justice. i am done seeing meaningful comments of people being overshadowed by people who live in the boards and try to defend their trolling/try to present themselves as superior human beings who have to enforce justice. the people who actually should matter are the ones who play the game and try to play it in the way it is supposed to be played and nobody else. nobody else! nobody else!

here comes what i wrote before and i am simply trying to make sure that the opinion of a huge part of the community is represented and i really would appreciate some support as i give support to these people like the one who created this topic as well. it is much to read. but it is simply time to make sure that things change because the punishments for "flaming" are out of control if you look at the things that the community does in the games besides "flaming". i can only repeat that this is a game and people should not need to be nice to everyone who works against them and who they do not know and who they will never see again. now i finally copy and paste the things i mentioned and you go ahead and read and think about the things that should be clear to most people and are clear to some people at least.

Glu10Sensitivity9/17/2017, 6:41:46 AM2 votes

According to Tantram, you can be punished if you are mildly toxic a lot. You can be punished for hyper toxic a few times or mildly toxic many times. It's a two fold thing.

Noxus Born12/5/2017, 12:59:38 AM2 votes

I'm gonna point out some things that actually bug me on League atm. The whole point of this post is the unfairness (I qualify it as unfairness) between what gets a person banned and what doesn't, per example: If someone trolls/ints in a game I'm 99% sure that at least 1 team mate will flame or say something that they don't mean just because that person is trolling/inting. Imagine this happening in Normal games where people like me spend most of their time during the pre-season and getting at least 2 or 3 players like this every game... That means at least 20mins of my time spent playing a game that will be unplayable because someone of my team decided not to play or feed for whatever reasons. Why can't I point out that they're being useless or acting stupid? Why can they do it freely and barely getting any punishments? It's so rare to get a player report feedback when I report someone for inting or trolling nowadays.

I'm not defending any type of hard flame or anything like that... I'm just somewhat mad that someone can play with my time and feed a whole team and nothing happening to them while I can lose my temperament once and get banned for 14 days or even permabanned. Not to mention that the player honor level is determined by other players who can easily report you if you missplay or do something wrong (that pisses them off in game).

Sorin Alucard9/17/2017, 4:47:55 PM1 votes

Foreword: Trolls suck. Mute/Report them and don't be surprised if you can't win the round they trolled. Don't worry, there will be more League games after. If you did it right the game they ruined for you will be tracked. Losing games to trolls (especially rank) is annoying af and frustrating, but lowering yourself in response won't fix anything.

LOL you should only fear use of chat if you aren't using it correctly. You should only fear reports if you actually did something wrong. People can report you every single game and if you haven't done anything to warrant them you won't get punished.

So, use your chat to call plays or give props to your allies. Any other use is waste of time. You have a mute for players who refuse to understand this. Any misuse risks chat restriction (whining about surrender, whining about game being over/impossible, whining about allies, passive-aggressive comments, insults, calling for reports, calling out trolls etc). The chat wasn't made to be your personal venting tool XD

You should be using pings more than chat anyway. You have plenty of variety for game comms there.

Its YOUR FAULT if you get trolled and decided to baby rage in chat about it. If you know its easier to catch chat offenses, why would you chat offend? Just report the players (in detail) hit your mute and go about your day. Don't feed trolls by responding to their trolling the way they want you to. Don't tell them you're muting them. When they all demand a report of you in chat you only say something like "Don't deserve a report, but ok", then YOU report them under negative behavior. Mention they called for reports, report the guy for afk, and if they trolled tell how in detail (don't just type "they trolled"). Don't call for reports back, don't insult them or worry about defending yourself. Mute and play then report after if you have to.

You only need to check a category for chat logs to be checked, but you gotta give reason for further investigation if they were actually trolling. There are plenty of "false flag" reports where salty players are just trying to get others in trouble, so you need to be specific about what they did to warrant them manually checking the game.

Lastly, a final reality check: Your feelings bottled or not bottled are no one else's responsibility to deal with. Like IDGAF if you're prone to raging or crying, no one got on League to deal with your feelings. If you explode in chat because you don't have self-control no one feels sorry for you. We, the players just trying to play, will report your flaming and the troll that made you do so with equal impunity. It just so happens raging in chat gets you banned faster because it requires less man power to check how many times you said "kys" this week than to see if you were throwing on purpose.

hsojbabe9/17/2017, 5:40:32 AM1 votes

Well, if a player is making you feel uncomfortable you can just mute them & there pings. If you feel like they are trolling just report them after game with a couple of sentences as to why you reported them (it works trust me). If there is a TROLL in the Q just dodge. Its better to MAYBE get a 5 min Q penalty than a 15 min game + with a mega troll. I understand its annoying to be in a team where players hardly communicate but its best to be humble and kind and say stuff like "nice job" whenever they get a kill. Being positive will cause the players to talk more, resulting in more wins. Even if you can not be positive, AVOID being negative/salty/toxic because that will make you and your teammates play poorly. Also realize League of Legends is just a game. I personally am stuck in bronze, but I am still having fun playing the game.

YerroFever9/17/2017, 5:43:07 AM1 votes

{quoted}

currently, ANY negative chat will get you punished if you do it enough, even as minor as "shut up" or calling someone bad. leading to chat restrictions and an eventual permaban for people who refuse to conform. it's done by an automated AI. that refuses to acknowledge context or provocation. however, the AI is absolutely horrid at catching negativity outside of chat or hardcore intentional feeding "we're talking like 6 tears and 30+ deaths" and manual reviews are few and far between. I've seen videos of people going 400+ games of trolling without getting banned, "looking at you TahmKench Anivia duo"

I don't think this is necessarily true. I haven't seen anyone on the forums get punished for telling someone to shut up. Calling someone bad is different and aren't on the same level of chat with people. Depending on the context, shut up is an attempt to quell an argument, not the most diplomatic and cooperative way to quell an argument, but still one. Telling someone that they're bad is in no way an attempt to calm a situation down. It's an instigator and aggravates the situation.

The instant feedback system isn't perfect but they're reprogramming it and expanding its detection algorithms. Stealth trolling is hard to distinguish from poor play because you have to compare their normal games to their troll games. That's going to require more time and effort into the programming of the system.

this has created a subculture of trolls who will attempt to bait other players into getting reported by using passive aggressive, but "non offensive" chat. "soft inting" deliberately banning peoples champs, ping spamming, holding surrender votes hostage, or any number of ways to troll without being detected. especially since people get a popup if their report triggered a punishment.

This is true that the feedback system has created a stealth trolls and bait trolls. However, look at how far the player behavior has come from season 1? I much prefer this climate over when I first started playing.

riot claims only 5% of the playerbase is negative enough to earn a punishment. based on my personal experience this number should actually be much higher, and thats simply how many actually "get caught" why? because people have simply taken it out of chat, and have resorted to griefing through gameplay. which is not only harder to detect. but is more disruptive, and can't simply be muted.

Honestly, based on my personal experience, I rarely run into jerks in game now compared to when I first started playing the game.

in addition, riot has "likely unintentionally garnered among neutral players and competitive players a fear of the chatbox and a "/mute all mentality." even with the new honor system. more people would rather /mute all then try and communicate. this creates yet another source of frustration for players trying to climb. people fail to realize how mind numbingly tilting it is to have your chat flat out ignored. because you arent sure why theyre ignoring you. and in cases of players who have had run ins with the punishment system, can create "report paranoia" "oh god. he muted me. im going to get reported and probably banned again" this leads to frustration, and frustration leads to negative chat.

I don't fear chatting with my teammates because I don't try to make them rage. I do try to be constructive and I do try to be cooperative. If they cannot be cooperative, there's nothing I can do about it and just move on. If they don't take the advice then so be it. There's no reason to poke and prod and annoy people into capitulating to your opinion.

ALSO. another side effect, is that players who ARE prone to negative chat are FORCED to "bottle up" their feelings. to avoid getting reported. this ends up leading to less frequent, but more severe chat toxicity. as A. when people get sick of it. they tend to just explode. and when they realize they're getting reported anyway. they simply go full george carlin.

There's a thing called constructive use of negative emotions. If you have to be awful to someone else to make yourself feel better, you need to look at yourself and figure shit out.