What I learned from my 14 day suspension

Greetings everyone, I figured that the player behavior team as well as moderators / players freshly banned might find this post somewhat amusing.

I will include a TL;DR: near the bottom, but for those who like to read, I will elaborate a bit here.

So after 2 years of playing League of Legends and never even being chat restricted before, I ended up getting my account a 14 day suspension after a chat restriction due to toxic communication. I came here to the forums looking for feedback, yet still on the defensive because I truly felt at that time that the punishment did not make sense because the reported chat log in question was probably one of the tamest, least toxic logs that have been linked for someone who actually got banned.

Thanks to some of the people here, I learned that it was not anything I said in particular, it just so happened that my "passive aggressive" or "mildy toxic" nature (which I personally attribute to being in pain due to serious health problems) over a large amount of games can sometimes add up to the value of one egregious over stepping of boundaries. I will admit that if I wasn't being a dumb ass and knew that my $2000 invested account was in danger of a ban, I definitely would of never opened my mouth in chat.

Other than that, I have some fresh air for you guys to breathe in here!

As you all could probably guess, since I am addicted to League of Legends like many of you here, I decided that 2 weeks of Starcraft just wasn't going to cut it, so I made a smurf account.

If you guys read one part of this entire post, I suggest this section be it because I had an epiphany while playing sub level 30 draft.

Whenever you make a brand new account, for those of you who do not have a smurf or have never needed to make one, you are lumped in with other "new" players. Some of these players have no clue what their champions abilities do, or even how to properly buy items and move their champion, let alone farm with any type of consistency. Every other game there are usually 2 AFK's on each team.

One of the main things I noticed in this setting is that every couple games or so, there would be another smurf like myself, who had been banned due to toxic behavior. It then dawned on me what super low elo really was.

Usually 1 smurf on each team, with 4 afk bots. I was in this particular game as Ezreal bot and I was vs a Yasuo mid. The game was literally smurf vs smurf.

Guess what happened? I got destroyed.

I never truly got to realize and acknowledge how TRASH of a player I actually was. Could I have carried that game? Yes I could have. I had a lead, I had the items, I had the scaling. But I still lost to this Yasuo smurf. Basically what I am trying to say is, the level of play at that level is so bad that you literally don't flame team mates because you never had expectations for them in the first place since they are new players.

Its a given at that elo to have 2 AFK's on each team at times. It never crossed my mind once to say something negative or rude to any of my team mates. I knew the one way we would win that game is if I outplayed him, and I didn't.

This has completely opened my eyes to my own skill level and that if I couldn't beat that Yasuo, then I have NO ROOM to ever say anything to anyone in this game. I really think that sometimes, some things do happen for a reason. I gained something valuable out of my suspension. I also got reminded of this lesson when a 0/7 Cho'gath ended up winning us a game by hitting an excellent Righteous Glory engage at their inhibitor turret. He didn't tilt, he didn't give up, and he didn't flame his team mates. Maybe if I would of said something rude to him it would of broke his psyche and he might have given up. Instead though, he ended up making the game winning play that we finished off.

TL;DR:

Getting suspended for 2 weeks taught me more about myself as a player than I have learned in my entirety of my time playing this game. Low elo is usually Smurf vs Smurf with 4 bots each, half of which are AFK. In that situation it is a 1v1 basically, and if you lose, that means you got outplayed. If you got outplayed, it's because you made a mistake and if you're making mistakes you are playing bad, if you are playing bad then you have no room to talk to anyone in this game about their performance. Let alone in a rude or negative fashion.

Now instead of getting upset at my team, I am that guy who says "GJ", "NJ", "Lets go!" and I help my team mates shake it off when they accidentally run it down from time to time. I have even broken up a few serious flame wars (that 100% would result in bans if reports were made) into winning games.

Bottom line I learned my lesson and because of this, I will never be suspended from my favorite game again. Thanks for reading guys! Much love. <3

Remember, the heart is the strongest muscle.