Boards›Player Behavior

Reforming the Punishment System

Asuparagasu420·1/5/2018, 11:59:23 PM·1 votes·582 views

Today I had a very useful conversation with Mr. Feeny, a Riot Support member.

Sometime February of 2017, I had my account perma banned for toxicity in chat, I admit it was pretty bad, it was a joke between my friends and I, we thought it was funny to be as most toxic as possible in chat... certainly those playing with us did not see it as a joke and took our jokingly toxicity as genuine.

I apologize for those who were in games with me.

I did however, reform. And eventually after months of not playing, and busy being pissed at Riot for banning my account, I finally made a new account and only recently did I reach level 30 on said account. What I discussed with Mr. Feeny today was due to the news of Tyler1 getting his ID unbanned, something I won't delve into because no information has really been brought up about the situation and Riot Employees don't have the ability to discuss it either. But what we did end up speaking of, was how poor the Riot punishment system really is. I was banned due to my toxicity in chat, not griefing, not trolling, and not even feeding. So I ask this, would the best solution not have been to given my account a permanent chat restriction, rather than an all-out account ban? I know that if I had received such punishment then the issue that Riot had with me on this account would have been resolved immediately. Instead I had my entire account restricted, leaving me pissed off at Riot for what I viewed as unjust, didn't play for months so that means they lost someone to their player base, and in turn made Riot lose money. Let me explain, I put little over $200 into this account that was banned so to say the least I was pissed that I could no longer use it; so from that moment on I vowed to never give Riot money again in fear of losing an account again for some reason, and losing all the money I put into the account. I know it was my choice to put money into the game but regardless, it was benefiting them and if I hadn't been banned I probably would've kept putting money in (which isn't really a good thing for me but still a point to be made). An additional point to be made; while leveling up my new account I noticed a majority of players I was playing with were in fact NOT new players but in fact just people smurfing for their platinum accounts or people who have also gotten banned. This resulted in me hearing a lot of "I don't care if you ban me or not ~~ this isn't my main so I couldn't care less" or "this is my smurf so go ahead and report me ~~~~" or even the classic "I'm platinum on my main so you can shut up ~~*". My point being that the lower elo community is absolutely terrible due to people getting banned and just starting new accounts and being just as toxic on new players and other banned players. This can turn off new players like it almost did me when I first started playing, leads poor sportsmanship to lower elo, and worst of all, DOES NOT SOLVE THE ISSUE AT HAND!!!.

So the point still stands, what does the rest of the community believe to be a just resolution for cases such as mine and many others? If you're toxic in chat should you just receive a permanent chat ban or is the permanent account restriction just in your eyes? Should Riot reform the punishment system to implement more innovative ways of punishing toxic players such as permanent chat restrictions for those who were reported for toxicity only in chat?

Maybe if Riot hears enough from their community we can get some proper change in here.

  • L.D.

5 Comments

Jo0o1/6/2018, 12:02:19 AM7 votes

Several years back, chat restrictions could pile up to the point where they were essentially permanent. Riot found that people turned to physical trolling rather than chat abuse when this was the case, so they stopped doing it.

It may have worked for you, but others already ruined it. Sorry.

Kei1431/6/2018, 12:07:23 AM1 votes

Well ... If you got permabanned, Riot actually wants you out of the game. So they really didn't care too much about the toxics leaving their game and they don't want your money either.

That said, for those toxics that have a small amount of self control, a self mute would be a good feature. But it takes all these development hours just to satisfy a super small population (probably only 5-10% of the toxic population), their time probably would be much more worth used elsewhere.

Zombie Gerbil1/6/2018, 5:51:33 AM1 votes

Riot definitely doesn't lose money really. The small percent of toxic players who are banned out of millions worldwide who play this game isn't even a waterdrop in the ocean. As for the system, there's nothing wrong with it. It literally teaches players that words do have consequences. This is why the vast majority of the community likes this system. The players who don't, which are the small percents who end up posting on here how unfair it is because they don't get the internet anonymous power where they can say anything they want regardless of its offense or consequences. This is why that very small number of players complain and whine how they don't have that power anymore.

So no, the system will and should always remain as it is. Because just like you neglected the rest of the players in your game as well as your previous games and players like you will have to learn that other players feelings counts and negativity with its ignorance have no place here.

You are either part of the game or part of the problem.

OnlyYouCanHearMe1/6/2018, 8:12:03 AM1 votes

I'm afraid I have to agree with the others here. The permanent chat restrictions simply do not work. It led to more trolling and intentionally feeding, and players finding more creative ways to express their anger with their teammates. While I'm open to the possibility of new or different types of punishments for players, given it's previous failures the permanent chat restriction isn't really viable. It just ends up making the non-toxic players in chat the victims of even more negativity, and I'll be honest with you and admit that I just don't want to deal with that in my games. I saw it the first time around, and I don't want to see it again.