6 Seasons down and still inadequate player moderation

I'm being generous when I say that. Inadequate indicates that definitive action is taken, but it just isn't enough, I would argue definitive action is not being taken to moderate player behavior.

Several years ago now we had something called the tribunal. In the Tribunal, players that received a certain number of reports in a certain number of games were sent there to be reviewed by their peers. Players could go on and see the chat (and not just the offending parties chat), the outcome of a game, scores, item builds, etc to determine if punishment was warranted. If they were voted to be punished by the majority of the community, someone from Riot would review the case. This was infinitely better than what we have now - players were reviewed in the context of the game, rather than singled out based on one line of chat, they were reviewed by their peers who could determine what really was toxic behavior, and at least from my perspective, there was less toxicity then - but that was, unfortunately, unsustainable for the number of players playing, and the number of players being reported.

Riot has since moved to a completely automated system. This system primarily detects chat logs only. If you're reported, it will scan your chat logs for preprogrammed words and phrases that Riot has deemed toxic. This works well to weed out racist language and death threats pretty well, as context really doesn't bear relevance to those items. It does not work quite as well when arguments happen during trolling and feeding. In other words, if someone calls another player a "jerk" that is intentionally losing the game, the system categorizes that no differently than when someone spews angry stuff in chat with no prompting. **Riot is welcome to monitor their chat as they see fit, but when players are getting punished for being unkind to people ruining games AND the people actually ruining games are going unpunished, there is an issue. ** They have talked about this systems use for intentional feeders, but it only really works if you are running directly into enemy towers for 20+ deaths, and it still takes a number of consecutive games to pick up on it. You still are freely allowed to feed an entire ranked game with no punishment, as long as you don't do it consistently.

So here we are in season 6. I have several accounts, all in different ranked brackets. If you look at this accounts match history, you will see in my last 8 ranked games, 4 of them had blatant intentional feeders and afk's in them. My other accounts have experienced the same thing. It is currently worse than it has ever been. You can make the claim that my sample size is too small to know exactly how much toxicity exists, but I would argue that Riots sample size is too large to be honest. They could tell you wahtever they wanted to and there is no way to verify it. What matters is actual player experience. I have had many recent games with trolls/afks/intentional feeders and not had feedback that they have been punished. This means that those people have gone on to troll more games.

Ultimately here is the issue. As long as people are free to troll/afk/feed in ranked without punishment, there will always be toxicity. Regardless of if people are being more cautious about what they say in chat for fear of being banned, players are just as angry, if not more so, as before. **Player experience is getting worse, trolls are going unpunished, and after 6 seasons, no system has been implemented to tackle these issues, AND the system that once did was removed with no replacement brought it. **

There are some easy solutions to these problems but Riot refuses to make implementing a solution a priority.

1. If you announced in chat that you were afking intentionally, or it the game detected you didnt get dced, but left the game voluntarily, in a RANKED game, you should be temporarily banned from ranked games IMMEDIATELY. This system already detects afks, and having it place a ranked ban would be as easy as pie, if they cared at all about the player experience.

2. If you were reported by your entire team for intentionally feeding, and you admitted to doing it on purpose, you should be banned from ranked games. I don't even need to address those that don't say anything, because I can freely go into a ranked game, tell my team im trolling, go 2/21 and queue right back up and do it again.

3. If you troll your team, and garner 4+ reports for it, AND announced in chat that you were purposely not helping your team win, you should be automatically banned from ranked games. How can players queue for ranked, get pissed off and try to make their team lose, and then queue right back up!?

I would even be in favor of adding credentials to ranked, as in number of games played with a champion, recent performance, ping rate, etc. to ensure that ranked is actually a fair competitive mode, but i recognize that might be a bit extreme for the folks that really like to queue with lag, play a champ for the first time ever, and then feed and lose.

This isn't rocket science folks, the reality is that Riot simply won't put the attention to addressing these issues.

**The TL;DR is: Riot has done an extremely poor job of monitoring the community for gameplay behavior that ruins player experience, and after 6 seasons of it, it's time the community demanded action. It's time to actually put an end to trolling, intentionally feeding, and intentionally afking in ranked. **