My rant about Riot's punishment system.
To preface, I recently got a 25 game chat restriction on my account. I didn't actually flame anybody, grief, troll, afk, or anything like that. My only offense was instead of using the mute button I engaged with the toxic teammates. I wish I could share the chat logs of the things my teammates were saying, but unfortunately I can't. Below is the pastebin for the SINGLE game that got me a 25 game chat restriction. I emailed back and forth with Riot and they deemed me to unequivocally violated their rules and deserve the chat restriction and all of the extra punishment that comes along with it.
The pastebin: https://pastebin.com/VPkVgZ4R
The Rioter I talked to recommended I post my little rant on the boards if I want it to be heard, so here it is:
"I first want to preface this by saying I understand that your job is just to reply to these tickets and you probably have no say in how any of this works, but I want to speak my frustration anyways, so hopefully someone at Riot can see this.
I never expect you guys to go back on your restrictions, and I (like I was a day before this chat log happened) am turning my chat off completely; since getting in a very small argument or even defending yourself from someone that flames you the entire game gives you a punishment. Riot's zero tolerance policy on this kind of stuff is just ridiculous. It is human nature to get caught up in someone flaming you constantly. Since I was chat restricted recently (and rightfully so), I can go quite a few games doing absolutely nothing wrong and only decide to defend myself one game and now my honor gets locked for months, my account is flagged and any other behavior you deem unfit can push me closer to worse punishments, and my rewards in game are quite diminished for quite a long duration of consistent playing where I essentially have to never get in any arguments, or be at risk of my account being permanently banned. All of this because for one game, I was being flamed all game by 2 players on my team and tried to act reasonable and ask them to stop flaming me and play the game. I think you and most other people can agree that based on my chat logs none of what I did should receive any punishment, but since I got involved I am now being punished for it on the same level as someone that gives up and trolls or relentlessly flames their teammates from the 2 minute mark.
Expecting the people who play your game to act like robots and never express any emotion in their messages or never get a little upset with someone who is being a relentless asshole is just insane to me. Everybody that plays this game is human and is bound to want to step in when someone is being unreasonable. You are never going to fix the toxicity in your game this way. Say I was a toxic player for much longer and was very close to being permanently banned. Say I decide to just not use chat for a while, like I did, and work on just playing. I decide to use chat for a few games and I try to be a good person and stick up for myself and teammates when being flamed. Anybody can see that I'm just trying to be a good person, and although it might not be super helpful, I don't think any reasonable person would say that is punishable. But in your system, as long as I engage, I am punished. And now, even though I might have been on the road to becoming a more level headed player, you now will permanently ban me, and when I ask why, you tell me essentially, "rules are rules, and you broke them, sorry bud".
Maybe take a step back and consider what your system is doing. Stop punishing people for being human. There's a difference between telling someone to kill their selves and telling someone to stop being an asshole and trying to salvage a game before it derails into arguing." \
Just remember when going into your next game, it doesn't matter if you tell someone to shut up when flaming two teammates for 20 minutes and trolling, or if you tell someone to kill themselves, Riot sees it as the same thing and will punish you regardless.
Moral of the story: turn off chat it isn't worth using.
