My 3,000 word open letter to Riot on improve queuing/match making, reducing toxicity, and...

My 3,000 word open letter to Riot on improve queuing/match making, reducing toxicity, and general happy-fun-times. 😊 March 23rd 2017

A TOXIC COMMUNITY The LoL community has a long history of toxic players ruining the gaming experience for the rest of us. Anyone who’s played at least a few dozen games probably has toxic stories to tell. As for my story, this whole letter started after my wife and I played one particularly toxic game after a long day. Our schedules don’t give us a lot of time to play together, so this experience really became the straw that broke the camel’s back and caused me to do some serious thinking about how often these toxic games happen and what can be done to improve things.

Being that LoL that is so team oriented, it’s incredibly frustrating to be matched with toxic teammates. True, you can always que with friends, but they aren’t always on at the same time as you. Without 5 friends to play with you end up queuing up with random people and getting a toxic player thrown in the mix. So, how likely are you to encounter a toxic player in LoL? On Nov 13th 2014 Riot shared statistics that: “95% of players have never received chat restrictions, ranked restrictions, game bans or permanent bans this year!” In theory, that sounds pretty good, but I’d like to point out that unless Riot has a 100% success rate of catching all toxicity and punishing it, then the count of punished players does not equal the total number of toxic players out there. Plus even 5% of 100 million players is still 5 million toxic players. However, let’s be conservative and say that the total toxic player base in LoL is 5%; then the odds of having a toxic player in a match are: (95/100)^10 = 59.8%. Or in other words, statistically, there should be at least 1 toxic player in every 2 games you play. For me, I personally find these odds just way too high. I could live with 1 in 10 games, but not 1 in 2. Having to be subjected to the harassment of a toxic player is the kind of experience that makes many of us wonder why we even play this game, and that’s a problem for Riot if they’d like players to continue spending RP on skins. I personally know a handful of people who quit playing LoL because of the toxic community. It makes sense why Riot would want to discourage toxicity in the community as it isn’t good for their bottom line, reputation and sucks the joy out of playing a game you enjoy in your limited free time.

In response to this toxic player problem, Riot has enacted several policies over the years such as “honoring” and giving gifts for good behavior, as well as “reporting” players for various violations ranging from a player leaving game, intentionally feeding the other team, or being toxic in general. In a 2012 article by Polygon Riot CEO co-founders recruited Dr. Jeffrey Lin to be the lead designer of “social systems” which was a team within Riot tasked with trying to cure the toxic culture in LoL. Riot is quoted as saying “What we want is for LoL to have the most sportsmanlike community in core competitive games.” It was Dr. Lin’s work which led to the honor system and other mechanisms for trying to encourage positive behavior. The thought was that a punishment like restrictions or bans will discourage players from being toxic to each other, and it was reported to have helped, but let’s keep in mind that 5% figure was from 2014, 2 years after Dr. Lin began his work.

Taken as a whole, when good players leave because of toxicity, it’s a bad thing for the community and simply bad for business, because a healthy community attracts more players and creates a positive feedback loop. However-much Riot has been trying to help shape the community to be more positive with initiatives like “Social Systems”, that 5% still leaves room for improvement and these toxic players are still a major problem 5 years after Dr. Lin began his work.

DON’T HATE THE PLAYERS, HATE THE GAME (PAYOFF SYSTEM) After reading the book “Algorithms to live by: The Computer Science of Human Decisions” I was introduced to the concept of Mechanism Design(inverse game theory). I was struck with the fact that too many visibly toxic players is evidence that the mechanism for creating a more positive community still can be improved. The good news is this problem of toxic players is solvable if we create the right mechanisms (ecosystem) for which players will respond with and create a new outcome of a more positive environment. In other words, we need to rethink the culture, rewards, and consequences for ‘good and bad’ (optimal and suboptimal) behavior, so that the payoffs for being a healthy sportsman are greater than the payoffs for being toxic, and ultimately the choices a player makes will change what they get out of the game.

Why are there toxic players to begin with? Well, besides LoL being a particularly stressful game that can bring out the worst in people, being toxic has payoffs for the toxic player, they can yell, troll, or rage at other people they’ll probably never meet again. Being able to act in a way that you simply wouldn’t be able to get away with at school or work can be a hugely liberating payoff for someone who needs to blow off steam or isn’t able to control their frustration. The problem is that, there are other real people being negatively affected by the toxic player’s behavior. The net result is the toxic player gets a payoff at the healthy player’s expense, and that is a huge problem. If reports against a toxic player start piling up and Riot acts against the player, it’s easy for the player to walk away and come back again when the suspension has cleared or even log onto another account. The toxic player walks away with a slap on the wrist, because suspensions are a binary punishment (on or off). What is needed is a cumulative effect of bad behavior stacking up against them over time.

The current mechanism clearly doesn’t discourage toxicity enough. The payoff to be toxic is greater than the cost, so players continue to be toxic. A new mechanism is needed to correct player behavior. Let’s talk about that next.

>“We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.” - Lawrence Durrell

LET GO OF THE LEGACY MECHANISM AND SAY HELLO TO A KARMA SYSTEM. To create a new mechanism, the first thing we must do is identify what we want our optimal outcome to be. If you’d like to be matched with less toxic players so you can enjoy more games like I do, then we can set that as the optimal outcome. We can do this by lifting positive players higher into a space which is more enjoyable to play in; being positive in each game on average would accumulate more and more rewards. While each toxic action a player commits pulls them into a lower space which is less fun to play in. Essentially what I’m proposing is creating a mechanism for taking good game experiences away from the toxic players and transferring them to healthy players, while also taking the bad experiences away from the healthy players and transferring them to the toxic players. What this means is that if you’re a good sportsman, honorable, positive, not AFKing, or feeding; you shouldn’t have to suffer through as many horrible games with people who are very toxic. Meanwhile the toxic player will have more toxic experiences to suffer through, because of their own toxic behavior.

The word “Karma” is defined as: >“The sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.”

In the context of LoL we could change this definition to: >“The sum of a person's actions in this and previous games, viewed as deciding their fate in future game experiences.”

Shifting LoL to a mechanism that isn’t binary but is always on would tip the payoff/cost scales in favor of being positive for the majority of players, and the players that continue their toxic ways will be relegated to a karma hell with other toxic players where they can troll and yell at each other. This mechanism shift implies a very different culture in LoL, because acting positive in a predictable cost/payoff karma system is in the player’s self-interest. We know from game theory and behavioral psychology that people usually choose the option that is in their self-interest (highest payoff). We can predict that almost all players will choose the most self-rewarding path. Our objective is to make the behavior we want the player to choose give them the highest payoff.

BEFORE WE DIVE IN Ok, so up until this point, all I’ve been doing is laying the argument for the need for a shift, without laying out how it might be implemented. That’s coming next.

Let me start by saying, I’m not all knowing, and designing a sweeping game mechanic like the Karma system should be carefully thought through, but something does need to be done for the long-term health of the LoL community, and I truly reason that this is the best approach to improve the community and overall experience. What I write next should be taken as suggestions and ideas for development. The reason I’m writing this open letter is get awareness out there and spread the idea so it can be developed by both Riot and the community so it can positively benefit us all.

OVERVIEW OF KARMA SYSTEM Karma is not a skill based metric, nor should it. We already have a metric for skill; that’s why we have ranked. Karma is a public metric of a player’s toxicity/sportsman level and will be considered separately from skill. Every account would start with 0 Karma and move on an y axis either positive or negative. A negative Karma score would bring on increasingly more negative effects (costs), while a positive Karma score would bring on increasingly more positive effects (payoffs). A player’s Karma score would be shown publicly, just like their ranked status. Karma score would be tied to the player’s account.

In the event, someone’s negative karma was so bad that regretted their actions and they wanted to start over they could reset back to 0 Karma, but, they would have to pay a certain amount of RP for the reset. Later, if the player wanted to reset again for a second time, they would have to wait 3 months since the last reset before the reset was available again. Once necessary waiting period was over, the reset would unlock, the RP cost would be double the previous rate. If a third reset was wanted the wait time would double again to 6 months and the RP cost would double yet again.

Each time a player wanted to go back to 0 Karma the waiting period and cost would continue to double over and over. A doubling cost penalty keeps people from abusing the reset, and makes it more meaningful.

COST Having a negative karma would: • Ever so slowly start increasing your que times compared to players with positive karma. If you were a nasty player with very low Karma, you might even expect to wait twice as long to find a game as a cost for your toxic attitude on the community. • You would be more likely to be paired with other low karma toxic players, this would put more toxic players together, reducing the abuse on healthy players. Also, players separated by more than X amount of karma would not even be matched at all. This way even the most toxic players would never be banned, but they would essentially isolate themselves from the healthy community. [You could still play with your friends who have a higher karma than you. However when queuing your karma score would be weighted 70 / 30 towards the player with the lower Karma.] • You would receive no gifts from Riot.

These huge costs might sound intense, but only chronically toxic players would be submitted to them, and the fear of being in such a bad position would serve as the main motivation to NOT be toxic. Players who have a bad day and lose their cool once a month won’t lose enough Karma so quickly to be damned to Karma hell and would only take a small karma hit. This system punishes/rewards your average everyday behavior. That means if you flip out even just one game, you will still pay a small price for your actions against the community, but they won’t immediately be noticeable unless you flip out on average. Players would know that each toxic behavior would cost them something that they would have to make up for later or suffer the consequences.

PAYOFF A positive Karma would increasingly bring on more payoffs. • Players could be prioritized in an aim to reduce queue times by as much as half the regular time. • Players would be matched with other high Karma players who would be healthy and nice to play with. • Riot could sweeten the pot by providing Karma reward levels where you unlock karma exclusive skins, wards, icons, or even create badges or ribbons that unlock at high levels of Karma and get taken away if your Karma level drops below the threshold. If you have an averagely healthy behavior you would trend upwards, if you had an averagely negative behavior you would trend downwards.

GETTING AND LOSING KARMA This always on Karma mechanism is precisely why this approach works over the binary punishment system currently in place. The primary challenge will be setting up the rules of the system so they are balanced, and hard to abuse or cheat. This is something that will probably need to evolve over time through A/B testing and need to be balanced/tweaked. Either way, this will probably be the hardest part to get right, but this is the right path to improve the community, so here we go. It goes without saying that all negative behaviors should yield varying degrees of negative Karma while all positive behaviors should yield varying degrees of positive Karma. We can apply these negatives or positives on a player’s karma by using an applied On/Off behavior for the game. It’s important that each player is judged each and every single game and is credited or debited for their behavior right away. That way, players will see their Karma score take a hit or rise and learn to correlate that instant feedback with their behavior. The hardest thing will be HOW a player is found to have a behavior. Currently AI is developing at a rapid pace, and one day it will probably be a very good objective judge, but at this point in time we still need human judging since AI isn’t good enough yet. (This would be a cool challenge for OpenAI to take on.) Since we’re dealing with human judges who have biases, we need to stop those biases from unfairly judging others; the goal being to improve impartiality and fairness. The clear choice is to make the judging random; this way you don’t know who will judge you, or who you will judge. Will it be a teammate? Will it be someone from the other side? Now, true, someone who is salty may end up being your judge, but we can reduce this risk of inaccuracy by adding a second random judge, and if both judges agree independently that you did something, then you’d be confirmed as having done that behavior. Statistically, 2 people both falsely accusing you of the same behavior are very low since they can’t communicate and coordinate their attack easily. Also, even the worst Karma behaviors in one game wouldn’t make a significant enough dent in your score to really matter, unless they added up game after game. Ultimately adding more judges would be great, but there’s a huge cost to adding more people to judge each game, so judging 2 people gives you the highest accuracy with the lowest cost. I reason that this trade off of accuracy and time cost is balanced at 2 random judges. Judging would take place immediately after the game finishes, before being brought back to the game summery screen, and a dialog box would be presented for each person to be judged. The judging form would be made to not take longer than a few seconds with Yes or No questions. If you failed to respond to the judging questions, you would automatically be hit with a negative Karma penalty of – 1, and be disqualified from receiving any positive Karma from people who judged you. If the person who was supposed to judge you was AFK, the judging task would be randomly pulled from the remaining available players until all players had been judged at least twice. (This means in some games someone might have to judge 3 people, but it would be rare.)

Here’s an example of what the judging questions could look like: [Show Player name and Champ Icon at the top of the window] Negative Karma Behavior: • Hate speech = - 10 Karma (Did [PLAYER] [CHAMP] , engage in any hate speech?) • Intentional feeding = - 7 Karma (Did [PLAYER] [CHAMP], intentionally feed?) • Bad attitude, flaming = - 4 Karma (Did [PLAYER] [CHAMP], broadcast a toxic attitude such as trolling, flaming, or verbally abusing someone?) • AFK = - 2 Karma (Did [PLAYER] [CHAMP], quit the game?) • Game long disconnection = - 1 Karma ( Did [PLAYER] [CHAMP], disconnect from the game without trying to reconnect?)

**Positive Karma Behavior: ** • Putting team success above self = + 5 Karma ( Did [PLAYER] [CHAMP], Put the team’s overall success above themselves?) • Friendly, helpful, or positive tone = + 3 Karma (Did [PLAYER] [CHAMP], act in a friendly, helpful, or positive manner?) • Finishing a game without any negatives = + 1 Karma (IF no negative behavior, then add this. Else disable.) Application: • Only one instance of the Negatives or Positives could be applied against/for you per game. • You could have both Negatives or Positives applied at the same time.

For example, you could be found to have “Putting team success above self” + 5 Karma, and also “Hate Speech” = - 10 Karma for a net loss of - 5 Karma subtracted from your total Karma score.

That about sums up my thoughts on how the mechanism could operate. Obviously, it should be tested and tweaked to balance it, but the core principle is that behavior each game should have a cost or payoff, and it should be clear to everyone how their behavior is impacting the community.

HELP THE TOXIC For the players who are toxic and want to turn things around, an official in-depth guide could be created in partnership with leaders in the field (Maybe even someone like Tony Robbins) to help players learn to control their frustration, and focus their energy on a more positive outcome. This would give toxic/immature players new tools that they could use to deal with challenges in their own lives in a more positive way and could vastly turn around public sentiment on the LoL community. LoL could be seen as a place where you can develop life skills on how to handle stressful situations that contribute to future success.

NOW I NEED YOUR HELP. WHO WILL STAND WITH ME?

> “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” ― Victor Hugo

If you believe Riot’s mechanism for dealing with Toxic players could use improving and like the ideas presented here, then YOU can help this idea take on a life of its own. You can help by commenting on this post, upvoting it, stickying it, plastering this discussion link around the relevant places on the internet, and forwarding it to Riot staff until they notice it. I believe a mechanism that creates a more positive community is in Riot’s best interest from a PR, User Retention, and Profitability perspective anyway so, if you’re from Riot please feel free to reach out to me by msging me on the LoL client @ “SevenStars7” in NA.

Thank you sincerely, for taking the time to read this, I hope to see a day when the LoL community flourishes and I’m matched with more positive and mature players like you. ^_^ -SevenStars7