The Real Problem with RIOT's Punishment System

Eternal Colossus··3 votes·1,238 views

Jayce Nautilus

RIOT will not accept that their system is flawed, nor will they address my concerns on this matter. However, I have reached the point when my patience has been exceeded and I will no longer sit here and watch as a game that I used to enjoy is turned into a farce by RIOT and its employees.

Here is the background. I consider myself to be a very reasonable and kind person, though I will admit that in a few games of League I have gotten frustrated with my teammates. However, I never swear (in or out of game), I wouldn't even consider using hate speech, and I have never been verbally abusive towards my teammates. However, RIOT has accused me of all of the above, and in my opinion they have accused me falsely. Here is (in my opinion) what is wrong with the RIOT system of reports and restrictions.

To start, I will mention that I am not going to get into how the RIOT report and restriction automated system works, or how it "temporarily" replaces the Tribunal (which is false, the Tribunal is dead). If you want more information on this just ask me, but every time that I have brought it up in the past all that I receive is other members here throwing verbal abuse and hate speech towards me for it, so I would rather not bring it up.

Instead, my main point revolves around RIOT's apparent inability to uphold their own Summoner's Code, while also falsely punishing summoners who point out that others are breaking the Summoner's Code (mainly, by saying that they are intentionally throwing).

Now don't get me wrong, I know that there are many players in League who may not be as good as others, or who may be doing poorly but are not doing it intentionally. I am referring to the players that intentionally throw/feed because they think that it is funny, because they want to ruin the game for the other players, because they know that they can get away with it, or simply because they feel like it. So with that in mind, here are my two main points that I feel RIOT should seriously consider fixing:

  1. I feel that a large majority of the community would agree that RIOT has allowed too many of these intentional trolls to remain in the game and run rampant again and again with little to no punishment. I have monitored the accounts of some of the worst offenders of this, and over a year-long period not a single one of them received any punishment that restricted their daily gameplay. Even without my second point, this point should be something that RIOT would take seriously. It does not really matter how people respond to the players that are intentionally throwing. The biggest problem should be that those players are bragging about how they can intentionally throw whenever they want and get away with it. And sadly, they are absolutely correct.

  2. With point one in mind, my second point is that RIOT seems to be morally obliged to punish summoners who actively don't support the trolling, intentionally feeding, and extreme verbal abuse/hate speech that happens in almost every single game. I was just temporarily suspended (for 14 days), and the warning message said that it was for verbal abuse and negativity. The chat logs however, told a very different story. Every single game that they quoted, I was punished for saying one thing; my teammate(s) is intentionally throwing/trolling. In every one of these games there is zero doubt to the accuracy of my claims, in fact it was bad enough that the enemy team often faithfully agreed with me, honored me, and apologized to me for what my teammates were doing. Also, in almost every single one of these games, the 2-3 people that were intentionally trolling/throwing were queued together, were verbally abusive towards me and my teammates together, and lied to the enemy team about us all together. Many people in this community would understand if I had started to insult them, swear at them, anything to make them feel like horrible people. However, all that I said was that they were intentionally throwing, and then I would mute any of them that were verbally abusive. So how is it then, that RIOT feels that upholding the Summoner's Code (pointing out intentional trolls) is worthy of a punishment, while the individuals who intentionally troll/feed/throw out verbal abuse and hate speech do not? I know that many of you will say "RIOT believes that it is negativity to point out someone who is intentionally throwing". However, nowhere in the Summoner's Code does it say anything against it, nor is there any official RIOT statement condoning it. Thus, it is not against the Summoner's Code, and in my opinion RIOT should appreciate players who are seeking to improve the community of this game due to the high levels of trolling and verbal abuse that are currently allowed to fester in this game.

Thank you.

31 Comments

Awkward Couch5 votes
  • You're right, trolling is something that needs to be looked at and punished more frequently. It shouldn't take someone getting to the front page of r/leagueoflegends to get punished for feeding/trolling

  • The Tribunal was put on the backburner because they wanted to focus on the new Alpha client. With the new client, Riot can do more things like replays.

  • The old Tribunal was extremely inefficient. Players would get punished for games months after they happened. Back when the Tribunal was running, most people would just hit punish to get the extra IP, people weren't actually reading the chat.

  • The problem is, it's hard to have an automated system detect trolling. It's a lot easier for an automatic system to look for toxicity. That's why you see toxicity punished more frequently than you see trolling/intentional feeding punished. That being said, there needs to be something done about trolls.

  • Your "study" of all the people you kept track of for a year is fundamentally flawed. How often do you check to see if they are still playing? How many games have they trolled in? How do you know they are trolling if you can't watch their games? Why should I take you at your word when you say, "after a year of monitoring these people"?

  • People troll, it's frustrating yes, but that doesn't mean that you have the right just to flame. If you start flaming the trolls, not only do you give them exactly what they want (attention), but you just make a bad situation worse. Bad things happen all the time in real life, that doesn't mean that you just get a free pass to throw a hissy fit. An eye for an eye only leaves the world half blind

  • I play 5-6 days a week around 4 ish games each night. About 1 time a week I actually see toxicity/hate speech, I don't know why people exaggerate how often toxicity occurs.

  • Riot isn't morally obligated to ban people who aren't actively trolling, you yourself admit that you try to make the trolls feel like horrible people, how is that any better than what they're doing? Why can't you see that you're both in the wrong?

Kartagia1 votes

The new client allowing stuff is bullshit. RIot should do the monitoring from server side logs. Unfortunately I have got RIot to admit they do not have all logs, and do not want even to investigate the issue.

Kartagia2 votes

The new client allowing stuff is bullshit. RIot should do the monitoring from server side logs. Unfortunately I have got RIot to admit they do not have all logs, and do not want even to investigate the issue.

Automatic system tracking verbal abuse is not an easy task at all. And RIot system preventing support people to see facts of game, is really bad. Support only gets the sanitized chat log without even talk of other players. RIot has taken stance to side with bullies and flamers with this. IF you remove talk from GAME EVENTS, interpreting it becomes almost impossible. If you remove chat of other players, you get total misinformation. The data without either of these information parts is totally useless. Riot does not want to admit it, as they spend lots of money into system which won't work. THey refuse to teach it with positive stuff "this is not verbal abuse", and anybody who has done AI 101 knows that is totally wrong way teaching AIs.

Awkward Couch2 votes

The new client allowing stuff is bullshit. RIot should do the monitoring from server side logs.

Those two things have nothing to do with each other. The focus has been on working on the new client before they work on the Tribunal. Furthermore, if you participated in the old Tribunal, then you know that Riot does have all of the chat logs from every single person. If you look at old videos of tribunal cases, you can see that you can see everyone's chat.

Unfortunately I have got RIot to admit they do not have all logs, and do not want even to investigate the issue.

I already answered this portion in the previous response, but again, Riot does have all of the chat, the old Tribunal shows us that.

Support only gets the sanitized chat log without even talk of other players.

Again, Riot does have access to all chat logs, but Riot's stance on things is that it doesn't matter what anyone else said.

RIot has taken stance to side with bullies and flamers with this.

How? If you spend any time on this board you'll see people get banned for flaming and bullying all the time.

IF you remove talk from GAME EVENTS, interpreting it becomes almost impossible.

The only instance where that would be true is telling someone to kill themselves in an ARAM. A vast majority of the time, you can tell things via reading context. There really isn't much to interpret when someone says "Lux go hang yourself you fucking %%%got" (this is an example that I have seen in games past).

If you remove chat of other players, you get total misinformation.

Again, I have to disagree with you.

The data without either of these information parts is totally useless.

Why? Riot has stated that being toxic isn't acceptable. You flaming other flamers or flaming at the guy who is trolling only makes the situation that much worse.

Riot does not want to admit it, as they spend lots of money into system which won't work.

Again, look at threads on this boards of people who have gotten banned, I think the system they have in place is working just fine. It's working much better than the old Tribunal we had.

THey refuse to teach it with positive stuff "this is not verbal abuse", and anybody who has done AI 101 knows that is totally wrong way teaching AIs.

You really have no leg to stand on here. You don't know how the AI is actually running. You can try to ask Riot Tantrum, but I doubt he'll divulge any information to you.

Eternal Colossus1 votes

I agree with you on most of this, but I disagree about the context being useless. Read the response that I gave to Nep2une (should be the comment right under this one) of one of my personal experiences in-game, and why I was punished for something that in-context I probably wouldn't have been.

Astôlfo3 votes

Incorrect. Context is irrelevant. Interpretation is more than good enough to punish players with up to permabans without it.

Eternal Colossus1 votes

Usually I would agree with you. In the games that I play I try my best to not respond to teammates who are verbally abusive or intentionally feeding/trolling, and I usually just mute them. But context can only provide 1% of the actual problem. For instance, I might say this in chat:

"what are you doing?" "please stop" "stop trolling me" "yes Ezreal is intentionally trolling me"

On paper it looks like I'm "flaming" and being toxic. But in reality, I was playing Bard support, and the Ezreal on my team was saying the worst hate speech that I have ever heard against me in chat, and following me around all game long (doing nothing else), spamming his taunt button which made it look like he was jerking off onto my leg. And yes, this situation did happen to me in-game, no it wasn't ok, and yes I received a chat restriction for it. Was he frustrating me, yeah, you would be too if you were playing this RANKED GAME with someone doing that to you. And did I actively try to understand what he was doing and try to get him to stop, yes, because that's better than just automatically assuming that he was trolling. And yes, when the enemy team asked me if Ezreal was doing that on purpose to troll me, I honestly responded yes.

In my opinion I felt like I did the right thing in that game. However, with the context removed, I was given a chat restriction on the basis of "complaining about what other people are doing".

Jorencice2 votes

He got punished you got punished.

Its exactly what should of happened.

2 wrongs dont make a right.

Simply ignore trolls. They WILL go away.

Had someone recently go LOL DOUBLE JUNGLE and followed me around trying to steal my jungle camps.

I told everyone on skype to not even type and we completely ignored him.

And i continued jungleing like nothing was happenings.

He ran up mid died twice and when we said nothing and didnt even react he simply left the game.

Which we carried and ended up winning ^-^

Trolls ONLY TROLL to get a reaction out of people.

Eternal Colossus1 votes

I am sorry, but you are wrong. Not only did I do nothing wrong, but he did not get punished. And no, trolls will not go away, especially if you pretend that they are doing nothing wrong. I hate to say this but players like you are why there are so many trolls that are left in this game. If you don't report them and make RIOT aware of the situation, then there will continue to be more and more trolls in this game, and fewer and fewer real players because we all got too sick of playing with trolls.

Astôlfo2 votes

If you did nothing wrong, you wouldn't be punished.

Eternal Colossus1 votes

Lol that's not true at all. Saying this:

"what are you doing?" "please stop" "stop trolling me" "yes Ezreal is intentionally trolling me"

isn't wrong at all, but I still got a chat restriction from this. Also, to put it in perspective, I have also received a temporary suspension with these as my chat:

"I'll ward red" "gj guys" "lets get drag" "thanks a lot for the help" "the bush is warded xin"

So, if you still believe that you can never get banned if you didn't do anything wrong, then tell me what is wrong with any of that.

Astôlfo1 votes

Why not post your full chatlogs then?

Eternal Colossus1 votes

Because I didn't receive the chatlogs.

Kartagia1 votes

This is.. interesting logic. REally interesting. DO you vote Trump?

Astôlfo1 votes

Why would I vote for such a horribly ignorant and bigoted failure?

Kartagia1 votes

Yeah. Context has nothing to do with meaning of words. You are so smart.

I suggest you learn facts instead of fanfictional opinions.

First: In languages context is MOST important part. IT defines meaning of words. IF you have not learn that this far, you are quite sad case.

Astôlfo1 votes

Congratulations on the strawman. Context is irrelevant because it does not matter what others do. You are only judged on what you do. If you say something toxic, it does not matter if the other person did the same. You were still toxic. And thus, you deserve the punishment.

Eternal Colossus1 votes

Sorry it took me so long to respond, I've been busy with midterms this week. Let me re-explain some things.

  1. I definitely agree with what you said about trolling, that's essentially what my entire point is.

  2. Technically the Tribunal wasn't put on the backburner, it was completely eliminated. I know that RIOT has been saying that it is only "on recess", and that this new automated system is just temporary, but RIOT employees have informed me (in support tickets as well as in other board threads) that the Tribunal is 100% gone, and that the new automated system will completely replace it and be referred to as the "New Tribunal".

  3. You're right that the old Tribunal had many flaws in it, there's no doubt about that. But so does the new Tribunal, and RIOT isn't keen on admitting that it is more flawed than they claim it is.

  4. Again I definitely agree about some change being made to the automated system to detect trolls (not sure what it could be). Or even just having actual RIOT employees review reports of intentional trolling and take seriously the need to remove those people. But I will also say that the automated system's method of catching verbal abuse is also sadly flawed. I had a RIOT employee sincerely apologize to me when I was temporarily banned for "hate speech and verbal abuse", when all that my chat logs said was "I'll ward red", "let's take dragon", and "thanks everyone for the help" (said literally, not sarcastically). Unfortunately that same employee told me that there wasn't anything he could do to remove the temp-ban, but that luckily it only had a few days left and that he would personally put in the word that they need to look at the key words that the system looks for when punishing people.

  5. It was a lot more simple than that, all that I had to do was look up their summoner name and see there game history, and that throughout that year there was no large number of days that they didn't go without playing, meaning that they couldn't have been temp-banned. And obviously the situation with each of them isn't always the same, but let me give you this example. I played a game with 4 teammates that were very verbally abusive and intentionally trolled me (they were all queued together so they thought it was funny to troll the odd-guy-out). But I still did very well in that game because I didn't let what they said/did get to me, muted them, and kept playing my best. The other team (who 4 of them were queued together as well) got angry at me cause I was the only one beating them, so they were very verbally abusive to me as well. We ended up losing that game. BUT, in the next game I was placed with the team that I had just lost against, and from minute 1 of the game they were verbally abusive, intentionally trolled me, and said that they would intentionally surrender at 20 just to make sure that I wouldn't get any wins that day. They also bragged that they do this in every game that they play and have never and will never be punished for it. Like they promised they trolled me all that they could and surrendered at 20 even though I could 1v4 the enemy team. I monitored the 2 most verbally abusive/throwing people on their team, and neither of them received any temporary punishment restricting their gameplay. And yes, they could have received a chat ban, but (according to RIOT's standards outlined in their punishment policy) the punishment for intentionally trolling/throwing would be automatically a temporary ban at best. None of those players received that, even though they intentionally threw for at least 2 games in a row.

  6. I don't flame them, I usually just mute them and try to ignore them trolling me. Usually the only times that I say anything about them intentionally trolling me is when the enemy team asks about it, and I say honestly that yeah, they're intentionally trolling me. Most enemy teams that I face understand completely and apologize to me for it and support me in reporting those people (as they should). If we seek to make this community better, I believe that they have the right to know which players are INTENTIONALLY throwing, because we should ALL want them to be removed from this game. If I don't answer honestly saying that they are intentionally throwing, then for all they know my teammates could just be really bad or getting lag or something.

  7. I understand, and some people might be exaggerating. However, that is almost exactly how much I play per week, and usually there is only one game every week or two that I play that has NO ONE being insanely verbally abusive and/or intentionally throwing. I'm not exaggerating about that. I stopped playing ranked because it happened almost every single game for weeks on end, and in my mind there is no use to playing ranked if that is the kind of team that I will be placed with. Not only will we not win, but it isn't worth the stress to constantly deal with people being verbally abusive and trolling.

  8. I know, but I am talking about the people that ARE actively trolling. For instance, another player that I have monitored played Singed in a game that I was in. 5 minutes into the game he got both out red and blue buffs, all-chatted "come get me free buffs!!!", and stood mid lane near their turret until someone came to get the free kill on him. He did this for the rest of the game, and proudly said that he did this kind of thing in every game that he plays with no punishment. Looking at his account over time, it appeared that he was right. And I also think that you misunderstood me earlier, I said that I DID NOT make them feel like horrible people for trolling. I said that in most cases people would understand if I did, but i don't. First I usually try to talk to them and figure out what is going on (if they're intentionally trolling or if they just need help or a confidence booster). If they're trolling or verbally abusive then I just mute them, I DON'T make them feel like horrible people.

Kartagia2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Eternal Colossus,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=iLjN7xf8,comment-id=00010002,timestamp=2016-10-15T00:07:55.859+0000) 4) Again I definitely agree about some change being made to the automated system to detect trolls (not sure what it could be). Or even just having actual RIOT employees review reports of intentional trolling and take seriously the need to remove those people. But I will also say that the automated system's method of catching verbal abuse is also sadly flawed. I had a RIOT employee sincerely apologize to me when I was temporarily banned for "hate speech and verbal abuse", when all that my chat logs said was "I'll ward red", "let's take dragon", and "thanks everyone for the help" (said literally, not sarcastically). Unfortunately that same employee told me that there wasn't anything he could do to remove the temp-ban, but that luckily it only had a few days left and that he would personally put in the word that they need to look at the key words that the system looks for when punishing people.

This case alone proves the AI is not taught positive talk. This also proves that either chat logs are ignored, or the system has learned wrong that your talk was verbal abuse. This proves AI teaching does not contain "this is not verbal abuse". I got this way of thinking when RIot got SPLENDID idea that they learn bad words of other languages by getting them from reported chat without getting anyone knowing the language to check it.

Anyone who can more than 1 language, know that you cannot learn stuff like that from reported messages. Trolls are really keen teaching AIs wrong. MicroSoft learn this harsh lesson in their chat bot AI.

I rest my case.

Kei1432 votes

Don't we all want the behavioral system's visibility to be better, so we know what/who is being punished and not.

BUT !!

your logs probably consist of being negative to those "throwers", logs or it didn't happen.

Eternal Colossus1 votes

I agree with you. But not at all, I try my hardest to not be negative to those "throwers". I usually mute them if they start to be verbally abusive. And I would love to give you logs, but RIOT locked my account for that 14 day ban for responding to the enemy team that my team was intentionally trolling. I think the 14 day ban is done on the 24th, so I can give you the chat logs after that!

Kei1432 votes

actually, you'll be given your logs when you attempt to log in.

If not, they are in your email (maybe even inside the spam folder).

If you don't have either, then you weren't banned for toxicity, but for something else instead. What does it say when you log in?

Eternal Colossus1 votes

Didn't get any logs. Just "account has received a 14 day suspension due to excessively inflammatory and offensive". Apparently that's what they're calling "yes this person is intentionally trolling". I also checked and I didn't get any email about it whatsoever.

Kei1431 votes

then you were punished manually, thus you don't get logs.

Pre / post / out of game chat are the biggest culprits. which you won't receive logs for.

Kartagia2 votes

And I wonder why you cannot get logs from that? Aha. Forgot. Riot is so "skilled" they have not been able to implement it for 5 years.

Kartagia2 votes

YOu are violating part of summoner's code saying you should not criticize Riot games :P

The problem is the A.S.S. - Artificial Stupidity System - used to punish people. IT seems that trolls have been able to teach it to take gj as verbal abuse. ANd there is wall of silence from Riot side to all comments and questions about the system, thus they KNOW it is failing. And they know, they have to play with trolls, or get DDoS on their servers. Thus, they go with bullies, and start punishing those who try to defend and stop bullies.

Weathered1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Eternal Colossus,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=iLjN7xf8,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-10-12T22:01:04.191+0000) Jayce Nautilus

Not sure why this is here.

[{quoted}](name=Eternal Colossus,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=iLjN7xf8,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-10-12T22:01:04.191+0000)

However, RIOT has accused me of all of the above, and in my opinion they have accused me falsely.

Riot is obligated to give chat logs and evidence to the player for a punishment for verbal reasons. Post your logs if you want people to agree with this statement.

[{quoted}](name=Eternal Colossus,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=iLjN7xf8,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-10-12T22:01:04.191+0000) I have monitored the accounts of some of the worst offenders of this, and over a year-long period not a single one of them received any punishment that restricted their daily gameplay.

Keep in mind this is a handful or millions of players being analyzed.

[{quoted}](name=Eternal Colossus,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=iLjN7xf8,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-10-12T22:01:04.191+0000) Even without my second point, this point should be something that RIOT would take seriously.

In the past Riot has taken a different stance and tried to punish players for this, but an overwhelming amount of faulty punishments were made to players who simply did poorly if their cases weren't manually handled, which is ridiculous to try for such a large game.

[{quoted}](name=Eternal Colossus,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=iLjN7xf8,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-10-12T22:01:04.191+0000)

Every single game that they quoted, I was punished for saying one thing; my teammate(s) is intentionally throwing/trolling.

Riot has clearly stated many, many times that asking for reports will do nothing but hurt the person asking. One report has the same weight as an entire 9, so there is no reason to ask for a report. In fact, they have stated that incessant asking of reports to a point where it is "toxic" will result in punishment.

Eternal Colossus1 votes

Let me respond to some of these:

  1. I put Jayce Nautilus at the beginning of my threads because those are my mains. It doesn't really mean anything, it's more of just a signature opening lol.

  2. Yes I know, although the chat logs are biased due to not containing any other chat aside from my own. And like I said a few comments back, I will gladly post my chat logs once the 14 day ban is over and I can log back into my account again.

  3. You're right, and I understand that. But you have to understand that those handful of players are among the absolute worst that I have ever seen as far as trolling and verbal abuse, and who also claim to do the same thing very frequently and never receive punishments for it. Now I understand that might not be truthful on their part, they could easily get a chat restriction that I cannot see from their game history. However, their actions (according to RIOT's policy on punishments) should warrant a temporary ban, but looking back at their game-history it appears that they received no such punishment.

  4. Yes and I agree. However, their automated system SHOULD be able to pick up on players openly saying in chat that they are intentionally trolling/feeding. Although maybe that would be a bad idea because some people say that jokingly. But my point was that RIOT needs to come up with SOME way to more accurately find and remove those people from the game, otherwise this game will continue further and further down the really sad and negative path that it is on right now. It shouldn't be that hard to manually monitor every game that someone was reported for intentionally throwing.

  5. I completely disagree. First, like I said, asking for reports is not against the Summoner's Code, so RIOT should have no problem with it. Second, one report does not have the same weight as 9, the way that the automated system works is by marking accounts that have received more reports than is deemed to be average within a certain number of games. If you get reported by one person every game (even if it's true) then you will likely not be punished. If you get reported by 9 people per game, I can guarantee that you will receive punishment in 3 games, tops. Third, like i said in a previous response, I believe that every person in this game deserves to know when someone is intentionally trolling, otherwise there is no way to know that they aren't just bad or lagging. Let me put it this way, almost everyone in this game agrees that there are too many people who are verbally abusive and/or intentionally feed/troll. If everyone (on both teams) were made aware of the intentionally trolling, then perhaps it would be much easier for RIOT to find and mark those players that actually need to be removed from the game. Finally, I will say that I don't ask for reports to the extend where it is "toxic". The ONLY times that I bring it up are when the other team asks, or when my teammates are starting to tilt or get frustrated because of those players. If the enemy asks me "Jayce why are Bard and Xerath camping top, are they trolling you?" (this happened the other day), I will answer honestly "yes, they are trolling me, I'm sorry Gnar there's not much that I can do about it". Or if my teammate is baited into a fight by our teammate who is trolling, and that teammate walks off laughing, and the teammate that died is really mad and tilting over it, I will try to say something like "it's ok Syndra, just don't listen to Nidalee's pings, she's intentionally trolling" (again, this happened the other day too).

Weathered2 votes

No, the system works on a flag system. You can only flag a report one time per game, so repeatedly flagging an account in one game doesn't make the system check any harder. Multiple reports don't carry weight in single instance.

Eternal Colossus2 votes

Unfortunately that's not how the system works at all. Multiple RIOT employees have explained to me that it works on a "average number of reports per game per a small number of games". For instance, if they view the average of reports as 5 games within 5 consecutive games, then anything more than that will be marked for punishment. Multiple reports carry ALL of the weight.

CrazyBear19871 votes

[zombie-brand-facepalm]

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