A Community call to action. AKA: A plea to the Dev team and community

Hello everyone,

First off I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read this post. It's going to be a long one. But I truly believe that this is a necessary discussion. It's a necessary course of action to take, and I hope you'll join me in fighting for this cause, because frankly, I think we as a community are running out of time to get Riot to hear us. If it goes on for much longer without any change, I think it never will.

So, let's start with me. My name is Riffinn. Account name Lord Riffinn, just for shits and giggles. I've been playing League since the end of Season 2, right before Elise and Zed were released. And I have had a LOT of accounts. A lot. Just the ones I can think of off the top of my head: The Magick Hobo, Majik Hobo, V3nic3M3nac3, nobadlanguage, TonyFlyy, Optimus Climb, Tsukiall, and finally, Lord Riffinn. I know I'm missing at least one or two names but, it's been years, I've lost track of a few.

All of these accounts have been permanently banned except for Tsukiall. Which I've barely played on until now.

Now, I don't have time (or the memory) to go through the reasons of WHY each and every one was banned, but needless to say, some of these bans were very much deserved. Some were not.

When I started playing League, I was really toxic. Like, really toxic. REALLY. I was the whole shebang of "kill yourself" "you're fucking worthless I hope you get cancer and die" etc etc. Super mega asshole supreme over here. I fully admit it and when my first account (The Magick Hobo) got banned? It took a LONG time. Like, months. I was a nonstop fountain of shit and horrible cruelty, and it took MONTHS for me to get banned. I probably should have been banned sooner.

Over the years, I realized that A: I was being an asshole, and B: the community was horrible. Like just god awful, and I was part of the problem. So I tried to reform. I tried to be better. I stopped telling people to kill themselves, I never (and still to this day have never to the best of my memory) used any form of slur. No N words, no "%%%", no hate speech of any kind. And I've tried to become overall a better more positive member of the community that I care so much about. I can say with 100% confidence that the person I am today, if I had acted in this manner on my FIRST account, way back in Season 3, I would never have been banned. I'd be incredibly surprised if I'd have ever even received a suspension. And the reason is because the original system was good. It wasn't perfect, but for those of you that remember it, it was called The Tribunal.

The Tribunal was a system where if a player got reported many times in a short time span (and I think if memory serves me correctly, it had to be like... A LOT. I'm talking like upwards of 9, not 2 or 3) their chat logs would be sent to the tribunal. And then players would volunteer their time to judge the cases. Real, normal players, like you and I, would read through these logs, and vote Punish or Don't Punish, and then after multiple judgements were passed on one case, the majority vote would win. This was not a perfect system, but it was a good one. It was a good concept. Getting banned from an account is a very extreme case punishment. It shouldn't be a common thing. And with this system, it wasn't. Because it took awhile for you to get noticed for toxicity. You had to do something extreme to result in an extreme punishment. And furthermore, your peers were the ones judging you. And not the people in the game. If you weren't being toxic and someone reported you because they were salty and wanted to blame you? That same person wasn't the one judging your account. It was someone who had never met you, had no interaction, and so by and large, it was at least mostly fair.

And then Riot Lyte came along.

I won't go into this for long, but I think Lyte was bar none the absolute worst thing to ever happen to League of Legends. The man treated the whole community as a science experiment, and regardless of his intentions, and regardless of his PHD, he never ever seemed to understand gaming culture at all. If you go back and look at any of his statements, they all are just so insanely out of touch with reality. And everything he said came off as a "I know better than you" like a parent talking to a child. And even though he's now gone, that's where we are now. Instead of treating the playerbase with respect and consideration, Riot treats it like a child who doesn't know what it needs.

When Lyte and the team decided to "revamp" the tribunal, they put in place the current system, supposedly as a temporary measure. They said they were working on improving the Tribunal and that it would come back. That was several years ago. And we've heard nothing since.

The current state of the report/punishment system is this: It is an automated system that "learns" what people consider toxic by finding common denominators in your reported chat logs. Then it flags those actions as punishable and doles out punishments for any future reports that meet the criteria. So what the obvious problem is: There's ZERO objectivity involved. None. Riot has never once released any form of statement saying "This is what is allowed, this is what is NOT allowed." with any sort of clarity. They use vague, extremely broad terms such as "Negativity" and "Toxicity" which essentially means... anything? No one really knows what it means. It means... whatever you want it to mean I guess. Which means you can get banned and reported for whatever anyone wants to report you for. Literally. Anything. And it's all in the hands of the players you come into contact with in game.

Now, I talk a lot in game. I like talking a lot, and as I play mostly ranked, I think it's an extremely important part of the Ranked experience. Communication in all scenarios in a competitive team based environment is 100% necessary. And guess what? Negativity comes along with that. Things that fall under the broad category of "Negativity" MUST be said.

Team composition is an extremely important part of the game, and yet if you were to say "This is a bad team comp, we're all ad, and we've got no cc for their hyper carry." That falls under Riot's implementation of the term "Negativity." I know this because I've literally been told this by Riot Support.

In any game, people make mistakes. EVERYONE does. While saying "Wow you're fucking garbage you shitter noob" isn't okay and doesn't help, pointing out what SHOULD have happened, or what needs to happen NEXT time, is absolutely necessary and helpful in trying to win the game. Something like "You need to go in BEFORE me, I'm playing an assassin, I can't engage unless you aggro them first so they blow cooldowns, you can't be afraid to take damage or we'll never get ahead." is a useful and constructive comment. But you can, and I have, been reported and banned for that exact type of comment. Riot considers it "Negative" and says "You should just focus on your own play and not berate your teammates."

I'm sorry but, WHAT?! I'm all for focusing on my play and getting better myself, but when you go into a RANKED GAME, the point is to WIN. You are not playing a game for fun, you are willingly entering yourself into a competition where the goal is WINNING. Critique, criticism, and learning from mistakes are part of competition in EVERY SINGLE SPORT OR GAME THAT HAS EVER EXISTED. Making these statements isn't toxic, it's not unacceptable or banworthy, it's just insulting to some people who have ego's so fragile that they could never possibly take advice from someone else. (and don't think that I'm being hypocritical here, if I make a mistake, not only am I most likely berating MYSELF for it, but should someone point out that I fucked up, I will either try to explain WHY I did it, or admit that I was being an idiot and will try to not make that mistake again.)

But some people don't see it that way. They call it "Crying" or "Whining" or "Being annoying" and then they report for that. Which I don't agree with, but you're allowed to have your opinion.

Thing is, since when did Crying, Whining, or Being Annoying start being legitimate reasons for being BANNED from the game? We're talking real hours that we've all spent levelling up, real money that we've spent in the shop (most of us), and we're having it taken away because we were... annoying? That's the standard now?

You might want to take a look at other games. Look at CS:GO, Overwatch, Dota 2, TF2, etc etc. Why is it that... none of these games have as terrible communities as League of Legends? Why is it that League has the worst community by far, but also is the ONLY major game to try and take such a harsh stance against it? The very action of taking the harsh stance AGAINST toxicity, is what's creating it in the first place.

Think about the advice that everyone gives to people who are concerned about getting punished. It's always the same. "Just mute anyone who bothers you, report them after game, and try not to say anything in chat."

We're advocating isolating ourselves, ignoring the problem, trying to pretend it doesn't exist. We're telling each other to stop talking to each other in game, stop trying to make friends, stop trying to make a positive impact. If someone is angry or tilted or upset, don't talk to them. Don't try and be just a nice human being, just ignore them. Report them. Get them out of the game. (Although make sure you don't tell anyone ELSE to report them, Riot thinks that's bad as well.)

When did we stop being a community who loves the game together? When did it become like this? Sure there are rude and toxic people in ANY game, but if you go into a CSGO match, or an Overwatch match, you're just as likely to find someone who you'll add and want to play with in the future as you are someone who's unkind and you don't want to deal with. We can never get RID of the bad, but at least there's some good in there too!

Right now, the whole community is essentially living in fear of the toxic people we're supposed to be trying to help reform. We're scared to speak because people wield the threat of reporting like a weapon, because they KNOW that it will be effective. They KNOW that reporting you will get you in trouble, even if you didn't deserve it. You know who goes into a game and if anything goes wrong or if anything they dislike is said to them, their first reaction is "Reported and muted"? Those are toxic players. THOSE are the people who are problematic. NOT people who are passionate about the game and about being competitive.

And Riot just upholds all these decisions because you were supposedly "ruining another players experience."

What does that even mean??? Like that literally can be construed in ANY manner. If I don't like ANYTHING that was said to me, no matter how innocent, no matter how nicely it was put, if I don't like it, it's "ruining my experience" and you should be punished. It's insanity.

I can't post screenshots of this particular conversation because I don't have access to the account it was held on, but this is to the best of my memory an accurate representation of what happened.

I was playing a ranked game, jungling, and I had a proxy singed top lane. I was completely fine with it, but as the game went on, all of us were behind and we were losing. So I said to him "Singed, the proxy isn't working, you need to do something else. Come help out the team." And that singed proceeded to get really pissed off at me. He yelled at me for flaming him, and criticizing something I had never tried. Now, I need to emphasize this, I was NOT flaming this guy. I was not yelling at him or cursing him out, i never insulted him, I said what he was doing wasn't working and he needed to work with the team if we were going to have any chance of winning. But he reported me after the game for flaming him. And then he added me.

And we started a conversation. He asked me why I was flaming him specifically when I wasn't playing perfectly either, and bot lane was doing poorly, he said "Why single me out??" To which I responded "Yeah, bot lane sucked. They were just bad. But me calling them bad isn't going to help anything. I can't just say stop being bad, and suddenly they'll play better. YOU however, were playing in a specific, intentional way. you were proxying, and it wasn't working. You could have easily changed what you were doing and grouped with the team, so me saying that to you is actually useful. You were capable of fixing the problem, Vayne was not. So that's why I was only talking to you."

To my great surprise, he actually responded with "Oh. I'm sorry, I'm just having a bad day and I got really angry."

I wasn't being toxic to this guy. I was strategizing in game. I was trying to win. He even realized that after the game when he had a second to talk to me and calm down. But I still got reported, and Riot would still uphold that report as "ruining his experience" and deem it punishable.

This type of thing happens almost nonstop. Almost every game. Now, usually it doesn't end in a conversation and mutual understanding, but when you're the one talking the most, it doesn't matter WHAT you say, it only matters that you've now become the target. And if something goes wrong, you'll get blamed and reported, and Riot will uphold that decision if you ever said anything at all they could possibly construe as negative. And it's not fair. At all.

My most recent account, Lord Riffinn, was just permanently banned. It was after a particularly unfortunate game where 2 of my teammates were flaming extremely hard for not being ganked enough, and the usual getting offended by shot calls and strategizing. I did nothing toxic that game, and besides these 2 players, the rest of my team agreed that I wasn't being toxic. I even asked them to please not report me, beacuse I had just came back from a 2 week suspension and I hadn't done anything wrong, and I didn't want to get permabanned.

In the post game lobby, several members of both teams were telling me not to worry, that I wasn't being toxic, and unless I had said some "crazy racist shit" I wouldn't be banned. And in that same post game lobby, less than 3 minutes after the game had ended, I got a pop up saying that I had been permanently banned.

The chat logs are saved in a Google Doc. Here's the link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZiSyELfZkBkFTglVt33Nk8sWVJhem6P5B14DO3U1_2Y/edit?usp=sharing

Now I got on my smurf and added several players from that game. Both on my team and the opposing team. I asked them to look at these exact chat logs, and without exception, every single one of them agreed that I was behaving fine, and that i was unjustly reported. here are screenshots of these conversations

https://gyazo.com/a12f0f5729fdb986943bd0d7039f545f

https://gyazo.com/d9b327dca3cb6d4bc1090c7375082854

https://gyazo.com/10d77081cb20eafc4fccba52fe0b869e

For Clarity, here is the screenshot of the game I was in. In accordance with Riot's no name and shame policy, I'm not going to be saying who the 2 players were that reported me, but showing the players who said I was fine is in no way shaming anyone, so I think that's okay.

https://gyazo.com/5aee0fb9f30d437927b361377cc2d10e

and I sent in a support ticket. and I got this response (linked below)

https://gyazo.com/e447c26967c19a1acb855e84460da23b

It was short, didn't address anything I had actually said, clearly didn't care about the fairness of the ban, and clearly was unwilling to listen or care about the situation. I could post screenshot after screenshot of Support Tickets just like this one, that are almost entirely copy pasted and seem as if I robot wrote them. I've gone back and forth with Riot Support for a LONG time, and eventually they told me in so many words, unless I make a forum post and it gets a lot of attention, they don't care.

https://gyazo.com/9e24be293045bbb913823a4e9c8c5159

So that's what I'm doing. This problem has gone on for too long, and it seems like the only people who care are dismissed as "Toxic" and so no change ever happens. But I see people angry about the system on these forums every single day.

All we need is a simple clear ruleset that can be followed. No more fear of maybe I'll get reported and banned, maybe not.

We as a community agree that we don't want Racism, Homophobia, Sexism, Hate Speech, Extreme insults, threats, and other forms of extreme toxicity. But we as a community don't agree that anything and everything should be bannable. That the trolls and toxic players should be in control, waving reports around to scare normal players into silence and compliance. It's not right.

And I've stayed silent for too long. I hope that you'll stand with me. Make some noise, get on twittter, upvote this post, leave your own story, make your own post. Do whatever it is you want to do. But do SOMETHING.

We've lost what made our game so special. We lost the magic that we fell in love with. I just want to find it again. If I could go to Riot and work with the team myself to try out new plans and initiatives, I would. But I don't have that power. I just have the power to write this. And hope you see it.

If you've read this all the way through, thank you. Truly.

I hope it's not too late to fix this.

Sincerely,

Riffinn.

EDIT: I have updated the sharing settings on the Google Doc with my Chat Logs on it. If you want, you can leave a comment THERE addressing anything specific that you wish to.