Boards›Player Behavior

Test results

Sorin Alucard·1/19/2019, 7:19:06 PM·2 votes·3,067 views

Edit: Go test it yourself if you don't believe me. You need at least 2 people. More is better. You need old and new accounts and have to test for each category mentioned. Its important you do it in duo pairs or groups and don't worry about "convincing" anyone not in the experiment to report. *Don't ask for reports

If you're a volunteer and don't work for Riot, don't bother answering all of my points with your opinions- I tested this and you didn't. Go test it yourself. Arguing with your bias towards Riot is pointless

If you doubt me as a player, well thats not surprising so rather than argue with you and give you a long ass power point video I simply say "go test it if you don't believe me"

TL:DR --- Riot should tell people openly "only use your chat for the game or compliments--- straying outside those guidelines risks punishment"

Take it or leave it

Multiple accounts, multiple players, old and new, testing parameters of chat punishments We concluded

The zero tolerance phrases are enforced as advertised - They're even good at catching misspelling Thats about where the good points end imo

Any form of swearing even if not aimed at an individual is capable of getting you a chat restriction

Typing too many sentences (if it irritates another player) even if aimed at no one can get you a chat restriction

Anything near the topic of racism including "racist" and mention of specific colors is likely to strike you immediately with full chat restriction or instant permanent ban. This includes names. "some black guy"

Typing too many sentences + swearing even w/o directing it at anyone is more likely to get you punished.

Lastly, we questioned support in multiple tickets ------- the resounding "standard" that seems to be held is this quote from support when asked about banter "I wouldn't type anything outside of telling your teammates gj or calling an objective because anything you say may be misconstrued :/" So if someone reports you for chat and you were using chat there is a percentage chance you will get punished. IE save your typing for just the game.

You can go test it yourself. At the end of the day I don't see their standard as necessarily bad, but even Riot pushes a misconception that they're only harsh on certain things. That's only true if they openly say "use your chat for just the game, or you might get punished".

42 Comments

ModThe Djinn1/19/2019, 7:21:36 PM9 votes

And someone who tends to type a lot and frequently uses curses to intensify emotion, I'd be curious to see exactly what you were writing, because I've never experienced any form of punishment despite a fairly consistent pattern.

PresBushDid7111/19/2019, 11:22:54 PM8 votes

I'm just confused why you claim to have evidence of something that goes against what we have been told, but won't share it. If you aren't going to share it, why do it? Why even make a forum post? You've basically done an entire experiment with the apparent end game of submitting one forum post that has nothing supporting it. It doesn't even seem like you are trying to trap ban people l, as the things you are suggesting people do won't get then reatricted/banned (you claim it will, but what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence).

Umbral Regent1/19/2019, 7:48:38 PM7 votes

I'm gonna pick out a few of the points from your list here that either need correcting or further comments, and I'll get to your TL;DR afterwards.

Any form of swearing even if not aimed at an individual is capable of getting you a chat restriction

This is not true. You can swear all you want within reason, and as long as you're not leveling those swears to insult others, you won't get chat restricted for it.

I've exclaimed "fuck" or "shit" after missing cross-map ults (Trueshot Barrage, Enchanted Crystal Arrow, Super Mega Death Rocket!, etc.), and have said "damn" or "ah, shit" after bad teamfights/scrums/etc. - and I have yet to receive a chat restriction.

Swearing is fine. Swearing at people is not.

Typing too many sentences (if it irritates another player) even if aimed at no one can get you a chat restriction

I'm gonna call this conjecture. As far as I've seen, there's only very little correlation between chat log length and the likelihood of being chat restricted.

Of course, it is against the rules to spam chat and disrupt the game flow, I would still take your statement about "typing too many sentences" with a grain of salt. I have yet to see chat log length alone lead to a punishment, so unless you're spamming "?" or other stuff like that, I would posit that it's the content of your logs that matter more than the length of them.

Anything near the topic of racism including "racist" and mention of specific colors is likely to strike you immediately with full chat restriction or instant permanent ban. This includes names. "some black guy"

I'm skeptical, but at the same time, there's no real reason to be discussing race/skin color in a match of League, so I'd say the point is moot.

Typing too many sentences + swearing even w/o directing it at anyone is more likely to get you punished.

This is just points 1 & 2 put together.

Lastly, we questioned support in multiple tickets ------- the resounding "standard" that seems to be held is this quote from support when asked about banter "I wouldn't type anything outside of telling your teammates gj or calling an objective because anything you say may be misconstrued :/" So if someone reports you for chat and you were using chat there is a percentage chance you will get punished. IE save your typing for just the game.

To start off, let's get this out of the way, since it's probably one of the biggest misconceptions I've seen on the PB boards:

Banter noun the playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks.

verb talk or exchange remarks in a good-humored teasing way.

Banter is NOT synonymous with toxicity.

Banter is saying things like "nice flash" or "not even close" or jabbing about how you've become a raid boss after being 3+man ganked. If you're getting punished for "banter", then it's 100% not banter.

So, with that out of the way, let's look at that quote from Riot Support:

I wouldn't type anything outside of telling your teammates gj or calling an objective because anything you say may be misconstrued :/

This is, on its own merits, and in response to the question of "banter" (which, as I've mentioned, is often misconstrued for toxicity), solid advice.

The two most bare-bones uses for chat are complimenting/having friendly chatter with your teammates, and strategizing/working through the gamestates. There is, naturally, a realm of other things you can use the chat for, but those two are the safest uses that the chat has.

Judging from that, I'm fairly certain that the Support Agent gave that response so as to avoid dealing with the "banter" confusion. Since a fair few people seem to not be aware that banter is light-hearted and well-meaning, it's altogether safer to just encourage people to use the most basic, safest forms of chat so as to avoid punishment.

So if someone reports you for chat and you were using chat there is a percentage chance you will get punished.

Using an RNG-based punishment system seems a little...Bad, don't you think? Why would Riot implement a system that punishes people based on RNG, when that could wholly lead to the possibility of someone with a 99% chance to get punished (hardcore flamer) getting to go off scott-free, and have someone with a 1% chance (early gg) getting punished immediately for an inanely modest offense?

There is no reason to assume that there's a percentage chance of getting punished for anything. Such a system would be flawed beyond compare, so it's safer altogether to assume that there is a rigid and logical system behind punishments that does not deal in RNG.

TL:DR --- Riot should tell people openly "only use your chat for the game or compliments--- straying outside those guidelines risks punishment"

There's a few pretty big issues with this proposal, first and foremost, people would assume from it that Riot intends to police chat and keep people from saying anything outside of what they specifically want to be said. And that's just not true.

Second, even if they did make a public statement - what good would it do? I mean, they have the rules up for everyone to read, and people either ignore it or don't understand, or deliberately misconstrue and twist the words to suit their view of things...

So, if Riot warned people to only use chat for complimenting teammates and strategizing around the gamestate, how many people do you wager would listen?

And, of course, there's the fact that "straying outside those two domains risks punishment" is generally not true. You can stray pretty far away from complimenting teammates and strategy without getting punished. Discussing skin lines, rune choices (although that's kinda counted as strategizing), Champions, lore, etc.

So telling players "only compliment or do strategy - otherwise you may get punished" would only serve to foster ill-founded paranoia.

Imperial Pandaa1/19/2019, 9:16:33 PM5 votes

So, honestly, if you had a collection of chat logs from each test this would be a better discussion in my opinion.

As it stands you are basically doing a "he said but she said" type disagreement. This is problematic for making a point, especially when there is a lack of evidence. You are telling others to go test it themselves; which is redundant if you actually have evidence to show. A drastic comparison would be me saying "Hey, it is now possible for you to fly. All you have to do is go on top of a roof, say 'Gravity Reduce' and jump off. Trust me, I tried it already." Why should you risk testing it and possibly getting hurt, if I could show documentation of doing it myself first?

EvilDustMan1/19/2019, 8:32:23 PM5 votes

https://tenor.com/pBSA.gif

Kei1431/19/2019, 7:36:17 PM4 votes

So what are your testing criterias for all those things you mentioned? What controls did you use? Can you post any evidence such as videos or spread sheets, even screenshot? What are your sample sizes?

AeroWaffle1/20/2019, 1:26:11 AM4 votes

If you claim that these got you chat restrictions and punishments, you know what would be better proof than just your word?

The actual logs that were handed back to when you got these punishments.

hshtagniemehrcdu1/20/2019, 11:09:48 AM2 votes

I wonder why these sort of threads are never backed up with proof. Riot sends you the chatlogs that you get banned for, so you could easily post them and proof your claim. You can share the results of your elaborate tests and proof that your claims are true.

But, of course, you don't do that. I wonder why....??

Maybe because you just made this stuff up?

mlm olo mlm1/19/2019, 8:41:57 PM1 votes

The old Riot support mantra was "any negativity is punishable."

Nice way to justify the harshest of punishments for the most minor offenses.

ModJikker1/21/2019, 5:42:57 PM1 votes

This thread has lived it's life and given that, according to the claims here, this thread is effectively encouraging people to violate the rules in order to get banned, it also violates the Board Universal Rules. Since it has devolved into basically a "give me evidence", "no you test it", "no give evidence" back and forth argument, there isn't anything productive being discussed here. For these reasons, I'm locking this thread down.

If we want to discuss how the ban system works, the best way to do so is in a manner that presents concrete evidence (such as screenshots of chats) and is open for a healthy debate on the subject while not encouraging people to violate rules.

[poppy-wink]