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On The subject of permanent bans

obodo·3/10/2018, 8:02:21 PM·2 votes·772 views

Now just to warn you, this is going to be long. I have a lot of ongoing thoughts about Riot games and permanent suspension in the League.

Your first reaction is going to be to witch hunt me, because I have been labeled among the .006% of the most toxic players in League.

As far as im aware I have been playing league of legends since 2013 when a couple of my friends showed the me best game I had ever played.

On the morning of March 6th I was permanently banned from League of Legends on my main account Obodo. This led to me opening a long discussion with Riot support, about many of the issues I have, and would like to discuss.

It honestly feels really bad, to see riot send out automated bans for long term players. I had a player tell me to "kill myself" recently because i was playing poorly on zed. Sure I get frustrated, everyone does, but isnt that what the mute button is for? Do you not get that when people say stuff like that to you, it has an effect. I dont ever tell people to kill themselves. But I was the one to receive a permanent ban.

The Mute button: Riot Games is a massive company. Your audience is massive. You give a mute button, but thats not enough. You want to silence any player that doesn't abide by your non accepting rules.

Permanent bans , are a non fixing issue. Go watch any streamer on Twitch and listen to the words that come out of their mouths. But they stream everyday, saying this person is fucking useless, that person is fucking useless, anyone that even slightly underperforms gets raged at.

My biggest wish is that Riot Games would assess what is actually creating the toxicity on their platform. Ever wonder why there are so many toxic players in league of legends? Its the game. League is an extremely demanding game, it requires that all players on the team have an equal understanding of what is going on.

I think toxic, is an overused term. Everyone is "toxic" nowadays. And every game someone gets raged out and reported by several players in the game.

Why you ask? well the game creates toxicity.

One game you do well, but there is a troll on your team. And a feeder. What do you do? you passively ignore them and try to do your best. Despite the fact that its nigh impossible to win with people like that on your team.

Next game, five minutes in your adc has died 3 times and quits. What happens? you lose the game. But hey, you still stay passive and calm because youre still hoping for wins.

Game after that? The duo on your team are obviously smurfs, so they shit talk you. And back you against the wall because theyre better at the game than you. What can you do though? they belong in diamond.

Game 4? Youre a little tilted but you keep it together and end up gaining a win! YAY good times!

Game 5? raging teamates, afk jungle, support hates adc and trolls

All that lp you got in the game before? gone.

Now what Im getting at is League of Legends presses on people, the community around you expects absolute perfection or they rage you out. League of legends is my favorite game, and also my least favorite. I love to play it when im doing well. But when i lose lane i legitimately feel like shit., not just because I lost. But because the team raged me out, told me to kills myself, something crazy etc.

This game, is a breeding ground for negative behavior, and you respond by silencing and banning long term players, which is really sad. Free speech doesnt exist anymore, Because riot is watching over your shoulder, and should you lose your temper? banned. Now you say its because its over time, but how can you hold anyone to bad behavior from months past? You dont know anything about the lives of your players, but you still expect good attitudes all around all the time. Your players arent all under the age of 15, and its really sad to see a company with such great potential waste it on political correctness.

Upon bringing these things up, the Riot Support help that I received told me "Sometimes the best thing you can say, is nothing at all" and "I truly respect your decision to move on to something else"

But sadly I disagree entirely. Quite frankly if someone attacks me, in any way shape or form, I have the God given right to defend myself. If you believe you can silence players based on something they say, im sorry to tell you that you're wrong. You cant silence players, you can't tell people what to say. Especially players that are reacting to others.

They agreed that the environment is one of high pressure, but Riot expects players to maintain that pressure at all times. The reality of this is that people dont retain pressure. They let it out, they express what they are feeling.

And on the front of moving on, sadly we both know that isn't what happens when players are banned.

Have you ever smurfed? Have you look at the chat boxes? Have you seen what bans cause? The reality of banning long term players, is that they will find a way to play regardless of how hard Riot tries to silence them. Smurfs are an extremely big issue in low elo and pre 30 games. New players are constantly raged at, disregarded, treated like shit etc.

Do you understand what im getting at?

Riot bans the toxic players, and forces them to play on new accounts, with new players that arent up to par with their skill level.

Put 2 and 2 together, and you realize that you havent banned anyone at all, just moved them to other accounts, where the people in their games aren't even knowledgeable enough to defend themselves.

Now on to another front. Riot games focuses on the games where a player is "toxic"(badmouthing, talking shit, cussing, etc) and completely disregards any game where you had a good attitude. You can defend that by saying the honor system compensates for that. No it doesn't.

The reality of league of legends is that people want to win. They dont care about your feelings, they dont care where you end up. They care that they win and nothing else. So you win lane five games in a row, you get honored all of those games and your honor level goes up 1. You have a single game where something sets you on tilt and you're honor decrease.

League of legends is a game that praises you in victory, and shits down your throat in defeat. If its not your weakness in game that gets you down, its the other players. Banning players based on words, is weakness, and honestly a sad one sided ploy at silencing anyone that disagrees.

To which Riot support told me that I had an interesting perspective.

Its not just an interesting perspective. Its reality. In a perfect world, yes toxic players will be banned over and over. But what you fail to understand is that passive aggression, is just as bad if not worse than aggression, yet it goes unpunished. Your system bans players based on "Trigger words". People will always end up changing the slang to fit your criteria, but at the end of the day "Fuck you" and "screw you" mean the exact same thing.

I really do appreciate the time this Riot employee put in to respond to me, I just wish that the system wasn't so one dimensional. You want toxic players out of your game, I understand where you're coming from.

Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world. And I don't label anyone as permanently toxic. People have issues. Riot has no authority over anyone. Regardless of bans, honor drops etc. You have no power over others. Riot Games as a company exists to make money.

Riot Games implements a system that bans long term players, who by the way, are the reason Riot Games exists. If we weren't buying skins. You wouldn't have a job.

Now this is all good and fine, until you start banning people from a one sided perspective. When you are banned, you are given the chat logs that justify your ban. You take the conversation out of context because of trigger words. You don't care who was right. You care that someone's feelings were triggered. You dont care if they deserved it, you dont care if I am right or wrong. You care that your system takes me out because I am among the .006 of toxic players(according to Riot Games)

The only way to fix this issue, is to completely remove bans.(Except for cheaters, inters, afkers, etc), people who actually deserve punishment for disrupting games. People who "Verbally" ruin games, are still playing your game and buying skins.

The mute button is a magical fix to this issue, a player that you mute, is muted forever in future games, at least until you unmute them. Does that not fix the issue? It takes one single click, for any player to silence another player, for any reason at all. But that's just not enough. Riot then goes, and decides to bring Morals into the picture(when it fits them) and ban a player that they label as permanently toxic.

Id like to see some what some people and possibly Riot have to say about some of these issues.

I dont hate Riot, I dont hate people. Sometimes I lose my temper and say bad things, but in my opinion who doesnt?

Sincerely, Mattregory, or "Obodo"

50 Comments

ModThe Djinn3/10/2018, 8:26:45 PM11 votes

The mute button is a magical fix to this issue, a player that you mute, is muted forever in future games, at least until you unmute them. Does that not fix the issue?

It really doesn't, as that play still had a chance to behavior poorly towards others, who have no warning until they are attacked. The mute button is a shield against toxicity, yes, but it is not an excuse for it.

There are also a few misunderstandings here, such as the idea the system only works on trigger words and can't detect some passive aggression (false), that the majority of players who are banned come right back to the game an spend more money (we have no data on this either way, so it's a guess at best as to the exact percentages), and that Riot has no power (private companies have always been allowed to implement rules such as this when the behavior is on their private property, be it real or virtual).

The biggest misconception is that this isn't what the community wants. If everyone stopped reporting today, no bans would ever go out. If people stopped reporting hate speech, hate speech would be allowed. The system exists to take the community's input on what sort of community it wants to be, and target those who are causing issues in that community. Some people, yes, don't agree with that -- and that's fine. There are other games and other communities they're welcome to be part of.

Kei1433/10/2018, 9:08:11 PM6 votes

If I had to mute you, it means you already did damage and probably ruined my day. So I'd rather report you so you can get punished so you can't ruin other people's day.

ModKnightsKemplar3/10/2018, 11:42:28 PM4 votes

But sadly I disagree entirely. Quite frankly if someone attacks me, in any way shape or form, I have the God given right to defend myself.

I think this is the statement that caught my attention the most, because I disagree with this statement more than anything else that you said.

I was raised to not stoop to someone else's level when they got personal and started insulting me. Everyone has a different moral compass, but the reality is that Riot does get to make the rules around here. You're right that they can't ban you from making a new account... but if that didn't actually matter at all, then why the long post about it? Obviously, it matters. You can't have your cake and eat it, too, as they say.

Your actions prove that the system is having an effect, because it's causing you to think long and hard about your behavior. You may not have changed your mind, but hopefully some of the responses here will at least convince you that you're in the minority. Most people have a problem with being rude and condescending in game; you can take as many issues with calling it "toxic" as you want, but most of the players don't want to see that behavior in their games.

Sidenote: streamers are an entirely different issue; it's like cursing at other drivers on the road with your windows up, which I do often :P They can't hear you, so that's just harmless venting. Riot can't police your out of game behavior.

But anyway, the ban system isn't going anywhere because it does make the game better overall for most players. Knowing, as you do, that you're in the .006% of people that get permanently banned, what makes you think that you should get the make the rules instead of Riot or the rest of the players? What's your qualification? Someone has to, and in this case, it's Riot. That's how real life works. Someone else usually gets to make the rules; you can not follow them at your own risk.

Zezockary3/10/2018, 8:50:50 PM4 votes

{quoted}

But sadly I disagree entirely. Quite frankly if someone attacks me, in any way shape or form, I have the God given right to defend myself. If you believe you can silence players based on something they say, im sorry to tell you that you're wrong. You cant silence players, you can't tell people what to say. Especially players that are reacting to others.

But you didn't defend yourself. Defending yourself would have been muting them, which would shield you from all harm they could potentially throw at you. What you are talking about is counterattacking, which is still attacking.

C3st La Vi33/10/2018, 8:33:45 PM2 votes

Riot is way too harsh with their judgement and it seems all the feeding or selfish trolls who deserves to get banned gets their ways, if you don't review the gameplay how do you know if the player is playing to win or trolling? trolling is way more annoying than people who has an opinion, that's why there's a mute button isn't it? So why do people even get banned for what they say? Honestly, people are way too sensitive, imagine a society where people can be excluded (or maybe killed/banned permanently for what they say), o yea those society only exists in the dark ages or maybe North Korea. Can't we just stop banning and play the game? Riot management are some of the most toxic communities I've seen. I hope the rioters gets judged the way they do to others. I don't think you deserve to be banned, goodluck though because Riot probably don't care about you or what you think.

obodo3/11/2018, 1:19:12 AM1 votes

Its a little sad to see how quickly people side with the system. No one cares, its all about political correctness and "keeping quiet" over actually defending yourself. Follow the narrative "be nice"(without an actual moral code set in stone)

Too bad people dont have balls anymore.

#gamergate

Ozag the Mighty3/11/2018, 3:11:45 AM1 votes

Removed

fatherdarius3/11/2018, 3:20:11 AM1 votes

For the most part, I don't care what strangers think of me, or say to me.

I'm just here to play, text doesn't tilt me.

Sorta Zen I guess. YMMV.