Boards›Player Behavior

"Bad communicators"

rujitra·10/20/2019, 6:43:16 AM·2 votes·1,607 views

What if, say, there was a report option: "bad communicator" - that players could use to mark someone as a bad communicator, which would prevent them from being matched with that player for some amount of time (say, 7 days). This would vary in impact depending on how much both players play at the same times - ranging from none to very little. And this is good - because it could've been a fluke - in which case there's very little impact on overall matchmaking times.

But say this player is a habitual bad communicator - doesn't ping well, spams chat with "toxicity" or doesn't help make calls, etc. - this player would be reported as a bad communicator by many more players over more games - greatly increasing this player's queue time and having a not very big impact on other players (it'd just be as if that player wasn't logged in, really). Once someone got enough reports for them to start noticing a difference, Riot would pop up a notice explaining the increased queue times, and with advice on how to communicate better to avoid reports for it from others in the future.

The good news? This player reads that and improves - they ping better, they discuss and shot call in chat, etc. So they stop getting reported. Since the matchmaking penalty only lasts at most 1 week, it takes this player no more than 1 week after they stop getting reported for it to return to normal matchmaking times. And in the meantime, again, it doesn't affect other players at all - it's just as if the player wasn't logged in (the matchmaking pool is 1 smaller). In the grand scheme of the tons of people logged in, one doesn't make a difference. Even a few wouldn't make a difference.

If the player continues being a bad communicator, they would continue being reported by people, and they'd still keep large matchmaking times for themselves.

I think this idea provides both a solution to players who want an "impact" in "self-policing" like Tribunal where they could "vote" on what is toxic behavior or not, but also a solution to players who complain about lack of communication. This would allow the playerbase as a whole to determine what is good communication or not. Through this temporary divide, the playerbase will set standards for behavior in that players who are getting reported will improve their communication until it isn't reported anymore.

To help prevent abuse by false reports, this feature could be enabled only when 2 or more non-premade teammates report for this maybe?

8 Comments

Umbral Regent10/20/2019, 7:48:09 AM3 votes

I think there's a couple things that need to be considered with this idea;

Community Volume Across Skill Levels - Generally speaking, the community can largely be separated into groups based on their average skill level, which ultimately diminishes in size the greater their skill is. It's the reason why lower-to-average skill ranges (Iron to Gold) will generally have enough players that you'll rarely see the same face twice, and it's why higher skill tiers (Diamond+) tend to run into the same players so often.

With that in mind, a feature like this would have dramatically higher impact in those smaller circles of higher skilled players than it would with the broad, diverse groupings in low-to-mid tiers. Of course, population per skill tier doesn't really mean much if you and other players are coincidentally jamming out matches all at once (I've had a few cases of my own where I've run into players in consecutive matches), it still bears to be considered.

Abuse Cases - There really isn't anything to stop a player from arbitrarily choosing to report any underperformers or "trolls" as "Bad Communicators" - with enough time, a player could practically curate their own matchmaking by simply cutting out any players who don't play to their specifications.

And, you do suggest something to try and alleviate that issue, but...Honestly, requiring two non-premade votes kind of defeats the whole point, doesn't it? The idea is that you're trying to prevent yourself exclusively from having to play with a given player more than once, so having the ability to do so tied to other people's inclination to agree with your assessment of someone seems counter-intuitive.

Honestly speaking, I can't imagine any limitation one could place on the idea that would alleviate the issue of abuse cases without simultaneously being overkill.

Clarity - There's a bit of an issue with what I can see proposed, and the best way I can point out the issue is with this snippet;

Once someone got enough reports for them to start noticing a difference, Riot would pop up a notice explaining the increased queue times, and with advice on how to communicate better to avoid reports for it from others in the future.

At what point would the system consider "enough to notice a difference"? How many players would that equate to, or how long of a queue time would there need to be before a message shows up? For that matter, when would the message show up? Is it in the middle of the queue, where a match accept screen is liable to appear, or after a match, as a little warning blip before the player can queue again?

There's not a lot of information here that leads to the idea being properly explained - whether on paper, or to whomever might suffer the ill-effects of it.

Isolation/The Prisoner's Island Effect - While this idea isn't really a full-blown Prisoner's Island-type deal, it still has some of the potential issues that could arise from a same-such situation. Specifically; the player in question being isolated and, eventually, being told that people don't want to play with them (for something as minor of an issue as lacking communication skills) wouldn't really do much to encourage the player to try and improve.

They may make a half-hearted attempt, sure, but at the end of the day, if enough people start basically isolating a player for a week, that week's going to roll by and the player in question isn't going to have improved much, if at all.

Ultimately, I don't really feel like such a feature should be implemented, but hopefully this all stands as sufficient reason beyond the usual casual distrust of people on the internet.

TrulyBland10/20/2019, 8:30:00 AM2 votes

The biggest problem I see with your suggestion is this:

And in the meantime, again, it doesn't affect other players at all - it's just as if the player wasn't logged in (the matchmaking pool is 1 smaller). In the grand scheme of the tons of people logged in, one doesn't make a difference. Even a few wouldn't make a difference.

If this is your pitch, it's obvious that there can also be little to no benefit to the reporting players. That means the purpose of blocking players from being matched can only really be punishment. And I simply don't feel like this is in the territory where punishment is a sensible course of action. Riot effectively said as much when they changed their policy when it came to controversial picks/strategies like support Singed.

The popup message might make sense, but the block I really can't get behind.

Timethief4910/20/2019, 2:21:27 PM1 votes

Riot mustnt allow players to influence matchmaking. Overwatch used to have a blacklist option and it completly broke the matchmaking. One top player was completly unable to find matches.