What should validate a permanent ban?

BlueFire Mark II·12/5/2019, 6:19:54 PM·4 votes·5,297 views

Just curious to see opinions on this, what validates a permanent ban? Slight but consistent negative behavior, extreme toxicity on small cases, only for inters and trollers- the only thing that actually can ruin the game- etc. How would you dictate permanents? Would there be escalating punishments or just based off your offense you get __? Or might you keep it as it is now. There is a lot of possible things you could do-

So what would you do for permanents? (This is not about anyone's personal bans and wanting them appealed or anything. Just discussing what the community sees fit as permanent or not :D)

27 Comments

Hotarµ12/5/2019, 6:37:20 PM4 votes

In my opinion: I think the system is pretty fair all around. And I say this as someone who's been permanently banned once in the past.

Consistent and/or severe negativity (such as racism, homophobia, etc.) should definitely result in a permanent ban, that's what makes it justified. The rules are fairly transparent and people get a minmum of 2 chances, maximum of 4 (assuming their punishment tier doesn't go down) and that's more than enough in my opinion.

My largest complaint is that I think AFKing should be punished much more heavily. Maybe it's just me, maybe my opinion differs from the majority of players, but I just don't think a leaverbuster is severe enough to deter people from ruining games entirely. Don't get me wrong, intentional feeding and griefing are definitely worse (after all, you're actively staying in the game just to keep others from winning) but AFKing is right up there with them.

And I know Riot themselves have confirmed that consistently AFKing can lead to a permanent ban, but I personally haven't seen this happen and if it truly does, it's clearly very rare.

Imperial Pandaa12/5/2019, 6:25:18 PM4 votes

Breaking the rules set in place.

Arcade Lulu12/5/2019, 6:30:24 PM3 votes

If you break the rules constantly and ignore all of the previous punishments, you deserve to get perma banned

Permanently disabling the chat is just a bad af idea

ModPrandine12/5/2019, 11:26:25 PM3 votes

I feel that if someone is consistently causing a negative environment (whether by consistent flaming, harassment, bullying, trolling, inting, griefing, etc.) and refuses to stop despite all the chances they get then they should be permabanned, as just like in real life you can only get so many chances before enough is enough. I do understand that people aren't perfect and make mistakes, and for those situations I do believe in second chances, but not infinite ones. Now as for common excuses (and note that I use "you" in the general sense here and not you specifically):

"I spent money on this game" Yeah, and? It's a free to play game with only optional cosmetics and champions (the latter of which you can get with in-game currency anyways) as purchasable items. Not only that but you're not paying to gain immunity to punishments or disciplinary actions, and most other businesses don't care if you're a paying customer: if your disruptive behavior is causing other potential paying customers to leave or avoid the place (and therefore driving away business) then they have every right to kick you out, and without a refund. To quote Kei143:

When Riot permabans someone, their philosophy is "the chances of this guy reforming isn't a whole lot, we'd rather not have him in the game". Thus in their eyes, they have already written off the toxic player as a paying client.

From a business standpoint, do they want to remove the toxic guy who has spent $500 but is causing a negative environment for 4-9 other players in every game? Those non-toxics are also spending $500 and probably will spend more, promote the game more when they are enjoying the game AND they won't cause a negative environment.

I personally think it is a fine argument to protect the ones that are paying money and aren't toxic rather than protecting the ones that may pay the same amount but are toxic.

"I deserve a refund since I got booted" No, you really don't. Refunds are generally only given out for things outside of your control, such as an error in the system or a product defect. Your behavior is something that IS inside of your control though, and are you entitled to a refund if it gets to the point where the establishment you're at is forced to kick you out? No, absolutely not, as that's on you not them.
"There's a mute button/language filter if you can't handle me flaming you so use them!" The mute button =/= a get out of jail free card & is meant to be a band-aid solution at most. Likewise the mature language filter is there for those who'd prefer not to see that language in their games but it doesn't mean you can cuss out others and get away with it. Yes people should use those tools if need be, but at the same time expecting others to use those tools just so you can bully and harass them scott free is not okay. That kind of mindset just makes you look like the sensitive one honestly. There's also no rule stating that they can't use those tools AND also report you for poor behavior as well.
"People who can't handle flame or trolling are oversensitive" I disagree as often the opposite is true. It's not that people can't handle it - they can, they'd just rather prefer those people not act that away around them or others. If anything the people who use this kind of argument are often the oversensitive ones themselves & are just looking for others to blame to avoid taking responsibility themselves. To an extent I get it, some people do take things way too personally and/or are unwilling to accept the viewpoints and beliefs of others. That said, the sensitivity argument (aka "the boy who cried wolf") can only go so far before the user of it has to be looked at to see if they're just abusing it to get attention or shift focus away from them. There's nothing wrong with expecting sportsmanlike conduct from people and holding them accountable if they don't show it.
"It's just a game so who cares how I act?" This just feels like a cop-out to me. Yes it's a game, one that we play for fun, but like any multiplayer game it's one you're playing with real people. and those real people do care about how you act. Word of mouth is an important and powerful tool, and because of that, often times if you develop a reputation for poor behavior (being a sore loser/winner, quick to anger for the slightest of things, argumentative and combative, etc.) then people will just stop wanting to play with you because of it, which in turn will make it harder for you to find people to play the game with. On the flipside if you develop a reputation for being respectful and fun/good to work/play with then you can often find more people willing to play with you than you would otherwise.

I could go on but basically there's nothing wrong with handing a permanent ban to someone if after being given many chances they still haven't shaped up. I get that emotions and tempers can get heated up sometimes and that we may say or do stuff we may regret later. It happens to all of us and I think giving or being given a second chance is important so we can try to make up for those mistakes. That said, if we still keep acting that way despite all the chances we've been given to improve then are we really still worth having around after all? It's unfortunate but some people only truly learn when they've lost everything, and even then it might still take them some time before they truly learn their lesson if at all. I think the following videos by Extra Credits do a good job highlighting some issues and recommend watching them when you have the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt9GwmOWoqo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9A8VJBh_Yc

Ginger97612/5/2019, 7:31:41 PM2 votes

What type of permanent ban, instant or over time? Instant would be over the top toxicity, the ranting, racism, homophobia....The stuff that you know it when you see it. The over time permaban should be things like feeding and griefing, intentionally ruining games. Low grade toxicity, like getting mad at teammates for poor play or not listening, shouldn't go to permaban status. They should remain at the multi-week suspension status.

BlueFire Mark II12/5/2019, 6:22:47 PM1 votes

I certainly feel permanents actually cause more harm than good. Most just create new accounts, scare away new players by either flaming, smurfing on them, or both. I don't know for sure what to do but possibly a permanent chat restriction or removal of chat entirely. "BuT tHeN tHeY wIlL jUsT iNt" but then you catch the REAL people who are ruining the game and can more appropriately punish them in some way.. just an idea but I'm not really the best at this area so y'know, i likely don't have the best opinion :3

Korillo12/6/2019, 5:27:17 PM1 votes

warning, 14 day, 1 month, perma. Should be something like this, isn't it something like this already?

Zertryx12/5/2019, 10:06:10 PM1 votes

I NEVER FELT any kinda BAN for chat related things should happen tbh, use the mute function, spend less time promoting players to report and more time promoting the use of moving the chat window / muting players.

Honestly all the report feature ever did was cause players who normally are not toxic to become toxic by typing in all chat "please report so n so they said this or said that " ect ect ect .... Just chat restrict for chat offenses.

However other type of griefing (Inters and trolls) thats where stuff gets murky, because 9 out of 10 times people will witch hunt and shout "Inter inter" to a guy who is just doing really bad, and the problem is especially now that level gaps and high damage is so dominant once you fall behind its very hard to not die again to your lane WITHOUT help. But again what ends up happening is people lose focuz and start spamming chat with "report him/her pls, report report" (WITCH WITCH WITCH!) this causes people to loose focuz and start doing poorly themselves and then blaming the loss even more on the original person they started yelling at.

I look back at older games i use to play that had competitive scenes and notice something very interesting, I always felt older games were less toxic, and whats even funnier is they usually lacked a report system other than for Real life threats / hackers, most the time people just muted others when they got tired of people talking shit

Because i guarantee MOST of the reports in this game are sparked because of CHAT first (why do you think a lot of games are starting to remove chats and just have emojis) I Bet if riot removed the chat there would be a lot less griefers, most the time i see a griefer its because they were getting harassed in chat first got fed up with the person harassing them and decided "i dont want you to win" but games were 3-4 of the players do bad and NO ONE Talks i end up actually winning those games because we manage to pull back and overcome our down falls because we were focused and not typing "report report report"

So me id remove bans, id remove chat our ping system at this time is good enough now, or make chat turned off by default and have players have the option to turn it on, and just let others mute what they dont wanna see. I come from many games with many shit talkers and they were all less toxic than this game and those games had almost no report system or it was very out of the way to access.

Saezio12/5/2019, 10:55:53 PM1 votes

Step one: Require phone verification to have an account. So people think twice about losing their accounts.

Step two: Highest punishment for toxic SPEECH is permanent CHAT BAN and permanent exclusion from VOICE CHAT

Step three: Disregard people's reports if they are flagged as serial reporters. Something like 60%+ invalid reports lose you your honour. (obviously there would be 1-2 warnings at 40% 50% etc) to make it so people report responsibly to help the system have less of a work load. Also, people with less than 2 honour can't report at all.

Step four: Extremely harsh punishments for gameplay related offences in ranked matches(seriously, int twice in 50 games and you get 14-days ban). Less severe in normal matches(you'd have to int twice in 20 games or 30). None in Coop vs AI.

Step 5: AFK needs to be dealt with. So, for every time someone AFKs in PVP matches, they need to play 3 Coop vs AI without afking to queue pvp again, escalating(5 games of bots, 10 games of bots etc) for multiple offences in a small period of time(games not actual time).

Tele II12/6/2019, 2:40:01 AM1 votes

Personally, I would try just letting people be. I would punish only for gameplay offenses. I cant say its the right way to go, and I understand why Riot moderates and punishes for in game chat, but I would just let people be offended, let them mute, and only punish for gameplay offenses like inting or griefing. Who knows, maybe after a few months I would regret it when the game grows a reputation for toxicity and players quit or dont even try it because they know games will constantly be ruined by teammates arguing with eachother and making eachother lose because they feel attacked and dont want to help someone attacking them verbally. Im not saying Riot is wrong for moderating chat. I just, on principle, would feel wrong trying to control people's speech.

Kamakas12/6/2019, 12:01:06 PM1 votes

My opinion, after years of playing and after being in this forum for a ~week now and seeing the current situation.

Immediately increase the difference between the punishments for extreme toxicity and regular "banter". It's absolutely disgraceful, that racism and death threats get you permanently banned for 2 offences, while mild negative attitude can get you permanently banned for just few more offences. There should absolutely be a bigger gap between these two. Just increase the chat restriction punishments maybe? If they have been used for years now, I assume Riots stats sho they tend to help. I've seen many people here not agree with it, I personally do agree. At least someone who was usually punished for negative attitude, when I got tilted, chat restriction definately helped me focus more on the game than on the chat. I also don't really agree with the fact that this would ruin your teammates games somehow, if you think about your soloq games, how much of the text in chat is actually helpful/about teamwork and trying to win? You can use pings for anything immediate/important. It's not like its usual that players are writing out some long strategies in the chat.

Overall I wouldn't mind the current punishments for extreme verbal offences, one warning should be enough before a permanent ban, if you tell people to kill themselves or something similar. I do think that punishing for mild stuff has crossed the line, in a game that has built-in chat filter and the possibility to mute someone with one mouse click, I don't agree that negative attitude (which is so usual in team sports) should be punished that severely.

Definately change the way intentional feeding bans are being handled. I'm not sure how actively the support team is looking over unban appeals, if they are doing it, this might not be that big of a problem, but otherwise I see a huge issue with banning people for intentionally feeding just from their scoreline/builds/cs per minute or which ever stats. In normal games you can duo with whoever, so if a beginner duos with a diamond player, and gets to play against a gold for example, they could absolutely without any negative itention go 0/20, even if they really try to play defensive. And this could easily happen several games in a row. Since you cannot duo like this in ranked, it would make sense to have this kind of automatic detection in ranked, not in normal

Also griefing. I have been banned from the game, but I can say I have never griefed/ran it down. I still think situatsion like the kindred player case ( https://streamable.com/j68wk ) should definately not be punished, at least that harshly. I play in similar skill level to his, and I see so often plays like that. Sure, it might come from being tilted and not focusing enough, but this to me feels nothing more than banning people for playing bad. Especially playing at night, I see these kind of things so often, someone is tired, decides to play one more game - finds out they shouldn't, because they are actually too tired - maybe getting autofilled aswell - what happens is they play wayyyy below their skill level. Sure they have maybe ruined someones game, but the average ranked player plays what, 400-500 games a year? Should someone be banned for playing really bad in one game? Makes no sense to me.

Cheating? Permanent ban for first offence, I don't mind. As long as it's obvious/proven of course.