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To Counteract Toxic Behavior, Give More Rewards For Sportsmanlike Players

ArnoldSchwarzens··3 votes·855 views

And I mean actual sportsmanlike players. I remember when I got a skin at the beginning of this season because it somehow recognized me as a sportsmanlike player. Even though I get in arguments a ton in chat, it used to be even more in s5.

Let's take honors for example. Who really cares about that shit anymore anyway. Get a virtual badge with no meaning ? - No one is going to try and control themselves for that.

But imagine the following - little reports, only those who report you for unintentionally feeding, lots of honors. First you get small IP boosts, then maybe unique summoner Icons, then unique ward skins, then unique actual skins, just for being a nice guy. That is something worth being nice for.

Because let's face it, the report system fails at propely penalizing and catching toxic players. If it would work, we wouldn't even stumble into those guys in the first place. It really only actually gets a small minority, the worst of the worst, banned. I for example was EXTREMELY toxic back in s2 and s3, on my old account, and I never faced ANY penalties. The system just doesn't work. This would be another approach that is probably much more effective.

I know you guys want to make money and giving away stuff for free should only come as a treat, like IP boosts or the Riot Kayle skin we got on special occasions. But people who get to weather the storm of flame and shit that we League Players have to experience everyday and actually are patient and cool about it, deserve much more then they are getting right now.

17 Comments

Weathered3 votes

Riot shouldn't need to give away free content to "good" people to stop others from being an asshole. That's a problem of the person, not Riot Games.

ArnoldSchwarzens1 votes

Thing is, banning toxic people just doesn't work anymore, aswell as reports. Can you imagine the millions of reports everyday? How long it takes to get through every single one of them? There is no way we can get rid of all toxic people like this, so we might aswell try something different. And I think that is the best approach. If you have another idea that is better, feel free to share it.

ModPrandine1 votes

{quoted}

Thing is, banning toxic people just doesn't work anymore, aswell as reports. Can you imagine the millions of reports everyday? How long it takes to get through every single one of them? There is no way we can get rid of all toxic people like this, so we might aswell try something different. And I think that is the best approach. If you have another idea that is better, feel free to share it.

Of course it's obvious that we can't get rid of every single toxic player in the game, that's not the goal. The goal is to teach players that creating a negative environment is unacceptable and to try to get them to reform and change their behavior for the better, hence why the punishment system starts off with chat restrictions first as opposed to an immediate ban (except of course in extreme cases).

Yes while extra in-game rewards would be nice, I personally feel like the current rewards are good enough. You can have all of the rewards that you want but it's up to the player themselves to put in the actual work and effort that it takes to actually earn those rewards in the long run.

Relinquisher071 votes

But the difference is that toxicity among the community is anything that can be perceived as negative, which is just wrong. Shit talking in video games is fine, and always has been, why league players among all gamers cant handle it i dunno, but once you start telling someone to kill themselves, you deserve to be banned. I feel like they need to draw a line, and players shouldnt be deciding what is and isnt toxic, cause you get this environment where you cant even brag about shit to the enemy team without being reported for toxicity. Its as simple as them putting a program into league which filters all chat for specific keywords, and then instant punishes based on those keywords. That will get rid of what is actually toxic, i watched my friend get banned for telling someone on his team that the made mistakes, and was rather nice about it and constructive, but the remaining 4 didnt think so... That needs to stop, you cant even tell your teammate to get their head in the game after going 0-3 without getting punished for toxicity.

ModPrandine

{quoted}

But the difference is that toxicity among the community is anything that can be perceived as negative, which is just wrong. Shit talking in video games is fine, and always has been, why league players among all gamers cant handle it i dunno, but once you start telling someone to kill themselves, you deserve to be banned. I feel like they need to draw a line, and players shouldnt be deciding what is and isnt toxic, cause you get this environment where you cant even brag about shit to the enemy team without being reported for toxicity. Its as simple as them putting a program into league which filters all chat for specific keywords, and then instant punishes based on those keywords. That will get rid of what is actually toxic, i watched my friend get banned for telling someone on his team that the made mistakes, and was rather nice about it and constructive, but the remaining 4 didnt think so... That needs to stop, you cant even tell your teammate to get their head in the game after going 0-3 without getting punished for toxicity.

That's just it though, even in professional sports (and not just esports) trash talking has it's definite limits. If you cross that line then you need and deserve to be held accountable for it. From Ulanopo's Knowledge Base:

Trash talk is part of all competitive sports. It happens all the time in the pros.

Yes and no. Yes, trash talk occurs, but it has definite limits. Most of the things that are punished in game (racial, ethnic and homophobic slurs, sexism, etc.) would also earn you a hefty fine in professional sports.

A Tumblr List of NBA Fines (http://nbafines.tumblr.com/) (My personal favorite on that site is this indefinite suspension (http://nbafines.tumblr.com/post/1010368028/3-12-96-the-nba-suspended-mahmoud-abdul-rauf-den), simply for refusing to stand during the National Anthem.)

A List of NFL Fines for Taunting (http://www.spotrac.com/fines-tracker/nfl/all-years/fines/taunting/)

NBC Article on Fines Agreed to by the NFLPA (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/12/01/bizarrely-specific-nfl-fines-come-from-agreed-league-union-schedule/) "Excessive profanity or other unsportsmanlike conduct triggers a minimum fine of $10,500."

NHL Office of Player Safety (http://www.nhl.com/ice/eventhome.htm?location=/playersafety) Brendan Shanahan is the ****ing Bad Santa of the NHL. Did you know that his Office of Player Safety watches every minute of every game, from multiple angles? He sees and hears EVERYTHING, including swearing.

... and the grand finale! Marge Schott (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_Schott), who was forced out of ownership of the Cincinnati Reds for racist comments and pro-Nazi sentiments.

As for "everything can be perceived as negative" that is true. However, this is also where common sense comes in (though I will admit that that can often become clouded in moments of anger and frustration). It's also why outside of very extreme circumstances one does not simply get punished for having a bad day or two, but rather for consistent negative behavior instead. Sometimes all it takes is a simple chat restriction, temporary ban or a warning for some people to get the message that acting like a jerk is not the way to go about solving or handling issues.

For the issue regarding your friend, I haven't seen the chat logs so I can't speak for certain about what actually happened there, but generally if he was punished then there's a good chance that he has a history of acting up in-game and/or in the pre- and/or post-game chat. It also wasn't because a full pre-made or whatever reported him since it only takes one report to flag a game for review (which is thrown out if nothing of fault is found within it).

Relinquisher071 votes

See i would agree with this if it wasn't an automated system that punishes based on how many people report. I just recently got a chat ban on this account for shit talking with the enemy team, it was a premade 5 and we were bantering back and forth, nothing over the line, nobody called anything out as toxic, and bam, next game hit with a 10 game chat ban. The logs were really quite harsh out of context because an automated system cant see what goes on in game, it only sees who got reported. So it looks bad, but both parties were involved. And again, this is where players should not be deciding what is and isnt toxic. Tribunal was nice because they could see the context and judge for themselves on what should or shouldnt be punished, and they could use their heads to figure that out, a machine cant. Like ive gone as far as calling people autistic in the past, and i got punished rightfully so, but being punished for bantering with the enemy team, and trying to tell your teammates to stop feeding, i mean cmon now, are we babies?

ModPrandine

{quoted}

See i would agree with this if it wasn't an automated system that punishes based on how many people report. I just recently got a chat ban on this account for shit talking with the enemy team, it was a premade 5 and we were bantering back and forth, nothing over the line, nobody called anything out as toxic, and bam, next game hit with a 10 game chat ban. The logs were really quite harsh out of context because an automated system cant see what goes on in game, it only sees who got reported. So it looks bad, but both parties were involved. And again, this is where players should not be deciding what is and isnt toxic. Tribunal was nice because they could see the context and judge for themselves on what should or shouldnt be punished, and they could use their heads to figure that out, a machine cant. Like ive gone as far as calling people autistic in the past, and i got punished rightfully so, but being punished for bantering with the enemy team, and trying to tell your teammates to stop feeding, i mean cmon now, are we babies?

Yes it's an automated system but it's specifically program to only punish people for valid reports and throw out any false reports that are filed. From Riot Tantram:

Actually, Erdrik is correct here.

A report flags a game for review. They do not establish guilt. The game is then reviewed for harassment, feeding, etc. This is why 'troll reporting' or 'gang reporting' do not work. False or inaccurate reports are thrown out.

You cannot ever be punished for saying nothing .. unless of course it's for something gameplay related like feeding, afking or cheating. But, you can never be punished for offensive language, hate speech or verbal abuse if you said nothing.

Also, manual reviews do still happen from time to time, so Riot doesn't just rely solely on the Instant Feedback System (which was designed around what the community deems is toxic and not toxic) to do all of the work for them.

As far as context is concerned, the vast majority of the time it doesn't matter, as even with context it wouldn't change the outcome of the case in question since only the defendant is being judged in their case and no one else. Not only that but chances are that it would just show that the person in question was in fact the instigator of the whole thing to begin with, further cementing the fact that the punishment was deserved.

Weathered1 votes

{quoted}

Can you imagine the millions of reports everyday? How long it takes to get through every single one of them? There is no way we can get rid of all toxic people like this

That is why we have an automated system rather than the tribunal.

Mister Punches1 votes

Banning people doesn't really work anymore seeing as it is extremely easy to circumvent a ban in League now.

It's as much a community problem as it is Riot's. I don't agree that we should get any more "free stuff" by just being a decent human being, but I also don't agree that Riot isn't responsible for some of the "assholes" in this game. They have some responsibility in the creation of the toxic people in this community, whether they know it or not (though, most of the responsibility is with the person).

Relinquisher071 votes

Well since dynamic queue, toxicity has increased by almost double purely becuase of people with a quad queue preference who solo queue occasionally, you can see huge differences in their performance because they arent being carried anymore. Once solo queue gets thrown in i expect it to go back to rational levels and we will have a good environment again.

Mister Punches1 votes

Even before that, in low levels from 1-29, the toxicity is at an all-time high. Sure, DQ is toxic, same with ranked in general. The League population is inherently toxic, given the daily complaints about it. It doesn't really matter on rank either.

Someone isn't level 30? Smurfs decide to shit on new peoples' parades by calling them all sorts of verbal insults.

Someone is Bronze? People in Bronze are self-destructive. I was in Bronze and carried myself out to Silver, but I literally muted every single person in the game because I got tired of people acting like this is a MOBA version of Call of Duty, and it essentially is now given the amount of people insulting each other.

People in Silver? They're just as self-destructive, if not even more. I stopped playing Ranked because I simply cannot tolerate how toxic Ranked is.

Gold? Many of my friends stopped here. The reason is the exact same: The community at Gold is too toxic as well. One of my friends calls Gold the "cancer" of League, because he honestly got sick and tired of the community. When I watch my friends play in Gold+, they end up more times than not actually getting tilted not because of a bad move, or something like that, but because of their teammates verbally abusing them.

Honestly, there really hasn't been a huge increase in toxicity from what I've seen since DQ came about. Last season before it came on, people were extremely toxic. The season before? Extremely toxic. The season before that? Also just as toxic. Then you have the people who pretty much say "Your opinion is irrelevant because you aren't 'x' rank, which is honestly reminiscent of Call of Duty pre-prestige class, or the infamous Halo 3 "Colonel Grade 2" elitism.

We will never have a "good environment" in a competitive game like League, unless both sides actively take a part in correcting the problem. I appreciate Riot doing all they can to pretty much act like the benevolent leader, and trying to be down to earth. That's pretty cool of them. However, given that their game is one of the biggest in terms of popularity, and maybe even amount of players, there are times when it's nice to be the "benevolent leader" role, and there has to be times where they need to be the "bad guy", kind of like what many people on this forum consider Blizzard when it comes to Overwatch.

TheSeltzerBaron1 votes

I don't really see this working. As much as I would like to believe you can incentivize good behavior, it has a limit and it's not going to affect the toxic people. It might make good people better but toxic players will remain toxic. If it's toxicity through chat, just mute and move on. If it was that easy to reform assholes through a game program we wouldn't have so many all over the place IRL. There's no magic pill to make jerky people nice.

Zombiemaster1 votes

If it would work, we wouldn't even stumble into those guys in the first place.

That's actually not true. The current system does work fairly well, being capable of punishing toxic players within minutes of a game's end. Sure it doesn't catch everyone, but it does punish a large majority of toxic players, and a majority of punished players do reform their behavior.

The thing is, though, is that the system works by punishing toxic behavior after it has already happened, it's not there to prevent toxic behavior from happening in the first place. This means that even if it worked perfectly and punished every single toxic player, we would still run into toxic players in our games because they need to be toxic before they get punished.

Now, as far as rewarding positive behavior, the biggest problem with having this tied to the current honor system is the whole idea of honor trading, which is likely why Riot didn't tie any significant rewards to the system in the first place. That being said, I do believe Riot has mentioned that they have some things in mind for rewarding positive behavior when they get around to bringing back the Tribunal. Unfortunately, we don't know now long that will take, but last I heard they plan on devoting more resources to it once the get the new client up and running smoothly.

ArnoldSchwarzens1 votes

Well on honor trading you could just make it so that you can only get one honor per player. This way, you will only get a few from your friends and will have to earn the rest from the millions of strangers that play this game.

Zombiemaster1 votes

Even if honors from your friends don't count as much as those from strangers, there's still the problem of trading honors with all the strangers you meet (ie you honor them if they honor you). By doing this, you could easily get a lot of honors from strangers allowing you to get the rewards from being honored even if you don't truly deserve them. In fact, this is something players did when the honor system first came out. The only reason people don't do this currently is because the rewards for being honor are fairly insignificant, but if Riot adds significant enough rewards, then it becomes a problem.

Relinquisher071 votes

Solo Queue will deal with Toxicity once its implemented in lower leagues, we will see it drop by a vast majority, cause people will stop getting boosted by dynamic queue and be placed where they actually belong. This will lead to easily triggered people not losing games to having someone who decided to not quad queue for a single game just not be on their team and have a fair chance at winning. Its the main focus of toxicity atm, is someone with a trio or quad preference who solo queues and very clearly doesnt belong in their league.

XerShade1 votes

Your reward is being able to play the game.

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