The instant feedback system may do more harm than good

How many times have you reported a person in game and waited for that satisfying notification, "a person you have recently reported has received punishment", but it never came? I know that it has happened to me many times and each time it damages my perspective on riot's reporting system. I also know I am not alone in this, as I have seen many posts come to the false conclusion that no instant feedback notification means no punishment.

This isn't the case.

Just because you received the notification does not mean they were not banned. The system is a bit of a crapshoot when it comes to sending you a notification. If I remember correctly (and I probably don't, if someone can provide me with a source that would be great!), you only get a notification if your specific report was the one that triggered the person to become punished. That means that a report in a previous game, a report in a later game, or a report from someone else in your game could trigger a punishment, but you would never know.

Regardless of how the system works, one thing I know is true. Notifications that someone you have reported are far too infrequent. Instead of getting a notification every time someone you reported gets punished or no notifications at all, you very rarely get notifications. I get maybe 3-5 instant feedback reports over the course of a season, depending on how frequently I play and report people.

Since there is nothing on the client that explains how the instant feedback notifications operate, I am left with one conclusion: only 3-5 people out of the tens of players I reported over the course of the season were punished for their actions. As I have explained above, this is false, but I only know it to be false after reading various threads about the topic over the time I have spent on the boards.

Not everyone constantly crawls around threads on the boards like I do, so many are stuck thinking that only a small percentage of the players they reported were every punished. This creates distrust in the system and the idea that riot isn't doing enough to punish toxicity.

#Solutions

1. More frequent notifications. Players who reported others within a given time of the punishment being doled out are sent a notification every time.

2. Honor/report cards. This could be a card on your profile page that is set to you only that shows your collection of honors and punishment-triggering reports.

3. A simple explanation of the system somewhere obvious on the client, such as the notification itself or somewhere else.

The only fear some may have is that this could encourage people to report more often or try to bait people into being toxic to pump up their report score, but I find this highly unlikely or a non-issue. As long as the system is working properly, there should be no reason why more reports would be a bad thing and if someone is easily baited into being toxic, they probably deserved the report in the first place.

Thank you for reading. https://www.iconexperience.com/_img/v_collection_png/256x256/shadow/buoy.png