Five Years Play with No Issues, One Game Reported, Received 14 Day Ban with No Other Warning (Help)

To start off, I just want to say I am currently in a state that I would say is a combination of shock, disbelief, guilt...and honestly more than a bit of anger. Hopefully I read this discussion over a few times before I submit it, because in all seriousness the last thing I should probably be doing is typing up a storm right now. And hopefully writing those two sentences will help me remember (edit, it did). Also, I do take the punishment message seriously, so I might remove or replace certain words or phrases in this post as to hopefully not anger the tribunal gods into making my punishment a permanent ban, for any reason.

Well, let's get started here shall we.

Edit: If you don't care about my prologue here and want to go straight to my situation, use ctrl-F and type 'Begin' without the quotes. That'll take you right to it.

So hi, my name is Bob (well, not really but that's what my screen name is). I've been playing League since around December 17th, 2013.

And well, I've played a lot. Between all the game modes, I'm not entirely sure how many games total. It's got to be at least 7,000 or so; I used to play on two accounts for a while, but ultimately just kept this one after like a year or so of playing. I know I've played 1,000 just in ARAM, and about 850 or so of AI games (because college and work made it to where I'd only get one game to play a day for long time, and I always wanted to get that win of the day). So yeah, at least 7,000 would be an appropriate guess.

All that time, I've always had a love/hate relationship with the tribunal. While not dwelling on it before today, I've personally not liked the community as a whole too much. The amount of toxic players that I've dealt with over the years has just become completely uncountable. Especially since, even recently, there have been games where there were multiple players in a single game that were yelling and berating people, both in game and in the post game lobby.

So I loved the tribunal and the reporting system because, for as long as I can remember, I have reported every single toxic player I've come across. Every one. Sometimes writing feedback, sometimes not. But I have done it every time for, just throwing out a number, probably about 600 or more toxic players. Players that I would never want to see or play with again.

But then I've hated the system for the one reason: I've never gotten a single message back saying that any of them have been punished. Not one. What about this guy who sat in base after 10 minutes doing nothing but berating three members of the team in the chat? Nope. The guy who tried to convince everyone in all chat that another player on our team was a (redacted) and used roughly 40 messages to try and convince everyone of it, while subsequently abusing our teammate? No, he was never punished. How about the toxic duo that played bot lane with full intentions to feed (as in legitimately running under tower, walking into enemy team members without attacking so they'd get killed, and died a combined 25 times in 15 minutes), and then sent over 25 messages in all chat saying that everything was my fault, as the jungler of course, and lying saying that I was being toxic in team chat, while simultaneously telling the enemy team they should all report me? Both reported, both got away scot-free. I even reported a guy, this was like two years ago, who told another player, approximately 6 to 12 times (hard to remember how many), to (redacted). No short hand, they didn't try to write it as kys, they didn't try to beat around the bush or use other phrases to be interpreted as that meaning, and they were not talking about doing it in-game either (like telling someone to intentionally have their champion walk under tower), nothing like that. Obviously, I would report that, since I'm reporting other players anyways. No response. For all I know, that guy/girl could still be playing today and telling someone in every game to (redacted).

It still never dissuaded me from reporting them. I mean just because I've not seen anyone get fined for littering doesn't mean I'm just gonna throw all my loose garbage out in the street. But it frustrated me that I've seen a few videos (granted, they are few and far between) of League of Legends YouTubers reporting people and getting that little popup that says something like, "Thanks for reporting that player. He/she will have their actions reviewed by the Tribunal, and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah." Or whatever that message says, because again I've never seen it myself other than in those videos, which in all likelihood would take me a while to find the exact ones. It gave me hope that the people I have been reporting might eventually be punished, but also angered me that I had never seen it happen. And some time ago, I had did have a passing thought that was similar to, "Well, I guess it's okay for people to say whatever they want in League...because no one I've reported has ever been punished." Only for a moment though. We all have thoughts that stay for a moment and pass us by, and I kept reporting people every time I thought they deserved one.

Further, it made me more angry at the agitators then I otherwise would be. There are a lot of people who play League that will intentionally type messages in game when others are getting riled up or trying to ask about things that will be clearly intended to provoke and anger that person. Things like 'no you just suck' or 'you mad bro', the ever popular 'gg ez' and 'you mad cause bad'. And usually they won't stop there either; these agitators will start analyzing what the other player says to then write other, and even more toxic, messages to try and further anger that player. Then, when the end game lobby comes around, they will keep continuing to add fuel to the fire writing more toxic messages, with no end in sight unless their victim leaves.

And I would report all those agitators too, whether they were agitating me or others. After all, the phrase 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may never hurt me,' is clearly untrue given how the rate of depression in all first world countries have risen above average in the last few decades, on top of the more recent crisis of bullying both in schools and online. But, as always, no matter how bad those players were, my reports went unanswered.

Begin:

So now you're probably wondering what I did, or why I got punished (like it says in my title).

Well I was playing a game in ARAM. And on ARAM, as the name and game type would suggest, sometimes team comps can be kind of lop sided; one team can get a really nice composition with a lot of A tier champions that are all really strong and work well together, while the other team can get a motley assortment that more resembles a bag of rotten fish. And I was on the team of rotten fish.

And that game was particularly bad, we lost our first turret in only about 6 to 7 minutes because all of our teammates died in a single fight, while killing no one on the enemy team. How'd we kill no one? Well, they had a Kindred, a Kindred that was real full of him/herself and had a small amount of skill to back it up, who ulted at a good time, and they had a combination of like a Sion and a Galio (I think) who built as much cooldown reduction as possible to stun lock us at every turn. Meanwhile, our team had me playing Dr. Mundo, no long range mages, no assassins, and if we had an adc we didn't have anyone decent to protect her, due to a lack of hard crowd control on our end. Like I said, a real bag of rotten fish.

Well after that, the enemy team just tore into us with no hesitation. I don't have a copy of the entire transcript (because I played more than 20 games since this game that I got reported for, and the transcript the tribunal provides in their suspension message, inconveniently, does not have the messages the enemies say), but the enemy team sent I'd guess around 40 messages in all chat berating our team. The Kindred personally sent somewhere between 10 to 20 messages directly targeting me saying that I was intentionally feeding (which I wasn't), that I sucked (which I didn't, since I killed her twice by myself and would have killed her 3 more times at least if her team didn't make some pretty good saves), and "apologizing" to my team for having to "put up with" me and my "inting ways" (again, not true particularly since I did the most damage on my team (more on that later)).

Needless to say, I was being provoked by what the enemy team was saying. I got a bit angry, and in game, in my anger, I started by saying (direct quote), "yeah, it was an easy kill for me," in response to Kindred saying something like 'your mundo is so stupid, he tried to go in on me lol'. Then on another occasion she said something like 'there was no way you could kill me that time,' and 'you just inted again,' to which I said, "no, I was going to kill you" again referring to that I was going to kill her in game by playing as Dr. Mundo and dealing damage to her. She responded by saying something like, 'but you didn't' and 'I lived', to which I responded, "because of your team." Which it was true, in both circumstances Kindred's teammates saved her in the game by stun locking me before I could get the finishing blow dealt. And I do mean finishing blow, she was below 150 health each time.

I was playing a kind of bruiser Mundo build that I saw SoloRenektonOnly do a video on once; it's where for your first item you build Phantom Dancer, since Mundo gets a huge attack damage steroid on his E building a PD gives Mundo a ton of attack speed, crit and movement speed to run people down and kill them without needing to rely on teammates. Because of that build, I was able to deal out anywhere from 600 to 1.4k damage in a few seconds at that point in the game, depending on whether the target had armor and whether or not I lucked out and got a critical hit or two or none. And because of that build, I was able to get a few kills, even though we lost the game really quickly, and dealt a lot of damage.

Anyways, that was all I said in game, so we move to the post game lobby. I looked in the damage charts and stuff. I had dealt the most damage on my team, which was awesome. Then I looked at the enemy team and saw I had even dealt more damage than the Kindred, who'd been aggravating me for over 10 minutes now, and another two of her teammates as well. So I ended up being 3rd highest in damage to champions.

I felt like that justified me, in some way, knowing that I really had been doing well in the game. And it made me more angry at the Kindred. Now I don't remember if Kindred said anything before I typed this next message, but I did say (direct quote again), "reporting Kindred, being a bitch." Probably could have used some better wording, but the Kindred player was being an agitating and annoying player, so I was just saying that to let them know I was going to report them. They responded by saying I was 'so bad' and that I was 'inting all game' again, and I responded with, "yeah, inting when I did twice your damage," referring to the damage dealt to champions. I actually forgot I did so much, but yes in comparison I did twice the damage to champions than Kindred did in that match. Otherwise, I wouldn't have used those exact words.

I can't remember what the Kindred said after, but being an agitator of course they didn't stop talking or berating me. And getting angrier, I said, "you lost this game. you sucked. your team carried you." In all reality, that was true. After all, she dealt relatively little damage compared to her team, her team helped stun lock and CC our team to where we couldn't get many in-game kills. They won the game. Not her. She responded, I believe, by saying 'but I won'. To which I responded, "and if I had a team, I would've slit your throat a hundred times over." Now I know, definitely not the best use of wording there. I was referring to the champion I played as, Dr. Mundo, who uses and hits people with his serrated cleaver. What I effectively meant was 'and if I had a good team, I would've killed you more times,' but I was angry and being provoked and wasn't using better judgement in what I said. And after adding one more message, I left the lobby.

I realize my actions are report worthy. Punishment worthy, most definitely. But this was one game, there were no other games in the decision (because there are no other times where I did anything that's punishable, much less that I was reported for), and I was provoked repeatedly. So I'm just going to go right out and say it, I think the Tribunal is completely out of line here. There is such a thing as chat restrictions, I know those exist and that people have gotten them before. All I did was write messages, and it was one game, which again I was provoked. The fact that the Tribunal looks at one game and feels the need to put a 14 day suspension is appalling, especially when I've reported hundreds of players and none of them were responded to. And there was nothing else that could've been done? No, "Hey, everyone has a bad day. You got reported, so just know we'll be watching you and you should straighten up your act"? Nothing? Just a straight up suspension.

In addition, I reported this Kindred player for doing the same thing; writing messages, being toxic, aggravating and verbally assaulting me. But I got no popup about them being punished. So what, did the Tribunal look at the two reports, flip a coin, and decided to punish only me? Did they let the Kindred go free, even though they did the same thing in the same game?

Give me a chat restriction, fine. I know what I did was wrong, and I would absolutely find a chat restriction to be completely appropriate. But I find this whole situation, especially with what I've dealt with as a loyal player for over 5 years without incidents like this before, completely appalling. Five years, and you punish none of the players that I've ever reported. Then I have 1 slip up, 1 anger filled and provoked slip up, and I get a 14 day suspension. This is ridiculous with a capital R and should be written in the boldest, biggest font ever conceived of.

I don't think I can put any more coherent thoughts into this that I haven't already touched on. I want my case to be reviewed again with what I said here in mind. Look at what I was dealing with, reread what my messages actually said. Realize that I've never done anything like this before, and believe me you won't have this problem with me again. I know the boards here can't help rescind a punishment, but if there is a way to get my judgement reviewed please could someone tell me what it is. Because I want to appeal this decision with every fiber of my being.