Boards›Player Behavior

"Dodge or I'll troll." Flawed system. Possible solution.

Divine Hymn·9/4/2017, 5:03:39 PM·5 votes·786 views

I'm in unenviable position of climbing as a support main through Silver. Despite maintaining a 55-60% winrate (often by sheer carrying), this slog is really annoying due to poor player behavior. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way.

In my last match (which is a familiar scenario to many), someone preselected Vayne top. An argument ensued. "Can you not go vayne top." "I'm going vayne bot." The bot laner ended up locking Vayne in first. The one who wanted top told everyone that if we didn't dodge, he'd troll.

The timer is ticking down. I tell him he'll be reported if he trolls. He says he doesn't care, this is a second account. I tell him maybe he'll be IP banned. He says he doesn't care, he's using a VPN.

The timer is still ticking. I explain to him that if he's not playing the champ he wants, he should be the one to dodge. He says "I'm just going to troll. I'm not trolling you, I'm trolling the botlaner. Don't take it personally."

Timer ticking. 5 seconds left. People are demanding in chat "Someone dodge wtf."

So, fine. I dodge.

Me. The support. Who is just trying to climb. I eat the LP loss. Not the troll, not the one picking fights, not the one demanding a dodge. Me.

In my last four games, I had 2 lost to people (probably on "second accounts") not caring, feeding, or "smurfing" while pretty obviously drunk/high. The other two games, our team won pretty easily. So, in sum, after several of hours of consistently playing at gold+ level (I climbed to gold last season as a support main, so I know I have the ability) I am officially at less LP than I started.

I like this game, I really do. I firmly believe that I consistently play my role at a level higher than silver, and after watching streams, researching my champion, trying to learn ideal ward placement, pinging to communicate, and oftentimes getting A/S grades and being honored by my teammates for my contribution, I am stagnating in silver pretty much because my teammates are selfish people. People like to say you need to "get good" if you're stuck in silver. I am pretty good. It's not really enough.

The game design is flawed when people who are playing well, trying hard, and often carrying games (and even being recognized for it) is relegated to a rank below the level at which they are playing. I thought the free skin and season reward would be cool, but I dunno if it's worth the grind. I know Riot has stepped up on punishing people who are excessively toxic in games, but the ease for which people can avoid punishment and manipulate the system sort of shoots efforts in the foot. Besides, even if that person did get reported, it would only be AFTER ruining my game and probably the games of many others. And there seems to be no shortage of them.

Possible solution:

Maybe develop a sort of Karma system. We already have honor to reward players who are helpful, friendly, and make an effort to shotcall. Perhaps a "downvote" button of sorts could be implemented, and players who are consistently being downvoted by at least 3 people on a team (this would give protection against random downvote trolls, since it would have to be a majority vote) would be relegated to their own "low karma" queue until they bump their honor back up, or given a ban timer from entering games similar to the ban given to dodging. There should to be a more fast-acting and algorithm friendly way to identify behavior that may not be blatantly banworthy but still manages to ruin the game experience for everyone else.

20 Comments

Chermorg9/4/2017, 5:42:34 PM3 votes

The issue here is Riot walks a thin line between people being able to have fun themselves and others having their fun “ruined” because they don’t agree. There will always be edge cases where people are legitimately having fun themselves but Riot punishes because others had their fun ruined - all of those I’ve seen have been overturned.

Riot takes a hard stance that so long as you aren’t trolling or intentionally feeding, you’re basically permitted to play however you want (as long as you play your assigned role [not necessarily a meta champ] in draft).

The issue with systems like this is that players would overwhelmingly use them to report/punish players who are simply playing off-meta, or who don’t pick the support the adc asks for, etc. What happens if an entire premade of 3/4 people reports one person for not trading roles or for playing off meta? What happens if someone picks an off meta champion and 3 people downvote them? There is a reason Riot doesn’t have a “grey area” category - it’d be abused by a lot of people. Generally speaking in League, if it’s not trolling, intentional feeding, or going against a game mechanic (i.e. pick order, playing assigned role, etc) then it will not be punished so long as the person has good intent. Considering not even Riot can 100% guess the intent of a person, it’d be foolish to assume that players in the game could just from pregame lobby.

Douglas Funnie9/4/2017, 9:34:13 PM2 votes

Trolls have the upper hand in this game, no doubt about it. They create tension between teammates and the ones who try to fight back through text get punished.

And the trolls in champ select have all the power. They can easily get away scot-free by holding players hostage, just like this post's case. If they can't get the champion/role they want, they'll find ways to force other players to dodge. So, the dodger gets punished with LP loss and a queue timed out, while the troll gets to instantly queue back up into champ select and repeat the malicious process.

I know it's difficult, and annoying to deal with. However, the decision to dodge was necessary. **Strategic Dodging **is important when trying to climb the ladder. Sometimes it's just the smartest thing to do. Remember that when dodging, you will not lose MMR. You will only lose 4LP. Instead of dealing with a corrupted player and losing 15-20 LP, you lose 4LP. Dodging is a worthy investment because the MMR isn't affected, and will earn the same amount of LP gains on the next game. Not only does it benefit you, it also benefits the other players on your team who are legitimately trying their best to climb the ladder as well.

Lets hope that Riot will find a solution to mitigate trolls in champ select. Instead of focusing on text based toxicity, which players can easily control through the mute system, Riot needs to focus on champ select trolls, feeders, and afkers. These players are the reason why text based toxicity occurs. If riot focuses on the trolls/feeders/afkers, League's community and the game will be at a healthier state, believe me.

Icy Hot Shoto9/5/2017, 12:51:38 AM2 votes

You can always screenshot if someone does that, so that way you have proof if someone DOES dodge. You can send in a support ticket with the persons summoner name and the screenshots, explaining what happened. If the game goes through, just report through the end-game report system with a note to check the champion select logs.

Also, Riot doesn't give out IP bans. If they did, they could end up banning entire cafe's or college dorms. Doing so obviously wouldn't be very good as then they'd be punishing players for things they possibly never did all because one person who couldn't follow the summoners code.

1 800 Starcall9/5/2017, 12:05:14 AM1 votes

As I was also im silver for 2 seasons, I get your pain haha. The players can be extremely toxic and as a soraka main it was extremely hard to get out. I got out quite recently just by pick and chosing a duo that I knew wouldnt fail me, seriously it helps alot try lolduo.com.

Your probably going through the stage where, your stuck in an elo in which you cant get out, even though your skill level exceeds others in the elo. this may sound like troll talk but i went through it and was so stuck I contacted riot, to which they told me the exact thing im telling you. I did it, its completely doable.

Best of luck <3

This Is Your Dad9/4/2017, 5:47:58 PM1 votes

I think part of being good (the part I struggle with the most) is being able to rally your teammates together in spite of their differences. Sure, some people silent carry their way out, but those are smurfs that are far above the level they start at. Getting your teammates to listen to you or another leader (not always you) by using the appropriate method that differs from person to person is very difficult. Some people like being told what to buy, others like being coddled and babied. Some just like being ignored altogether for their master plan that they are set in their ways about. You just need to know when to press an issue, when to ignore and issue and when to just completely drop an issue. That's my two cents. Of course there are just unsolvable games, but the other part of that is to not let those games hinder your ability to come to a rational conclusion on how to handle people in your next game.

By the way I'm antisocial and suck at this and every time I say good job I get x9 reports even when not using all chat.

Hugh Muńgus9/5/2017, 1:30:34 AM1 votes

A system which would do more harm than good from abuse and premades

AdeBug9/5/2017, 3:50:56 AM1 votes

why is this thread all fkd up for me?

Baka Red9/5/2017, 8:15:42 AM1 votes

Your solution sounds like the Prisoner Island. See what Riot Games thinks of that here.

YerroFever9/5/2017, 4:11:21 PM1 votes

I feel like this would be too easily abused.

I think the best thing to do is report them and let their pregame chat be seen by Riot and have that be punished. I'd just SS it and add it to the report at the end of the game.