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History of reporting in League of Legends: part 1 the tribunal.

deathgod5·10/26/2017, 11:08:32 AM·49 votes·3,853 views

I thought It would be a fun thing to try and do a mini history about the report system in League of Legends, going through each and every phase of the reporting system and explaining what the systems were and why they were eventually removed/kept.

But before I go into detail I will say the following: Finding official riot resources on this topic is hard. You can't find official information on a lot of things and even if you do it is really old. A lot of the reasons of why choices were made are either gone or vaguely written so for a large part there will be speculation about why it ended.

With that: The tribunal

#The tribunal

Sources used: The wiki: http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/The_Tribunal The official statistics of the tribunal poster made by unknown riot employees a long time ago: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/a/a1/Infographic_Tribunal.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120208201858 Some smaller riot comments which I will highlight with a local source reference, mostly leading to the amazing old forums.

Created in: 2011 Ended in: 2014 Main goal: punishing human players with other player feedback. success rate: varied.

What was the main functionality of the tribunal?

The tribunal was a system that showed chat logs, builds and build paths of all players that were in a match with a report placed on it. The chatlogs of the player were marked in pink and all other chat logs were marked with green(allies) and red text(enemies). On the right a timer ran down from twenty to zero and after that time the player could decide if the player would be punished or pardoned. Below I included some pictures of the system.

https://i.imgur.com/bmVej4I.png

As a tribunal member you had to have the following requirements to join:

  • no outstanding punishments;
  • a minimum level of level 20;
  • you couldn't vote against the general vote in the tribunal too often.

And could do the following things:

  • vote on players;
  • Skip report votes you had no opinion on(This seems irrelevant, I come back to this one later);
  • see the results of the votes you personally voted on;
  • up to ten votes a day;
  • earn IP(blue essence starting from season eight) for your account.

So what was liked about it

The following argument were made for the tribunal:

  • If you were punished, you knew it was because the public didn't like the way you were behaving;
  • You got acces to the report info your teammates gave so you knew where they thought you fucked up;
  • it gave people the satisfaction of knowing that your reports will probably get somebody banned;
  • arguably the int feeder system was better when it was manned by players.
  • so called fighting cases(troll annoying people into responses) didn't always end in a ban for the players that were reported by the troll where the new system does.

##what was disliked about it People dislike the following things:

  • votes were almost always guilty after a rapport;
  • a lot of people voted guilty on every case to farm the IP causing false punishments;
  • people who had other opinions and voted pardon had a chance of not being allowed to vote on the tribunal because they disagreed with other players.

the cancellation

On 2014 the tribunal was canceled with the following post of riot lyte: https://euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/player-behavior/upgrading-tribunal

There really isn't much of a reason given here, considering they were planning on a relaunch back then. We can however theorize on the reason why it was canned. Below are a few probable reason the system might be cancelled.

1. It wasn't a fair system anymore when they gave IP rewards

A lot of players felt they were punished without reason. A former friend of mine shared a tribunal case of him getting banned for "stealing kills" in a bot game. Somebody had reported him for that and he got punished. The tribunal had a lot of players that just voted guilty on everything because they were probably in the majority anyway.

A system that punishes based on reports only causes a lot of problems so they removed the IP reward to fix this until they found a better solution.

2. Without the IP reward the system was too slow

When no IP was awarded for tribunal cases any more the amount of cases that were handled by the system got significantly lower. A lot of players needed to vote on a single case to give fair judgement, so it wasn't fast to begin with. The game kept growing and the report amounts kept getting higher. I don't think the players could keep up with the reports, so it could take up to 3 months for somebody to be punished by the tribunal.

3. The players that were left after the tribunal got rid of lp rewards were really punish happy

Looking through cases I reviewed there were cases that were punished for saying fuck once(only chat). You might the current system punishes too quickly but the old system was horrible with this.

4 Youtubers made money and views of it.

If you used the skip function that case didn't count toward your total cases. Some people used this to save thousands of the cases and used this to make dramatic readings of toxicity. I think riot felt that this gave their community a worse name.

##Conclusion the tribunal was a flawed system that was cancelled when the problems got too big. It did have advantages over the current system that riot should think about reimplementing(letting your players know when they successfully punish someone more often). It did die with a reason and it was not because they hated the player base. It died because it got to big, to slow and to problematic. I would however like to see part of it reimplemented somewhere in the future, if only for permanent ban cases.

After this we entered the next phase of report calling I like to call the wasteland. I will talk about that one If i feel that this post is worth following up on.

Let me know what you think

Deathgod5 Karthus

28 Comments

ModUlanopo10/26/2017, 11:30:30 AM10 votes

  • Lyte mentioned that the primary reasons for getting rid of the IP reward were the distortive effect it had on voting (it put people in the wrong mindset) and because it was bad PR. People who disliked the Tribunal would latch onto the IP rewards as a critical flaw.

  • "Punish happy" was never a problem. The problem was that they used the Tribunal to refine their engine for locating punishable offenses, meaning that too many cases were punishable.

  • No one ever cared about the YouTubers.

  • The system was too slow in general. Also, they wanted to provide immediate feedback, which made it really too slow.

SkeltzAlukard10/26/2017, 6:29:33 PM5 votes

How to make players reform, how to end the toxicity ? Someone from Riot. HAAA, I HAVE A GREAT IDEA. LET'S PERMANENTLY BAN THEIR ACCOUTNS HAHAHA. Riot games: Hmm, that's actually a really good idea. But it will be unfair because other players will be able to do that via tribunal HAHA, BUT WHAT IF WE GET RID OF THAT THING AND IMPLEMENT A STATIC SYSTEM THAT PERMABANS IF A SENTENCE HAS "KYS" OR "FUCK YOU" HAHAHA ? Riot games: holy fuck, this guy knows what's up. Lets do it boiz Riot games: But wait, what if a system makes a mistake ? There will be like 10000 tickets about it. HAHA, BUT WE WILL JUST SEND THEM AN AUTOMATIC MESSAGE HOW THEIR BAN WAS TOTALLY CORRECT AND THAT SYSTEM WORKS AS INTENDED HAHAHA. Riot games: k.

sanshaoye10/26/2017, 11:41:56 AM3 votes

lyte is one of the worst game regulation system designers ever in the history of gaming. the current bunch at riot can't be much better based on the system in place atm.

Unreformed Shaco10/26/2017, 11:29:19 AM2 votes

I really really like what you've done with it. A very necessary post IMO.

I really think that they've replaced a lot of the original Rioters who dealt with and designed the original systems (Not just Player Behavior) and replaced them with fresh out of college kids who have overzealously chased ideals and over-enforced the rules in an attempt to scare players into behaving.

Riot Lyte was a shitlord and thankfully has been let gomoved on.

Skip wasn't intended for no opinion, IIRC it was primarily for cases in other languages.

The IFS and the current system are both terrible. They really should have just fixed the system rather than scrapping it entirely.

Either

A. Use IFS to hand out chat restrictions, but bans should be done by Tribunal. B. Use IFS as is, but players can appeal to a tribunal with comments from them and their team mates, rather than just their team mates.

Tormentula10/26/2017, 9:39:16 PM1 votes

This is a good post, I actually look forward to reading the others.

xelaker10/26/2017, 10:34:41 PM1 votes

The reporting now is super meh, and only covers the most extreme of cases. I want lighter punishments for lighter "crimes". I'm a fan of the ol "garbage island" when used smartly.

LightningShado10/27/2017, 2:57:24 AM1 votes

First off, nice post. And this sounds really cool. I started preseason six so I'm eh kinda new. If I could do stuff like this for a job that would be amazing. I'll do it for free though, because this stuff is interesting. I feel like the Tribunal should be a group that is somewhat exclusive as you would have to sumbit an application and meet all the criteria set forth by Riot. That would be really cool. Just an idea. It would be very strict moral criteria, just to mention at the end.

Punkkee10/27/2017, 3:19:14 AM1 votes

the poster looks like a german propaganda poster lmao

MadMad Sickness10/27/2017, 3:53:37 AM1 votes

Great work!

I was here when all of those things happened and always wondered why...

The Trent10/27/2017, 6:13:49 AM1 votes

Something I'm confused about

those statistics seem extremely off, why?:

The majority of Leagues' players are casuals who like to play with their friends, and a lot of them don't even play enough to get banned. Why does that matter? Well, I feel as if those players should be taken out of the pool, that way so people who do get punished don't feel like there's something extremely wrong with them.

The statistics say that 1.4% of players have been punished by the tribunal, that's an old statistic, but let's see what's wrong with it.

There were a TON of bots back in the day on ARAM, Twisted Treeline, and Dominion.

Like I said the majority of Leagues players play casually, that's about 50% or more (obviously more since the majority aka over 50% of players are casuals) that will probably never get punished, and if they do, they're most likely the "50% of players that never get reoffended."

So we've covered a lot of how these statistics suck, but lets go EVEN DEEPER.

If you do play this game a lot, your chances of getting punished go up exponentially. That means people who play to climb ranked are almost GUARANTEED at least one or more punishments. If you are actually toxic, and you also play the game a lot, you're going to get a lot more punishments than someone who is just as toxic or more, but only plays the game a little. In fact, the person who is just as toxic, probably won't even get a punishment! As long as you only play about 2 games a day, you'll probably never get a punishment unless you're bashing your team in like there is no tomorrow.

Also doesn't it just feel like they're lying? Almost every single one of my friends, unless of course they're casuals, has been punished. I've seen every single streamer punished, from Bjergson to IMAqtpie. It's like they're just telling us, oh, only people who play the game a bunch and love it get reported! It's just like, if you put the slightest bit of thought into this, you know these statistics are wrong.

Did they include inactive accounts? If not, what marked them as innactive? A month of no activity or a year? Did they include level 1-30 accounts or just lvl 30 accounts? Did they include people who don't even know how to use the chat? Did they include the bots? Did they include my uncle, aunt, grandma Sandra? The list of questions only goes on, but don't let League lie to you with their statistics lmao. DID THEY INCLUDE THE LITERAL PRACTICE MODE BOTS IN THEIR STATISTICS?

General Esdeath 10/27/2017, 8:29:57 AM1 votes

Very educational. Keep it up!

themachamp10/27/2017, 11:32:49 AM1 votes

The biggest selling point of the tribunal was that context was actually taken into account. It is night and day compared to the way they do things now. I have pardoned plenty of people who briefly lashed out against people trolling/inciting them, also the tribunal was actually found to be more lenient than riot employees. The tribunal was a godsend compared to the punish happy riot employees who don't even review the entire game( most of the time).

WingsofGulgazor10/27/2017, 2:35:40 PM1 votes

I mean if the problem really is that the players couldnt keep up with the amount of reports couldn't they use the automated sytstem whenever it gets backed up. Then people can just do the rest.

BlueThingamajig10/27/2017, 3:17:44 PM1 votes

There's some inaccuracies, and misleading comments in this. While it is true that there was an IP reward for voting, it was removed well before the Tribunal went down. I don't have numbers on this, but I'm confident that it spent more time WITHOUT IP rewards than it spent with them.

People weren't really that punish-happy, either. That's the Xander argument (The punish rate is high, therefore it is flawed). In truth, Riot varied the reporting requirements to appear in the tribunal. For a very short time, there was a ~60% punish rate, and iirc, there was a ~85-90% punish rate when the Tribunal went down. This isn't a matter of people getting more punish happy, but instead Riot prevented people they thought would get pardoned from even reaching the voting. Also, Riot has continually said that they would be harsher in punishments than the Tribunal ever was. It's true that some people chose to spam punish, but just as many (if not more) people chose to spam pardon, in their minds to counteract the punish spammers.

And at the very end, there were technical issues with the Tribunal. It basically stopped generating cases for voting, and Riot decided shortly afterwards to take it down. They were making adjustments to the Tribunal, including the then-new chat restrictions, but never made any indication that they were planning to get rid of it. At the time, it was taken down SOLELY for technical problems, not for any of the problems you indicate. Riot wanted to re-implement it, but later decided on going with the current instant-feedback system (After experimenting more with chat restrictions, ranked restrictions, and other systems).

And I think it is worth noting that the Tribunal went through several phases, as well. Originally, you were given the players' names and in the presentation example, the voter 'saw a name they recognized, and chose to skip as a result'. They quickly chose to remove the names, then remove the IP rewards, and then adjusted the punishment tiers themselves. And then the tech behind the scene broke down, so they dropped the system.

ZT Xperimentor10/27/2017, 3:24:45 PM1 votes

Part of the problem was that it was subject to being binary. A few times a month, I'd see a case where it was clearly a group of friends mass reporting the random stuck with them, regardless of the game situation. Yet the system only let you punish or pardon the reported person, it would've helped if we were allowed to call the other players into question for these situations.

It was also a mistake to reward players for punishing others, and riot should've taken action against those publicizing the tribunal long before it got out of hand. The skip option was necessary though in some cases, such as getting one that was in another language.

notice me Sin pi10/26/2017, 3:48:10 PM1 votes

im wondering since we now have the new honor system, if reimplementing the system would work better than the current auto-punishment system

Elikain10/26/2017, 7:31:09 PM1 votes

I remember back in the day when i logged in my Tribunal profile to clear up some cases. With a 96.6% accuracy, i thought i was doing a good job at it because i would always spend an hour or so reviewing my cases for that day.

Until one faithful day i noticed that my 10 or so cases for that day were basically months old. This was the major issue i had with it and a likely reason Riot put a stop to it and switched to an automated system.

Yordle Xayah10/26/2017, 8:45:53 PM1 votes

Ah... I miss The Tribunal. Good time killer between games.