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6 month post-mortem on ranked play

Koonta Kintae·3/18/2017, 2:50:02 PM·2 votes·448 views

6 months ago I used to play several ranked matches of League daily. After having yet another account banned for reacting to provocations by other players in game, I decided to quit playing and move on to other games.

Recently, I decided to patch up my league client and play some games for laughs. After playing just a few matches, I see that low bronze ranked is the same cesspool it's always been. I find myself reporting one or more players in every postgame and have already received feedback that I've gotten a player punished (after something like only 5 games played?). In every match there was someone being negative and putting other players down in chat. There are players also actively baiting others into punishable behaviors (myself included on occasion). Obviously, their behavior system isn't working at all or is even having an increasingly negative impact on the game. No other multiplayer game I've played has a playerbase so routinely toxic as league and most of them don't even have a complex behavior control system in place to manage it.

The only solution I can see to this would be to remove chat entirely. As it stands, the chat system is used to harass and intimidate other players in over 50% of ranked matches. Using it in some positive manner to coordinate teamwork and win? That happens in maybe 2% of matches if that. Overall the chat system during match is used to create most of the problems. And Rito's automated system of analyzing chatlogs and punishing people completely out of context just exacerbates the problem and creates a lot of the witch hunts.

4 Comments

AraMoOse3/18/2017, 3:16:50 PM3 votes

Yes, well... You are free to mute all at the beginning of the game. This accomplishes exactly what you're requesting from your perspective without imposing it on people who want to keep the chat function.

Great Muta3/18/2017, 10:00:22 PM1 votes

The only solution I can see to this would be to remove chat entirely.

I've suggested this myself and I think it is a great solution. Immediately, 90% of the behavior problems would go away. I was of course IMMEDIATELY downvoted for suggesting this.

Text chat also just isn't that good. You can't type and play, but you can talk over a mic and play. Voice allows you to make a lot more complex plays, it allows you to make calls a lot faster and just have better overall games. I've played on voice and text and I prefer voice 1000 times over.

Astrovert3/19/2017, 2:06:59 AM1 votes

Using the chat system to remove people is by far the easiest way for Riot to do this, why exactly would they want to stop it? You literally want them to do a manual review on everyone?

Consider this, if you say the wrong word in game, well I can set up a bot to instantly ban certain people out without using any people machines at all. Also the games that take manual review can be done much faster than having to watch a game.