Boards›Player Behavior

@Riot: Ban waves seem terrible for morale

Jo0o·12/8/2017, 2:02:40 PM·11 votes·1,469 views

I'm sure there's some rationale behind banning for MMR boosting/scripting/etc. in waves, but I truly don't think it's the way to go.

These boards are SCARY right now. The majority of new posts are people claiming that their recent bans for MMR boosting were done in error, and with most of them, it's tough to find any fault in their match histories. We're supposed to have faith that Riot is being thorough with the technology they use to find these boosters, yet many of the complaints involve horror stories about automated/repetitious responses to their support tickets, while enough people ARE talking about getting their bans overturned that we can see there are at least some errors happening.

I had no intention of playing League yesterday, but even though I've never let anybody else touch my account and I've certainly never boosted, I logged in just to make sure I didn't personally get caught in the wave. One might even be forgiven for having some reluctance to invest more RP into their account when they're worried about erroneous bans.

I know that secrecy is part of security for Riot when it comes to defending the integrity of the game, but the lack of transparency on these ban waves is some scary secret-police-at-your-door shit. Isn't there a better way to handle this sort of thing?

35 Comments

JeLLö12/8/2017, 2:20:28 PM7 votes

Waves are the only way to go to effectively combat boosting and scripting long term. It prevents incremental adjustments being made by the perpetrators that would allow them evade identification very easily. They obviously have to be secret about their methods or again it would make it too easy to avoid being caught. It is unfortunate that some innocent people get caught in the crossfire but those truly _innocent have bans reversed. It is also an _extremely small % of false positives. It would be a much different situation if this affected a large portion of the player base, but that obviously is not the case.

Lets also be honest with ourselves here. Every single ban wave (as with normal bans) people come here and lie about being falsely banned only to have it later revealed it was just. Don't overreact, there is a margin for error in every process everywhere.

ModKnightsKemplar12/8/2017, 4:22:39 PM5 votes

Here's another consideration, though:

If you were boosting, and you did get banned, what's the easiest way to get a little revenge? Getting together with your boosting buddies and going on forums to lie and say you got falsely banned. It's a quick way to try to sow some discord and possibly cost Riot some cash, as you said. It's really easy to come on Boards and lie about your record.

I'm not accusing anyone in particular, and I haven't looked into any of the more recent threads about this. While I'm sure some mistakes are made, I am extremely skeptical that erroneous bans are getting ignored; if they submitted a ticket, it's getting reviewed. And if they can't prove that someone was boosting, they aren't going to uphold the ban. I trust them in that from my interactions with the support team.

I once submitted a ticket claiming they didn't give me the proper season rewards. I was super wrong and sounded like an idiot, but they sent me a very professional and polite email correcting my mistake. I've never known anyone personally to get screwed over by Riot.

TrulyBland12/8/2017, 2:15:57 PM5 votes

Let's be extremely honest here: It's not the ban waves that are scaring you, it's the people who deliberately lie about being falsely banned who are scaring you. Even if Riot were to not ban in waves, those people could still complain in waves, because at least some of them are literally doing this in an organized fashion with the specific goal to scare people like you and with that pressure Riot into adopting a policy that is more beneficial for boosters and scripters.

It's a shitty situation, but I honestly cannot come up with a better way to handle this.

Telephone Booth12/8/2017, 10:55:37 PM2 votes

I don't know... just the whole premise of your worry seems wrong. One major point you're making, is that you OBSERVE all of this stuff that you cannot know.

The boards have given you a false sense of involvement in the process. You really should not be able to determine whether they're lying or not, because you really should not even be involved. It's literally none of your business. But people post here for years and you give your opinions and judgements and you start to feel like that's the way it works.

But all of your judgements are based on trust. Riot doesn't have to base anything on trust, they have the actual data. Your judgements on these erroneous bans are completely irrelevant because you have no data. You don't know the source, either. They're strangers who could be lying or just too drugged/liquored up to remember shit.

So really, it's the people that post here that are making you feel like there's some scary secret police type shit. You've observed all these posts without having any FACTS to back them up, other than match histories that mean close to nothing. And Riot doesn't share with you personally what they're up to, so you start to feel insecure about Riots integrity. But they don't have to comfort you and reinforce that they're upholding their integrity, because you shouldn't be involved in the first place.

53W3W Drucifer12/9/2017, 2:47:07 AM2 votes

Riot doesn't care if innocent people go down.

EL HAMSTERO12/8/2017, 11:38:40 PM2 votes

some get overturned. if you get banned falsely open a ticket. i have confidence they will figure it out

verysalt12/8/2017, 2:25:05 PM2 votes

Star new account, buy XP boosts. Business as usual, RIOT wins.

I am Pacman12/8/2017, 2:10:17 PM1 votes

The majority of new posts are people claiming that their recent bans for MMR boosting were done in error

Could you link a couple of these posts? I havn't seen anyone claiming they were banned in error for mmr boosting.

llIlIlIllIlIlIll12/9/2017, 11:01:30 PM1 votes

I am a high elo top/mid/jungle player and a pretty decent youtuber making a video on how my account got banned for being Elo boosted, if anyone wants to share there case with me I can include it in my vod, Riot has been 100% confident that I got boosted to D5, as a high elo player who often duo queues with professional league players I find it hard to believe that there system is perfect and they that look at each individual account, please let me know if you want to be included in my next vod

nerak2312/8/2017, 2:23:26 PM1 votes

Yet how is it different then other ban waves. I'm not finding the boards scary.

Just a point, i am not at all worried about any of my accounts being banned.

I would agree that I'm curious for some basic understanding of 3rd party bans also.

Scorpion12/8/2017, 4:53:08 PM1 votes

so how to they look when they ban someone? do they look after someone reports or send a ticket?

grafix12/8/2017, 5:06:25 PM1 votes

playing in gold elo is disgusting cause there are A LOT of boosted ppl and a lot of ppl eloboosting accounts.

DrSephiroth12/9/2017, 12:41:51 AM1 votes

While mine got overturned quickly, I did see some people that sent tickets to player support - only for them to say they weren't going to research further into the matter/push it forward.

Which makes me worry....what if those people were like me yesterday? Who legit are confused and upset because they've been accused of something they didnt do - and yet, its out of their hands.

I would really like to see riot at least supply some sort of background/evidence as to why a ban took place. Like for my case....I still have no idea what could have trigged the account audit and the ban. Was it the way I was playing? Champs? Change in game modes?

A little more clarity would be perfect.

theTyger12/9/2017, 1:38:03 PM1 votes

{quoted}

I'm sure there's some rationale behind banning for MMR boosting/scripting/etc. in waves, but I truly don't think it's the way to go.

These boards are SCARY right now. The majority of new posts are people claiming that their recent bans for MMR boosting were done in error, and with most of them, it's tough to find any fault in their match histories. We're supposed to have faith that Riot is being thorough with the technology they use to find these boosters, yet many of the complaints involve horror stories about automated/repetitious responses to their support tickets, while enough people ARE talking about getting their bans overturned that we can see there are at least some errors happening.

I think it's tough to make good determinations from what we can see. Our vision of match histories in general are severely limited.

I had no intention of playing League yesterday, but even though I've never let anybody else touch my account and I've certainly never boosted, I logged in just to make sure I didn't personally get caught in the wave. One might even be forgiven for having some reluctance to invest more RP into their account when they're worried about erroneous bans.

Personally, in my opinion Riot needs to step up their actions against people who account share/smurf/elo boost. It's been 7 years and it's still a massive problem.

I know that secrecy is part of security for Riot when it comes to defending the integrity of the game, but the lack of transparency on these ban waves is some scary secret-police-at-your-door shit. Isn't there a better way to handle this sort of thing?

Perhaps? What makes you think they only do it in waves? Is it because people proclaiming their innocence only show up in the forums in waves?

Scary Door12/9/2017, 6:42:15 PM1 votes

There have been a couple of people that got banned for MMR boosting .. in NORMALS. Their entire match history only had normal games and nothing at all suspicious even in those.

This is clearly out of hand and there is definitely an algorithm in Riot's Ban-o-matic computer system that is way out of whack.