Boards›Player Behavior

Why isn't Riot more vocal and transparent about what merits punishment?

exxpose·12/17/2017, 7:49:00 PM·1 votes·1,108 views

I just spent the last hour reading topics about players who received chat restrictions or suspensions and bans over chat logs that were relatively mild in nature. Not severe flaming. Just a few "xyz is inting, report this person".

The majority of the community are confused why they are being punished and have no idea that asking your team to report a player is a punishable offence.

Why does Riot leave us out in the dark? I've received a few 10-game restrictions myself. However, I still have no idea what exactly in those logs was against the rules since I don't go out of my way to severely flame, nor do I ever use profanities in my games. Therefor, I have no idea how to "reform" my behavior when I have no idea what behavior specifically is flagging me with the punishment. Perhaps once every 20-30 games I'll say 3-4 lines of comments like "report xyz for inting" "our bot lane is 0/15" "please stop feeding and we can win", or I'll give constructive advice on how to play a role better "instead of farming wolves you should have gotten the free dragon". Yet I get punished for these kinds of chat logs despite the majority of my chat long being positive and giving direction to which objective to rotate to next.

I think people would stop certain behavior if they were informed specifically which behavior is punishable.

It also makes no sense to me that people get punished for pointing out mistakes of their teammates and telling them how to improve their play. Why is constructive criticism viewed as flaming and discouraged? Shouldn't we be helping others to perform better in the game? Explaining to someone why splitting bot when baron is up is a mistake shouldn't be punishable ("why are you bot side? baron is up you should be with your team. now the enemy get a free baron because they saw you bot side", or "my support keeps hitting the minions and it's making me lose cs. please try to aim your Q so it doesn't hit the minions Soraka. I can't afford my BF sword if you keep doing it", yet Riot punishes players for exactly this.

I'm pretty sure there is a minimum of one person who says "report xyz for inting/feeding/toxic" in every single game I play. Every. Single. Game. 99.99999% of the community is completely unaware that rallying for reports is punishable. Why isn't Riot transparent with this information? How are we supposed to magically know that the non-toxic chat log we just received was only punished because we said "report xyz for inting".

When the system gives you a chat restriction and gives you your chat log, it's a perplexing puzzle to figure out what exactly you said to get punished. Especially when you show the logs on the forums and the users respond "that's not toxic at all I don't know why you were punished".

How can we get Riot to be more transparent with what specifically is punishable?

46 Comments

Mindspeaker12/17/2017, 9:21:13 PM6 votes

They are pretty much transparent.

Don't intentionally disrupt the game in any way and don't be verbally abusive for any reason or react/respond to someone breaking game play rules or being verbally abusive for any reason.

In point form that breaks down to

DON'T..........

  • Intentionally feed.
  • Go afk
  • Stop participating ( passive leave buster avoidance)
  • Be verbally abusive/ verbally offensive
  • React or "defend yourself" against others being verbally abusive
  • Chastise those legitimately breaking the rules
  • Chastise those who you don't agree with (play style,champ choices etc..)
  • Try to correct something you think someone is doing wrong
  • Complain about anything happening in game
  • Rant about any personal grievance in the game
  • Give any type of negative "commentary" regarding whats happening in the game

Doing any of the above can lead to various punishments including permaban's

Basically you are required to act like a mature civilized player 100% of the time no matter what is happening in game .

Wínters Dawn12/17/2017, 9:08:46 PM3 votes

Being an assholes is punishable; pretty sure as a human being you can decipher what behavior would fall under that category.

Troll for Trump12/17/2017, 10:20:36 PM3 votes

They are transparent, just nonspecific. If they were specific, people would just find loopholes.

alasarcher12/17/2017, 8:49:55 PM2 votes

Well its not really complicated. Dont insult people, dont harass people, dont tell people how to play if they dont ask you for advice first. Like that comment "stop feeding" - only purpose for that comment is to annoy teammate who is already having a bad game and it accomplishes nothing. Do you think opponent will suddenly start playing bad and will stop killing them? If person is feeding on purpose then telling him "stop feeding" is pointless. If person isnt feeding on purpose then telling him "stop feeding" just tilts him even more.

You dont wanna get punished? Focus on your own game and leave others alone. If you form your own team and they choose you as captain then feel free to tell everyone what to do. But when you play with randoms, shut the hell up and play your champion.

Zombie Gerbil12/17/2017, 10:12:20 PM2 votes

These punishments don't require anything more than common sense and common understanding of not being a negative individual. It is never a complicated thing to understand.

Simply avoid these

  • Passive aggressiveness
  • Bigotry
  • Hostility
  • Hate speech
  • harassment
  • Intentional feeding
  • Antagonizing others
  • Griefing
  • Negativity
  • Threats
YerroFever12/18/2017, 5:55:00 AM2 votes

They are pretty vocal about it. The reason why they don't tell you exactly what triggers it vs giving you the categories of what kind of behavior triggers it is that people will try to find new ways of harassing teammates to avoid being punished by the system.

Essentially if you ask how the IFS picks up on insults, harassment, and flaming in chat... you're asking for the "How to not get punished but still insult, harass, and flame your teammates" handbook

Rather than ask what triggers the IFS, why not just think about how you would expect to be treated and how others expect to be treated and try to treat others the way you expect to be treated and hopefully that aligns with how others expect to be treated.

I mean, most people will just say don't be an asshole... and that's pretty much a good base line to start at.

Sir Ticklesword12/17/2017, 8:01:14 PM2 votes

Riot has a set of base rules that are summed up as this: don't be a jerk. The players helped determine what "being a jerk" entails. So, when a player gets punished, they were being a jerk across multiple games and climbed through punishment tiers, ignoring the multiple warnings that being a jerk constantly will have them removed.

Jkrexx12/17/2017, 8:03:32 PM2 votes

Riot cannot explicitly reveal anything to do with the punishment system because then some clever little people will find ways to work perfectly around it to avoid punishment, simple as that.

I'd personally love to know what is punishable and what isn't so I know how to be safe but it's just never going to be revealed.

LostFr0st12/17/2017, 8:08:15 PM2 votes

{quoted}

I just spent the last hour reading topics about players who received chat restrictions or suspensions and bans over chat logs that were relatively mild in nature. Not severe flaming. Just a few "xyz is inting, report this person".

The majority of the community are confused why they are being punished and have no idea that asking your team to report a player is a punishable offence.

Why does Riot leave us out in the dark? I've received a few 10-game restrictions myself. However, I still have no idea what exactly in those logs was against the rules since I don't go out of my way to severely flame, nor do I ever use profanities in my games. Therefor, I have no idea how to "reform" my behavior when I have no idea what behavior specifically is flagging me with the punishment. Perhaps once every 20-30 games I'll say 3-4 lines of comments like "report xyz for inting" "our bot lane is 0/15" "please stop feeding and we can win", or I'll give constructive advice on how to play a role better "instead of farming wolves you should have gotten the free dragon". Yet I get punished for these kinds of chat logs despite the majority of my chat long being positive and giving direction to which objective to rotate to next.

Can't comment much to the above. Indeed the flame must be rare and mild since the account has time to cool down enough to only receive another set of 10-game chat restrictions instead of being escalated to 25-game chat restrictions.

I think people would stop certain behavior if they were informed specifically which behavior is punishable.

It also makes no sense to me that people get punished for pointing out mistakes of their teammates and telling them how to improve their play. Why is constructive criticism viewed as flaming and discouraged? Shouldn't we be helping others to perform better in the game? Explaining to someone why splitting bot when baron is up is a mistake shouldn't be punishable ("why are you bot side? baron is up you should be with your team. now the enemy get a free baron because they saw you bot side", or "my support keeps hitting the minions and it's making me lose cs. please try to aim your Q so it doesn't hit the minions Soraka. I can't afford my BF sword if you keep doing it", yet Riot punishes players for exactly this.

The above are not punishable if they are worded to not be accusatory and call someone out. It's the way the player writes the criticism which is the problem. The criticism also doesn't stop at the above. If the other player disagrees or responds, the criticizing player often starts a flame war instead of leaving it at that.

I'm pretty sure there is a minimum of one person who says "report xyz for inting/feeding/toxic" in every single game I play. Every. Single. Game. 99.99999% of the community is completely unaware that rallying for reports is punishable. Why isn't Riot transparent with this information? How are we supposed to magically know that the non-toxic chat log we just received was only punished because we said "report xyz for inting".

By either posting it on the boards or e-mailing support for insight. I can't recall a log which was purely punished for "report xyz for inting." tbh.

When the system gives you a chat restriction and gives you your chat log, it's a perplexing puzzle to figure out what exactly you said to get punished. Especially when you show the logs on the forums and the users respond "that's not toxic at all I don't know why you were punished".

Some posters edit their chat logs before they post them in order to curry favour from the community. It is mainly in such threads where the users are perplexed.

How can we get Riot to be more transparent with what specifically is punishable?

It's pretty transparent; I don't know how many people have actually read these pages though: https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/featured/summoners-code https://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/game-info/get-started/summoners-code/

Raeyxx12/18/2017, 6:35:07 AM1 votes

As someone who used to do moderation work for another popular game, I can tell you EXACTLY why they don't get specific. It's because people find loopholes. You literally have repeat offenders that outline the rules and try to get around them in every way possible. It's insane: some of the things I've seen people try.

That's why they don't get specific. It's like that annoying little kid that plays the "I'm not touching you" card. But worse.