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Is it really against the rules to ask people to report a problem player?

Dehitay·12/14/2015, 1:05:16 AM·4 votes·1,786 views

I've seen people time and time again in this forum say that asking people to report somebody is harassment. And that makes no sense to me. I can't tell you how many times I've managed to salvage a game by telling players to keep and eye on somebody and report them if they purposely feed. I'm sure every last one of us has ran into that one person in champ select who threatens to feed and troll if they don't get their way. Then they don't get their way and throw a massive tantrum. But because champ select isn't taking into punishment consideration (I honestly don't know the reason for this), the best way I've found to deal with those people is to immediately announce in allchat that the problem player threatened to feed/troll, and ask the enemy team to keep an eye on them and report them if they live up to those promises. The problem player will then rage at me like crazy and call me a pussy or whatever other insults, but over 90% of the time, they won't immediately start throwing the game like they did back before I learned this little trick.

10 Comments

EndlessSorcerer12/14/2015, 1:07:07 AM4 votes

Yes, it is.

There is literally no benefit to doing so, but it causes a significant amount of negativity between players.

As far as the system is concerned, there is no difference between 1 report and 9 reports in a game. It only tracks the frequency of games in which you are reported.

In addition, if it does not occur where the enemy team can see (in champion select or in team chat), then they only have your word to go on.

Aerilus12/14/2015, 7:09:38 PM2 votes

The reason it's fair is because often you have players begging for reports when it is undeserved.

One example, I was Alistar support on a team full of premades with Lucian bot. The teammates would ping me no matter what lane I went in, top mid or bottom they'd spam ping fall back. Every time I stunned or knocked back an enemy, my teammates would spam pings run away and not attack once. When the other team focused me my teammates would just run away and call me noob, every time I tried to tank so Lucian could poke, he would just run away, and act like it's my fault he was doing so badly. They kept telling me to quit this game when they basically weren't even playing, just csing and not going for any kills, and harassing me all game.

Needless to say this game was an epic waste of time. All 4 of them begged for reports in the end, and I'm pretty sure they reported me, when it was actually all 4 of them that deserved reports.

Dehitay12/14/2015, 1:49:40 AM1 votes

The actual question of this post is whether it's actually considered harassment by Riot to ask others to report a harmful player. So far only EndlessSourcer has actually given an answer to that question. But I would really appreciate it if somebody could tell me what section of the ToS or some document by Riot mentions asking people to report a problem player as harassment. This is on the same level as asking a witness to a car crash to testify about it. It's hard for me to believe it's considered harassment by Riot unless somebody can direct me to where it's identified as such by Riot.

On another note, I love how people downvoted what's nothing more than a straight up fact. Back when I first start playing, I ran into I can't even count how many trolls in champ select who threatened to feed/troll if they didn't get their way. Somwhere between 30% and 50% actually carried out on their threats. Ever since I started immediately relaying threats from champ select trolls to the enemy team and asking them to keep an eye on them and report them if they lived up to those threats, only 1 champ select troll has actually lived up to his threat even though there's been 15 or 20 of them since. Unless you have a very logical explanation for a significant change in numbers based on a very relatable action, I'm going to have to link the two together.

Also, I'm well aware of how the report system only needs one report to run punishment checks. I appreciate the informing, but I call out people to make them paranoid that everybody is keeping an eye on them after they threatened to feed/troll, not for actual reports. What I'm curious about here is if it's actually a Riot rule that asking for people to report a problem player is harassment or just player hearsay.

AJStarhiker12/14/2015, 1:58:46 AM1 votes

I think someone else has the actual link, but I remember a few years ago, a survey of reported/punished games showed that varients of "Report" were among the the most common words used by people getting punished.

So, while not a rule, specifically, calling for and/or threatening reports is a major red flag against the player.

Dehitay12/14/2015, 4:14:38 AM1 votes

AJStarhiker's answer sounds pretty much like what I would expect. Last time I read the ToS, there was nothing in there about requesting reports on problem players. But I can definitely see how people who fling around the word report all the time could be problem players themselves. But if anybody can find an any actual Riot documentation saying that asking people to report problem players is harassment, I would understand.