For a while now, the player behavior team has believed that bans are not the ideal solution for dealing with toxic players in League of Legends. Sometimes a banned player will create a new account and negatively affect the experiences of low level players. During this time, the banned player is not learning what it means to be a positive member in our community.
On the player behavior team, one of our core philosophies is to create features that can help toxic players reform their behavior. We have been working on alternatives to banning, and will begin running experiments on the PBE. Unlike many features on PBE, these experiments will see rapid iterations, and may look completely different when they go live. Some experiments might take two weeks, some might take two months, and some even longer. Running experiments this way on PBE will introduce a new level of transparency in our ongoing player behavior initiatives, and we encourage players to join us in these experiments and shape the future of the League of Legends community.
The first experiment we are trying is a new restricted chat mode. Players that are identified as the most toxic by our player behavior systems will be placed into a restricted chat mode where their ability to participate in [All] Chat is disabled. Also, these players will have a limited number of chat messages they can send to team chat, which will slowly increase over the course of a game. To unlock this restriction on their account, these players must play a set number of matchmade games with positive, non-toxic behavior.
With this experiment, we hope to address a few key issues. First, we hope this will help toxic players to think carefully about their chat messages and what they use them for—if these players still choose to rage, they will immediately hit their message cap and be muted, shielding other players from their harassment. If these players use their available messages responsibly, they can learn to exhibit positive and constructive communication in League of Legends.
Secondly, we hope that by tying the punishment to games played instead of a set duration of time, we can enable toxic players to assume more responsibility for their actions. Players will no longer be able to make new accounts for a few days to escape their timeban—they will have to play matchmade games in restricted chat mode to unlock their account chat privileges again.
This is the first experiment in a series that will all be focused on replacing bans with alternative punishments that encourage players to improve their behaviors, and you will see this feature on PBE shortly.
I'm not sure I like the idea of being in a game with someone who has a cap on the number of messages they send.
Yes, it would reduce their ability to rage, but it seems to me like someone who didn't learn anything from their punishment would hit their cap and then be unable to communicate with the rest of the team for the rest of the game. Yeah, they're being punished, but they say useful things sometimes too. I don't like them raging and making the game no fun for anyone, but I also like winning games, and I'm not sure whether them being utterly silent is actually an improvement in that regard.
(I know this is an experiment and I'm sure you've already thought of that, I just wanted to put my opinion out there).
Part of the experiment is trying to gauge how many chat messages a player needs to effectively communicate in a game, and how much communication can be conveyed solely through pings.
We'll adjust the feature as necessary throughout the experiment.
I'm a little unclear about this. Are there going to be actual restrictions on players making new accounts, or will it just be as a result of having access to the normal account and being able to unlock restrictions through playing games?
We aren't explicitly locking or preventing players from new accounts; however, by tying punishments to games played instead of time, we force players to play on their main accounts in 'restricted mode' or they will never be able to remove the punishments on their main account.
So how do us non-toxic players help you test this?
Help us by identifying and reporting toxic players on PBE! We will also have many Rioters playing on the PBE in restrictive mode to help collect more data on the experiment.
This is a cool approach to player behaviour! Do they get identified as toxic before they get sent to the tribunal or is the restricted chat a punishment from the tribunal?
We are still figuring out what the final implementation will be--the focus of the current experiment is to determine how many messages a player needs to be effective in a game and balancing that against the risk that a toxic player will still just use all of their messages to verbally abuse others.
This sounds like an awesome strategy to retain consistency on testing and still push the "It's just the PBE" mindset out the window.
How easily identifiable will the restriction be for players?
Will they receive an in game announcement similar to when you receive a gift or banner from honor? Or will they only be identified in a match, with a chat box message?
I'm guessing this is something that falls in the "we'll be testing multiple different methods" category, but figured I would ask.
For now, we have intentionally designed the feature so that players in restricted mode do not have any indicators or obvious signs that they are restricted; we did not want to create a situation where toxic players are bullied just because of a 'mark' on their account--this would go against our philosophy of creating a path for these players to actually change and get on the path to good. We also did not want to intentionally increase the number of games where a teammate might see a restricted player and immediately want to dodge the match.
Right now, players receive a login message if their account has been chat restricted.
The iteration that will hit the PBE soon will not include restrictions on pre- and postgame chat. The restriction itself is only on the in-game chat.
However, we want to make sure that players with this penalty understand their situation before they enter the game, so they are not surprised and confused in-game when other summoners are counting on them to be focused and to perform as a teammate. We'll still working some of this out, which is part of why it's not quite ready to go live.
For those of you asking how to test this feature-- please do not purposely behave badly in hopes of receiving chat restrictions! We'll be rolling this feature out to groups of testers as we test specific elements of it over time. To be clear, not everyone will experience this feature first-hand on the PBE, but if you are restricted, you'll know it
Very cool. Is the idea that if this goes live, the alternative punishment would be given through the Tribunal, or automatically by the system?
This is to be determined. We may decide to augment bans at first and run some experiments with that approach, then run some experiments where we replace bans with a version of this feature.
Player Behavior Experiments and Restricted Chat Mode on PBE
On the player behavior team, one of our core philosophies is to create features that can help toxic players reform their behavior. We have been working on alternatives to banning, and will begin running experiments on the PBE. Unlike many features on PBE, these experiments will see rapid iterations, and may look completely different when they go live. Some experiments might take two weeks, some might take two months, and some even longer. Running experiments this way on PBE will introduce a new level of transparency in our ongoing player behavior initiatives, and we encourage players to join us in these experiments and shape the future of the League of Legends community.
The first experiment we are trying is a new restricted chat mode. Players that are identified as the most toxic by our player behavior systems will be placed into a restricted chat mode where their ability to participate in [All] Chat is disabled. Also, these players will have a limited number of chat messages they can send to team chat, which will slowly increase over the course of a game. To unlock this restriction on their account, these players must play a set number of matchmade games with positive, non-toxic behavior.
With this experiment, we hope to address a few key issues. First, we hope this will help toxic players to think carefully about their chat messages and what they use them for—if these players still choose to rage, they will immediately hit their message cap and be muted, shielding other players from their harassment. If these players use their available messages responsibly, they can learn to exhibit positive and constructive communication in League of Legends.
Secondly, we hope that by tying the punishment to games played instead of a set duration of time, we can enable toxic players to assume more responsibility for their actions. Players will no longer be able to make new accounts for a few days to escape their timeban—they will have to play matchmade games in restricted chat mode to unlock their account chat privileges again.
This is the first experiment in a series that will all be focused on replacing bans with alternative punishments that encourage players to improve their behaviors, and you will see this feature on PBE shortly.
Yes, it would reduce their ability to rage, but it seems to me like someone who didn't learn anything from their punishment would hit their cap and then be unable to communicate with the rest of the team for the rest of the game. Yeah, they're being punished, but they say useful things sometimes too. I don't like them raging and making the game no fun for anyone, but I also like winning games, and I'm not sure whether them being utterly silent is actually an improvement in that regard.
(I know this is an experiment and I'm sure you've already thought of that, I just wanted to put my opinion out there).
We'll adjust the feature as necessary throughout the experiment.
This is a cool approach to player behaviour! Do they get identified as toxic before they get sent to the tribunal or is the restricted chat a punishment from the tribunal?
How easily identifiable will the restriction be for players?
Will they receive an in game announcement similar to when you receive a gift or banner from honor? Or will they only be identified in a match, with a chat box message?
I'm guessing this is something that falls in the "we'll be testing multiple different methods" category, but figured I would ask.
Right now, players receive a login message if their account has been chat restricted.
Question: Does this affect pre/post game chat?
However, we want to make sure that players with this penalty understand their situation before they enter the game, so they are not surprised and confused in-game when other summoners are counting on them to be focused and to perform as a teammate. We'll still working some of this out, which is part of why it's not quite ready to go live.
For those of you asking how to test this feature-- please do not purposely behave badly in hopes of receiving chat restrictions! We'll be rolling this feature out to groups of testers as we test specific elements of it over time. To be clear, not everyone will experience this feature first-hand on the PBE, but if you are restricted, you'll know it