
The difficulty in banning ‘most toxic League of Legends player in North America’ - taylorbuley
http://www.polygon.com/2017/1/10/14179366/league-of-legends-riot-ban-tyler1
======
whack
According to the article, Tyler is streaming full time. This makes him
massively vulnerable, because he depends on the game for his livelihood. It
also makes his characters extremely easy to identify. Find one guy in your
company who would take pleasure out of giving this guy a spanking. Phreak
maybe. Have him check out Tyler's stream once every day, find his latest
account name, and ban it. Tyler would now be stuck in an endless loop of
playing against newbies every single day. His fans would get bored out of
their minds, and leave after a few weeks. Tyler would get bored out of his
mind, and will see the money literally getting drained out of his bank
account. Within two months, he's going to become desperate and ask for a
second chance. Milk this for all you can. Ask him to post a video on YouTube,
where he apologizes, atones and grovels in the most humiliating way possible,
so that he loses every "troll loving" fan he has, and so every troll can see
what happens to their champion whom they admired so much.

You want to fight bad behavior online? Show no mercy.

~~~
zepolen
Actually the fans would love watching him get perfect scores and beating
everyone.

------
forgottenpass
Why should I, J. Random Reader, look at the game genre most notorious for
putting people in a frustrated emotional state and care about that game
administrators' attempts to enforce good vibes through social control without
ever touching the fundamental mechanics of their anger-generator?

It's easy to focus on someone that uniquely makes it their thing to be
purposefully annoying. Certainly easier than to employ systems thinking about
why players are pushed into states conductive to being upset by others, or
wanting to upset others. So ban with an iron fist. Or don't ban. Whatever.
It's not really relevant to me until they start crafting new and more
terrifying tools of social manipulation to envelope the one they refuse to
touch because it's their cash cow.

I don't mean to single out Polygon. They, like any outlet trying to profit
from covering games, seems unable to move past the myopic coverage that
refuses to admit "toxic" "shitlords" are an emergent phenomenon of life (as we
currently know it). They seem hell bent on never looking at what it means for
societies to have such large chunks of their population engage with software
explicitly designed for emotional impact. Some of which knowingly and
willfully employ techniques of physiological manipulation.

Games press is visibly scrambling for meaning beyond toy purchase advice. That
service is becoming available from more sources than ever. The editors are
getting older on average and looking for more substance out of their life's
work. This kind of coverage has the potential for an editorial voice unique to
game coverage, instead of being hangers-on that poorly cover widespread social
politics in an embarrassingly transparent attempt for relevance.

Instead of any of that, I got to read the hot take "maybe this guy does more
damage banned than unbanned." So I'll reiterate my question: Am I supposed to
care?

~~~
spdionis
> Certainly easier than to employ systems thinking about why players are
> pushed into states conductive to being upset by others, or wanting to upset
> others.

League of Legends and its genre are popular because of the highly competitive
nature of the game. A highly competitive game naturally leads to frustration
sometimes. The only way to take away the frustration is to remove the
competition (and ruin the game).

Do you have any other proposals?

~~~
forgottenpass
_Do you have any other proposals?_

I'm not proposing to change what makes a MOBA a MOBA.

I'm proposing that Polygon acknowledge the social aspect of a MOBA (and other
games) beyond a surface level. As a system with inputs, outputs and feedback
loops. Elevate their readers understanding, rather than write advertizing for
a YouTuber.

Provide an understanding where the idea a malicious banned user burning
through troll accounts might cause less damage if unbanned and given a stake
in their status within the artificial system is no longer a novel idea.
Because it's not a novel idea of user moderation.

------
Synaesthesia
With the swearing and outbursts and mania, sounds like he may have Tourette's
which may give you "prematurely fast reflexes".

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/03/why-
tourett...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/03/why-tourette-s-
may-be-tim-howard-s-secret-weapon-on-the-field.html)

~~~
Cpoll
It's worth noting that swearing isn't a commonality among Tourette's
sufferers. The condition is more accurately "motor and vocal tics," not
uncontrollable swearing.

------
zepolen
And now his popularity is going to soar even more.

------
Benjamin_Dobell
I don't play LoL (or any games frequently). However, what sort of backlash
would there be if Riot were to remove Draven from the game for a month?

~~~
vanattab
Draven is not the problem. It's the players intentional "feeding". Which in
LoL vernacular is when I player intentionally lets the other team kill them
for gold and money.

~~~
Benjamin_Dobell
My logic was that the article says he only plays _seriously_ with Draven,
which allows him to consistently rank up. He then trolls/feeds when Draven is
unavailable to him due to roster lock-out. Presumably he finds it a challenge
to rank-up with Draven over and over. If he can't play as Draven he can't
rank-up and _may_ stop playing. Or worse case his rank will be so bad that
he'll only feed in low-rank games.

Either that or the LoL community should collectively agree to roster out
Draven of every single match for the foreseeable future.

------
lackbeard
Many of the design decisions in this game seem bad and arbitrary. Why have
bans and why limit to 1 of each character per game? Why not let everyone play
who the want?

~~~
maruhan2
"Why have bans"

The so called "normal mode" is one where there are no bans. Rank mode,
however, have bans because with so many characters it's impossible to be
perfectly balanced, and some will be distinctively stronger than others. Just
by picking them first, you'll be in a much better spot, which goes against the
competitive nature. So, you get to ban those characters. (Then, you might
question why there is pick order instead of everyone choosing what they want
at the same time. I'll get to that.) In addition, in adds a strategic element.
For example, say you are really good at one character but that character is
particularly weak against another character. You can ban that option out.

About why there is pick order. In the normal mode, there is no pick order. In
rank, there is because it adds a strategic element. It allows you to try to
pick characters that will most amplify your team's strategy or nullify your
opponent's strategy. This also helps with balancing since you don't want to
have a strategy that completely by chance happens to be countered by the
opposing strategy.

"Why 1 character per game"

This can be put to two options. First option is controlling many characters at
once like starcraft. Second option is being able to swap out characters mid-
game like overwatch. This is purely based on decisions of what make games fun.
About the first option of controlling one character, this game structure is
based off DOTA which is a mod for Warcraft 3. People liked DOTA because
instead of the trouble of controlling multiple characters in Warcraft 3, for
many people, it was more intuitive and hence more fun to control one
character. It also highlights different skillsets where controlling one
character rewards more on accuracy and reflexes, while controlling many
rewards more on macro decision making.

The second option is likely arbitrary. One can totally make the same game
where you can swap out characters mid-game. But that would make it harder to
balance characters and items properly, which is why I think the original DOTA
decided to just go with playing one all throughout the game. And in my biased
opinion, it wouldn't particularly be any more fun to be able to swap mid-game
anyway.

