Originally Posted by Riot Ambassador

Hey xXHeather92!

You bring up some good points overall about the Tribunal system. Some of them are a bit of conjecture on the part of players about how the Tribunal works. But others are some good ideas on how the system can be. I figured I’d go down over a few of your points and hopefully provide a little more insight into the system.

Purposely Feeding is an important category in the Tribunal. It’s one of the dramatic ways a player can troll and ruin the experience of the rest of his team. It’s also a category that’s frequently thrown around by other players as a threat. We’ve all had our bad games where someone says they’re going to report us. I usually just laugh it off and keep playing, because the reality is, even if that player does report me; even if the entire team reported me, I would still most likely not appear in the Tribunal for Feeding.

This is because the Tribunal has built in safeguards against this kind of abuse by players who want to report others for every little thing.

We all know THAT GUY: you gave up first blood and he claims “gg noobs” and reports you for feeding. Unfortunately for him, the more often he reports other players for non-issues the less “weight” that is given his Tribunal reporting power. So if he reports 200 people for Feeding, and only one person is ever actually punished, then he’s pretty much shooting himself in the foot for future reports.

Now here is where player perception and our own knowledge differ. We regularly audit the Tribunal system to ensure that the proper judgments are being made and that abuse is not happening. What this means is we’ll take judged cases and compare the decisions made by the Community with those made by our special Tribunal team. In all cases we’ve found that the Community has been surprisingly consistent with the Summoner’s Code. (Funny enough, they’ve actually been more lenient then we would be!)

What does this mean? Well for one, players are not getting suspended for feeding just because they played a bad game. When you’re in the Tribunal it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between someone purposely feeding, and someone actually playing a bad game. Thankfully the Community knows how to use the evidence we provide in each case to determine the difference.

We don’t really feel a screenshot would provide any better information than that which we already provide in each case. You can easily tell if a player is breaking the Summoner Code by looking at the in-game chat; their item’s purchased, how far they leveled, and in-game score. And since screenshots are just still images, they won’t minimize false reports. What’s stopping someone from grabbing a screenshot of you getting ganked and then claiming that you purposely ran off on your own to feed the enemy? But ultimately this ties into my earlier point, players who repeatedly make false reports have the weight of their reports reduced.


This is a pretty good suggestion and we’ve been hearing it a lot lately. We believe that after a careful evaluation of your behavior it’s pretty easy to determine why you were banned. However that’s not to say that we think the Tribunal doesn’t have room to grow. As we continue to improve the system we’re constantly on the lookout for constructive criticism like this.

It’s an interesting suggestion for the system, but something we feel that could be easily exploitable by those with enough friends who can hand out free karma. It does bring up an interesting point though. Are there ways to reward positive game behavior in League of Legends in a manner that won’t be abused or exploited? We don’t really have a stance on this yet but it is something we’ve thought about.

RoreBAWW
Riot Ambassador

Originally Posted by Riot Ambassador

It’s an interesting suggestion for the system, but something we feel that could be easily exploitable by those with enough friends who can hand out free karma. It does bring up an interesting point though. Are there ways to reward positive game behavior in League of Legends in a manner that won’t be abused or exploited? We don’t really have a stance on this yet but it is something we’ve thought about.

Originally Posted by Riot Ambassador

Hey xXHeather92!

You bring up some good points overall about the Tribunal system. Some of them are a bit of conjecture on the part of players about how the Tribunal works. But others are some good ideas on how the system can be. I figured I’d go down over a few of your points and hopefully provide a little more insight into the system.

Purposely Feeding is an important category in the Tribunal. It’s one of the dramatic ways a player can troll and ruin the experience of the rest of his team. It’s also a category that’s frequently thrown around by other players as a threat. We’ve all had our bad games where someone says they’re going to report us. I usually just laugh it off and keep playing, because the reality is, even if that player does report me; even if the entire team reported me, I would still most likely not appear in the Tribunal for Feeding.

Originally Posted by xXHeather92

This is where you are wrong, I often legitmately build AP amumu or odd item builds and am playing seriously, I've played AD sona and was 100% serious about it

Originally Posted by xXHeather92

there's been many wrongful bans with this system

Originally Posted by Lordnewb

With regard to Riot Ambassador's comment on a karma system, as shown below:



Why not restrict karma voting (+ or - karma) to players who are not friends of the evaluated player? This would prevent friends from abusing the system and ensures that someone's karma is weighted only by those who do not interact with the evaluated player on a regular basis.

In light of the generally poor sportsmanship observed in the LoL community, it is very likely that a player will get significantly more karma downvotes than upvotes, due to:
1. Troll players who would want to abuse the system
2. Players just getting ticked off at someone for dominating them/winning an in-game debate/rivalry with them
3. Players have already been conditioned to recognize and report players who get on their nerves/display negative behavior, but have not been conditioned to recognize and praise-report players who display great sportsmanship/cooperation, as there is no incentive/reward for being a good sport apart from avoiding punishment.

For these reasons, karma upvotes should have 150-200% the value of karma downvotes. Displaying great sportsmanship would be much more rewarding due to this.

Matchmaking should also be modified to weigh the karma of players being matched up, to match up players of similar karma, forcing trolls to have to face other trolls, hopefully as a form of reforming the player or something. New players should start with a set amount of positive karma so that they aren't immediately matched against trolls and whatnot.

TL;DR - Riot should implement the karma system. Only non-friends can vote on someone's karma so the system isn't abused, and karma downvotes hold less weight than upvotes, and karma should become a factor in matchmaking. New players start with positive karma to avoid matching up with trolls right off the bat.