The difficulty in banning ‘most toxic League of Legends player in North America’
polygon.com
polygon.com
You want to fight bad behavior online? Show no mercy.
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?
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?
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.
Do you consider LoL to be a game structured in such a way that it brings the worst out in people? And therefore we shouldn't care about the troubles of an admin, because it is the game designer who, so to speak, designed the game for trolling behaviour?
I didn't say we "shouldn't care about the troubles of an admin." I'm specifically scoping around my disagreement with Polygon over what's noteworthy. This article falls into the category defined by the old saying "news is only there to fill up the space between the ads."
We can care about the troubles of an admin on an interpersonal (or any other) level, just like we can care about anyone with an unpleasant job. That's largely a different topic.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/03/why-tourett...
Either that or the LoL community should collectively agree to roster out Draven of every single match for the foreseeable future.
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.