Summoners!
The player behavior team has been working hard to redefine our vision of what punishments and rewards mean in League of Legends; we have been working hard towards a day where we don't have to utilize time bans. Although they have shown success in helping players improve their behaviors, we believe we can do even better by using account restrictions that teach and spread what sportsmanlike behavior looks like while still allowing players to play League of Legends on their main account. For the past three months, we have been testing our new Restricted Chat Mode, and the results have been interesting.
When we combine chat restrictions with timebans, we see a 15% decrease in the number of players who return to the Tribunal within the month. Players that complete their chat restrictions see up to a 20% decrease in the number of reports that they receive from fellow players.
When we first thought about account restrictions, we noticed that a lot of game studios opted to completely mute players and disable their ability to chat in games at all; however, we were inspired by the psychology of feedback and wanted to try something different. In Restricted Chat Mode, we wanted to put players into a situation where they had limited chat resources that would accrue over time; these players must think carefully about whether to use their chat messages for sportsmanlike behaviors, or for toxicity. If players chose to still use the chat messages for toxicity, they quickly hit a message cap and are effectively muted, which acts as immediate feedback to the player that their behavior is not cool. This experiment serves a dual purpose: it gives players an opportunity to learn what sportsmanlike behavior is, but if the player remains toxic, the feature shields other players from this behavior.
We've gotten some great feedback from players about Restricted Chat Mode Many players have noted how Restricted Chat Mode has taught them about sportsmanlike language, and how the mode has been helping them manage their behaviors and win more games. Many players have also asked whether they can opt-in to Restricted Chat Mode permanently. We're not quite sure how we want to handle this yet, but we wanted to share some initial results of this experiment.
We look forward to talking more about iterations to Restricted Chat Mode, and new player behavior features in the future!