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Introducing the new League of Legends "rescue" system

DWlGHT K SCHRUTE··202 votes·7,777 views

Greetings Summoners,

We are proud to introduce the new "rescue" system where players can queue into a role and summoner which was lost on the battlefield due to a disconnect or leave. In effect you will be able to "rescue" a team in distress because of a lost player.

  • The key feature of this system includes the ability to queue for a specific role to be filled, i.e. Jungle, Support, Top, Mid, or ADC
  • Another key feature of this system includes a display of the champions which are available to play for the correct role. This will avoid the summoner being queued with an unfamiliar champion which he/she has never played before.
  • A summoner will be able to assume where the previous player left off which includes keeping the same items and gold accumulated
  • Bonus IP will be rewarded after successfully joining and completing a rescue game, win or loss
  • A rescue player will also get a ribbon and summoner icon after successfully completing (X) games.
  • Note: Only players which have been disconnected more than (X) minutes will get a leave and have their champion's role filled.

This is what I'd expect to see Riot implement, or something like it very soon. The game has been plagued with leavers and disconnects from champion select for many years. Make it so Riot :)

Please upvote and comment if you like this idea or what could be changed.

143 Comments

iainB8545 votes

Hmmm, so two years ago the player behavior team said it was obvious that Champion Select was the best area to place their efforts.

Fast forward two years to present day, and people can still troll as much as they want in champion select without fear of punishment. Further than that, the only way to avoid this troll is to take a penalty yourself.

Bravo!

Dengeden1 votes

Don't change the subject. If they didn't troll in champ select, they'd troll somewhere else. Whatever miracle cure you have in mind isn't going to work, it's logically impossible.

iainB852 votes

Or... OR... just bare with me a moment, I know this is going to be pretty outside the box... they could keep track of chat from Champion Select all the way through to Post Game chat, so that you can report someone for trolling at any point of the match, rather than just the game itself.

I KNOW, I KNOW... pretty crazy and hard to understand, huh?

Dengeden1 votes

Ah it's good to be back! I was under the impression that you were illicitly advocating a "vote kick" system, which is inherently flawed.

Just keeping track of champ select chat on the other hand? Good idea, it wouldn't change much though. You can always take screenshots.

disregardable21 votes

It's not going to be implemented soon, if ever. To quote Riot Montag's post from 2 years ago,

Any solution is theoretically possible, including bringing a human in to cover for an AFK player. But to bring it out of theoretical and actually build it, we'd have to solve a few things to get there. How do we source those players? How does the player know what they're getting into to start? How do we match skill -- and how do skill needs differ when the player is jumping into an unfamiliar game in progress with a potentially confusing build? How do you prevent abuse, so players can't AFK on purpose and self-select their Gold 1 friend into a Silver 5 game? Can you jump into a game with a champion you don't own? All of those are solveable if we worked at it. It's more a question of effort vs. impact. At the moment, champ select is clearly the most important way for the Player Behavior team to spend its time since it has the potential to have a large positive impact on all games. AFKs is important but not necessarily the most important, given the effort.

It's similar to deciding when to dragon, when to baron, when to B to buy that item. You have to pick the option that will net you the most gold for the least risk -- you could Baron now, but with their entire team top and mid, it might not be a good idea. It might be better to farm now so you're more likely to win that Baron or dragon fight later. That's how we approach all feature development at Riot: highest value for the effort.

AMYS GRAVE1 votes

basically this.

It Hertz When IP15 votes

I would instead say to convert the AFK player's items into gold, as not every champ builds the same items.

Other than that... I like this, and would volunteer in a heartbeat for it.

CyberTootie1 votes

But the other team may have built around that build.

Diananmen Square1 votes

But if the AFK player was playing an AP mid laner and got replaced by an AD mid laner, for example an Ahri went afk and got replaced by a Zed.

Therefore it would make complete sense to exchange the items into gold.

CyberTootie1 votes

In no way should it be possible to switch champions in such a scenario. For starters, it would negate the draft. And the draft is part of the game.

Diananmen Square1 votes

That makes sense.

L Rayquaza2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Darien Juranas,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=20gJ3XLW,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-06-16T12:41:15.108+0000)

I would instead say to convert the AFK player's items into gold, as not every champ builds the same items.

Other than that... I like this, and would volunteer in a heartbeat for it.

I think that you are supposed to play who they played

Oberic3 votes

I would be happy either way, convert the items back to their gold, or leave it as is. Either is fine with me, as I have had extensive experience using off-builds in the past.. I really miss season 0 malady.

The Öutcast7 votes

I like this idea, here's how the idea would play out in my mind.

I log into league and go to start a game, there would be a rescue tab and it would be set up much like teambuilder, except I would be able to pick from a list of who disconnected from whatever game from those in my MMR (much like teambuilder, but it would look more like the custom games). I'd look to see what role is needed, I pick a game, and I enter the game with no items, but instead with total gold earned up to that point. I build into whatever path I choose, and head off into the game. The games can be ranked, and they could not be ranked. I wouldn't receive or lose ranking for completing that match, but instead get an IP bonus.

If, for whatever reason, I choose to be toxic in a rescue game, I would get reported and lose my rescue status and not be able to participate in rescue games. Another thing that should be implemented is a feedback tool that would be mandatory (gray out the screen until the feedback is completed, could only take 30 seconds or so) in order to prevent abusing the system. If the player was too good for the match, the feedback would show that result. If the player wasn't good enough, the feedback would show that result.

As far as petitioning for a rescue game, 3 out of the 4 remaining players would have to type in /rescue or something of the like to submit a rescue vote, so that if there is a premade 3 and for some reason 1 guy wasn't connected but will be in 30 seconds, he doesn't get left in the dirt. When a rescue vote is successful, the game could go on pause or the switch would be activated (loss forgiven) unless a player is found or if the original player came back. If a rescuer enters the game, the original player would receive a notification stating that he/she had been replaced, and he/she would receive a mandatory survey asking him why he/she had left, be it from a disconnect or toxic team members, in which case the game would be investigated. If the player stacks up enough leaves, ranked would become disabled for that player for X amount of time to prevent abusability.

As far as incentives for players to become rescuers. IP bonuses, a special ribbon upon completing X amount of games (OP's ideas), mystery skins, special thank you notification from riot, etc.

That's how I see it playing out, I think this is an awesome idea.

PaleMarionette2 votes

Okay This^

MUCH MUCH better. I love the idea of actually being able to explain why the disconnect happened. That's why my Fiance and I can't play ranked. We have Time Warner Cable and for some reason they disconnect us for weird 15 minute sections about 6-14 times a day at randoms times.

I don't even play Rift anymore for that reason. :/

Really great idea though.

canpan145 votes

On paper it sounds nice and fun. But what if a player just dced for a few minutes? When is the line drawn where someone can just take over the game? Does the rescuer gain/lose lp also?

CyberTootie5 votes

As much as I hate leavers, I don't see what's offered as a plausible solution.

What I wouldn't mind seeing would be automatic "grace" game pauses, with different caps on length and number on a per-player basis for disconnects not caused by willful player quitting.

Theory process:

  1. Non-intentional player disconnect detected
  2. Play continues for a few seconds AKA "buffer time" (Maybe... but there already is a buffer time before player triggers as disconnected in-game)
  3. Has disconnected player reached any cap? (Suggested: 150 second total grace period, per game and 2 grace stoppages, per game) If yes, end process.
  4. Game pause global announcement "A summoner has disconnected... prepare for pause in 5 seconds!" or something like that
  5. If disconnected player has not reconnected after 5 seconds, game is paused
  6. Once the grace period cap is reached, or the disconnected player reconnects, or the team of the disconnected player votes unanimously to force unpause, game resume global announcement "The battle will resume in 10 seconds!"
  7. After 10 seconds, game is unpaused
DirkTarTar4 votes

This sounds amazing! I would totally be bouncing around there to be the "11th hour savior"

LittleBlast3 votes

What if the person comes back?

Dreadlocks11 votes

Give the player 5 mins to come back, if he/she doesn't come back, tough shit.

Aevo 554 votes

If their client crashes or laptop runs out of power etc. then if might take them 10+ minutes to reconnect. If they DO come back, there should be a message saying "the summoner (or whatever they are now) you have replaced has reconnected." You would get a bit of IP for holding their place for that time, then you could go sub another game. If somebody RQs, chances are they won't be coming back.

Dreadlocks6 votes

If some1 is gone for 10+ minutes its probably not worth coming back at that point anyways lol... 5 minutes is plenty of time.

S W A G B O Y S1 votes

what if they have a shitty computer?

Dreadlocks2 votes

Then he pays the consequences.. not the other 9 players..

Leetri1 votes

Depends on the team. :P One game I blue-screened just as the loading screen popped up, and then the client crashed 2 times after the restart as well. Took almost 30 minutes to reconnect to the game. I expected us being at Nexus towers and they'd flame me like crazy. Turns out, we're at the enemy inhibs in all lanes, 10 kills ahead and they were really cool about it. Obviously that's a 1 in a million game, but it happens.

Dreadlocks3 votes

exactly its not common.

RisenDarkKnight3 votes

The major issue with this is that if a player temporarily disconnects then comes back. When I was at college our wifi would flucuate a lot so some game I would dc for 30 secs or so every third game or so. I was playing jungle so it didn't usually matter much since I wouldn't die during the disconnects very often. If the system waits 2 mins for the player to reconnect, the enemy team might tend to get enough of a lead in that time that the rescuing players might only have 45% or so winrate. If the system immediately looks for a replacement player people will get screwed out of games if their internet isn't perfect. Also, this system wouldn't work well in ranked where it is most needed because the rescuing player might gain lp for only playing the last 2 mins of a winning game or lose lp for connecting to a game to replace a feeder who is 0/20/0. Therefore the rescuer couldn't earn lp, and the other players in the game woulnd't be able to either unless the rescuer is very close in elo/mmr to the person he/she replaced which would be hard to do in a timely fashion unless queing as a rescuer becomes super popular. It is a good idea though, just not simple to implement.

Keltari3 votes

This just wouldnt work. Every player plays the same champ in different ways. Some build the champ AP, some go AD. Some build their masteries and runes one way, while other's go another. A player coming into "rescue" will have a champ who's items, summoner spells, chose abilities, runes, and masteries which are completely different than their personal build, would be severely gimped, at best. And you cant allow the new player to use their runes and masteries, or respend their level points, etc... as it would be unfair to the other team to have a champ that suddenly has a ton more of a stat they were not accounting for.

DirkTarTar6 votes

That's why it would make for an amazing challenge!!!! and the person that plays with the handicap gets the extra bonuses!

AND would you rather have someone come to HELP in whatever way possible than to finish out a game from minute 5 to 20 while one man down?

I'd dive head long into this, and so would a lot of people who don't run away at a challenge or surrender after the first failed team fight

Oberic4 votes

I'm with DirkTarTar here.

I would queue up, no care of role, character, map, mode or build. I would love to pop into a leaver's seat, regardless of the situation.

Those games where you pop in, and make a difference, and you help a team doomed to lose, to win. It is an amazing feeling.

Arch Mage Magnus3 votes

Inb4 trolls connect just to throw someones game.

SlushieDee1 votes

They could get banned from doing rescues if they troll, which would prevent this kind of abuse.

Arch Mage Magnus2 votes

{quoted}

They could get banned from doing rescues if they troll, which would prevent this kind of abuse.

Cause Riot's already doing a great job banning the trolls right?

Terchio3 votes

I don't think anyone would take this seriously, first off. It would be an option to troll and troll hard, as this game shouldn't count for whoever came in, win, loss, and/or report (maybe honor). Second, I couldn't imagine the system finding a player who likes your champion, just how you build it (runes/masteries), in your ELO. And third, when does this activate exactly? What if the first guy ends up coming back from disconnect? What if I finally do get in a match with my fave top, Gangplank, only to find he's playing support? Too many loose ends that just round off easier if you say that you'll play shorthanded sometimes, and sometimes you'll be on the powerplay. If it doesn't even out over time, that means either you're one unlucky guy, or Riot should take a strong look at the matchmaking system, which I wouldn't say is completely off the table in my mind.

Aevo 551 votes

The substitutes would NEED to be abel to be reported for this to work. This would get overrun by trolls so quickly if they couldnt be reported.

Terchio1 votes

Problem is, it has to be similar to the good Samaritan law. If someone is deathly injured/ill/choking/whatever, and someone has a possibility to stop it, they have the right to try to fix the situation scot-free. If they could be prosecuted, say for giving CPR wrong, it would stop people from attempting to help in dire situations such as that. Report function isn't quite parallel to it, but quite similar, and I don't think it would be appropriate for someone potentially fixing a "dead situation" in the first place.

Aevo 551 votes

Obviously the substitutes couldn't be reported for performing badly, as they are more than likely going to walk into a lane that's been fed and the person RQ'd. If the substitute is purposely trolling or something they should be reported.

Singing Lark3 votes

This sounds nice but it has some issues in terms of execution.

  1. If the AFK tries to come back past the time limit, do they get an AFk then? What if it's because they have a slow computer? Or slow internet connection? I've had games where it's taken me up 15 minutes to reconnect.

  2. What if the AFK abuses this, popping back into the game right before the time limit is up?

  3. How many people are willing to queue into a game as a champ that will be 1. behind due to being AFK for a while, and 2. have a possibly different build/skill leveling order than what they are used to? This could be fixed by letting the new player respend their skill points and gold. But still, you're at least 5 minutes behind in gold and XP, and you never know how badly the AFKer may have been farming. I don't know about you, but I'm very miserable when I'm behind in gold and XP due to a connection issue forcing me to AFK for a few minutes. Plus, there are over 100 some champs in League, the queue times for this could be enormous.

  4. The fact that your starting a game from the middle means you have to learn how reliable the rest of your teammates are during the middle of the game rather than at the start. Which sometimes can be a problem.

  5. Ragers may use this system to get out of bad games that they think they'll lose in. (Despite leaverbuster.)

  6. The biggest issue is that this doesn't solve the problem that people are getting AFK players. In the end, the issue is that there are enough people who AFK in games that it's effecting a large population of people and their gameplay. The issue with AFK is that now you're without one 1 player, and if they come back, they'll be behind. With this system, you're still going to be playing catch up, and no one wants to play catch up. No matter how smoothly the system goes, there is no denying that you will always end up behind because you've been away for 5 minutes. And that's what really needs to be solved in order for this to work.

IF those issues can be addressed though, I think this idea has potential. (Though, I'll be honest, I personally prefer the "forfeit after 10 min AFK with no loss counted" way of resolution.)

Dragonflight3 votes

League of Legends Red/Blue Rescue Team™

SlushieDee2 votes

Why can I only upvote this once ;-;

Apollocliptic2 votes

It might not be so simple, But I love the idea, as you said, if not this, something similar would be good (or synchronise team building to fill in these roles)

Snow Taradien2 votes

Why not the strife route? If they afk for 5 mins, their current gold is distributed among all players currently on the team and all players on that team get a passive gpm boost.

DirkTarTar1 votes

That sounds dope.... hello 26/1 tryndamere going afk so that his team can share his 21k gp

Snow Taradien3 votes

Why is it always Tryndy's and rivens that disconnect?

Shac Norris1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Snow Taradien,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=20gJ3XLW,comment-id=0009,timestamp=2015-06-16T16:40:07.444+0000)

Why not the strife route? If they afk for 5 mins, their current gold is distributed among all players currently on the team and all players on that team get a passive gpm boost.

no no, if you have 1 hyper carry in your team and he's doing good, if you start giving more gold to him he's just going to carry even more, then the other person comes back and just has to farm items once again

Snow Taradien1 votes

Except isnt that fair though? One person doing really well on a team is only one person out of five, and further is only one person out of four in an uneven 4v5 match. So really even that slippery slope situation isnt so bad, and GPM really only helps one team get ahead enough to even the field midgame. At the end only itemization and mechanics really count so the 5man team is still at the advantage.

Dengeden2 votes

It begs the question how difficult this would be to implement. Would you copy their runes, even though you probably don't have their set-up? There's also the whole "players performing badly will be pressured into leaving" thing.

SouL1ess2 votes

Good Luck With The Coding Lol

Snakezzy2 votes

Maybe at the end of a game which a rescuer was in, the people who were on the team with the rescuer rate his attitude and his performance on a 1-5 scale to keep the trolls away.

ModFrom The Cosmos2 votes

I've thought about doing this before and the only thing left out here is a real incentive.

Think of it as doing community service for the community. Allowing people with AFks to get that 5th person back and maybe win the game.

I propose that we offer extremely high IP gains or the potential to get discounts off of RP and/or champions. (Adding RP incentive will still make Riot money and keep thing profitable)

We could also force chat banned people to queue in the Community Service queue either as punishment or offer the Community Service games double the value of the normal queue so that chat banned players can lift their punishment earlier by doing some actual good.

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