Tying crafting loot to getting S rank will encourage bad behavior

CrazyGoNuts·Jan 19, 2016·5 votes·1,383 views

Right now on the PBE the way you earn loot chests for the crafting system is to earn an S rank on a champion. This is going to encourage bad play, specifically it will encourage people to not end games that they are winning by a large margin and instead to keep farming the enemy champs for kills to boost their match rank.

Please, the matchmaking rank is pretty arbitrary and unrelated to actually playing the game well, don't add in a system that pays people to game it.

12 Comments

Phoenix Kotori Jan 19, 20163 votes

S rank is based on performance that accounts for game length, so dragging the game out wouldn't have effect it, so idk why anyone do that.

JorenciceJan 19, 20163 votes

[{quoted}](name=Quinn of Yuri,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=IfloBBy7,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-01-19T19:31:00.982+0000)

S rank is based on performance that accounts for game length, so dragging the game out wouldn't have effect it, so idk why anyone do that.

^This. I've actually gotten more s ranks the shorter the game was.

Critmaster GarenJan 19, 20162 votes

i get s rank on my champions all the time. its not that hard. you should be able to get 4 chests in a month just by normally playing.

but i have a question. loot chests are tied to champions and capped at 1 champ per season. they also unlock if anyone of your teammates on a premade gets an s rank.

my question is, do you get the chest for your own champion you were playing that match, or for the champion your friend was playing?

Stiv1234Jan 19, 20162 votes

my question is, do you get the chest for your own champion you were playing that match, or for the champion your friend was playing?

The chest is counted for the champion you are playing.

Source: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/cuuOtBkZ-hextech-crafting-and-loot-qa?comment=00230002 #2

Critmaster GarenJan 19, 20161 votes

{quoted}

The chest is counted for the champion you are playing.

Source: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/cuuOtBkZ-hextech-crafting-and-loot-qa?comment=00230002 #2

whelp. i like to play a handful of champions, and i already own all of them. so ill get maybe 6 to 7 chests per season and half of the content they unlock is useless.

fuck me.

Valderis VandalaJan 19, 20162 votes

Only dumb people would do that... Ok granted thats probably the majority anyway. XD

But seriously, mastery rank isn't related or based on KDA, nor does anyone know what it is based on so there can be no encouragement of any kind because there are no known variables people can focus on to abuse.

The only encouragement that can exist comes from people like yourself, who post nonsense ideas on the web for people to mindlessly follow. If you say people will be encouraged to not end games to boost themselves to S rank then some people who read this and happen to not be informed about the truth will get the impression they can boost themselves to S rank because they read it somewhere, because why would people be concerned about such a thing if it wasn't true and bla bla bla you get the picture.

So if you are truly concerned about this the best thing you can do is not help spread this kind of misinformation.

QuephaJan 19, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Valderis Vandala,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=IfloBBy7,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2016-01-19T20:58:05.542+0000)

But seriously, mastery rank isn't related or based on KDA

It is at least partially related to those statistics

nor does anyone know what it is based on so there can be no encouragement of any kind because there are no known variables people can focus on to abuse.

People will try to find what it is based on and try to abuse it (assuming that getting the S ranks are difficult enough that they want to look into ways to save time). Just because Riot doesn't tell us how it works doesn't mean people can't figure it out at least partially with effort, nor does it mean there are no flaws in the system. Although it might lead people to find patterns that aren't really there and make false conclusions about the system and how to game it, which could end up with some REALLY toxic behavior.

Valderis VandalaJan 19, 20161 votes

{quoted}

It is at least partially related to those statistics

We can only guess and speculate on that, and quote whatever Riot has to say on the matter. (I don't see how you can have a partial relation to KDA. You either use those stats or you don't, there's nothing partial here. You can't partially use your number of deaths in a game as a stat, you either use it in your calculations or you don't.)

I have no doubt that people will try to figure out Riots methods of calculating mastery rank. But I suspect their methods are far too complex to figure out, of course I could be wrong but so far nobody has found any success with it so we'll just have to wait and see. And sure, some may even somehow get toxic trying to figure it out, but I have yet to meet a single one that did though, or even tried. So thats all just hypothetical to me and not a good reason to scrap a system that might end up benefiting me. Though I will admit that I hardly ever play normals so I don't expect to meet the people that would exhibit such toxicity. But even here on the forums I hardly ever seen anything about it, its always just people asking how this stuff works instead.

EDIT: So far the only ones with bad behavior on this stuff is people like you. XD

QuephaJan 19, 20162 votes

[{quoted}](name=Valderis Vandala,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=IfloBBy7,comment-id=000200000000,timestamp=2016-01-19T21:53:25.652+0000)

You either use those stats or you don't, there's nothing partial here.

If they don't use those values in their equations they probably would use things like 'damage dealt' and you generally deal more damage when you're getting kills and not dying. That makes it partially related to k/d/a and also a stat that is pretty obvious in how it can be farmed by delaying the game.

Valderis VandalaJan 19, 20161 votes

So we are simply not talking about the same kind of "partial", thats fine.

While any stat can be farmed the use of this is unknown at best.

All you need is a time component to make farming such a stat irreverent, but even if this wasn't implemented match time by itself will tend to devalue farming because it leads to more mistakes and comebacks and thus lowering your rating by other means.

Farming may even have a negative effect, if for example there are build in thresholds that when exceeded give you a penalty to your rating instead to prevent exactly this kind of behavior.

Farming may even be a mood point, perhaps its a percentile comparative stat along with your damage received as compared to your enemies, so no matter how much you farm unless you find a way to increase that percentile gap between you and them you're not gaining anything out of it.

We don't know if farming stats has any use, maybe yes, maybe no, maybe both at the same time, we simply don't know. We don't even know how to go about testing for this because we simply don't know how many other variables we have to take into account.

QuephaJan 19, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Valderis Vandala,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=IfloBBy7,comment-id=00020000000000000000,timestamp=2016-01-19T23:47:10.889+0000)

While any stat can be farmed the use of this is unknown at best.

Keeping the information on how to get s ranks from players does not at all imply that players will not try to figure it out. WoW raiders spent an enormous amount of time and effort trying to figure out how they could keep Onyxia from using her "Deep Breath" ability. It was entirely random and out of their control but hours and hours were spent trying to look at statistics and time when they triggered certain phases of the fight, or completing certain quest chains, or trying different party make ups just to make this one ability show up less often.

Whether or not you can game the system (but you probably can) is irrelevant. The point is that players will TRY to no matter what. This is the reason that Riot never added an 'achievement' system in the game and is very hesitant to even add things like summoner icons as rewards for in game actions that aren't simply winning or losing (like the ascension summoner icon that generated way more salt than it should've from people who got repeatedly juked out of it)

Valderis VandalaJan 20, 20161 votes

I think that people trying to figure this out is not necessarily toxic.

In order to get workable results you need a controlled environment, playing against people you don't know is never such a thing, playing with and against friends would allow you to control their behavior and thus get better results. Anyone who is actually serious about finding exploits will do so with friends instead of ruining random matches against strangers.

Which is not to say there won't be people trying it in normals vs strangers, just that it would be less then you expect it to be, besides we can always just report those people for their asinine behavior.

But whether it will happen or how it will happen its not worth scrapping a feature unless this actually gets out of hand.