Riot. Please. For the love of your own fanbase. For the love of your own loyal players. Who are willing to pay money. Are willing to try and be cooperative and friendly. Are willing to try and learn your game, to enjoy your game, and even shovel money in your general direction out of appreciation of your game and the content you produce.
Either put in a confirmation window for Kalista's soulbinding, or remove it entirely. Yes I know removing it entirely sounds extremely harsh. But I've seen it used as a tool of harassment far more than I've seen it be used for good purposes. That kinda spreads a lot of negativity around your game's community. Makes people mad. Makes people not want to play. Makes people not want to pay money for your game, because they're a little mad that you've put in a character with a mechanic that was so obviously abusable right from the very beginning. I don't know if this was some kind of oversight, or if there is some kind of option that lets you refuse the soulbinding. But I am running with what I can see right now, and right now a player is unable to refuse the soulbinding. At least put in a consenting window. Then a player can just think. "Oh well okay, I won't consent to letting ImmaTrollU1992 soulbind me ever again" if they end up getting harassed. The player will have a means with which to avoid it. And maybe put a cooldown mechanic, or a refusal option that lasts the entire match, so the confirmation window can't be spammed.
You can't force trust. Kalista's soulbinding mechanic seems to be about trust and communication between two people. So that they can both kick as much butt as possible with a fun and cool mechanic. In theory. There is no trust in what she has right now, it's just one player enforcing their will on another and taking them along for the ride. It wouldn't be so bad if the player could AT LEAST refuse to be picked up and carried around, but they can't even do that. In practice. It kinda sucks, because it can be quite badly abused if the guilty party just feels the bizarre need to harass somebody. There are no hoops to jump through. No confirmations. Nothing. They can just go Kalista and have fun at somebody else's expense on a whim. And that's assuming their intentions are malicious and they're not just idiots, or not playing well.
Before anybody complains about the relevancy. The bulk of this rant, and no I am not going to deny that it is a rant, is aimed at Kalista and champs who can meddle with their teammates. Which I believe includes Bard. During a recent incident, I was made (yes, made, I would've loved to leave but leavebuster kinda got in the way, and I don't want to get banned for leaving matches filled with trolls) to watch a Volibear player get harassed by a Kalista player while the two other players in the group who were clearly in on it had the time of their lives stalling the match. Preventing Voli from getting any kills, and calling the Voli player a baby when he quite politely asked the Kalista to stop messing with him. The people ganging up on Voli claimed that they did not know each other, and that they weren't in cahoots. Even if they weren't working together, the three of them together were being a lot more than just a little "mean" to this one player. And as much as I would've loved to say. "Hey, come on Voli. Let's leave these bums, form a group, and see if we can get in a good match with some nicer players. We'll see how far they get with only three people". I couldn't bloody do that, because both he and I would've possibly been punished for leaving. I've already been booted from a match twice because of connection hiccups, and while I won't deny that if my net is being iffy then I shouldn't even be playing. I do NOT want to be punished for doing the right thing in denying somebody the chance to do the wrong thing, only to reward them by getting myself banned in the process. Fix Leavebuster to make exceptions. Fix Soulbinding. Do one, do both. Just please, do something about this. I know this post is a little irrelevant because it went from "CHANGE KALISTA PLOX" to "LEAVEBUSTER SUCKS :(". But I would've gladly removed myself from the matches these events happened in, and even tried to take the other people I saw getting picked on with me to go have actual matches if I could. I could not. In fact, I'm pretty sure the three other players reported me for the sake of trolling, and I'm worried the Volibear player reported me out of spite for keeping quiet and not defending him. I did what I believed was best, and I sat in silence and did the one thing I knew could end the match without repercussions. Try to win it, to free us both. But I still would've greatly preferred either not being in the situation in the first place or having the choice to leave it. Maybe even being helpful by convincing the player being targeted to leave with me, and join me in another match.
Please do something about this, Riot. I want to give you my money for your game in which I am having fun. I think I might've even wanted to buy Kalista because I think she's neat, but I'm not going to bother if going Kalista makes everybody on my side soil their pants in unison, and makes them want to leave, which in turn could possibly get them banned. I don't like being cornered in a position where my options are stay and be abused, or leave and give the abusers the knowledge that they might actually get me banned. It's bad enough that I get a few snide comments based on my champion choices just from the metagame existing.
For the record, this was a lot longer and had a lot of detailed retellings of personal encounters. I trimmed the hell out of it and it's still this long. I'm not going to deny that there is more than just a bit of emotion in this, and if I trimmed it any more it would start to lose that. But hopefully all this is taken sincerely.
A Kalista that can't soulbind without consent, is better for your player's moods than a Kalista that actually puts people off your game and causes your players to collectively exclaim "Oh hell no" at the champion select screen upon seeing a Kalista player. She's just way too easy to harass with right now, and that will just draw more trolls when they hear how easy it is to use her that way. Besides. A confirmation window will make it harder for accidental or "it was an accident lol oh well" soulbinding to happen.
No doubt somebody has something to say about my post, but I just needed to get this off my chest. Sorry for the length, but this was as short as I could get it while retaining everything I wanted to say.
