AFKs, leavers, and how Riot could/should handle it

-- Disclaimer -- Did not know where to post this exactly. I thought gameplay/balance could do it. Yes, this topic makes me rage. A lot.

This subject might have already been discussed. In that case, no problem. Riot, still read it. It could give you some ideas.

It is quite long, take some patience. Interesting and serious part is at bottom. -- End of disclaimer --

Hello Community,

So I think this is something everybody, I mean, EVERY player in the League has encountered. A lot. And for some reasons, because Murphy is always with us, it occurs even more when we are in a promotion serie. And I'm pissed. I mean, PISSED !

AFKs, leavers and disconnected players. I might be cursed or something, but I woulnd't be far from the truth if I said I have in 20 to 25% of my games someones who afk/dc and we lose because of this. That's huge. Yes I know there is the tribunal. Yes I know we can report players for being AFK. But seriously. Do really players get any bans for AFK ? If they repeatedly AFK on purpose, that would be fair. But how do you know they do it on purpose ? Could be a storm and the power goes down. Or for whatever reasons you get disconnected/have to leave. (I still understand that life>game thing, but other team members should NOT be blamed for the issues of one). Getting a ban for AFK isn't a good solution in my opinion, because I do believe most of the time they don't want to leave. And even in the case they do get banned, it doesn't change the fact that 4 -sometimes 3 and less- players get screwed in elo/rating/promo/whatever. And knowing that AFK gets banned won't change that. So basically the system screws the entire team because one of its member is unable to play for whatever the reasons, thus making an uneaven game.

So, how come there is nothing in the game to handle such a thing ? Of course you can still win 4v5. I won 4v5 several times. As I also lost 5v4. I guess it happened to everybody. But that's not the topic.

So Riot, no solutions for this ? You found one for LCS and Worlds at least. There is this "pause" option we see quite often on the streams. Why not implement such an option in game ?

Acutally, I already thought of something for you. What if there was a voting system for each team (or all 10 players) to cancel a game ? Blizzard had a pause system, and even a save option, in Starcraft 1. That's right. You could pause the game, save it, even with 8 players, and then reload it and continue the game like a week after, as long as the same 8 players were there. In WoW you can vote to kick someone from your group/instance/raid team. And that vacant place is automatically replaced by someone else, with the same role.

In DOTA 2 anyone can pause the game. Although the it doesn't seem so usefull, the option still exists. But most importantly, if a player disconnects for more than 5 minutes, the team mates can simply leave the game, without losing any ranking/elo.

Why is there no such thing here ? Now don't get me wrong. Voting to kick someone would be pretty stupid in League of Legends. That's not the idea.

But here are a few ideas that could work. What do you think ?

Establishing a way to open the vote What do I mean by that ? Simply that if there is an option to cancel a game, people would abuse it. Especially in teams I guess. That's why we need things like requirements to get in order to be able to open a vote (like waiting 20 minutes at least to surrender). These requirements could be:

• 1 player doesn't move/talk and is 100% innactive for more than 5 minutes
• 1 player gets disconnected for more than 5 minutes (in a block, not 5 times 1 minute)
• other ideas ?

Who could vote ? Now that the requirement is met, one team can open a vote. Would only the team that opens the vote be able to vote, or would it be open for all players ? This is an open question. Even though the only ones directly touched by an AFK is his team, I guess the vote could be open to all 9 other players.

Cancel the entire game This might be the most radical option. Once the vote is accepted, the game is canceled and does not count. No point loss or gain, for both team. Nothing. As if the game did not existed. In this case, the vote would obviously not be openend to the "strong team".

Cancel loss of losing team This could be the easiest solution. And maybe the fairest. The point loss is canceled for the losing team, as long as it's this team that openend the vote and has an AFK member. Of course the AFK player loses points/elo, and can't joint another game for 1 hour.

Let's clear things up. Team A and B. Team A has an AFK and opens a vote. The vote is accepted and Team A loses. Team B wins and recieves their elo/ranking points. Team A loses nothing, except for the AFK member. Now if Team A still wins even though 4v5, then Team A gets their points, and Team B loses their points too. AFK player loses his points anyway.

Replace the AFK player Maybe the most complexe, but complete solution. If a vote within a team is opened and accepted, the AFK player is kicked away from the game. He loses elo/ranking points and gets an automatic 1h ban (same as if you dodged queue). The game pauses the moment the vote is opened. Once the player is kicked, the game opens a search for another player with same champ to replace the missing member. Once the player is replaced, a second vote opens just to be sure all players are here, and the game resumes.

The player that just joined the game would win ranking if game won. But would not lose anything if the team he just joined loses. That way you don't fear of joining a game already started.

This would also mean to create a new queue when chosing which game mode you want to play. Like a "Join a ranked game" queue.

Team abuse Voting creates abuse. Quite easy to see if doing some premade 5v5 teams. The requirement for opening a vote as a team could be restricted to only disconnected player. Since the game says when a player disconnects or reconnects, it should be quite easy to know that in a script, wouldn't it ? The AFK/kicked player would still be unable to join a game for 1h. If within 1 hour the same or another player of** that same team** is AFK/kicked too, then the whole team and all it's players within are banned for 24h from joining a game. I think this would prevent too much abuse in teams.

The vote could also take place AFTER the game. When we honor/report people. If a name is in read (disconnected) on the losing team => automatic vote.

So I think this is it. I came around and I don't think I missed something. In any case I'll edit it later.

What do you think ? Is it viable ? Do you see other solution about how to handle AFKs ? Is there other ways to abuse such a system ? And I am sure there is, but for evey problem there is a solution. So go head and look for "security breach". This is a brainstorminig !

Zarffyn, a pissed player at AFK and at Riot for not doing anything against this issue.