The state of the game today and why Riot makes certain decisions
Hi Riot Games & League Community!
I've submitted content throughout the years, and because you guys were so helpful during those I wanted to reach out and ask a rather pressing and concerning question about the state of the game today.
Riot Games has constantly stated that they want to cut down on toxicity, however, from what I've gathered over the years, the many implementations made to try and mitigate that have been rather ineffective (as judged by my hiatus from S3 to S7 and it still being the same, if not worse). To remark on specific features:
Leave Buster: While useful in-game for reporting afk/trolls/you name it, during champion select it is extremely double-edged. Legitimate players can no longer dodge without losing rank when trolls or known bad players intentionally try to inhibit performance before the game begins.
Remakes: Extremely necessary because leaving the game or disconnecting during loading can ruin a game, but it also should be available if someone has disconnected post-initial connection. A lot of times people will connect and disconnect or afk within the first 3 minutes, causing every player on the team to have to sit there and wait for the loss. If anything, time how long someone has been afk and allow a partial remake/surrender at lower LP loss. Additionally, if a team is extremely far ahead, it is a complete waste of people's time and effort as the queue, loading, and 3:00 wait takes up 12 minutes (on average); there is no benefit for the non-remake team and they get no choice in the matter.
Losing LP due to other people AFKing: Everyone knows the term "winnable" at this point. So to think that the company would punish the entire team because of one or more AFK/leaver/rage quits you name is confounding. Why isn't there a reduced LP loss if someone leaves, or a timer that calculates the probability of winning based on how long ago they left and then mitigate some of the damage to the rest of the team?
Based on the current state of the game I have a few suggestions; features the game needs, :
Turning chat off altogether: This one has bothered me for 8 seasons. Every game I have to mute all, every pro player, semi-pro player, and otherwise has to mute all during every game because of toxicity on their OWN team. Yet, we find that you can only turn off /all chat. Give us the option to turn off team chat as well permanently, please.
Mute during champ select: See previous reason for turning off chat.
Prevent your own team from banning hovered champions until the player changes their selection: Nothing spells toxic player quite like target banning someone else's champion because you don't like them or their choice.
Fix flexed client bug that says "parties of 8 are not eligible" when you are queuing as a group of 4. Cheeky and tangential to the above issue, but I think its a typo and needs to be fixed.
Please note that I have played the game for 8 years, and I'm not taking this lightly. Also please note that I'm not referring to champions, roles, or general game-play. As someone who has dealt with everything from bronze to challenger players, this affects everyone regardless of skill level. These are client/process flaws (in my opinion)that need to be addressed. I would love to hear Riot's thoughts and what is in the pipeline to address the aforementioned issues.
I love the additions of crowd-sourcing prize pool for pro play, and the introduction of Clash. You guys are doing good work, and it doesn't go unnoticed. Hope to hear from you soon, thank you in advance!
