League's Community and Suggestions
Let's face it. League of Legends is notorious for its horrible community, above and beyond even the most popular of games. Players and non-players alike all regard the community with such disdain that it's almost embarrassing to play and participate in. Often times, League players are seen as immature solely for this reason, and it's hard to argue after playing only a handful of matches. New players are met with snide remarks and vulgar insults when asking a simple question or when they make a mistake in a non-ranked match. It doesn't take more than a handful of matches to come across people like this. New players are often dissuaded from playing the game further after the first interaction with random teammates and opponents.
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| ---Who's to blame? Riot? The players? Humanity in general?--- |
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| I don't think there is, or ever will be, a simple answer to that question. In fact, I don’t think that is the most important question at all. There’s clearly a problem with the community, and both developers and players alike have clearly acknowledged that fact. Both sides do their part to contribute in improving the interaction between players. Riot has implemented an honor system that rewards players for obtaining enemy and ally approval, and players participate in the tribunal to weed out some of the ‘toxic’ members of specific matches. And yet, the behavior continues to exist. There’s clearly a problem, and we should not be asking who is to blame at this point. We should be asking what we can do to fix it. Let’s take a look at what we have in place already. |
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| --What's in place now?- |
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| Reputation system: |
| Riot implemented a rep system, divided into 4 areas. Teamwork, Friendly, Honorable, and Helpful. At the conclusion of all matches, players have the option to award one of these four to anyone else (apart from themselves of course). Players that obtain an abundance of these ‘marks’ receive a badge during the loading screen to show off to others. This is meant to provide a reward-based incentive to, basically, be a nice person. |
The Tribunal: Acting as a sort of online ‘court’, reported players chat log and similar evidence are brought before random onlookers, who then have the option to either punish or pardon that player in question. No names are given out and each case is made anonymous in order to prevent as many biased rulings as possible.
Gifting: Similar to the rep system, gifting has recently been added to end-of-match results, allowing other players to gift their allies or opponents skins or characters. Many in the community have taken this up as a sort of enhanced rep system, providing a reward for those who did particularly well in matches.
Punishments and Penalties: Of course, there are automated penalties in place for when much swifter action is needed. Players that drop out of a ranked match, usually after seeing the enemy team’s line up, take a penalty to their ladder points and are locked out of further matches for a set amount of time. Players that try to do that within their advancement match set also automatically fail that set. All this is in place to deter match-hopping and seeking an easy match.
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| -Ok. So what else can we do!?- |
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| These are all great steps in improving the community, and yet the issue still persists. Rude behavior is ever apparent in almost every match. Within ranked matches, where people compete for their place on the leaderboards, the behavior is even worse. Why haven't the systems in place solved it? Surely, there’s something that could be done? |
Now of course I don't have any solid answers. I don’t work at Riot Games and won’t pretend to understand how to run a large gaming company. I won’t even pretend I know how to manage such a large base of people. I have, however, played league for nearly 4 years. That doesn't mean that I know better than anyone else here, but I have seen patterns. I’ve seen how players act, and I’ve seen the community improve since Riot has been implementing these features, albeit in small amounts. Personally, I think more drastic measures need taken in order to become a reputable game that people won’t automatically scoff at or regard as “that one game with the bad community.”
I have a few suggestions that I think would be easy to implement, would take little-to-no time to develop, and would most likely impact the community hopefully for the better. Using the above list of the current features in place, I think they could be expanded upon. We’ve already seen them make a difference in the community, but it might be time to take them one step further.
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| -Possible routes of improvement!- |
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Reputation System The badges are a really cool touch. They give the players some sense of satisfaction and reward for being an honorable player, but they aren’t desirable. Why, as a player, should I yearn for one of these ribbons? Instead, wouldn’t it be better for the honor button to award your account with reputation points that would, when searching for a match, pair you with similar reputable teammates? I could see this impacting match-search times, but if you come away from a match with a much better experience, wouldn’t it be for the better? Match times are already seconds anyway, extending that to a minute or two would surely be worth the wait in the end. Disreputable people would have a much harder time finding a match, and rightfully so! When people see their queue times ramping up, maybe they would start behaving themselves within matches. The easiest way to stop people from ‘farming’ this or exploiting the system would be to make this system only available to non-friends.
The Tribunal: I actually like this system. It helps the players get involved in the decision making and even shows how they are impacting the community. Maybe stronger incentives would draw more people to participate, but at the same time, as a company, you can’t sell yourself short. I can understand that. The tribunal system may have its flaws, but it’s a good system.
Gifting: My suggestion may not pertain fully to the gifting feature, and maybe it falls more in line with the rep system, but again an incentive to help make the community better is in order. For instance, an honorable opponent (or similar rep point) would award the recipient with 1 RP. Now I can hear a lot saying “Cash rewards for being a good player? Why would riot give away money?” when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Think about it, 1RP per match would mean that at least 350 matches would need played before they can get even an older skin. At that point, wouldn’t it be WORTH giving away a skin? That person is playing hundreds of matches and most likely telling their friends about it, bringing in more potential customers. Sometimes you have to give a little to get a lot. Of course, the RP reward could be limited to people not listed on your friends list to avoid farming points.
Penalties: The penalties in place, at least for leaving a match, are mostly for the better! It’s a good system that most every game has in place and for good reason. A very simple improvement could be made in order to help the innocent players, actually. The current system, at least for ranked, punishes those who leave during champion select with a ladder point deduction and an automatic loss of their series (if they are on one). However, we all know that we get the occasional horrible teammate. Maybe they are being unruly in chat, choose a jungler even though one is already locked in, or any number of similar situations. There’s always someone out there that will try and ruin it for others. It’s inevitable. But what are you to do when you are clearly matched with one? Waste 50+ minutes in a losing game? Leave the game and take the penalty while the culprit gets off with no punishment? Just implement a system similar to your ‘reroll’ system in ARAM. After so many games, a player receives the option to ditch a game during champion select with no penalty, except maybe a timed lockout.
These are all easy patches to a complex problem. Will they ‘fix’ the community? Likely not. Will it help, though? There’s only one way to tell. RIOT, I implore you to let me know your thoughts on the matter. You care about your community, you care about your players. You also know that you have a problem. Only you guys know what is feasible in your game, so maybe you could let me know what you think of the above suggestions? Would they work? If not, why? What are the complications that I could be missing? Of course, I’d like to hear from the community itself as well! Leave a comment and let me know what you think.