Replacement System

I was just reading another thread complaining about AFK, rage quitting, real life, blah blah blah and had an idea. I don't read the forums often so I have no idea if it is original or not, so I apologize if I am restating something already proposed. Either way here it goes.

!!!Disclaimer!!! Being a software developer myself, I am under no illusion that any of this would be easy or a quick turnaround. It is probably a ton of work to address something that riot already feels they have addressed. Regardless, maybe something sparks conversation in the dev team that might prove useful.

Requirement 1: Multiple queue system Players would be able to queue for multiple game types. This could be extended to queue for multiple maps at the same time as well. But in this case, I would queue for a new game and replacement game.

Requirement 2: Replacement vote system 2a. /findplayer - Don't try to do timers or disconnect types to determine when to allow a replacement player, it would just be too complicated and piss off a lot of people trying to legitimately get back in. Instead, put it on the remaining team members and implement a new /findplayer command that starts a team vote. If 50% of the remaining team votes yes, a replacement search is initialized.

2b. /kickplayer - This one is a much more delicate topic but is a valid scenario to address afkers, toxic players, etc. Players in a game need the ability to self manage. We are in the game to have fun. If a player standing in base not moving, or hasn't used a skill some amount of time, players should have the option to implement a kick vote. This would immediately queue a replacement. Here's is the catch for /kickplayer. It can only be done once per game per player. So if player A doesn't like B and initiates and it fails, they can't troll the player every couple of minutes for the rest of the game. If B turned out to be a problem, C, D, or E would need to initiate a kick vote.

Requirement 3: Player selection This one gets a bit tricky depending on how Riot's current code loads the game for other people. The best experience would be to let the replacement pick from a list of players that have not been banned or chosen. They would get the team selection screen as it looked when the game started with their spot open. I would also show them which champ they were replacing as well. But this may not be possible if the champ can not be changed mid game easily.

An easier implementation would be to lock the player into the champ that the leaver had. That champ would already be loaded for the other players and would probably be easier from a code standpoint. The issue would be does the replacement even have that champ. You may need to have a dynamic unlock system to give them game level access to the champ adding a third tier to the unlock system (game level, weekly free, owned)

Requirement 4: Level/Gold/Inventory 4a. The champ would be auto leveled to the average level of the remaining 4 players 4b. The player would be given gold equal to the average gold earned of the remaining 4 players 4c. All purchases and skills would be cleared and the user would be able to build their champ like they can in the beginning of other game modes.

Requirement 5: Incentives/Restrictions 5a. If ranked, replacement players can not be demoted for a loss. 5b. Replacement games do not count as part of a player's series if they are up for promotion 5c. Replacement players earn and IP bonus regardless of win/loss 5d. LP bonus - I had thought this might be a good idea, but the more I thought it through, the more ways I saw to "game" the system. If you gave an LP bonus to players regardless of win/loss. Someone could queue as a replacement if they hit 0 LP and get the free LP bonus just to avoid a demotion. Because of thatm you could just queue replacement games to farm up the ranks. So let's just avoid it all together. 5c. Banner - replacement games count the same as if a person honored you as "helpful". You would earn credit toward that reward.

This replacement system is not innovative. It is the same thing SWTOR uses for dungeons and works pretty well. This post just tweaks the base replacement concept and tailors it to LoL's game play.