[Proposal] Post-Game Badges or Accomplishments for Positive Player Feedback

Background: Hey everyone, Kouga here. I've been playing League off and on since its Beta release. I mentioned this idea quite some time ago on the old boards and there was a fair amount of player interest but at the time it didn't go anywhere. Riot has since then made some additional comments and released some features in relation to positive player feedback and incentivizing positive community relations so I wanted to present it again.

The Concept: Broadly speaking, the idea would be to award badges in the Post-Game screen that would acknowledge player behavior within the game. These could include something like "dealt the most damage to enemy towers" or "healed over [X] HP to allied champions." These rewards would be assigned on a Game-By-Game basis to players and would be given to any qualifying player whether they are on the winning or losing team.

The key components of this idea are:

• These would not give any intrinsic rewards - i.e., no RP bonuses. The objective is not to influence a player's long term experience.
• You could have some badges that are common or easy to achieve (Heavy Hitter: Dealt The Largest Critical Strike) as well as rare or difficult to obtain ones (Baron Snatcher: Stole Baron [Dealt the killing blow on Baron where your team did less than 10% of the damage to Baron])

Why This Encourages Positive Interactions - What Role Does This Fill? Everyone loves winning, right? But in every game there must also be a losing team. And in the vast majority of every day normal games that I play (being a casual player myself) there is inevitably blame hurled and fingers pointed. This gives players an opportunity to recognize the positive accomplishments of individual players even if they didn't win. For example, maybe your team lost, but you consistently tried to make sure your team had vision of the map. So if you got a Badge like (Scout: Placed the most wards in the game) it serves as a visual reminder that you did contribute.

As it stands, in a game there is little you can cite other than KDA or who dealt the most damage, a few of the statistics the game currently shows. And often one bad game can lead to a spiral, so this would be a way to mitigate negative feelings from losing a match, and also serves to remind the winning team that this is a team game. Just because Vayne says "GG I Carried", if everyone on her team has Badges showing they contributed to the win, it just shows that no one wins alone.

Could This Encourage Negative Interactions? Admittedly, this system can be abused, and I acknowledge that. If you lose so badly and do so little that you don't get any badges than your team could theoretically feel more justified in laying blame. Further, you could have people who troll or deliberately play negatively in order to score some Badges and pretend like they did something useful. In the above example, Scout, a player could run around in their base with an inventory full of wards so that they get a Badge.

So how could we mitigate abuse?

For one, these Badges would deliberately be non-persistent - these Badges are given out in every game, they are just recognition for what happened within a single game so there isn't any particular reason to go out of your way to 'earn' the same badge in another game. Further, Badges would be disabled for AFK and Leavers. Every system has opportunity to be abused. For example, with the Scout badge. So what? That player probably would have done that anyway, and since the Badges don't give any intrinsic reward it isn't like they really benefit. They certainly wouldn't be fooling any of the other players in that game. Its meant as a positive encouragement tool but it doesn't change the actual balance or progression of the game experience.

Why Is This System Different Than The Current Banners? This would not just be Banners 2.0, it would be a separate system that could run in conjunction with the current banner rewards. The Banners currently fill a role of recognizing long term, individual, positive player interactions. That is a great idea but has some drawbacks. A) It does not reward every positive player, only a small percentage and B) it looks at long-term trends rather than specific incidents. The Badge system would be in place to acknowledge individual game behavior, but wouldn't have any impact on the long term rewards.

Why Should We Listen To Your Idea? The good thing about this system is that it is scalable in terms of scope and necessary resources. You could have a list of maybe twenty badges for a couple game metrics and wouldn't require much other than the coding required to capture the requirements. Or, you could expand it, and have a hundred or more unique badges and accomplishments with little art resources for each one or each category - and obviously with that many resources it would be a huge project in terms of time and investment. But I think that if you started with a manageable number of Badges in a few clear categories and ran them through the PBE you could see if they have a positive or negative influence without risking much in terms of investment.

Let's Get Some More Details: So here is the way I see this system working. In the Post-Game Screen there are pages for Overview, Grid, and Graph. There would be a 4th page: Badges. On this page, each champion would be listed along with a list of the Badges they 'collected' that game, along with a multiplier if they earned it multiple times. If you clicked on the badge, or on Mouse-Over, it would describe the conditions to get that badge. After you left the game, these would be like any other game stats - you can see them in your detailed History page but otherwise it means nothing. The reason that these essentially 'go away' is to avoid situations where players deliberately play negatively or obstructively in order to "Catch Em All"

Okay. Let's take it one step further. Riot could take this idea even further. Aside from just having a large number of these Achievements, you could even have Champion specific badges, similar to the current Hidden interactions. For example, Brand could get a Special Badge - (Watch The World Burn - Kill an enemy Champion with the last tick of damage from Brand's Passive) or Jinx could have (Sniped! - Kill an enemy with a Super Mega Death Rocket that travels at least X units)

This could extend to the unique interactions in the game. For example, Vi has special VO lines when she blocks an enemy Cait Ult. That could just as easily be a special badge instead of/in addition to the VO. This gives Riot more opportunities to make special interactions between champions.

So, Let's Talk I will keep an eye on the comments and will update this post with questions, feedback, and other suggestions as provided in the comments. I will make a second post after this one (because this is getting really long) where I will make a list of proposed Badges.

Update 1

Dev Blog: Player Design Values: Rewards

Lyte recently released a new dev blog that in some ways supports my idea.

TLDR: Our player behavior philosophies include punishment, reform and positive reinforcement. With rewards, we have to be careful to design systems that don’t simply incentivize positive behavior for a small duration, but provide reasons to stay positive all the time.

This is one of the key elements of the Badge system, is that it provides a persistent and ongoing reward system. But because the reward isn't intrinsic, such as skins or IP, it doesn't "break the bank" or ruin the economic side of things.

One of the keys of positive reinforcement is the idea of “schedules,” or the expected frequency of a reinforcing event. Introducing surprise rewards unrelated to specific activities or durations is one of the most effective ways to encourage positive player behavior.

This is one of the admitted weaknesses of the Badge system; once players understand the requirements for the badges, it isn't exactly a "surprise" anymore. In response to that, I'd say that its still good to have different kinds of reward systems in place. The "surprise" element could be kept up by adding new badges periodically, and having those unique or difficult to get badges, or Champion specific ones that are also rare. They would act like the Hidden Interactions the game has - it'd be a fun element for players to try to find them.

Update 2

User [Pastramka] had a great idea that Riot could also use this in their Sharing function. Currently, Sharing one of your matches just says, "Summoner went: K/D/A" but with this system they could set it up to list out your badges along with it, which would add a really neat visual and complement the sharing function.

Update 3

So, the Mastery System. Rather than worrying than taking this as a sign that Riot has settled on a different direction and putting my idea to rest, I think this actually makes my concept even stronger!

The new Mastery System will give you a Score at the end of the match. So you can get a B, or A, or S ranking depending on your performance. My Badge system idea could easily be combined with this, maybe implemented at a later date. It could be a system where the badges actually give you bonus points to your score, or they could be purely for the sake of the achievements themselves.

In my ideal fantasy, the end game screen would have the following:

[Victory!]

Ezreal

Game Score: Rank A (X Total Points)

Badges Expert Killer! (Get the most kills while taking the least amount of damage | X Points) Bloodbath (Get an Ace while being the last Champion alive on the map | X Points)

Unique Badge! A True Display Of Skill (Kill an enemy with Trueshot Barrage that traveled at least 10,000 Units | X Points)

The Badges could give you some of the points that go into your Rank. Or, you can simply take the point values off and they are more cosmetic, but still fun, and give you a great way to highlight your game.