THE SOLUTION: Regular URF & Healthy Gameplay/User Count
In psychology, you learn about conditioning-- the process in which you reinforce a behavior to induce the same response more frequently-- and this method could be used with Regular URF and LoL users. URF is loved by the LoL community and most of us could agree that we would love to have it back and around more often; however, Riot has their reasons for not bringing back Regular URF such as the decrease in number of games played overall.
The solution or compromise between Riot and the LoL community would be to reintroduce Regular URF with the following:
- Missions / Ranked Gameplay
- URF Masteries
- Post-URF Missions with incredibly desirable rewards with moderate difficulty in order to keep number of games high.
***Keep in mind that since Regular URF's style of gameplay does not require such strict strategic champion placement such as ADC, Jungle, Support, etc., the time it takes to begin a 5v5 game is very quick; thus, you will get more games played. Moreover, games tend to scale quickly if one team does better than the other; thus, faster games correlate with more amount of games played. Overall, it is normal to expect number of games played to spike with Regular URF and decrease when the game mode is over.
Going back to the psychology and the conditioning plan that will help the relationship between Riot and the LoL community, there needs to be a healthier schedule of the game mode rather than a "healthier version" of this game mode. Regular URF needs to be on what's called a Variable Ratio Schedule. This means that Riot will provide Regular URF to LoL community with extreme short notice, short a duration [days], multiple times a year, and at random times of the year. This will condition LoL users to stay alert and play actively throughout the year in order to make sure they do not miss the game mode.
This Variable Ratio Schedule is explained with the scenario below:
A child does not do his/her homework.
Checking on the child to make sure he/she is doing his/her homework every hour will prove ineffective because he/she will not do their homework until the same time the parent checks on the child because he/she knows the schedule. [Fixed-Ratio Schedule]
Checking on the child at random times [15min., 1hr., 25min., 5min., 1hr.] will make him/her unaware of when the parent will check on the child; thus, the child will continue to do the homework throughout the allotted time in order avoid punishment from the parent.
This way, it is simple:
Give the LoL users what they want [Regular URF], at random times and a short duration [to keep them playing all the time], and give great incentives to continue playing afterward [when Regular URF ends].
With this suggestion, Riot can only conduct trial and error and see what happens in a real-world test. I hope this provides helpful insight for Riot.
Thanks for reading!
[sg-ahri-2]
