Feedback on New Honor System (Post-Game Honor Screen)

Dear Riot,

I liked your old honor system, so I may have a bias, since I actually honored team mates as well as honorable opponents. With your recent changes, I totally get the idea of tying some perks to being "honorable" as a way to punish dishonorable players (since they can't get such perks).

The new system is not exactly a drastic change (i'm writing this from client version 7.13). But after using it for a little time, I want to mention one aspect that bothers me as a player: The post-game honor screen.

No doubt some talented people worked very hard to explore, research, design, and implement this feature, but I have some complaints (please consider any invalid or unreasonable complaints an "honest mistake" based on a hasty response after a particularly regretful experience with the new honor system):

1. There is now an extra step between game end and the post-game stats screen. (But thanks for the "skip" link)
2. Skipping the honor screen revokes the ability to honor once you reach the post-game screen (though this is obviously intended).
3. As far as I can tell, there is no way to honor an opponent now.
4. sometimes there is a delay in this screen appearing. This is disconcerting because I recognize others may already be chatting away in the post-game lobby and I'm just stuck staring at a loading icon. Is my client stuck? Did I disconnect? What was that lobby message ping sound in the background? What about that other one? and another? I have no idea what's happening!
5. Sometimes there are 4 players on the Honor screen, sometimes less, with no explanation as to why.
6. There are no stats on the Honor Screen. The design is more like a post-game quick survey ("who did you enjoy playing with and why?").
7. So, in order to "properly" honor someone, I must rely on a quick mental playback of the entire game, ignoring recollections of the experiences of the previous game, and the game before that, and so on (wait... which game experience am I trying to remember?) -- do you see the problem?

My point #3 may seem like a stupid aspect, but I believe the "honor" of a player may in some cases be more accurately reflected by an opponent. Obviously as an opponent, you can't be aware of "shot-calling", and unless all-chat is enabled, probably not much indication of the "friendliness" of an opponent. Nonetheless, I play a lot of games where I see an opponent played well, but due to teammate feeding or disconnect did not reach victory. In other games my opponent was kept down (by me) but came back and dominated later in the game. I would like to be able to honor such worthy opponents as either skilled players, persistent or focused. In short, why not allow players the opportunity to honor a player from each team?

Now that I am limited to honoring a single teammate I want to be sure I'm honoring the player who deserves it for the reason they deserve it. Maybe it doesn't matter much exactly what category I choose to honor them with? But wouldn't you want honor to reflect the aspect where that player excels? I would.

The current implementation of the new Honor Screen has, in my brief experience using it, led to much regret on my end. When I do honor a teammate, once I reach the post-game stats screen, I feel I often honored the wrong teammate. When I feel like I did honor the right teammate (i.e. all teammates agreed Player X was awesome), I wonder if I chose the appropriate honor category because none of the existing options seemed to cover why this player was so great in this instance.

To my view, there is simply not enough information on the honor screen to properly honor a team mate. As a bot lane ADC, did I really notice amidst all the chaotic team fights that top lane completely dominated a separate, game-long 1 v 1 laning battle and pushed our minions all the way to the Nexus turrets? Or that jungler perfectly timed those early ganks I simply considered happy coincidences? I spend a lot of time in the game with my support, so even a decent support player would have some bias in my mind toward honor.

I think the current flow needs fixing. #letmefixit ;^)

I would like to suggest Riot ditch the post-game Honor Screen from the game flow and instead extend the old honor UI on the post-game stats screen. By choosing to honor on this screen, all players can get to the final screen as soon as possible and can readily see the KDA performance and other stats to select the one teammate (if any) that deserves honor.

If it is that important to make sure only a single teammate is honored, the UI option to honor a player could be disabled once a player has selected to honor a teammate. There could be other valuable effects obtained by honoring on the post-game stats screen (as hinted at further below).

From the current design, it seems like the Honor Screen is necessary so that Riot can spotlight the honored players at the post-game stats screen, which you clearly can't do until everybody has voted, right? Or can you? Is it not possible to update the post-game screen UI dynamically to indicate which players are receiving honor (after each teammate honors a single teammate)? I think it must be possible, because under the current system (once all teammate votes from the post-game Honor Screen are collected, inspected, collated, stamped, photo-copied, and filed in triplicate) the honor flair appears dynamically on the post-game stats screen along with some text. Seems like it should be possible then to update the post-game stats screen each time one player honors another. In this way, players would see the honor accumulate in real-time (and wouldn't each dynamic update be a great reminder to honor for people who have reached the post-game stats screen with other things on their minds?).

And if the honor-voting on a post-game stats screen were dynamic, then it seems like players could actually change their votes (mis-clicked, changed mind, turns out honored player is a jerk and offends everybody after getting honored). No regrets! Of course, you obviously would limit the frequency at which a player can change a vote (just like limited in-game pings) because otherwise there will always be that one troll spamming with constant vote changes. (Under this scenario, the UI Button for honoring is not disabled after the first use, but subsequent use changes who receives the honor).

I really enjoy this game (most of the time) and I have a lot of respect for all the talented and hard-working people that make it happen. I have no doubt you have good reasons for doing the things you did and deciding not do any of the things I have suggested above. My only purpose in writing this is the hope of making League of Legends an even better experience.

Disclaimers:

The post-game Honor Screen looks great and functions properly. I really appreciate the option to skip out immediately when playing with a bunch of trolls that don't deserve honor. I just feel this screen is less able to provide me the information I need to effectively decide which teammate (if any) best deserves honor.

A co-worker looking over my shoulder as I finished writing this told me, "Just tell them to do it like the up-votes in HotS". ;^)

I don't play HotS, but it is my hope that this HotS thing isn't the reason for the post-game Honor Screen, because that would mean the LoL experience is being hampered simply because some people don't want to be viewed as "copying" and idea from another game.