STOP ALLOWING LEVEL 1 ACCOUNTS TO SEND FRIEND REQUESTS!!!

Nucleophilic atk·Apr 2, 2015·679 votes·83,872 views

This stupid bot shit is getting annoying and out of hand. At least let me see the level of the friend request, so I know if I should accept or not.

291 Comments

ZombieNinja WarApr 2, 201574 votes

I actually thing this is a good idea because when your irl lv 1 friend starts you will prob send him a request because he dont know how to and we wont get spammed. (INSERT GIF THAT SHOWS APPROVAL LOL)

ActuallyArrowApr 2, 2015103 votes

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/08/dr-mccoy-and-captain-kirk-approve.gif

S H A Y C 0Apr 2, 20159 votes

Insert .gif that shows gratitude (^_^)

ActuallyArrowApr 2, 201527 votes

http://i.imgur.com/wdrjFSF.gif

JubbinautApr 2, 20158 votes

I'm not entirely sure exactly what that is, but it is freaking adorable and I want one.

ActuallyArrowApr 2, 20155 votes

I believe it is a baby Coyote xD

JubbinautApr 2, 20151 votes

That's... pretty close to what I thought. Now to add coyote to my list of furry creatures I want to - but probably never will - have as a pet.

ActuallyArrowApr 2, 20159 votes

Could always work at an animal sanctuary. They get all sorts of animals in there, and most of them are really nice. My uncle co-owns a "Big Cat" sanctuary, and as a kid he would let me play with the baby tigers.

Ice Cold WazApr 2, 20152 votes

You literally are the coolest person ever now.

ActuallyArrowApr 2, 20154 votes

I am? xD

chicken doodleApr 3, 20154 votes

Lol, let's all stream ourselves nodding our heads!

I Kill CommiesApr 2, 20158 votes

This is a very smart idea.

And believe me, I don't say that often about ideas proposed on these boards.

Also, love the start trek gif.

SexaphobicApr 3, 20159 votes

This is a great idea. I am sick of the spam from people.

For people who don't understand what ZombieNinja suggested...

He is saying it would be nice if you could not send friend requests to people until you are like lvl 3 or 5. They could still accept friend requests. This would reduce the spam by as long as it would take for these spammers to keep making more accounts and reach the lvl needed.

RiotRiot DragglesApr 3, 201556 votes

Hi all! EUW Ritoer checking in.

tmx, our Live Services Manager, left a comment about this earlier today.

hey all,

we're obviously aware of the friend request spam problem as we're also getting tons of requests every day. I synced up with our Game Designers and discussed various solutions that could be put in place. We have some ideas that are currently in development, but we also know that spammers regularly adapt their strategy to overcome constraints we put in their way. This is not the first time we defend our players from the spamming problem, so we're approaching it a bit differently.

Anyway, we're going to implement some mechanics to stop/reduce the amount of requests, but additionally, we're working on solutions that will let you gather more information about the person that is inviting you. Things like a link to their profile, their level, etc, should help you to distuinguish a legit player from a bot. I'm planning on giving you some more details soon, or maybe ask our Game Designers to describe the problem and our plans form their point of view.

Hopefully this is useful!

LuckmakerApr 3, 201519 votes

[{quoted}](name=Riot Draggles,realm=EUW,application-id=cIfEodbz,discussion-id=FlWhTBz8,comment-id=006b,timestamp=2015-04-03T19:48:45.601+0000)

Hi all! EUW Ritoer checking in.

tmx, our Live Services Manager, left a comment about this earlier today.

Hopefully this is useful!

Thank you, I would also suggest that you guys put something that notifies you if the person sending a friend request was in one of your previous games.

JubbinautApr 2, 201522 votes

[{quoted}](name=Nucleophilic atk,realm=NA,application-id=cIfEodbz,discussion-id=FlWhTBz8,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-04-02T16:23:45.304+0000)

At least let me see the level of the friend request, so I know if I should accept or not.

This is actually a really strong idea, I think. Anything that offers more information about friend requests - to better allow players to decide whether to accept - can only be a good thing.

Nucleophilic atkApr 2, 20153 votes

I know. Like, I post on some things about team recruitment. I have no way of knowing if the friend request is real or not. At least let me see their level...I kno that no1 is going to be sending me a friend request of any meaning that is level 1.

JubbinautApr 2, 20154 votes

Or at least if they were going to be worthwhile requests, you'd probably already know about them from elsewhere.

FantasySniperApr 3, 20157 votes

I have to deal with a lot of random friend requests. Every time I look at their match history if I can't remember who they are. Leaving a link to their profile directly on the client would be uber-useful.

JubbinautApr 3, 20154 votes

It would certainly help speed up identification. And I see no real downside to that.

slaya45Apr 2, 201522 votes

Or just make it so you can't send 50+ friend requests a second... Better yet, ban accounts that send 50+ friend requests a second and delete their friend requests.

RiotRiotZuluApr 3, 201516 votes

Hey all,

First of all I wanted to say that we certainly share your pain. Rioters are also getting bombarded with these invite spams and we've mobilized a team to tackle the problem on all fronts. There's a few things that we need to look at:

It shouldn't be so easy to create a bot that you can do it by the hundreds (or thousands) in a matter of minutes
Accounts that are obviously bots shouldn't be able to spam hundreds of invites to real players
Players should have better ways to get context around who's sending them invites

We've collected a lot of great ideas on how to tackle each of those points but realistically we need to improve on all of them to fully resolve this challenge. That may take some time to come to full fruition but we'll be patching out individual solutions and tests as we feel like we have good solutions.

Limiting lvl 1 accounts from sending invites is a good suggestion but wouldn't in isolation solve the problem.

So in short, we're hopeful to see gradual improvement in this spam ASAP, hopefully with a full resolution on the horizon.

DaenApr 4, 20152 votes

Very few people are going to see this answer since you aren't tagged as a Rioter; that might be worth looking into, or have someone that's tagged repost this.

gubigubiApr 4, 20152 votes

Thx for the info but why aren't you red D:?

I Am FlorgApr 2, 201511 votes

All we need to do is require a captcha to send a friend requests. Real players send few enough requests that it would not be overly annoying, and it would prevent the bots from sending the requests.

RetroRage96Apr 4, 20152 votes

Great idea!

Original QuitterApr 2, 201510 votes

Or you could just limit it to 5 friend requests a day.

Nucleophilic atkApr 2, 201520 votes

5 people getting bot spammed is 5 too many for my liking.

B3ERApr 2, 20159 votes

Steam has this thing where you can only add friends once you've spent money. I know that would be shit in LoL, but the idea is still intriguing. What commitment can we force on level 1 accounts that isn't money?

Nucleophilic atkApr 2, 201511 votes

Terrible idea lol.

B3ERApr 2, 20159 votes

Try reading all of my sentences.

Nucleophilic atkApr 2, 20159 votes

I did read your sentences. Terrible idea.

Champion SkinApr 2, 201512 votes

So the question is a bad idea?

What commitment can we force on level 1 accounts that isn't money?

ProvengreilApr 2, 20155 votes

minimum IP earned and spent? real friends could get their higher level friends to send the requests, requests made from post game lobby unaffected, but to send your own requests you have to have earned X IP? doesnt solve the, "they'll bot the games then bot the requests" issue, but if riot can detect and ban botting easier than requesting fewer might get through. honestly, even just less of them would be a win for the moment.

FantasySniperApr 3, 20152 votes

Maximum amount of friend requests per level until you hit like 15-30? You're unlikely to friend more than 10 people before that window. It could be sorta harsh, but keeping record of the names of who to friend is an easy task that can be accomplished later on if you're human.

Champion SkinApr 3, 20154 votes

Well then again there is no need to limit the amount of people you can add/send friend requests to in the after game lobby and recently played and such... only to random people you haven't played any games with so it shouldn't really be that troublesome if people can still add people they have played with

GaleWinUnleashedApr 2, 20157 votes

Basically it'd be nice to at least be able to see more information in the request itself. At the moment we have to confirm it by searching for their profile, which can get annoying.

Though by this point we can probably assume any friend request from a name we don't recognize is a bot...

Constantine IIIApr 3, 20157 votes

I logged in today and I had 6. Six. Fucking. Level 1 friend requests. Like I'm sorry but this is unacceptable. Normally I never complain about anything in league but this is just rubbing me the wrong way.

LordOfTheLeagueApr 2, 20155 votes

I fear that if you don't allow level 1 account to send friend requests, hackers will just make bots that farm exp in coop games..

JubbinautApr 2, 20153 votes

Those bots already exist - account sellers use them to level the accounts up to/near 30 before selling them.

You're right, though, that setting a minimum level for friend requests would just incentivize a whole new group to start using those bots.

Nucleophilic atkApr 2, 20153 votes

Which already happens. I think Riot would be able to ban an account that is botting easier than banning an account sending out friend request. Just my opinion, though.

JubbinautApr 2, 20154 votes

Banning isn't particularly effective in either case, though. They're throw-away accounts, after all. They can just make new ones.

Prevention and removing incentives are the two best ways to handle both of these issues.

BatteryDeadApr 2, 20155 votes

If we could get Riot to acknowledge that there's a problem that'd be great.

Ltnkpyw2FZApr 3, 20155 votes

I literally just logged in to bitch about this. I logged on to my client just now to 7 bot spam requests.

AsheSoulSilverApr 3, 20155 votes

Same here. Before it was one or two every couple days, didn't think too much of it, now it's at least 5 or 6 everytime I log in.

HoofsterApr 4, 20153 votes

Agreed, either make it a requirement that to send invites you have to be level 5 or have played a game with the person. OR give us the option to just ignore invites from people below a certain level, or ignore invites all together.

EleshakaiApr 3, 20152 votes

The second half is a good idea. Information never hurts.

Disabling the ability to send friend requests at level 1 won't help anything though. And it will make the new player experience worse since they won't be able to send friend requests to people they play with, and even worse if two friends decide to start playing together they won't be able to friend each other.

Nucleophilic atkApr 3, 20156 votes

Doesn't it take like 1 game to get to level 2?

EleshakaiApr 6, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Nucleophilic atk,realm=NA,application-id=cIfEodbz,discussion-id=FlWhTBz8,comment-id=00510000,timestamp=2015-04-03T17:01:44.221+0000)

Doesn't it take like 1 game to get to level 2?

That's irrelevant. Say a husband and wife signed up together, or two close friends decided to give a new game a try to play together.

Preventing them from playing together is going to cause them to quit.

And it'll cause literally NO benefit whatsoever, since the people doing the spamming are the same people botting accounts for various purposes. So they'll just spam at level 2, 3, 5, or whenever in stead of at level 1. For about an hour after the change gets implemented, you'd see a decrease in friend requests but then after that it'd be the same.

Nucleophilic atkApr 6, 20152 votes

Preventing them from playing 1 game together is going to cause them to quit? Sorry, not buying it.