Dominatrix, Ranked Social Reform and Toxicity Cultural-Engineering

*"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories." *

• Sun Tzu

~ TL;DR at the bottom ~

It's probably come to the attention of anyone that's ventured into ranked solo-que and escaped with their sanity that little is done to engineer a cooperative and anti-toxic environment.

The "honors" system that was implemented, for example, most people don't even remember that it exists, or to +1 teammates they liked - (myself included; I've occasionally left after a game, remembered I wanted to +1 someone for teamwork, then remembered it hardly mattered as those little upvotes don't seem to do anything useful. There's not much to remind people that it's there, nor any incentive to use it).

Humans are fickle, stupid sheep (something which should also be apparent to you if you've retained enough brain cells to read fancy words like 'implemented' and 'incentive'). What should be done, then, is to herd these lowly animals into doing something productive.

The objective of a business is to make money. Riot, and the financial platform that is league of legends, are no exception to this rule; in such a case, the common reaction of the frustrated ranked player of "ban the troll" isn't very realistic considering if said troll stops purchasing skins, they translate into lost money.

However, the idea that trolls must be either fully tolerated/ineffectively disciplined or permanently banned, is a false dichotomy. There exist far more options than simply these two.

**First, let's look at incentive to be useful and not be toxic (good behavior incentive), rather than simply penalties. **

As Sun Tzu put it, each penalty for failure must have a matching or greater reward for success.

If you are one who seeks wisdom in ancient knowledge, you'll find a lot of dark, horrible truths that mankind mustn't know - you'll expose your mind to the perils of the warp, the voices of the old ones, and any other nasty that ancient lore can throw at you.

So, let's open our morellonomicons to page 666... let's see, tie Bieber to altar, hold ritual knife above heart, - COUGH erm, uh, wrong page.

Ah, here we are. Page 9001.

As was cited above with the honors system, there's no incentive to honor people, or particular motivation to be nice to them - in a game where people -are- offered the ego boost of blaming their teammates instead of themselves.

To compare to a competitor that some have claimed has superior solo-que, there's no little window after the game where you can give teammates karma points and more karma points means more fancy rewards at the end of the match (and can't skip the screen), such as say some bonus IP, or for great people a free IP boost - or perhaps some other, more creative rewards for the best of the best. Maybe a skin or something, be super awesome and get a free skin, like those kayle and janna tourney skins. Perhaps a special karma points store for paragons of the community (and proper controls in place so a team of 5 friends can't farm KP for each other, obviously. Not that hard to implement).

Of course those are not the only options, it's simply a crude example of how such a system could function.** Good behavior must have incentive. **Create a circumstance that will add motivation to be nice to one's teammates.

Vice versa, poor incentive requires... discipline. Wha-psh!

As any dominatrix can tell you, these worthless beasts sometimes need to be whipped into behaving. Lowly brutes need discipline. But, we should be responsible with how we discipline them. Discipline should have structure.

Let's take chat suspensions for example. This does nothing to penalize someone who repeatedly afk's due to "ADC KS'd me". Their undesirable activity is repeatedly afking, not verbal abuse or spam.

A chat suspension would be more fitting for someone who's behavior is *actually related to the chat log. *

Suppose we have someone in ranked - and we've all seen people like this - who yammer on about how they're a diamond smurf and could win easily and are of course significantly more skilled than everyone else, they're just doing poorly because they want their bad team to lose - it's not because they're bad or made misplays or anything.

In such a case, perhaps instead of applying an ineffective penalty or perma-banning (Which terminates the "smurf" account that has a bunch of skins on it and would eliminate more revenue if they stop buying), a mode-restriction can be utilized as a more balanced middle-ground. Terminate or suspend the account's access to ranked ques.

Someone who's admitted they have no desire to win in ranked has no need to play ranked, it's a feature that can be removed from the account, without actually eliminating the account as a whole.

In the same sense, people who insist on doing ranked despite constant refusals to communicate and refusals to understand basic game mechanics don't need to be in ranked, they need... *guidance. *

Perhaps the privilege of playing ranked can be earned back by good enough reviews from random people that are not in your friends list or in a party with you as you spend time in normal que.

There are many other, smaller, penalties that can be implemented short of account-bans and chat restriction. Mode restriction, being forced to pick a champion after others, IP penalties, etc.

~ TL;DR, In Summary ~

Make good behavior more appealing and more rewarding. Make poor behavior less appealing and more taxing. Don't offer an ultimatum, simply offer... encouragement.

The possibilities are endless. Remember, gentlemen and ladies, with great power comes great possibilities.