Honor System Rework
The current Honors system is meant to be a system that not only encourages good sportsmanship, but also makes the already positive players feel a little better about actually being positive. Yet it was a bit of a failure in its intended purpose and has seemingly been forgotten. This systematic change I propose is, what I hope, going to look much more rewarding and further encourage people to be good and more sportsmanlike. In order to do this we should focus on readability of the system and incentivized rewards that encourage actually clicking that button.
Readability This is the more simpler change that can be made. Currently, there is little to no introduction of newer players to the Honor system or its purpose and function, so a more clear introduction of this system may encourage good behavior to new players. Also, unlike other games, most notably Overwatch, there is no clear indication. The system has no large visible button to honor key individuals.
Perhaps we could make a button that is more satisfying and aesthetically pleasing to click. This button could be in a separate location from the Report A Player and Add A Friend buttons. It would be much more visible and upon being clicked have a neat little sound effects. Maybe a different sound effect based on the category you honor them in.
Last proposal on this front is more incentive on the accumulation of these points. On ones profile, you will notice the amount of Honor points they have in individual categories. These should better convey a message to someone on the type of player that person is. If they have a lot of teamwork points, you should expect them to be a team player. Friendly points, they would be expected to be a nice person to hang out with. Things like this should be focused on more to provide an idea for certain players before even playing with them. Maybe these points could be visible in Champion Select, even.
Rewards Players should be rewarded for not only acquiring these points, but for bestowing them as well. If you really want people to feel encouraged to actually Honor people, it is best to add a benefit to them for taking the time to do so. This is where Goodwill (or maybe Karma points?) points come in. Goodwill is an invisible accumulation of points that the player cannot see, but are there and will boost the amount of IP, experience, and mastery points gained by players. The amount they gain is based on their Goodwill points.
You gain a small amount of Goodwill for honoring a player, but the more you honor in one day, the less you will gain over the course of that day. A small amount of Goodwill is lost by being reported and facing any sort of punishments related to those reports will decrease it by a lot. The bonus IP/EXP/Mastery points would be relatively minor, but would be a good noticeable effect overtime as Goodwill builds up.
Lastly, the can revamp the badges of the individual categories. Badges should be more common, but not too common. To gain one, the system should look at the past games in their match history and judge the average amount of Honor points they got within those games. If the average is above a certain threshold, they will have the badge so long as they are consistently honored in that category. If they start being honored more in another category, the badge will change to that color. And finally, the badge will double the bonus you are receiving from your Goodwill. So you are not only being rewarded for being positive, but you are being rewarded for honoring other players.
So yes, there it is. The only potential error I really see is people blindly honoring people for the sake of Goodwill points. Perhaps there could be restrictions on honoring certain individuals, or a limit on that amount of honors you can give? I was even curious as to making a way to actually write a comment upon honoring someone to specifically tell them what they honored them for - but this could end up being toxic . . .
Thoughts?
