Why do players lose LP for games like this?...
Okay Riot, I'm not normally one to complain about the ranking system, because despite the fact that I have some problems with it, I deal with it because at the end of the day I enjoy playing the game. However, situations like the one I'm about to explain have been happening more frequently for me and I don't think it's fair for the players that I play with or myself. So, without further delay, here is the game that finally pushed me over the edge and made me make this post:
My team consisted of Olaf top, Ekko jungle, Fizz mid, Lucian (me) adc, and Zyra support. The enemy team consisted of Trundle top, Evelynn jungle, Vladimir mid, Jinx adc, and Morgana support.
My team was pretty nice, which is a huge accomplishment in low-elo League of Legends. Except for my Olaf. He died early to Trundle, claiming directly after his death that he was "on tilt". As the game went on, my team's mid, jungle, and bot lane performed relatively well, and were on pace to win the game. However, Olaf was having a hard time top lane and had reached the score 1/4/0 around 17-18 minutes. No one was making comments on his poor performance. Heck, no one was even trying to give him advice which in today's community would have been taken as toxicity. No one was saying anything to him, he wasn't saying anything to us. However, after his 4th death, he exited from the game. At first, the team was reluctant to make assumptions. We continued playing well and hoped for his return. The 4/1 Trundle proved hard to deal with, and when the enemy team started to group, we began to lose.
Hope of this Olaf coming back slowly diminished as the game dragged on and we kept getting pressured by the 4v5. Despite being 4v5, our team played rather well and put up a good fight for the remaining 13-or-so minutes that the game dragged on after Olaf's disconnect. However, despite all of that, we eventually were beaten. And everyone on my team lost LP for performing well and only losing because someone on our team couldn't handle having a bad early game. No one at all was toxic in the game (except for a little bit on Olaf's part after his first death). However, this player left the game and resulted in our team losing LP (shortly after I played a game that I actually legitimately lost and got demoted).
My LP (and later my divison) are already gone, and I'll already have to work to get that back. However, I hope Riot will do something about games that people leave in. I think there should be a system that harshly punishes those who AFK consistently, and those who are on the team of someone who AFK's shouldn't lose LP. Obviously this is a system developed by a rookie. I don't expect even in the 1 in a million chance that Riot actually reads this and actually takes something out of it that they're going to make this system point for point. I also know that not all of this is going to work flawlessly. I just hope something from this will help Riot make a system that will not punish players for being unlucky and having an AFK teammate. Anyways, let me go into more detail:
- If a friendly champion disconnects from the game and is gone for 10 or more minutes and doesn't reconnect to the game before it ends, all of his allies refrain from losing LP for that game.
- The enemy team still earns full LP for the game.
- If the person who AFK'd was part of a party, their party still loses LP (possibly a reduced amount if it isn't a frequent occurence).
Those are just three simple tenants that I think would make it so much less frustrating when someone AFKs. Plus making frequent AFK punishments worse. I know that this probably won't get much attention, but mostly this post is being made out of my own personal anger that I am losing LP due to AFKing players, since I pretty much bottle up the toxicity that it breeds.