Making NA a Better Region/Giving Players faith in the system
So before I go into the details of how I think North American Ranked Solo could improve I would like to preface my opinions with a little bit of context about me. Also before you comment please read the entire post.
**First: My current rank is Diamond 2 and I usually hover around Diamond I to Diamond 2 During the Season. This is important because at such a high rank you play with the same players over and over and over again.
Second: I have been banned for toxicity before and have the quit games multiple times for months at a time.
Third: I have reported over 50 players with tickets, Screenshots, Video evidence out of game and in the game report card. **
The main issue with the current system is players are not punished with direct evidence of their actions. When a player says they give up, says they are going to troll, says they are going to rage quit, or buys mobi boots and runs it down mid five times. I do believe action should be taken. At the end of the day they are** intentionally ruining the game for four other players**. Yet, when I use op.gg or run into the same players who have done this to me before multiple times in solo queue I know action is not being taken. Another important aspect of this issue is what players have slowly adapted to to do to deal with people giving up and other people trolling/inting games.
First: As you might have guessed, peoples first solution to this problem is to leave the game. Sounds simple enough and ill address this a little bit later, but sadly this happens a little too often. (P.S. Before people start spamming people can have internet issues. I understand. However, the higher rank you get the less internet issues people will have due to fixing setting before games from playing the game longer. Also if a player is lagging the usually spam their ping which I think is helpful to inform teammates.)
Second: People flame the person and start to call them names. You probably guessed this too. The next solution for most people is to be toxic. Now as much as I would like to say that players should not do this I understand the frustration a person feels after playing with the same player who just clearly intentional fed, rage quit a game, or spammed that the game is over.
Third: The last main solution is to deal with it. Yes this actually does happen sometimes despite it being quite uncommon. I do think this is the best action to take out of the three and majority of players just deal with it. But, it most importantly does not go unnoticed.
Now here is my solution. Start looking for key phrases such as "Im afk, I do not want to win, I am going to int/feed, bye bye (before a person leaves a game)" when players do this it is extremely frustrating and I honestly think if Riot started to punish people who do this people would... well stop doing it as often.
Second, update the report feature. For so long, it has just been a simple click report check two boxes and leave the game. The problem is usually this does not give enough context for Riot to punish players and sadly action is not taken and players feel as if this is true. This leads to people not reporting at all meaning a more toxic community. The solution to this issue is actually rather simple. Add a more in depth reporting system that allows for screenshots, videos, and takes more time to complete. The reason why this would work is if a player is just tiled for someone playing poorly they would most likely not take time to make an in depth report. However, if someone legitimately did troll players would be more inclined to right a more detailed report with evidence.
Third, and most importantly. Allow players to track what actions have been taken to prevent the players trolling from happening in future games. Kind of like a report tracker. Riot has told me multiple times that people would "witch hunt" if they were able to see what actions Riot has taken. So I have a couple of questions about this.
1: Why is this an issue? If someone murdered someone and a person looked for evidence and tried to convict the murderer I do not think anyone would see this as an issue. The same could be said about someone bullying in school which can be extremely similar to league.
2: How can someone witch hunt? I mean the whole point of solo queue is that it is Solo random players. Lets say my goal is to "witch hunt" Jimmy111. I can't randomly get in a game with Jimmy111 unless I invite him or if I'm randomly assigned into his game. This makes it really difficult to "witch hunt" and I honestly do not understand how this is an issue especially if the person is.... you guessed it GUILTY.
3: Why has this not happened yet? You probably guessed this too. Accountability. It is a wide view by the community that Riot has not taken action due to the fact that well they would have to ban players that act improper and that means they do not buy more skins. However, Riot will continue to lose players and a lot of these players may be willing to make new accounts and try not to be toxic. That means more skins and more money in the long run.