Honor Rework
Look. Honor is just not working. This isn't a good system and isn't going to work, basically ever.
(Please be aware that this post is NOT meant as a replacement to the system. It's a very basic and generalized example of how the honor system could be more rewarding. The rewards suggested will be outlandish and buggy concepts. The post also deals with reports, as honor is supposed to be a direct deterrent for negative behavior. I didn't spend 5 hours on this so please don't judge it as though it's supposed to be perfect.)
First of all, league of legends has always been in a weird spot. The fact that an hour long game can be won or lost based on a 5 second dc or bad play is huge. There are lots of other factors involved like being able to deny surrender votes while feeding and being able to build anything on anyone. It's good that you can do that, but it lends some tilt to the equation.
Right now, there's this "get lots of honor for a ribbon and maybe a ward skin or loading border" system going on. What? Seriously what?
This is like the 4th iteration of honor or something, I can't even remember. The best part is, people are probably even more toxic now. Not only that, but the answer you (Riot) give to us about how to deal with trolls and flamers is "Mute them bro". Okay, cool, I get that it is AN answer, but it's not a good one. Muting people as punishment is also detrimental to gameplay...
Here's why it doesn't work.
- Dude goes on tilt and starts flaming.
- Mute them.
- They resort to ping spamming.
- Mute their pings.
- Die to a gank because couldn't see an mia ping and don't have god map awareness.
- (alternative 5) Don't go to dragon or baron because don't see a ping and have no communication.
This makes no sense. Your game is literally won or lost based on communication and resorting to muting someone or their pings simply makes the game even less winnable.
First things first, lets go ahead and stop punishing people for flaming or troll building or whatever. If they're being racist or just over the top, fine. It's a video game. A COMPETITIVE VIDEO GAME. People are going to trash talk and it's going to get spicy. Chill out Rito. Honestly, most of us don't really care as much as you seem to. Also, why can we turn off filters and then report people for filtered item? That's kind of silly.
My second point would be to make honor actually worth something.
- Get a lot of the GG <3? *You get a free set of unique in game emotes for as long as you keep this level of honor. Make them actually super trolly because these people make the game more fun and know how to use them.
- Get a lot for good play calling? *Get a unique set of pings that set you apart from others.
- Get a lot of tilt proof? *Idk, haven't thought about it much. This should be a different honor anyway like didn't give up or something.
- Get all of them to a pretty good level? *Get choice of a unique skin at the end of the season. Also, random pop up after 100 or 200 games to gift player(s) a skin. Maybe it's random maybe you get to choose the champ it's for, who knows. BRING BACK HONORABLE OPPONENTS. It was nice to be able to +1 the friendly riven that lvl 2 killed you and still made the game enjoyable.
**The reports need to work differently as well. **
*Bring back that good old **unskilled ** option. Yeah, you remember it. *It doesn't need to actually do much, but it has to be there so people stop reporting for other stuff. Maybe they get a pop up with some charts showing how to improve. It could show them that their cs is where they're struggling and they're focusing too much on harassing and not csing. Or it could compare their builds to winning builds. Once they stop getting reported for that, they stop getting the pop-up. *Verbal Abuse.
- This one just needs to counteract 1 honor received. Seriously. Stop punishing people for trolling and joking around. *Intentional Feeding.
- Yup, this one should be punishable. This should be the main one. It should also say "Intentionally feeding OR counterproductive gameplay". I'm looking at you, guy who gets tilted and ping baits people to fight just to get them killed and spam laugh. Yeah. You. No need for that one. Also looking at the duo queue afking in the fountain but comes out every now and then to cs when minions get to nexus and denies the surrender vote.
- All other reports.
- Pretty self explanatory.
It's not perfect. I only spent a few minutes reworking it in my head. Would much rather have this than see 5 orange honors per game and still it's a flame fest. That just feels weird.
TLDR Honor system does nothing. Make one that does something.
