Riot Should Meet Halfway and Restrict More Players From Ranked for Bad Behavior

It's funny. You would think ranked play in League or any game for that matter should bring more "quality" to the table. Well, at least at face value.

The truth is, at least on many levels, it doesn't. Even if you queue up for ranked play, you would think you would get more players who take the game "seriously." However, instead, some of the worst games you can experience in League are ranked matches. This is mainly because LP is on the line.

I get it. Everyone and their mother wants to rank up and prove how good they think they are. They want to win every match. The problem is, unfortunately, your team winning means the other five people on the opposite side have to lose. Chances are they are not going to roll over that easily if you want that win.

This is already hard enough as it is because a halfway decent match requires coordination and some degree of teamwork. But I also think some of the hardest matches in League are not because of your opponents - it's because of awful allies who carry out bad behavior.

Pick your poison. There are so many ways to commit bad behavior in League. Flame, nag, bitch and moan, write out every insult and slur you can think of, troll, int, tell the enemy team where someone is on the map, so they get ganked and so forth.

Heck, so many of these toxic players would be Challenger level if they got LP for being toxic. It's a sad state of affairs when you have to queue up and pray the matchmaking dice roll does not screw you over with a person on a 20-game losing streak.

Anyway, sorry for the setup, but it brings me to my main point here - **RIOT NEEDS TO TREAT RANKED PLAY MORE AS A PRIVILEGE THAN JUST ANOTHER GAME MODE. **

Riot doesn't want to do a "Low Priority" island of misfits like Dota 2 does with its terrible offenders. So for League, I wish Riot would at least meet halfway and be quicker to punish toxic players in ranked by suspending their ranked play privileges sooner.

For example, let's say a toxic player in your ranked match causes a flame war. Not only should the punishment be swifter - it should promptly restrict that player from playing ranked games for a while. Force them to play norms or whatever for a bit before they can queue up for ranked play.

Sure, in this particular scenario, I know the argument is that the toxic player in question would just end up terrorizing normal games instead. Well, at that point, that player is already on the track of getting their account actually suspended/banned. A toxic player is a toxic player until they're not. Punishment or not.

In this context, the goal would be to clean up ranked play to some degree. It might not solve everything, but I think the system needs to weed out more of the toxic filth. I don't want to play every ranked game, hoping I get the side without the toxic player in a crappy mood who will throw the game as soon as they are down three kills in the lane or whatever.

Ranked play, without a doubt in my mind, SHOULD be a privilege. Instead, the reason why toxic players are so prominent in the mode stems from the fact that it's so easily accessed. Toxic players queue up (some without any intention of actually doing what they need to do to win), and then they ruin games. People complain, and then the cycle repeats.

If Riot would at least restrict toxic players from playing ranked on a quicker basis, at least some of the woes from the ranked experience could be somewhat better. If just a little.

TLDR = punish toxic behavior (in ranked play) for League sooner by restricting their ranked play privileges.

[sg-miss-fortune]