Boards›Player Behavior

I think I know how to deal with alt accounts (and everyone is going to HATE it).

Lun4Shy·12/27/2015, 6:52:21 AM·5 votes·1,031 views

Make League cost money to start up. Simply put, WoW did it to stop hurting their toxicity and it (kind of) worked. It's the only thing I can think of that would honestly make people go "Maybe this was a bad idea..." when just trolling and then making alternate accounts. Offset this by giving a set amount of RP when buying the game and done. This will get downvoted to oblivion, I know it will, and there's probably a good amount of reasons why NOT to do this (such as no other big name MOBA does it even though Smite has that 30 dollar every god pack from now till end o' time deal), but hey why not? I don't really know many other options and unless Riot has something better cooking up I think this might be what it'll come to. That or continue letting alt account trolls run wild or LCS players fuck up your promo's

EDIT: So people have been mention WoW's player base steadily declining since. I think that this does lead to a load of questions about whether this is a good idea or not (and judging by that minus 2 up there you guys say not) and as I have mentioned in the comments:

I should have mentioned in my comparison to WoW's process, these are not the same games. So therefore things tend to be less... Coherent. Things that are considered toxic there might not be here, vice versa, and things that would be a problem in a MOBA (such as dodging que's and feeding) won't be present, at least to the same degree, in League.
The steady decline of WoW's player base is a concern. However, I think we need to ask ourselves which is more important: A small, tight knit community that has a massively cut player base but a harder nut to crack in terms of trolls, toxic players, and general bad attitudes, or a much larger player base with more money but also heavily increased toxicity and rage. Personally I prefer smaller community with less strength but this is a game of millions, not one

EDIT 2: Ok some people seem to think I mean a pay to play constantly deal. I was thinking more of a pay to start UP than a pay to play constantly.

37 Comments

PIMPSMOOTH12/27/2015, 10:12:58 AM2 votes

This idea has zero chance of happening.

disregardable12/27/2015, 7:04:13 AM2 votes

There's no upfront cost because no one will play the game. When no one plays, there are high queue times, so the few people that bought it won't want to play it.

Pierce The Veal12/27/2015, 7:31:47 AM2 votes

The value of this game comes from the free to play players. Economic models indicate that paying players actually gain value from the free to play players. If there were no free to play players, Riot would lose quite a bit of profit. The constant influx of free to play layers provides opponents and allies for the pay to play players.

I know I've spent money on League, but I wouldn't have joined had it been pay to start.

ModKnightsKemplar12/27/2015, 6:56:52 AM2 votes

That's... a darn good idea.

Won't ever happen, I'd wager, but pretty slick idea.

Samus7212/27/2015, 11:15:45 PM1 votes

This concept assumes Riot can successfully determine, on every occasion, someone is using an alt when their main account has been banned. It is entirely possible to do this with some research. But I think you'll find that most companies are not willing to divert resources to accomplish such matters. Riot would need to hire people, perhaps lots of people, to perform this activity; the backlog alone would necessitate it. Time and money better spent on other things.

Riot has to be careful and not become too heavy handed. Granted, there are people out there that cannot respect the rules and suffer as a result. There will always be that kind of jerk. Most of the time, people who are banned won't come back. Besides, all it would take is one mistake of raising prices on an innocent person who was incorrectly priced out of the shop for a P.R. backlash to happen.

Akenero12/28/2015, 1:23:11 AM1 votes

Or have the account limit per email be two...oh wait

shyv12/27/2015, 7:34:31 AM1 votes

if you want league to die out then sure.

Tomate Cru12/27/2015, 9:18:30 AM1 votes

It may have been suggested before, but, oh well... What if instead of banning an account, a bad player just lose something? Like his champion pool? Or their masteries?

Considering that, let's say that you have 100 champions and you are to be punished for some reason and the punishment is to lose 25%-50% of your champions. Would you create a new account and start all over again or would you stay on this one with 50%-75% of your previous champion pool and try to never get punished again?

They could also work with a more permanent punishment system like applying an extra "tax" on banned accounts, for instance:

Once "banned", everything will cost 1.5x-2x more (runes, champions, icons, anything) until you get reformed. If banned again, this factor goes up.

In this case, if banned, I would still keep my account, as I don't want to get enough IP to buy 70 champs again, and I would try my very best to not let the punishment gets worse...

And yeah, one might say that they cannot charge people differently, but if they have the right to ban an account entirely, I think there may be some ways to apply this kind of system as well. After all, you are buying "RPs", not the item itself.

Pantheon Forever12/27/2015, 5:48:32 PM1 votes

I only started playing this game because it was free, and would quit immediately if it changed. I pay to play many games, but this community is to angry for me to fork out money to be harassed. Other pay to play games like "world of warcraft" allow you to leave a group that you don't enjoy and continue playing, worth every penny to bail on a group on trolls.