Losing full amount of designated LP from leaverbuster games

Hey League community! This is my first ever post on the boards (or any board for this matter.) I'm coming your way to open a discussion about something that I know most, if not all players in League of legends face when it comes to ranked solo/duo queue.

[zombie-nunu-bummed] AFK teammates.

And no, I'm not speaking (fully) on the terms that all people who AFK are doing it maliciously. If there is a real life issue preventing you from continuing the game, that is** fully understandable**. If your internet craps out and you have to restart your router, go for it. I would heavily suggest informing your teammates before leaving, but those are reasonable excuses to cut out of a match early.

Leaving because your jungler didn't all in your 3v1 is not one of those reasons.

Leaving because you were auto-filled to support and wanted mid is not one of those reasons.

Leaving because your top lane died 3 times in the first 5 minutes is not one of those reasons.

Do you notice the trends? Complete toxic behavior will always be apart of League, there is no possible way to refute that. Toxicity will always be apart of any online gaming atmosphere even though league is by far the most toxic community out there in gaming .

To clarify my point a little more, let me paint you a sample picture. I'm playing my usual position of Neeko Mid in a silver ranked game. The only 3 champions worth mentioning in this game are Rammus, Blitzcrank and myself. The game is going smoothly, and rather well in our favor. We're pushing towers, objectives, etc. The game is all but won. Now, I don't typically read team chat logs in game, so if someone is arguing I typically won't really notice. I did, however, notice my Jungler hadn't been seen in awhile. After reading up through my chat logs, I noticed that my Rammus and Blitzcrank had been arguing over a few ganks earlier on. As the chats got more recent, the conversation got uglier, and finally the Rammus decided to sit in our fountain for the remainder of the match.

This is in ranked.

As Rammus sits in base, rolling around in his Q and all of its glory, he says one thing over and over:

"Apologize and I'll help"

Now, I still really don't know exactly what they were saying back and forth. What I do know is that my Blitz was not afk, he was not trolling and he was still playing the game. Our entire team was asking incredibly politely for Rammus to return, to no avail. Finally, out of my frustration, I cracked and broke my silence. My Rammus would not quit claiming our support was "toxic". So I shot back.

"Man, this is pretty toxic of you to do."

His response?

"Now I need TWO apologies."

Needless to say, he never came back to the game. Just spinning, rolling around our fountain until the game finally was put out of its misery. However, before the enemy team finally put us down, he said something that resonated within me quite a bit:

"I don't give LP to pricks. I refuse."

And this made me think, a lot.

Why does this one player, this one upset individual, have all of the power to lose an entire game for 4 others, 3 of which had not said a word to him at all until the end? Now, I know some of you M7 500k mastery point Yasuo mains are reading this thinking "I can easily carry a 4v5". Hypothetically, you can. You absolutely can win a 4v5 match up. I've done it, I've seen others do it, it is possible. But probable? Absolutely not. Not only is having one less player a critical setback in a game like League, but its almost a complete handicap. Pile on the negative attitude that your AFK laner brings to your team and boom. Mentally and numerically, you and your team are beat. Coming back from this stacks your odds completely against you.

Lets peek into another instance, where just today (roughly 30 minutes before posting this thread) I was playing my silver ranked solo queue game. I was playing top lane, and in this case the only important players to remember are my Master Yi and Fizz.

The game was going fairly smooth, both sides were trading well against one another and kills were spread out evenly enough. Neither team had an overwhelming gold advantage over the other. At some point, my mid lane had gotten pretty upset with my jungler for taking 3-4 minions from his wave while he backed. The reaction my mid lane gave was to follow my jungler around for 5 minutes taking his jungle camps and completely ignoring his own lane. This was clearly incredibly irritating for our entire team to witness. We all asked very politely for the Fizz to just return to lane and play the game. His response to us was, "Yi already threw the game for us."

This was roughly 7 minutes into the game.

Needless to say, the Fizz got bored and decided to just connect and disconnect from our own fountain.

More LP gone.

I could tell you guys stories of my teammates going AFK, trolling lanes, or just flat out inting (the real kind, not just having a really bad game) for hours. This happens an overwhelming number of times to me within my ranked solo queue games. If I were to spitball guess, I would say if I play 6 games in one day that 2 of those games would have someone who AFK's or trolls the game because they're "upset". I have never received any form of reprimand for toxic behavior. I have never cheated/used 3rd party access in my game. Shoot, I've never even had so much as a chat restriction. But it still feels like I am being punished just as hard as the people who intentionally do this in ranked games. This is incredibly unacceptable and an unhealthy way to set up a ranked atmosphere.

This brings my argument to its circle.

If you lose a ranked solo queue game with somebody who AFK's for ANY REASON, you should NOT be penalized by losing the full amount of LP that is distributed/lost. League of Legends already has the ability to detect when a player has gone AFK (The white "X" over a players champion splash art in the post-game lobby). If they can detect this, why can they not reduce the amount of LP lost? Would it be overkill to lose 0 LP for an AFK loss? Absolutely. A loss is still a loss, so I see no issue with having to grit through a small portion of lost ladder points. But losing the full amount as if you had 5 people on your team when you only were able to play with 4? That seems genuinely absurd. I truly believe a potential system could be put in place where we lose 1/3, or maybe 1/2 of the original lost LP.

I made this post for 2 reasons:

1. Because when I sent a ticket to Riot, I was suggested to do so (Shout out to Good Looking Detective from Player Support)

2. I really do know that I am not the only one who is affected by this issue. Others out there are getting robbed of potential gained LP or losing a full set just because of their bad luck with teammates.

Thank you all who took time out of your day to read this! I want to know what your thoughts are on this subject. What could Riot do to fix/help this specific issue? Lets discuss! The best way to create change is to engage in change. Until next time!

-Gizmo