[UX] Shower Thoughts. Players would be less toxic if...

OneAlmond·Mar 7, 2019·2 votes·3,106 views

Had some shower thoughts today. Players would be less toxic if they were ranked for individual performance as well as team performance.

Think about it: got an AFKer? The current system doesn't reward you for continuing to play the game. Most league systems instead punish you for continuing to play a game. Individual performance would allow you to get some points towards your next rank if you didn't feed/give up.

What about if someone on your team picked a really bad champion for the matchup/troll picked/trolled your team? As long as you did well in cs/didn't feed or flame, you'd still be rewarded.

I'd be really interested in what UX studies riot and the reds have on this and why they haven't implemented something like this before. There's no need to complain/AFK/tilt if you know that you'll still be rewarded for your sporting/good play, even if your team does bad (or in many cases has one bad actor) and loses.

The only reason I can think of off the top of my head is that Riot wants us to play as long as possible, and the current system empowers one bad actor to negatively affect as many players as possible, causing those other players to play longer to meet objectives. (aside from cases where someone immediately closes the game, something I've seen in ux studies for other games.) The increase in distance between honor waypoints and other reward milestones tends to lend credence to this.

14 Comments

Soul DealerMar 7, 20192 votes

I have wanted this for such a long time but the mods will all say that the only thing that matter in a game is who’s nexus explodes. This is false however because I could be playing extremely good and have good CS, vision score, and objective damage (I listed those 3 stats because they are the most important, KDA doesn’t mean shit tbh) and still lose because someone decides to run it down mid

ModThe DjinnMar 7, 20194 votes

[{quoted}](name=Soul Dealer,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=eaBHxvBp,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2019-03-07T03:49:48.363+0000)

I have wanted this for such a long time but the mods will all say that the only thing that matter in a game is who’s nexus explodes. This is false however because I could be playing extremely good and have good CS, vision score, and objective damage (I listed those 3 stats because they are the most important, KDA doesn’t mean shit tbh) and still lose because someone decides to run it down mid

I won't say that's the only thing that matters. My concern with the individual performance metric is solely that I do not believe that a metric for judging player performance can be created that is fair across roles and does not incentivize behavior that is detrimental to overall game quality.

Soul DealerMar 7, 20191 votes

[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=eaBHxvBp,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2019-03-07T04:05:07.882+0000)

I won't say that's the only thing that matters. My concern with the individual performance metric is solely that I do not believe that a metric for judging player performance can be created that is fair across roles and does not incentivize behavior that is detrimental to overall game quality.

Just make objective damage and vision score all that matter in the metric. That makes people prioritize getting vision control and getting objectives therefore helping their team win games

ModThe DjinnMar 7, 20193 votes

[{quoted}](name=Soul Dealer,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=eaBHxvBp,comment-id=000000000000,timestamp=2019-03-07T04:21:10.930+0000)Just make objective damage and vision score all that matter in the metric. That makes people prioritize getting vision control and getting objectives therefore helping their team win games

This changes gameplay though. Suddenly some trinkets become less valuable, as does defensive warding. Characters with lower objective damage potential become less desirable, even if they're strong picks for the team. Taking all the objectives to raise your objective damage score is now more valuable than closing out a game quickly, and you're incentivized to take stupid plays in losing games in an attempt to get more vision score or objective damage, even if the better play is to wait for a pick and win the 4v5.

ShahamutMar 7, 20192 votes

that is fair across roles and does not incentivize behavior that is detrimental to overall game quality.

Could you elaborate on this?

I've only ever thought that since we already have a rating system, it should slightly modify points lost/gained. If you win with an S + rating, gain 2-4 extra LP. Get an S+ rating and lose? Lose 2-4 less LP.

I think other modifiers, like winning or losing a game with an afk or someone who lost connection should be a mitigating factor or a boon if you somehow win.

ModThe DjinnMar 7, 20195 votes

{quoted}Could you elaborate on this?

Sure!

You can see this sort of thing in Overwatch, which gives you performance-based rankings. My friend and I played all our placements together, and we both contributed in every game. We ended up with over 1000 difference between our rankings because my character of choice simply had more damage potential and more synergy with the meta at the time. This is despite playing every game together, and despite him being quite a good support.

League has some similar things -- can you figure out an algorithm that can accurately judge the contribution to winning of a carry who places no vision but has triple the next highest objective value vs. a support who has a solid vision score vs. a tank who is 0/7/10, but whose self-sacrificing final play was the lynchpin towards bringing down the enemy team and winning the game? What about the guy whose great macro play and splitpushing creates all the opportunities that the other four players get to play off of to secure objectives?

These are just some examples of complex game situations across multiple roles. This doesn't even touch on the fact that putting values on specific game actions influences choice between them. If objective damage is crucial to me getting the maximum LP gain, I'm incentivized to extend games I'm winning and take risks I might not normally take to max that out, for example. If I'm losing, I may make aggressive, risky plays aimed not at getting back into the game, but instead aimed at padding my personal score to minimize the loss.

If you can't solve for that sort of problem, I think any proposal is inherently flawed, and probably does more harm than good -- at the cost of a lot of development time to boot.

ShahamutMar 7, 20191 votes

What do you think of my proposal to simply give a small bump based on the score you get at end game? The rating being at least slightly more fair, since it just compares your stats to how others are doing in that role on that champion (I think?). You could make it A+ through S+. (1,2,3,4 points respectively)

ModThe DjinnMar 7, 20194 votes

{quoted}

What do you think of my proposal to simply give a small bump based on the score you get at end game? The rating being at least slightly more fair, since it just compares your stats to how others are doing in that role on that champion (I think?). You could make it A+ through S+. (1,2,3,4 points respectively)

I think that ends up at an awkward intersectiom between not mattering enough to feel impactful but and still having the potential to artificially change the game for people who are loss averse and want every edge.

rujitraMar 7, 20192 votes

Unfortunately, the player demographic of League is the one that will be very likely to try to maximize this "small bump" the second it's announced.

Anything that is "stats based" that provides tangible benefit to someone's ranked standing will result in players trying to maximize those stats.

NMG SerinaMar 10, 20191 votes

{quoted}

Could you elaborate on this?

I've only ever thought that since we already have a rating system, it should slightly modify points lost/gained. If you win with an S + rating, gain 2-4 extra LP. Get an S+ rating and lose? Lose 2-4 less LP.

I think other modifiers, like winning or losing a game with an afk or someone who lost connection should be a mitigating factor or a boon if you somehow win.

I would be happy losing 2-5 less LP if a player lost connection before the 15 minute mark.
It wouldn't have a big impact on overall LP, but might make losing for that reason feel less frustrating.

LP gain/loss based on performance rating would likely not work out fair.

ShahamutMar 10, 20191 votes

Not sure what wouldnt be fair about it:

Winning with a good score could get you 24 instead of 19. Losing with a good score would still make you -13 instead of -17.

Having a terrible game would still net you the +19 or the -17.

TrulyBlandMar 10, 20191 votes

And you can have good CS, vision score and objective damage while still making decisions that are detrimental to your team's chance to win, especially when looking at individual decisions resulting in minor increase/decrease to chance to win and stats respectively.

Let's take a look at the following scenario: You are about p% confident that your team will be able to push the Nexus without your help, so you decide to instead go to a lane to get some last second creep stats. Let's say you can get at least X more cs.

In 100% of cases you increase your CS by X. In 0% of cases do you help your team win the game. In (100-p)% of cases you completely fuck them over.

For every metric that you are suggesting, there will be values for p and X, where over the course of enough games the decision that effectively lowers your chance to win will be the best possible choice from a selfish point of view, because the X minions outweigh the (100-p)% chance to lose the game.

The Highest NoonMar 7, 20191 votes

I've suggested this so many times. TBH it's not even like Riot would have to base Ranking solely on individual gameplay, but ffs there should be at least SOME impact on the ranking system from it. As well, Matchmaking should function in roughly the same. Say you're a Support main that have bare minimum CS and low/low/high k/d/a but also high gold income from income item and assists. That should match you with an ADC that has high cs and high/low/low k/d/a. The system would match your talents in the bot lane with someone who compliments you. As it is, you're matched with damn near anybody who queues at the same general timeframe with no regard to individual gameplay talents nor what the player can apply to the team--it's just "are you gold? here, have some others".

Silent GravityMar 7, 20191 votes

The system doesn't need to reward players when there is an AFK/troll/etc on their team. Statistics already accomplishes this.

For every loss from every and any cause that is NOT you, you are currently given 1.25 wins.

This is done simply by having there be 4 other players on your team to contribute these losses and 5 other players being on the other team to similarly contribute losses to their team. For every cause of loss that you don't participate in, it happens more to your opponents.