My First Thoughts on the New Honor System
In one sentence, it's freakin' amazing.
For context, I'd been losing for the past 3 hours straight and I was started to get frustrated with my performance, and some of that frustration ultimately affected my perception that I was simply getting unlucky with matchmaking as well. But I as with the ranked system and my prior experience on Oceania, I knew I'd rebound at some point once I got re-accustomed to the ping difference there and I regained my confidence.
Unfavourable Early Game Conditions
I queue up for my last game, picking and receiving jungle, fully expecting to play Master Yi. Well, our team bans out Master Yi, but it's 100% my fault for not pick intenting it so I say nothing. Champion Select goes on and the enemy picks Rammose (Ok.), so I counter-pick with my only other 'viable' jungler, Kayle. I'm not a fan of her clear, but against Rammus, I'd take Kayle over Master Yi any day.
The early game was pretty bad. The enemy Rammus got several early kills and rushed a first-item Thornmail. I maintain my jungle rotations and gank for lanes when the chances of me getting a kill are good and it doesn't set me behind in camps/levels. As the game progresses, tensions start to rise and my teammates began to vocalize their frustration. As to not name names, let's just say some of the things said weren't the most positive of messages. However, I knew that most of the gold was on two champions, my team was holding their own pretty well despite the surrender votes, and the enemy team was having difficulty pushing their advantages (again, partially because a lot of the early gold was funneled into Rammus).
Understanding that we had a decent shot at pulling a comeback, I quickly ended the back and forth arguments on my team as they manifested.
The End Game and Post Game
"Mate, honestly, we still got this."
"Legit, stop being toxic."
"I'll build Black Cleaver for you Sivir."
"Alright, I'm building Wits End now for the rest of the team."
The word 'useless' was thrown around a lot, but I couldn't be bothered by it; we had a game to win. The game seemingly hit a crossroads a bit after 30 minutes into the game when they thought they could start wrapping up the match. Rammus saw the Nexus turret was low and made a unilateral decision to go for the kill on the turret. With a decent amount of Armor and Magic Penetration and sick shields and peels by Janna, we saved the turret from falling and killed one of their beefiest players. After their players came back up, another fight quickly ensued. Taking advantage of the enemy's poor target focus, we aced their team and just barely snagged Baron in the process.
You know how the rest of the story goes. I wouldn't say that being a super positive player is something that comes naturally to me to the point where I don't have to think about it, but it really isn't something that I think requires a tremendous amount of work. The new Honor System really brought my behaviour to the forefront since I knew we had a good shields and heal teamcomp, we weren't super behind, I was on our team (obviously best player OCE jk), and while being supportive isn't natural to me, it's at least easy.
All in all, there will be those games where you'll have positive players in your game who can help you see your situation in a better light, but there will also be those games where you won't; and that's where you can make the conscious decision to put that little bit of effort to keep your team together and play past 15 minutes. I knew our top laner was frustrated at me for not ganking top while the opposing top laner got a nice camp, but I played the map that I thought would allow me to stay relevant while communicating my intentions to my team.
Incentivising positive behaviour with more consistent rewards and visible progression? Let's do it.
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