Boards›Player Behavior

Enforcement Gaps - the Swan Song

Bunglepicker·2/26/2019, 6:12:08 PM·2 votes·1,711 views

While you can work your Diversity and Inclusiveness to try to incorporate respect and a giant group hug amongst player and staff, while you can continue to fund cool dance sessions, concept storylines and videos to promote game entertainment, while you can continue to focus merchandise development to supplement the income streams, and while you can fund the e-sports coverage and tournament play which exposes the common player to the most unbelievably skilled and respected of fellow players, you have completely dropped the ball on the primary reason Riot developed League in the first place – “To develop and present a team-based game for gamers, as established by a company that is the most player-focussed in the world” As a player active since Season 2, I can say that for all the board complaints that exist, Riot’s intent to balance champion strength, to create a fair ranking system, to adapt and fix bugs as content develops, and continue overall content development has been solid, and most complaints in this regard are either emotional or unfounded. But Riot’s blind spot is the enforcement of Player behaviour. Penalty enforcement outside those rare cases of clear sociopathic players, is really limited to only two enforcements – verbal abuse and AFK. It seems as though the player enforcement department has been handcuffed by a set of bureaucratic guidelines that rival that of Kremlinology, and can only enforce those items that are so clear cut that there is no interpretation needed. This is the tragic blindspot of the game, and the primary reason behind ELO hell. Which leads me to the suggestions for improvement, as the Swan Song gift from a long time player now leaving game: • Reallocate funding to player enforcement so that RIOT emphasises the gameplay portion of the business, rather than the gloss and glam. Take care of the basics, it’s the reason players come here in the first place. • Enhance player enforcement with the capability to interpret game play and make appropriate penalties (trust your people). Verbal abuse and AFK are mindless to enforce, it’s the toxic, trolling, BMing, smurfing, goofing behaviours that kill the ability to enjoy the team structured environment and drive players out of the game. This continues to be fundamentally ignored by Riot, and is supported by the continuous trend of growing disinterest in the game (google trend league of legends... continuous slide since Oct 2013)

7 Comments

Bunglepicker2/26/2019, 6:28:05 PM2 votes

This weeks examples of missed enforcement in ranked matches:

  • Player locks Udyr as top with smite, wanders the entire field trying farm every lane and smite steal every buff, thus throwing his lane (first to lose two turrets at 12 min mark) and screwing any effectiveness of the assigned jungle. Post game states that at least 3 of 5 players report this player, but match history shows no interruption to his game play.

  • Player locks ashe as jungle... feeds epically trying to 1v4 through their jungle(2-23), and is reported post match. In looking up match history, this player has a 0.15KDA and a 12% win rate in over 40 matches. Clearly a troll account, yet not banned from ranked play, and continues to be active in matchplay to this moment.

  • duo'd pairing take fiddle adc and zilean support... game play when there is actually solid, but players announce every 5 minutes in chat that they need a 1 min break to hit a bong. this occurs continuously through 40 min of play, clearly throwing the match, and they openly laugh that RIOT just wont do anything about it.

  • Player takes Trundle top - states that since he gave up first kill that there is no way to recover so he is going to intentionally feed... walked from respawn at base to whereever he could find players in the opposing jungle, and feeds throwing the match. Continuously laughed that he was trying to int and they wouldn't even kill him because of his tankyness. Player ends up going 6-32 and throwing match, get reported post game, and match history show no interruption to play (his ongoing stats indicated continues intentional feeding).

These are perfect cases where Player Enforcement should be able to intepret play and suspend these players from Ranked matches, forcing them to norms aram and arurf. Leave ranked play for those that are actually interested in trying to win, to actually play competitively and to do so in a manner where the primary intent isnt selfishness or intent to aggravate team mates.

MasterLico2/26/2019, 8:51:48 PM1 votes

i thot this had to do with dua lipa. oh well