Potential Improvements to player community in game. (Opinion based)
I'm not going to lie to you guys, I'm on that border between annoyed and livid for today. Mainly due to a majority of my games, I as well as the other 3 people on my team, have had to deal with that one player. The one "Holier than thou" individual that dies twice in lane (despite being offered help via gank or advice to play smart), then continuously feeds the other team while still trying to insult the other team.
I think we all agree, this is the epitome of idiocy.
Before I receive the standard responses, allow me to answer some concerns; 1: Yes, I have put these players on mute. 2: Yes, I as well as others have reported them post match.
What I'm proposing here is that RIOT tries to take a second look at their ban/tribunal system. These suggestions may have already been posted and if so, I apologize for being a broken record, but in my honest opinion, this could potentially go a long way separating the toxic from everyone else.
► 1: Shadow Ban The practice of covertly moving one or more entities, wanted or unwanted, into a separate area. This is not a new concept by any means. Max Payne 3 was the most recent game in memory to do this and I as well as others liked this system because it brought the negative side of the community together, put them in a room and locked the door to have fun with themselves, away from the "good" portion of the community.
Lets look at the facts for a second. League of legends is a Free to Play game, if someone is banned, it costs NOTHING to make a new account and continue spewing their toxicity on to the undeserved few. Sure they lose their champions, but they can just as easily make up the difference in about a weeks worth of time. So avoid that, just take these individuals and put them into a room of their own like minded peers.
Now I know some people tend to go into overdrive when it comes to toxicity, the fail safe(?) here is to still have some moderators looking over it (although behaving like valve customer support, slow as molasses) to actually go in to ban the "upper tier" of scumbags.
►2: IP Banning/Suspension Self explanatory. This is not the best solution, however it is still a legitimate course of action.
►3: Revive, Modify, Remove the vestigial. With the most recent update, Riot has removed team builder all together and traded us for a new interface on both draft playlists. Personally I think that removing team builder was a mistake. If you look at the current state blind pick is in, yeah you'll get into a game faster, but half the time it's people auto locking into positions others had already called. This is in my opinion a terrible system that can lead to a lot of undesired behavior, I know because I've unfortunately lost my cool a few times with it.
So what I propose is the revival and modification of team builder and cutting off blind pick.
Mods:
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When a new player enters with character and position, instead of giving the 'host' the option to single a person out and reject him/her, wait for the full team to assemble and force a ready up status before the timer runs out. If there is a disagreement within the players they they can have at maximum 1-3 queue dodges per day, beyond that then they go on to cool down for X amount of time. (X = Intervals of 10 Minutes). If a player dodges, the room doesn't clear and reset, the game looks for someone new to take up into that position until everyone readies up.
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Incentivize players for playing outside their comfort zone. There are people who have not touched other lanes or jungle because they found the one position that works for them. So what I propose is that you have a program running in the background that takes in detail of what position and how they play, then give them IP boosts OR a Play bonus for playing a role outside of their comfort zone. The reward can be proportional to the role most neglected. Simply put, if you don't touch a certain role for a while and will play everything else, your neglected role pay will increase to the cap*. (For shits and grins lets say the cap is 500 - 1000 points, and this is calculated in a span of 2 weeks to a month.) To prevent loot scumming you can make an algorithm that says they have to perform within reasonable expectations AND NOT FORFEIT to receive your pay.
If Riot plans of retaining blind pick then the only advice I have is to PUT A GOD FORSAKEN AUTO LOCK PREVENTATIVE TIMER ON IT.
►4: Alerts This one isn't a major concern, but it'd be a nice cherry on top. Simply put, if action is taken against a user that you reported at any point in time, alert the player, action has been taken. For some of us who do not frequent the forums it would be good to know first hand to see if our grievances have actually been listened to instead of pushed off to the side.
*This cap can potentially be variable. To tie it in with preventative loot scumming, this prevents players from picking a role, then doing nothing to properly earn it or 'paid trolling'.
P.S: I apologize for spelling/grammatical errors.