Boards›Player Behavior

Honor doesn't seem to have enough impact

This Is Your Dad·8/27/2018, 6:56:49 PM·4 votes·3,573 views

So I got booted down to honor 1 a couple months ago and made it back to honor 2 pretty quick after I stopped playing ranked entirely. So my opinions aren't based on being honor level 5 or 0, hopefully excluding bias or ulterior motive.

As it stands I think honor doesn't send a clear enough message. We see occasional loading screen flairs, but we don't have a clue as to what they're for. Did the guy carry his games and get honored for it? Does he main support and get honored for some good plays? Does he get honored for comebacks? Or does he simply get honored for being nice to people in the face of defeat?

Ideally it would be great to see different honors weighed differently. For instance, I feel certain honors would be harder to earn in Ranked than in Normals. Behavioral honors would be worth more where there are stakes in defeat and triumph. Tracking lifetime honor, adding statistical relevance to it in comparison to others, and adding more diversity in honor expression might help people not constantly forget honor even exists.

It doesn't have to be all about the free stuff. Exclusive emotes that highlight your highest honor category, that change colors based on how much honor you have received would be great. If a player really is really good at carrying, he'll get an honor separate from honor given to those who are good at being carried, supporting carries or just keeping the team chat cool. You don't own the emote; it is conditional based on honor.

Allowing for more diversity and a more complex honor system would make honor less of a superficial function. I totally think people that carry should definitely get something for it, but I think that shouldn't impact other honors. I've met some people that are honor level 4 or 5 that were really difficult to play with but were individually good, and it threw me off guard because I was expecting a more amicable teammate.

Honor tanking for a punishment should be diverted in a way. If I get a punishable report against me but it doesn't trigger a punishment, I'd like to be notified that I should take a look at my actions, with a chat log from the game that triggered a hit. Obviously I don't want lighter or less punishments, but when I did get punished it came in chats of three. A pop up would remind me to cool down. I'm not excusing lack of self-control. I just think we can do better about allowing positive affirmation and a tap on the shoulder to spur us into self-reflection.

Thanks for your time and let me know what you think would help you treat the honor system as a more active component in your league experience.

4 Comments

Umbral Regent8/27/2018, 9:04:14 PM1 votes

I'm gonna respond to these out of order, primarily because I feel that your last paragraph is well-worth addressing first;

Honor tanking for a punishment should be diverted in a way. If I get a punishable report against me but it doesn't trigger a punishment, I'd like to be notified that I should take a look at my actions, with a chat log from the game that triggered a hit. Obviously I don't want lighter or less punishments, but when I did get punished it came in chats of three. A pop up would remind me to cool down. I'm not excusing lack of self-control. I just think we can do better about allowing positive affirmation and a tap on the shoulder to spur us into self-reflection.

This is a good idea, and I honestly can't think of anything to say against it. It doesn't use Honor to undermine the punishment system (as I've seen some folks suggest), it fully acknowledges the necessity of the actual eventual punishment, and I'd reckon that a fair warning before the actual punishment might help a few people kick a bad habit or two.

As it stands I think honor doesn't send a clear enough message. We see occasional loading screen flairs, but we don't have a clue as to what they're for. Did the guy carry his games and get honored for it? Does he main support and get honored for some good plays? Does he get honored for comebacks? Or does he simply get honored for being nice to people in the face of defeat?

There are probably some good ways to deal with this to some degree - just off the top of my head, I could imagine letting there be an option to use the generic Honor flair, or setting it to be reflective of your highest Honor category. (although I'd imagine for most people it would wind up being GG, since that's a catch-all category, but there's options.)

Alternatively, for a bit more agency in displaying pride in one's Honor, one could potentially set it to be generic, Stayed Cool, Shotcaller, or GG - maybe with the stipulation that they obtain a certain number of the Honor beforehand, like, 50~? So that it remains achievable, not totally misleading, and personalized to some degree.

Just to throw some ideas out there.

Ideally it would be great to see different honors weighed differently. For instance, I feel certain honors would be harder to earn in Ranked than in Normals. Behavioral honors would be worth more where there are stakes in defeat and triumph.

I'm not totally sure how I feel about weighing Honors by gamemode. On the one hand, I can see some good reasoning for it, as Ranked play is pretty high-pressure, so Honors earned there would potentially best highlight your abilities, but on the other, I feel as though it may have something of an impact or leave a sour taste in the mouths of more casual players.

It's definitely a good idea to think about, regardless.

Tracking lifetime honor, adding statistical relevance to it in comparison to others, and adding more diversity in honor expression might help people not constantly forget honor even exists.

I'm not sure how much individual Honors tie into Honor progression, but I imagine that even what little they do might hurt the odds of Riot allowing one to see their lifetime Honor and statistics. That said, I'm personally in favor of the idea of at least being able to see one's individual Honors - I feel it'd be a nice carry-over from the old Honor system, and seeing where I stand in the eyes of the community is something a little fun for me.

I feel like I'd be well-stunned to see my Shotcaller Honor count, heh.

It doesn't have to be all about the free stuff. Exclusive emotes that highlight your highest honor category, that change colors based on how much honor you have received would be great. If a player really is really good at carrying, he'll get an honor separate from honor given to those who are good at being carried, supporting carries or just keeping the team chat cool. You don't own the emote; it is conditional based on honor.

Part of me wants to say the idea of emotes that change based on your highest Honor category might be a little complex - but, that'd be a tad hypocritical of me, given I just spitballed adaptive Honor flairs like, a minute ago.

Not to mention Elementalist Lux's ward skin adapts to the Element chosen, I think? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Again, though, definitely in favor of more ways to show one's Honor stuff. Workable or not, any idea is a good idea.

All said, there's a lot to think about here. Plenty of good ideas, some that could arguably run the line of "staying on paper", but all definitely worth considering.

Kei1438/28/2018, 2:55:34 AM1 votes

Kim Voll did say that they planned on expanding honors to give people more recognition on the types of honors they get most.

With how the behavioral system has expanded now to include honors, the stakes of punishment is higher than before. I think it's a great idea to have a warning before the punishments kick in.

Probably a reform card (with 1-5 chatlogs) stating that the system has detected a recent spike in unacceptable behavior frequency, warning the player to chill out else he might get punished soon. Have that message on until his toxicity meter decays.