Idea for improving player experiences

Warlord Zudane·6/2/2016, 11:28:54 PM·1 votes·300 views

So, I'm a pretty new player here on LoL (around 6-8 months I think), and I've done other online games before. A long time ago I played a different MMORPG shortly after it started and was later a Player Mod for several years (until I was completely done with the game and got demodded after giving a suggestion to improve the game). I know that doesn't mean a lot, but I do have some experience with online multiplayer and handling communities and the sort, both from that Player Mod position and other positions in several other communities.

I see a lot here that people complain about the community. I don't blame people, it's an aggressive game, and by nature that means there will be flaming and trolling and everything else people want to complain about. We can't get rid of that, and we can't even hope to remove it all - after all, what's an aggressive game without some aggression?

I have some ideas to help improve things, and I know they aren't 100% sound, but I haven't fully fleshed them out because they are just ideas. I just want to get them out and hopefully make some meaningful impact on the community.

First:

The game is not very well tailored for new players, it's a damned steep learning curve. Something needs to be done to help this, I had to research and spend a lot of time to figure out jungling (still working on it too) because it's not covered in the smallest bit during the tutorial or any bot game. Tutorials aren't always fun, but they show how a game works. The tutorial on this is fine for the basics, but lacks a LOT once you get into any other game. There should be options for other tutorials, including jungling and detailed tutorials on laning. These options don't need to be mandatory, but maybe have a requirement that you can't do ranked without passing the tutorial (or winning at least 3 games in each role).

Second:

The flaming and trolling is a problem. Reports don't seem to do a ton, even though there's plenty of people complaining, it just doesn't feel very helpful. I know reports do get a lot of people banned, and it does help, but I also know there's a ton of reports and it's time consuming to handle. I propose a new solution: a player review system. I know there was the Tribunal, but that faded out because it just didn't quite work right. What should happen is that each game is recorded (as it is, to my knowledge) and when reports come in for games they are put into a review queue. Players that are reviewing games can view game chat for both sides, but otherwise see the game as a normal spectated game. These players can then mark points in the game (say at 60 second intervals) where the reported player(s) broke rules (or whether it can be seen as a false-positive). After several players have marked the game it can be reviewed for those parts by Riot staff to determine if action should be taken or if evidence is logged to their file. Also allow to mark a game as acceptable (or something) if there are no rule violations, similarly, if a game is marked with no infractions it can be dropped.

I know it's not a perfect system, but here's how we make it work: Players have scores based off of their reports, more accurate reports gives a higher score and a higher score leads to being selected to be a reviewer. Players can apply to be a reviewer and reviewers are selected by Riot staff based on account history (and those scores I mentioned). There can be several layers of reviewers, with decisions weighted heavier at higher levels. Reviewers would start at the bottom tier where say each 'vote' would be worth 1 point, and 10 points for each incident would mark it for review (too few people agree it's a problem and it gets dropped). Higher tiers could have a 1.5 or 2 point vote after they have shown they can accurately assess rule violations.

A system like this would ease the burden on the Riot staff reviewing everything and would subject each person to a completely transparent review of their behavior. People act out when they have anonymity, and I propose we have a justice system that doesn't obscure identity (we're online, identity is already obscured).

How do we get people to keep going with this so we can have a good community? Rewards. But don't just reward for "You voted the same as everybody else!" but perhaps by accuracy of the reviews. The reward system would be a bit more complex to work right. Because of crowd sourcing punishment (much like the tribunal) we can assume that any instance marked as a violation by majority of reviewers is 'correct'. We can give 1 point for each 'correct' mark, and remove 1 for each 'incorrect' mark, and divide that total by the final 'correct' marks as voted by the reviewers to get a percentage. So, if a player flames 4 times in a game and the reviewers mark all 4 times they would have a 100% accuracy (all marks are 'correct', no 'correct' mark is missed). A reviewer that saw the same game and marked the same 4 instances and 2 other 'incorrect' ones would have an accuracy of 50% (+4 right -2 wrong = 2 of 4 points). A third reviewer marks only 3 of the 4, but none others would have an accuracy of 75%. This would make it less beneficial to mark excessively. These accuracy ratings can be used both for keeping the reviewers accurate (and giving feedback when they are wrong) and to reward. If a case has a minor infraction it can give a maximum of 10RP, a moderate infraction is 25RP and a major infraction (bannable offense) is a 50RP reward. The rewards are only doled out after punishment is determined by Riot staff, and each reviewer gets a portion of the reward based on accuracy and what level reviewer they are (lower tier reviewer = less RP).

Part of the reason I suggest this is because I would enjoy just sitting and watching games, being able to pick out the bad apples at the same time would be enjoyable. The rewards are small, but enough to make people want to keep going, and the checks and balances should keep it as a fair way to monitor the community.

Lastly:

Listen to the damned community. People don't always know what they want, but that doesn't mean that you know what they want either. Bring back Solo Queue. Why? Because I am a semi-casual player, I enjoy the competition of ranked but I am not dedicated enough to the game to put in that much time for the draft pick. It's slow because people like me (I don't know who to ban, so I take forever) and because there's so many steps. I would love to do ranked without having to spend 15 minutes just to get into the game. Maybe Solo Queue isn't the answer to it, but the Dynamic Queue just isn't working.

Anyway, there's my wall of text. Feel free to tell me what of it is wrong, or if you want to add me or anything (or buy me stuff) I don't mind.

Edit: Fourthly... There's often a problem I see of someone going the wrong direction with things, such as Tank Fizz right now. Instead of constantly tweaking everything, why not add a modifier to the classes to make them more unique? Make assassins get only 50% bonus armor from items, or tanks get only 50% for AD bonuses from items. It doesn't need to be as extreme, but it would level the playing field quite a bit. Sure, we shouldn't stop a mage from having heavy armor, but it should cause a problem.

Perhaps it would be better to have each class has a weakness where one skill inversely effects another (IE: As Assassin - attack speed goes down as AD goes up; similarly AP dropping as armor increases on a mage).

This type of balance would mean that a mage would never be a tank, unless they are a tank mage by description. And tank Fizz would never happen because he'd be all tank and no Fizz.

2 Comments

deathgod56/3/2016, 10:30:51 AM2 votes

your points and why I agree/disagree.

1: 100 percent on board, the tutorial is bad and needs to be improved.

2: the tribunal was removed because too many people just voted guilty for the ip or other reward. anyone who got reported got a ban or a warning. My little brother once got reported for ks in a co-op game. He got punished. so they removed the rewards. so the tribunal was only run by the most PC players(actually getting banned for making a somewhat edgy joke etc, even if set player was reported for unskilled player while being 10/0/10). It was getting so bad that players got reported for saying something that was barely salty. the system was also very slow; it could take weeks for a ban to be processed so trolls could easily troll on.

the system you propose is without a doubt the best system for dishing out fair punishment, but it only works if everybody takes this system serious and it is very sluggish. I would like to see the spectate thing for troll checking tho.

as for checking if someone was trollvoting. I would put games inbetween it that are fake games made by riot(f.e a fake game in which a 10/0/143 champ gets reported) if someone votes guilty on that, the value for his vote drops.

3:I really don't know why riot implemented dynamic queue, but I have a feeling there is a reason they are not reversing it. I do wish they were more open to the community with things like this because a lot of rage could be prevented with. 4: a lot of the best things in the game come from off meta picks. this would ruin that, I have to disagree. Sometimes It ruins things like tank ekko, but things like annie and naut support are things I would not like.

Warlord Zudane6/2/2016, 11:48:44 PM1 votes

Edited with an additional point.