"Open Mid" feature?

Sabrinachu·Oct 29, 2015·1 votes·2,434 views

I know this started in Korea for teams that wanted an early end to the game due to trolls. But i've noticed people have started doing this in NA as well. My last game they had us group mid because they had a Clarity/Cleanse Sivir run into mid turret 3 times to feed our Malz. While I believe player toxicity should be banned, perhaps a feature like "Open Mid" should be implemented as a sort of early surrender. Have it on a cooldown of 5 minutes or so. That way the game has to play out a little to determine if they player is actually trolling or a god. Then have a vote (kind of like surrender) where your team votes AGAINST the person that is trolling them. If the vote succeeds (4 required) then do something to allow the enemy team to push through mid freely. Drop turret strength, give enemy team enough gold to full build, remove minions from side lanes and spawn nothing but super minions on enemy team. Just some ideas but I think it would help players get into healthier games where they acn enjoy themselves instead of being stuck waiting 20 minutes getting completely dominated.

Edit: Someone replied saying that it's no different than a 20 minute surrender, or dropping the surrender time. The reason I think this should be implemented side by side with a Surrender option (or even surrendering the game if the vote succeeds) would be that it allows more control against toxic players. I'd like to give an example of how the system could work:

Irelia top runs cleanse/clarity. She proceeds to run mid and feed multiple kills. Players initiate the vote after the 5 minute mark. The vote succeeds. Irelia is automatically flagged for trolling, get's a 1 ranked game restriction (the player is obviously tilted/toxic). Team A automatically surrenders the game but receives a 0 LP loss until the game is reviewed. After review, the team either receives a higher LP/MMR drop than normal for the false report and the irelia receives standard LP loss for losing the game. Or the team receives a lower LP/MMR drop due to being trolled while the Irelia loses much more LP and get's a ranked ban/time ban. Either way team B receives standard LP. This would prevent people from initiating the vote needlessly while still allowing players to not be punished negatively because someone joined their game while tilting and expected to troll. Also, disabling it after around 10 minutes would prevent people from abusing it just because they don't like how the game plays out. My idea could be improved on, but I firmly believe a system like this would definitely encourage player behavior and reduce the amount of tilting/trolling going on in ranked settings.

26 Comments

ThePartyLeaderOct 29, 20152 votes

............ If they did that why not just let you surrender pre 20. Since that is what you are doing.

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

As I said to Zielmann, it allows you to (in a way) condemn a player who displays toxic/troll behavior. It ends the game faster than the 15-20 minute mark push/surrender and can implement a system to institute a ranked ban or a timed/perma account ban if too many reports go through. It's a better idea than the "assisting enemy team" or "Intentionally feeding" reports which do nothing if the automated systems don't agree with you. all it takes is for that 1 person to KS a kill or two and not be flagged anymore.

ThePartyLeaderOct 29, 20151 votes

But without voting you can just not defend mid turrets and they can win like 10 min in. The report thing is fine but if riot doesn't punish them now when they are getting reported then i don't see why reporting them in your system will do anything. Voting to debuff your turrets or give enemies full build solves nothing but adds more ways to troll. I could see lots of teams being like OK you have us full builds at 9 minutes in a 5v4. Time to rack up that kda.

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

Again, a standard push 5 mid at level 5-8 would take around 10-14 minutes depending on comp and who got the first blood etc. and I changed my idea around and posted a scenario that could possibly work. Check up top and lemme know if you still don't think it would do any good.

ChaosReignsDownOct 29, 20151 votes

{quoted}

............ If they did that why not just let you surrender pre 20. Since that is what you are doing.

Thats what I was thinking reading this lol

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

Look at the end of the post. It's a surrender that prevents the team getting trolled from being punished as if they had played poorly.

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

Also, set the person that got voted against in your toxic que times (kind of like afk/leaver times) and file an automatic report. I think it would be great with limitations (like not available in normals)

ZielmannOct 29, 20151 votes

I don't see how that's any different than just pulling the surrender time forward (which I don't think is something that should happen). Letting the other team push down mid and walk over the base pre-20 is an informal surrender. The team already has to have majority agreement for it to succeed (I've seen a couple players continue to try defending after a 'just push mid' was called by the other team, and it can be enough to stall things longer than should be necessary).

There's not really a benefit to giving a built-in means of quitting the game even earlier.

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

Would you rather waste the time in a game you cannot win and try to let a bunch of low level people push mid? it takes around 13-14 minutes early game like that. The idea is to give players a means of getting into a game earlier while implementing an in-game report against a troll. As of right now Riot has absolutely no punishment for intentionally feeding and assisting enemy team. Literally 0 punishment for those. This would allow players to file those reports and if it's successful it auto-bans that player from Ranked or even timed/perma bans for players who receive it too many times. It's an alternative to allow the community more control in the report system instead of hoping some automated systems agrees with me (which 99% of the time it won't unless the player left the game)

ZielmannOct 29, 20151 votes

They have created automatic intentional feeding detection. And people do get punished for assisting the enemy team. So there's that.

But yeah, in general, I just feel like implementing a pre-20 surrender option with an attached punishment targeted at a single player isn't really wise, or necessary.

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

I edited the main post with an idea/scenario for how the system could work. Lemme know what you think.

ZielmannOct 29, 20151 votes

i just honestly feel like true intentional feeding* happens so infrequently that the effort to put such a system together and then review each case and apply LP accordingly isn't justified. I would imagine that, even in a majority of situations where a team calls the Open Mid right now, it's usually just a situation where the team is just down that far early, or a certain person on one team is just that fed early enough that they determine it's a loss before they can surrender.

Also, they cannot implement something that delays granting LP, or modifies LP gains/losses, until a game is reviewed. It would basically have to lock all players from that team out of ranked until the game is analyzed in order to not cause issues.

*True intention feeding as opposed to what most people like to call intentional feeding, which in reality is just one person having a bad game and dying a lot.

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

Despite what Riot tells people, they do have control over your LP/Division/Tier. An example of how this could work effectively is the same thing they do with the chat restriction. After the match is over and the case is reviewed have one of two pop-ups on the reporting players screen. If the player was found guilty of feeding, have a pop-up that says "Thank you for your recent report, you have assisted us in finding a negative player in the community" or something like that. Have the system grant you 5 LP or something. If it was a false report, have a pop-up that says "We've found that you filed a false report that ended a game early. This is unsportsmanslike and hurts the community by doing so." Remove 5 LP if you get that message. It would be very simple to apply that to said system.

Edit: I didn't touch on the first part of your comment because I just said something about that in a comment to Wuks. Please scroll down for my explanation on that.

ZielmannOct 29, 20151 votes

The problem isn't their ability to adjust a number in their database. Yes, they most definitely would be capable of adjusting any data in their database if they wanted to. The reason they can't go and add, remove, or modify LP gains/losses after-the-fact is because it introduces conflicts in the LP system.

For example, player A is at 85 LP. His next game, his team does a false Open Mid vote because they gave up 3 kills to a jungle invade and a majority decided to just give up on the game. Because it ended like that, his LP is held at 85 while the game is up for review. He then plays another game, wins, and gains just enough LP to hit 100, and reach a promotion series. Perhaps he even goes and wins his first game in the series. Then that one game is finally reviewed and they determined it wasn't a 'valid' use case for the Open Mid vote because nobody was trolling. He's supposed to be penalized 5LP for abusing the feature, but he's already mid-series now...

SabrinachuOct 30, 20151 votes

The point of the system is to award/remove the LP AFTER review. Not hold it. This way the player would still lose the LP he got from the loss and then add/subtract the points later on.

ZielmannOct 30, 20151 votes

I don't think you're quite thinking that through. They cannot modify LP after a delay to review a game, unless they lock every player who might potentially have their LP modified out of playing ranked until they get around to reviewing the case.

Player loses LP as normal after the Open Mid loss. Drops to 85. They win their next game and reach 97. Then they lose the next one and drop to 88. Then the Open Mid game is finally reviewed and it turns out they get back 5LP as a result. Now, this means that they should have had 90 LP after the Open Mid loss, not 85. The next win they had should have put them to 102 LP, so they should have been put into a promotion series after that game.
Player loses LP as normal after the Open Mid loss. Drops to 80. Wins the next game, gets to 91. Wins the next game, gaining exactly 9LP, which puts them into a promotion series. Perhaps they even get to play their first game. The Open Mid loss is finally reviewed, and it turns out that this player needs to have 5 LP removed as a result. In this case, after the Open Mid loss, the player should have dropped to 75, not 80. The next win should have them at 86, and the one after that at 95 LP. This person shouldn't even be in a promotion series as this point now, but they're a game or two in already.

And this all assumes that the match analysis happens within just a couple hours of the game. If it takes even longer than that (which is likely), things will just get even more scrambled. Cases like these are exactly why LP cannot be modified once it has been awarded at the end of a game.

ModWuksOct 29, 20151 votes

Personally, I believe "open mid" is a bad concept and shouldn't be implemented or accepted in most situations. I do my best to not let other individuals affect how I choose to play the game, and if someone decides to troll, I'll be sure to win in the midlane and report the player afterwards.

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

Wouldn't it be nice to make sure that the player cannot go ruin some other person game? Not everyone would have the willpower to play like you. Most people in our community would rather resort to flaming or verbally abusing that person for their actions. One person could effectively cause 3-4 people to tilt causing them to not want to play or go into their next game in a bad mood. Not saying this is the case for all people but most people (including myself) get pretty pissed when stuff like this happens. I myself am a plat 4 player. I understand that people have bad games, which is why I think each case should be reviewed before any kind of serious punishment is dealt. And I also believe that teams should be reviewed as well. Are they flaming/verbally abusing the player? They should be punished for doing so. Have seen numerous cases where people get a troll, proceed to verbally abuse the person while they wait for the 20 minute mark. A feature like this could end the game early and help keep people from getting pissed at a borderline automatic loss and start flaming.

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

Something I want you to consider while shutting down the idea is how your post-game chat looks when something like this happens. More than likely it's 4 people saying "Report xxx for feeding/trolling" and the other team sits there laughing because they got free LP. Most of the time they won't report the feeder and instead honor them for doing it. Why would they report someone who gave them 17+ LP? The other times are usually the feeder saying "report xxx + xxx for verbal abuse" which you've probably done and get reported for. This kind of feature gives more power to the community while preventing abusers.

ModWuksOct 29, 20152 votes

RiotGhostCrawler commented on the topic about a month ago saying,

It's a really nuanced conversation. The reason we don't allow surrender immediately (for example once you see what the enemy team comp is) is because it's often possible to win a come-from-behind victory, and we want to give players an opportunity to focus on strategy rather than focusing on campaigning the team to surrender. In addition, we don't want to use quick surrender as a run-around leavers. For example, we don't want to encourage someone harassing you to surrender because they didn't get the position they wanted or because they didn't get First Blood. However, it does also suck when you are really, really far behind (say a couple of players never connected) and you're just killing time waiting for that 20 minutes to tick down. Our surrender mechanic may need more flexibility in its design.The open mid situation is further complicated by a number of factors. For example, teams may be throwing games just to get around the surrender limit I discussed above. Or maybe players perceive the game to be more snowbally than it really is, so they feel like playing from behind isn't worth the effort. (Our data suggests the game isn't more snowbally for players in most ELOs, but perceptions don't always match reality.) Also, there may be a perception that since open mid started in Korea, and Koreans have a well-earned reputation as skill players, that they must be onto something. :)We're discussing what to do about it, if anything.

http://ask.fm/RiotGhostcrawler/answer/133297822347

Thoughts?

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

I feel like something like this would still benefit them. Again, this is designed for people to NOT be punished because someone on their team did so intentionally. Look at how Riot's Match History lookup works. It will tell you exactly where someone died, who got the kill, when they died etc. While I understand where they are coming from (i have had a few 4v5 troll comebacks myself) I still feel it's a system they could use to potentially cut down on the toxicity in the community. It would not be hard to set up a tribunal-like system where it shows the match report with all the information (chat logs, the map from the match history, summoner spells). Not every game with a feeder is an automatic loss (hence the borderline automatic in my previous statement to you) but 90% of the time it's not a fun experience for people. Closely monitoring and implementing the system could do wonders. Have it only available between 5-10 minutes. Have a replay of the 5-10 minute game to show what the reported player was doing. I don't see 4 out of 5 people in a single game abusing this feature, so the amount of fake reports would be limited quite a bit. And it wouldn't take much to punish the players who do. If you get salty just because someone got outplayed for first blood and decide to abuse the feature to surrender then the system flags the reporting players and they get reviewed. Would not be hard to tell the difference between someone having a bad game and a true troll.

ChaosReignsDownOct 29, 20151 votes

I agree there needs to be something done about the issue. I mean its not fair to punish a whole team because some guy didnt get the role he wants so he trolls the entire match, I just dont think this is the correct way to do it.

I really think using a system based off your individual performance should be used for ranks. You know they can track it. So if I get an S+ and the troll gets a D or whatever it would only punish him for playing poorly. Just my thoughts though.

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

I think they touched on this a year or two ago and said that it doesn't fit the setting of the game. They have enforced that the game is a team game, everybody is expected to help each other. Whose to say the guy didn't get camped and ended up dying 6 times to turret dives against 2 tanks? Everybody has a bad game sometimes. It's not necessarily fair for someone to lose 20+ LP because they got camped or had a bad game. It's up to the team to carry and/or help that person. And the flip side to this is if the enemy team has a troll and feeds you 7 kills and you end the game with an S+ why should you be rewarded with 25 LP because you played "amazing" according to the game?

ChaosReignsDownOct 29, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I think they touched on this a year or two ago and said that it doesn't fit the setting of the game. They have enforced that the game is a team game, everybody is expected to help each other. Whose to say the guy didn't get camped and ended up dying 6 times to turret dives against 2 tanks? Everybody has a bad game sometimes. It's not necessarily fair for someone to lose 20+ LP because they got camped or had a bad game. It's up to the team to carry and/or help that person. And the flip side to this is if the enemy team has a troll and feeds you 7 kills and you end the game with an S+ why should you be rewarded with 25 LP because you played "amazing" according to the game?

But if I do play a role amazingly, and I do get an S+ why should I lose bc say top decided to feed, or not play safe if he is losing, not build tank. Or mid decides its good to push with out wards and feeds? j/w

Maybe the "grade" could effect how much LP you lose/gain. Like if I am on the losing team and get an S+ I dont lose LP or lose less that if I got a lower grade. Same with winning. If you win with a C.. why should you get the same LP as the person that got a S+. I think it would even out a lot better that way.

Also in solo Q its a lot harder to be a Team. If you Q up for 5v5 I would expect great communication and team work, but 3-4 random ppl you just met? No communication other than pings?

SabrinachuOct 29, 20151 votes

In Riots eyes you should have helped the losing player. And just because you lost the game it's impossible to get an S rating.