The Sticker System [Positive Reward System]
WARNING: Very lengthy post, there is a too long, didn't read at the bottom, but very recommended you read the entire post as it has small details. Also the post is quickly bad news first, and then good news after layout, so be patient as there is a lot to read. If you have any questions or concerns feel free to ask questions away in the comments! Be considerate, and have a good day everyone!
Okay I will be suggesting a new system to helpfully be a good way to encourage a better community, but before I jump into things I want to talk about somethings first. Also I will briefly touch on the bad (negative) side first and then talk about the good (positive) side. Anyways, something I notice is that the current systems Riot has in placed are too negative focused and when negativity affects a neutral or even positive person it will get to them and eventually cause them to be negative and then that negativity to spread onto the Boards and other match-made games, etc which causes more people to be negative and soon we have a spiral and wide-spread of negative feelings, emotions, and verbal not-so-optimal talk. Now as I continue to the main subject matters for this post, please bare with me and stick through it and do not turn off if you immediately see something you do not like what I just said for the positive talk is also after the negative talk.
In terms of the Boards a very negative and discouraging element is the downvoting system. Something I think needs to happen is a more consequential system in place to discourage negative experiences such as downvoting, now I cannot go too heavily detail into this quite yet because there is a positive / reward system to try to encourage not only a community aspect, but a good, helpful, co-operating community. It will be a varily simple system, but one that is meant to discourage negativity and encourage positivity; again more details later.
In terms of "in-game" behaviour ironically enough I actually think the report system has a massive influence on negative activity players have on a game to game basis and also does not help when there is no real reward system in place for positive upbringings. So the report system, it is not bad in terms of punishing criminal activity, but it is bad in the terms creating a mental image towards players (which is an unconscious thing that most players do not think about at all even if it is brought up) of a punisher around every corner with a whip getting ready to beat you with it, which is an enjoyment for some people (this is being sadistic, getting pleasure from someone else's pain and there are people like this). And there are many false reports, mainly since it vents frustrations especially if you just lost a game and there is no reward system for being good so might as well report people and get some satisfactory for the time you just spent. Alongside the positive / reward system I will be introducing, what can directly happen with the report system is a slight 'think twice before acting', and a way to try to organize reports better. So the report system will be a pay with IP (Influence Points), and if the report ends up being legitimate then you will get (for example) 3 times the IP you spent back to you if the player you reported ends up getting punished; as far as organizing goes, let's say the IP values will be 100, 300, 500, 1000 that the player can choose from and if you think you have a severe case of a bad egg of a player in your game [team or enemy] then you spend 1000 IP and the report will be in higher-priority queue than 100 IP, even though the judges will not know how much IP you actually spent for the report; and if the player was indeed deemed guilty after proper assessment then you get your IP back and a big bonus for aiding the community and cleaning it up. The cost per report system is good in terms of less reports so that legitimate reports will get through for faster punishments for the guilty, also cost per report system means players undergo less stress and worry about if they say anything at all that they will get reported and potentially punished; so with less stress and worry will relieve pressure on each player which should reduce negative tensions so there are less likely scenarios where players end up 'snapping' and 'losing their cool' to keep a level head and not wide-spread negative feelings and emotions to other players and reduce creating pandemonium in the community.
THE STICKER SYSTEM! So let's be a little positive now! First off, the Boards. So my idea will be similar to the Llama Badge system in Deviantart which is a thing users can give out to other users kind of like a 'you did a good job sticker, keep up the good work' for positive reinforcement and encourage creative works which the site is an art site so makes sense and more Llama Badges that you collect unlocks tiers of different and/or better Llamas which you can always select what Llama you want to show off as long as it is unlocked.
So my system will be Poro Stickers (who doesn't love poros?) that once you have a poro sticker unlocked you can show it off and it will be by your name tag, if you have different poro stickers unlocked then you can select what poro sticker you want to show case or just show off your highest tier poro sticker, it will be your choice. Examples will be normal white and fluffy Poro, then maybe black poro, maybe a foxy poro, a king poro, red poro, blue, poro, etc etc; examples of Poro Stickers to collect for each tier will be like 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, etc etc. Basically this way it can encourage being an active positive citizen and keep being a good person with ways of earning an unique reward for being a good and positive person in the community and helpful. So how do I get Poro Stickers? So the poster of the thread (best way I can think of to try to reduce exploit cases) is the one that can give out a poro sticker if he finds your comment on the post helpful, fair criticism, constructive, encouraging, or if you just were a good person; doing it for poster of the post to give out a sticker (1 per person per post of course; restricted to the same person giving to the same person 1 per month; so to get stickers you must reach out in the community) can make it so there is not a bully system going on and a gang of people is not encouraging each other by writing mean comments and giving stickers because of that mean comment; plus poster giving out a poro sticker just forces people to try to be nice to the person; again if there is board misuse, whiney posts, or inappropriate/improper posts there is the report system for those and Riot will deal with them.
If comments or posts ever have to be removed because breaking the rules of the Board then [if applicable / as much as possible] 10 stickers will be removed from the user to take away rewards for not being good in the community; alongside potentially temporary suspensions from the Boards which is the punishment.
For downvoting, the system will cost 1 Poro Sticker to downvote AND you have to leave a message describing why you are downvoting, the poster will then read your comment and if it is fair criticism (based on the poster's standards) then you get your Poro Sticker back, and if not then you paid the price for downvoting. The poster is allowed to give you a bonus Poro Sticker as well if he so chooses to do so. So yes this is going to be putting in work, and will discourage downvoting especially for lazy people and people that is not willing to put in the effort to be a part of the community in a good way to earn Poro Stickers (aka like reducing trolls or people that cannot accept differing opinions); also something I forgot to mention is that if you have zero Poro Stickers you are ineligible to downvote, but hopefully this way obvous anyways.
MY SCRAPBOOK! BOOM! Honour system is removed! But in short the honour system really did not do much to encourage positive activity (it didn't do anything except maybe first week it was released), and having a number i.e. 157 Helpful Badges! does not mean anything and there is no value or incentive or purpose for getting bigger numbers. So once again the sticker system will be implemented and same person cannot give a sticker to the same person again until at minimum 1 month has passed (28 days to clarify what a month is). This sticker system will be more simplified and streamlined in giving stickers in match-made games (no stickers can be awarded in customs, sorry) than the honour system since there is a simple one-button to do so, and slightly more stand-out too.
So stickers will be separated into 5 tiers with two different ways if achieving them and the system I want should be set up that every patch or two patches or something Riot will create and release more stickers to randomly acquire to always have an incentive to be positive; but anyways, the active positive role to acquire stickers is the faster way to do it (and should be easier) where teammates have something like a "Good Teammate" button by their name in the post-game lobby screen and enemy players have something like "Enjoyable to Play Against" button by their name, both buttons do the exact same thing, but if you get between 1-20% of players in THAT game clicking those buttons by your name you get a random tier 1 sticker, 20-40% of player for a random tier 2 sticker, 40-60% for tier 3, 60-80% for tier 4, 80-100% for tier 5; which besides being more rare for higher tiers the higher tier stickers are more complex, nicer, prettier, etc than the tier 1 stickers. What ends up happening; for example; is lets say all the stickers are based off of champions and each sticker is re-coloured which future stickers could be based off of Runeterra things and in-game items as well so players can constantly collect stickers of trying to achieve all the stickers of their favourite champion or champions or just try to get all the stickers of their favourite colour or colours OR just try for ALL THE STICKERS.
So what happens next is that you can place the stickers in "My Scrapbook" which will be a tab in "My Profile" which anyone can look at your sticker book since you can arrange your stickers however you like on your sticker book pages, plus showing off your good works should be encouraged and showing players what exactly the other stickers you can get look like and they try to achieve those stickers for themselves. Another aspect to the sticker system will be the "Sticker Summoner Icon" which is, in a way, a customize-able icon that you can place your favourite sticker in the icon box to show off to people that look over your name in your friend's list and show off your favourite sticker within loading screens that you earned just for being a good person! The reason why I think this sticker system will work out is because there is always an unique something that can be gained, earned, and acquired and as long as new stickers are constantly added to the game then there will always be a reason to perform with your best behaviour which should, in theory, reduce things like negative behaviour aspects within games to hopefully make games more enjoyable to play if there are gains and rewards to be made even from losses as long as you have a good attitude towards the game even in losing ones. Also the "Sticker Summoner Icon" can of course be constantly changed out for other stickers and have 5 majour backgrounds which are based upon what tier of sticker is currently in the icon at the time.
So get a customizable sticker scrapbook to show off and a customizable icon to show off in your friends list and loading screens, plus it just feels good to see what random sticker you will get at (hopefully) the end of every game; the stickers will be on a little bit of a lengthy delay since the random selection process will not begin until everyone has left the post-game lobby to ensure everyone given a sticker vote or no vote at all to anyone to properly grant the random tier of sticker.
To mention the other way to get stickers is simply by not being reported which is a much slower process, but controllable outcome non-the-less. So every 10th game in a row without getting reported you be randomly assigned a tier 1 sticker, at 100 games in a row it upgrades to tier 2 stickers, at 250 in a row it upgrades to tier 3 stickers, at 500 in a row it upgrades to tier 4 stickers and finally at 1000+ in a row in upgrades to tier 5 stickers; remembering that this is when the random stickers upgrade their tiers in this way of acquiring stickers, you still get a random sticker every 10th game as long as you remain not getting reported every game. This is simply a 'you were not a negative person, good job', but if you cannot tell the much MUCH more efficient and faster way to collect a bunch of stickers is through trying to actively be positive on a game-to-game basis.
There are taking away privileges for being bad however like if you ever receive a punishment [mainly through the report system] then you will be locked out of receiving new stickers or any stickers for awhile, using your Sticker Summoner Icon, and accessing your sticker scrapbook for a few days, weeks, or even months based on how frequent you are being punished and how severe your punishment is. Which I forgot to mention that you can receive the same sticker more than once, but if you already have that sticker the chances of getting it again are super low, so you will most likely always receive a new sticker so it is like opening up a pack of Pokemon cards or Hearthstone cards (I never played Hearthstone personally, sorry) and seeing [things like mystery gift is the same way] where there is always that surprise factor of "what will I get? and hopefully I get the sticker I really want this time" which is always an exciting and cool feeling to have. Which is another reason why I think a unique mystery system gains will work out to improve this community since things like mystery gifting is so well received and having unique gains that is only gained through either actively being positive to the community or just straight up not being bad, sure you are not being positive, but you are not being negative either and not being negative is at least worth something since it is still better than actually being a negative player and as a person.
In conclusion sorry for the super lengthy post and thank-you for all those that stuck with me; apologies for any and all grammatically incorrect errors I have listed through-out this post, but hopefully you saw through them and try to understand where I was trying to get at. Hopefully you are understanding and open-minded about having a system that tries to reduce negative activity and encourages and rewards good positive activity.
Thank-you for your time everyone and hope you appreciate my efforts and ideas! Your's Truly ~ Stacona
tl:dr : You may want to read the post for a better understanding, but basically I will suggest a drastic system that highly discourages negative aspects to try to have it reduce negative aspects within the community ALONGSIDE a positive system that involves stickers both a collection system for higher tiers for the Boards and another system that replaces honour system entirely that rewards players for actively being good with a unique sticker every time or just rewarded over a lengthy duration of games for just not being bad; you can show off all your stickers in a sticker scrapbook in 'My Profile' to everyone that goes to it and show off your favourite sticker that you earned through a semi-customizable Sticker Summoner Icon. There is also an added "think twice before acting" suggestion for downvoting on the boards and reporting in post-games to clean up the system and have more meaningful downvotes that will help the community out and more meaningful reports so that guilty offenders can be punished faster with false reports being greatly reduced.