Boards›Concepts & Creations

Position Ranks Reforged

DorQuendi·5/30/2019, 12:11:31 AM·1 votes·854 views

Who am I? Hello, I am DorQuendi. A support main, some might say hardstuck Diamond 5 player, currently sitting in Platinum 1.

What I want from position ranks? I am good at playing support, bad at everything else. I want to be able to play ranked in more then 1 role independently. Now the only option is to have multiple accounts for multiple roles. Or use flex and soloq for separate roles. Both hotfix solutions that can't work longterm.

Why were position ranks bad? Too grindy to play multiple roles. Autofilled games don't matter due to low LP impact causing players to not care about winning. That ruins competitive integrity. That sucks.

How would I fix position ranks? Some people hate having multiple ranks, some desperately need it. So don't force all players to one option or the other. Let them choose. Keep all ranked system as it is. Just allow people to have multiple "slots" for soloq. Lets say soloq1 and soloq2 for example.

How does it work? Example 1: Bob is a fill player. He playes every role at similar level. Bob just plays in soloq1 all the time whichever role he feels like. He has single rank and ignores soloq2. Example 2: Mary is very good with mages and she plays them primarily in mid lane. But sometimes she wants to play marksman, even thought she really struggles with them. Mary plays mid in soloq1 and bot in soloq2. She has 2 separate ranks.

How to tweak position ranks reforged? There are bunch of implementation details to figure out: How many "slots" can players have? Do the all have lets say 3 slots by default or do they create and delete as many as they want similarly to rune pages? How do players differentiate them? You let them name them of course. You can also give players some cool icons they can associate with them, for example Mary would love to have mid and bot icon to mark her queues. How do you stop players from abusing this to constantly create new "slots" and smurf in their placements? You can start them in their main "slot" elo (the 1 "slot" that currently exist). You can also not allow players to remove "slots" and only create a small amount of slots", lets say up to 5 (at least 1 for each role). Other option is to monetize "slots" with either BE or RP to discourage people from spamming new "slots". Players also want to get as far as they can to earn split and end of season rewards, which already encourages players to focus on one of few slots.

That is my take on how to go about Position Ranks Reforged. How do you feel about this idea? Tell me in the comments!

1 Comments

Metal Janna5/30/2019, 3:26:09 AM1 votes

I would go for a similar solution: #Official Smurfing# Sell secondary profile accounts. Incentivize players to choose this option over unofficial smurfing by having the secondary profile accounts share purchases, unlocks, and level (but not rank!) with the main account. Upon purchase, the player gets the option to start the secondary profile account at, or slightly below the main account's ELO. Gains and losses for the secondary profile function as normal from that point on. ##No pass for toxicity:## Secondary profile accounts share punishment status with the main profile. Toxic players looking for impunity will have to look elsewhere.

But what about existing smurf accounts?

##Two birds, one stone:## Employ a system that detects when a player is playing on multiple accounts. Once the account hits level 30 (or immediately, if above level 30), the player gets the option to incorporate the account into their main as a secondary profile account. The player receives this choice via email, and if they choose to link to a different account than the one the player mainly plays on, then it's obvious that the account has been sold. The sold account, the account it was just linked to, and the main account of the player who leveled it get banned. Offer the chance to preemptively submit a support ticket and have Riot staff manually link all your alts to your main in order to avoid the possibility of a false positive sold account detection. Not only does this allow existing smurfs to incorporate into the new system and gain all the benefits (shared purchases and unlocks), it would also kill the black market for fresh level 30 accounts overnight! Nobody is going to sell an account whose punishment status is linked to their main, and selling an account that's ready for linking risks getting both you and the buyer banned.

##The end result:## Players who want a "positional rank" can easily obtain an alternate profile for whatever off-role, off-champion, or off-build experiment they want to run. Players who've already created an alternate profile account the hard way get to join the new system without paying for the new account. Players who don't want an alternate are completely unaffected, except by the sudden shortage of toxic smurfs and out-of-ELO-smurfs, as their source of fresh level 30 accounts has been cut off. It's like Positional Ranking, but opt-in and better!