White Knight Mode - Player Replacement Feature

CmC Killer·Apr 19, 2017·93 votes·2,949 views

White Knight mode is especially promising as an idea that could help League of Legends in general. Players may queue up as white knights and if another player in an existing match is disconnected or quits, those in the queue are asked whether they want to join that existing match. There's no penalty in doing so, and you'll earn as you would normally.

Note: Be a Legend and help some unlucky folks who had a player disconnect. Sure when you join the game you may be 0-20 but that's what its all about.

63 Comments

Blades in ExileApr 20, 201733 votes

So a game mode dedicated to me? I like the sound of that.

DemosthentineApr 20, 20171 votes

ha ha ha

YalathanilApr 20, 20177 votes

Why not replace players with bots? We might as well give those advanced bots they were working on a try :P

Skins ProjectApr 20, 20174 votes

I can't tell if this is a joke or not....

TheEdgeOfDestinyApr 20, 20171 votes

No. I had the same suggestion when started playing league. Bots are ok and better then not having a player.

LauchmelderApr 20, 20172 votes

Bots are in no way better than not having a player.

If you put a bot on the enemy team in one of my games I'm sure as hell gonna get fed off that bot. You're practically turning a 4v5 into a 4v6.

TheMinezApr 20, 20171 votes

Have you seen Doom Annie / Udyr / Veigar?

literally able to solo teams

LauchmelderApr 20, 20171 votes

Yes, but that would give the team with an AFK the edge again, which would result in people trying to harass a teammate out of the game to get a doom bot.

Automated RivenApr 20, 20171 votes

yeah I am with you on this one. My friends and I play "protect the leona" and its damn near impossible to keep a bot alive.

Skins ProjectApr 20, 20172 votes

That's not what I was referring to....

I was referring to the advanced bots... That was an april fool's joke riot did.

YalathanilApr 20, 20172 votes

The April fools part was a joke, but the rest was a legit idea. I know that bots will never be able to replace players, but at least they could have the impact of a Tibbers for example in a team fight.

Skins ProjectApr 20, 20172 votes

That was what I was referring too....

Automated RivenApr 20, 20171 votes

the bot would feed over so much gold by the time that the tibbers dropped it would have little more effect the a support tibbers against a fed enemy. it would litteraly take away 99% of 4v5 comebacks above bronze 5.

YalathanilApr 21, 20171 votes

Yeah, it's a pretty flawed idea, but it is all I can think of to fix DC issues. It just gets annoying when your Mid goes MIA and the enemy just rotates where ever they want on the map. But, since bots will never be as good as players, :,( rip 4v5 games

SzGamer227Apr 20, 20171 votes

Bots are basically feeding machines. They're extremely easy to abuse and don't know how to avoid being cc locked, bursted, or engaged from a distance. The most they do is camp tower when there is a stronger enemy champion nearby, but they'll walk into and lose a 5v1 without thinking twice because their judgement is extremely limited.

Having a bot on your team wouldn't be much better than having an intentional feeder, unless it's a bot playing a champ like Brand.

There's also the fact that not every champion has bot AI, and I don't even know how easy it would be to load AI controls into a game, how much programming would be required to set that up, etc.

YalathanilApr 21, 20171 votes

Thx for your comment. I know this idea would never work, but It was the best idea I had.

p.s. Is there a list of champs that have AI?

SzGamer227Apr 21, 20171 votes

If you make a custom game and add a bot, the drop down list should include every champion that has an AI.

TheEdgeOfDestinyApr 21, 20171 votes

Really?! What about doom bots? They were rotating and doing other stuff that bots in VS AI games don't do. Or you think it were Rioters in every game pretending to be bots?! :D

VS AI bots have specific role and they certainly don't need to win. But yeah. I just thought. It would be "unethical" to use a thing that basically has maphack and 0 time reaction to aid team with disconnected player.

JamsheerApr 20, 20172 votes

I find this not a bad idea. (although not sure it works in high elo's)

But enemy team must not know about the bot existence or the bot will be camped i guess.

YalathanilApr 20, 20171 votes

I know that bots will never be able to play at the same par of actual players, but in theory it would be able to make a game playable again if someone permanently DC's

Automated RivenApr 20, 20171 votes

its painfully easy to tell how a bot moves tho. Example. during the bot test for april fools having no idea that it was a prank. (it hit my server the night before and I had just played a game without any bot stuff) it was super obvious that the 'bots' were not actually bots. if this was implemented it would help 1 out of 1000 games and then destroy the others against the losing team.

Bob the ToastrApr 19, 20176 votes

You would need to offer some incentive, like bonus ip or lp because queuing up as a 'white knight' could take even longer than finding a game normally.

zrWQMdGHtYApr 19, 201718 votes

Not in EUW XD

Lucky MonikerApr 19, 20176 votes

And then when they reconnect 30 seconds later? You just get booted? Most of these games you'd be in 2 minutes before getting kicked back out. Not to mention trolls would still pick it

AsterfixApr 19, 201744 votes

Let the players vote for white knights instead of a remake, then the other player that AFK'd is booted.

iamthegoatofwarApr 20, 20172 votes

Legit idea.

ÁrYaNApr 19, 20172 votes

maybe create a time limit like you dc or afk for 3 mins then the white knight comes in and you get booted

underscores222Apr 19, 20175 votes

I think there'd be a problem with getting a "White Knight" in the same MRR range as the rest of the game. Even if this were taken into account, what benefit would there be for the player? You don't get to pick what champ you get, you don't get to have any say on how the game is going prior to joining. You will probably be joining a losing team that's getting steamrolled, is raging/salty, and likely has a huge disadvantage in objectives and/or kills. Why would any player chose to join that over starting a new game - unless you really hate laning phase?

Additional problems - runes/masteries/summoner's are all determined by the "summoner" before the game begins. Would this "White Knight" be taking over a champ and using their runes/masteries/summoners (and how would that work in terms of the game interaction) ? In game items would probably carry over - potentially resulting in the white knight having a crappy build in addition to the other problems.

It sounds like a great idea - I've had games where my team was winning and someone's internet died or they had to go, etc, and we could not close out the game 4v5. A player coming in to save that would be wonderful. However, there have been maybe 5 cases of that sort of problem in my games over the past 5 years. There have been many, many more times where someone rage quits and there is no hope, regardless of if another player joined.

So while it sounds nice and might actually help 1% of the time, the vast majority of games with leavers are unsaveable and there's no incentive for players to want to join that mess.

iamthegoatofwarApr 20, 20178 votes

The point of being the white knight is being willing to charge head 1st into matches like that. Also this might sound like a bad idea, but if the white knight leaves It should be asked if it was due to the team being toxic.

Fondling GemsApr 20, 20175 votes

Why wouldn't I want to be a white knight? I get to help people and be a good person. That is more than enough reason for me. I already play a lot of ARAM so I don't care about getting a champ I know and I can always sell my current build. They could even make it so that if a White Knight comes in you can sell your items for their full value for about 30 seconds. That way having a crappy build doesn't matter, all that matters is the starting gold and I don't really care about that. I would expect to start behind like that.

Honestly I would love to be a White Knight and help out others.

It Hertz When IPApr 20, 20171 votes

Acknowledging all of the above, I'd still volunteer for it. Consider it a bit of a challenge; can you still carry even when taking over for an unknown player.

I would add a caveat idea; maybe when the "Match Found" screen for a white knight appears, it would at least list the champion and role queued for. That way if (say) the opening was for an Evelyn jungle, I would know not to hit "accept", since I suck ass with Evelyn.

zrWQMdGHtYApr 19, 20172 votes

What if I wanna be a crimson assassin? Wont I be welcome ? :-;

sirwaterflesApr 20, 20172 votes

Sounds really hard to make work. Think about it; you need a white knight that can play that champ in that role and that is about the same mmr as the people in the existing game. That sounds like a 30 min quequetimer for the white knight that then comes into a game where he has no history in (who which items and lvls, towers; objectives, who is good on your team, who jsut got camped to death, ) that has been 4v5 for at least 5 minutes. That sounds more like a suicide mission instead of an heroic act.

TheEdgeOfDestinyApr 20, 20176 votes

Any player may be better then disconnected/afk player.

Actually it may be plausable as a side feature. Somewhat like this: -you queue normally -somewhere during queue - if there is a game with AFK player a prompt appears that shows champion (build, items, gold), role and some game stats -you still need to have the champion played in your roster -you can accept or reject, happens only once per queue -as an option you can turn off this feature -if you win - you gain LP, if you loose - you don't loose LP so it would be a reason to play

There may be other issue. Especially at start. It may happen that connected player would make matters even worse. Intentionally or just because he won't get punished for doing that. But that's a pretty small percentage of players. And it gets fewer the higher elo rank goes.
It isn't a problem of finding a right player. Percentage of afkers isn't that big comparing to percentage of queues. Role/champion doesn't look like a big limiting factor - it doesn't have to be a role you queued for.

But mhan. It needs to be a really-really big work. There are numerous things that would need implementing from UI, network and other software stuff to social stuff like penalties.

BG DeathApr 20, 20173 votes

Just make it so you can gain or lose LP, just a reduced amount. No LP per loss is too safe for ranked.. you're not risking anything. Also reduce the LP loss/gain even further the later the point in game the white knight joined.. imagine if he joined a 40min game and won in 2 minutes to gain +22 LP? free af

Automated RivenApr 20, 20171 votes

you would have to make it so that you cant go through promos with it. even if you cant make it past like 75 lp or something. if there is bonus LP and no penalty for losses you could just white knight your way to diamond even if you suck.

well maybe not diamond but plat probably.

MelledoneusApr 20, 20172 votes

I would White Knight. Being thrown into random situations is what game modes are about, and White Knighting is having fun and doing good at its FINEST.

Lux TizerApr 20, 20172 votes

Maybe give that player either full IP or a small IP boost in compensation for joining a match part way through and dealing with the torturous hell that would be some random person's likely unfortunate runes and masteries?

Example: Shit I'm sure glad this Nami runs 30% attack speed and no armor

Context for idea: http://imgur.com/a/KjdQv

snibedi snabApr 20, 20172 votes

Garbage idea.

KaeblenApr 20, 20172 votes

double elo for white knights in ranked?

EvanThomasApr 19, 20171 votes

Sounds like a great idea, but I know a way this can be foiled.

If you are the potential AFKer and are feeling particularly like a prick that day, you could sell your items and buy more items with the sell gold, and rinse and repeat before AFKing. This reduces your gold to essentially 0.

Obviously this wouldn't happen every game, so I think the system would be a success, but there would have to be a failsafe implemented eventually to prevent this kind of behavior (no, banning accounts doesn't count).

Also, this would have to be disabled at high elo in case someone tries to abuse it.

DeathBot666Apr 20, 20173 votes

Well, we know from the after game menu that the game keeps track of how much money you have earned from that game. how about if you are a white knight, the game removes all your items and gives you the gold the person had earned up to that point. That way you can't just delete your money, and you also get the ability to use your own build rather than being forced to use the build of the person who AFK'd.

KnalxzApr 20, 20171 votes

Call we call it something else like Hot Drop or Helljumping? I can only imagine going into a game where someone has just rage quit won't be the an easy mess to jump into.

Loading https://68.media.tumblr.com/d683345eac2c5f91e81f34ed7fc51484/tumblr_nirxmyD1mq1smzyhdo1_400.gif

In-Game https://img.gifamerica.com/fdc75ea1320907a98d54c054cb86b55a_image-odst-ogif-odst-gif_320-180.gif

Also the player would be forced to play a champion that they could be awful with making it just better to wait for the guy to get back. (If they did DC).

OelykApr 20, 20171 votes

I love this Idea, but I think it would need a lot more refinement to before actually implemented live.

Maximum MordeApr 20, 20171 votes

Pfft, fuck White Knight, Black Knight is the best one.

SirΤeemοApr 21, 20171 votes

let's say a player quits on 35 minutes , once the other player joins what level is going to be? also how much gold? he will be behind after all...

lexmusApr 21, 20171 votes

this is a very valid point and this actually sparks some ideas out of me. How about instead of replacing a person with another person, we replace them with a amiibos that respond just as the person on that account would respond. This would take a LOT work to put into action, but this is one way it could solve this problem without affecting the gameplay. This is a solution but a incredibly hard one to put into action, unless you look at Super Smash Bros's version of amiibos learning system and creating a way to communicate with the AI through chat. Thank you for listening to my commentary. lexmus from NA server Galio

SirΤeemοApr 21, 20171 votes

eh, AI could never understand how a human would play. instead of AI or a same elo palyer , the only way that replacement system , should put a higher elo player , in order to keep the game "balanced" specially if the enemy e.g irelia is 5-0 .

fugertechApr 21, 20171 votes

I like this. Reminds me of the Blue Sentinels from Dark Souls 3.

lexmusApr 21, 20171 votes

I love the idea, but it could contradict critical gameplay moments. This could work, but Riot would have to find a way to change the game like make games shorter but impactful etc.. I had this idea earlier before, but they also would have to program a system for that to work as well. I sure they would want this to happen, because when I mentioned something like this, Riot made it so you could end the game early if a player disconnected, and people are okay with that, as long as this doesn't happen too much. This is possible but the ability to make it happen isn't there yet, at least I don't think it is. If it's going to happen, it's on the shelf. [slayer-pantheon-thumbs] Thank you from lexmus (US Server)