New Summoner Training Initiative
Recently I saw a thread talking about the uphill battle new players face when trying to learn the ropes. With so many different aspects of the game to learn about from different champion abilities to objective control to figuring out which items go best with the champion you're playing you have a lot to take in from the start. Riot's done a good job of trying to introduce the bare bones essentials through intro bots but there's still a missing piece when transitioning from bots to PvP. At a certain point intermediate bots are too easy but you find yourself struggling to keep up with experienced players in normals. I think a fun solution to this would be a new type of game mode. Players ranging from levels 5-29 would be able to queue into a normal-like game as "students" while level 30s would be able to queue into the same games with new players as "mentors". Level 30s would then be tasked with giving constructive feedback to new players on how to improve their overall skill (e.g avoid turret diving without a significant advantage or once you get a kill try to take an objective if possible instead of backing immediately). New players would be able to get meaningful feedback about how to improve without the fear of other players lashing out and the comfort of knowing everybody in the game is there to teach or learn with them. In order to incentivize level 30s Riot could offer a small amount of RP per game. Say 15 RP per game with a maximum cap of 75 RP in a given week. That would only require you to play a game a day to hit your cap for the week and if maxed every week for a year it would be equivalent to four free 6300 IP champs. To ensure that level 30s don't abuse lower levels, additional Report Player options could be added to the existing list at the post game screen for players that make a point of beating the lower levels rather than helping them learn. The consequences could be them being banned from this specific game mode for a duration and left up to the Tribunal similarly to current issues. On the opposite side it would be neat to see a more lavish version of the yellow ribbon that is traditionally earned by players calling you helpful in other games.
TL;DR There needs to be a better solution for players transitioning from the skill necessary to beat bots to being an asset in normal or ranked games and this is my solution.
-New Game mode to allow experienced players to teach new players
-Games focused on improvement rather than winning to avoid conflict
-Small amount of free RP for players choosing to teach new players
-Reduced player learning curve by being taught better practices
Let me know what you think.