Riot is trying out a new way of keeping players in check — positive reinforcement. Will it make solo queue more bearable?
League of Legends is a salt mine, we’ve all experienced it, we’ve all gotten annoyed during games and we have all encountered someone tilted as well. So, what do you do in those situations? You report disruptive players, right? Does anything happen? Rarely.
In a new blog post, TimTamMonster, the new Product Lead for Behavioral Systems has gone over a few things they will look into, to make your solo queue, normal and ARAM more bearable.
Focus on the 95%
In the blog post, TimTamMonster explains that while only 5% of players are constantly disruptive, 86% of the remaining 95% of players will lash out at some point when having a bad game. When you think about the large player base League has, then that means everyone will encounter someone tilted at least once every other game.
That’s why the Behavioral Systems team will try to shift their focus away from the 5% that are constantly disruptive, and to the rest of the player base that is usually well-behaved. How will they shift their focus though?
Champ Select Reports
Yeah, champ select reports are a thing, but it seems Riot forgot they existed. Sure, the reports were noted, but punishment was not doled out accordingly, which is an area that will be looked at in 2022 to improve upon. So, watch out in champ select guys, by the end of 2022 these reports, even though they only make up 3% of all could be punished.
Positive Reinforcement
The honor system exists for players to show off how players are able to make League of Legends a positive experience for players. When reaching honor level 5, players will obtain a free skin in celebration. Well, now we might get more for being good sports in the game.
This year, we're upping the rewards with a new special recall VFX for players who are Honor 5 or have received an Honor from either a non-premade or two premades in their last game. Similar to the special Challenger recall, you’ll now have the opportunity to sport a special new Honor recall.
Not only that, but players who have reached Honor 5 will also be getting an exclusive new skin as part of the end of season rewards. This is a bonus with existing chromas and other rewards.
Targeting Widespread Behavior
The team is also focusing on repeating behavior like verbal abuse, which is a big part of League of Legends. They want to upgrade and implement better systems to detect verbal abuse.
We expect to see improvements in this area by up to 10x. While Verbal Abuse isn’t directly reflected in game stats like KDA, it as a widespread issue that often leads to other disruptive behaviors.
Hopefully these initiatives will make solo queue somewhat more bearable, especially with the amount of new players that have joined after the success of Arcane. Now all we need is for Riot to finally announce the Void event and all will be good.