Earlier this week, popular League of Legends streamer Joedat “Voyboy” Esfahani released a video where he discussed at length how toxic solo queue has become. The video went viral, and now Riot is addressing these concerns about toxicity in the community.
Riot’s plan
Today, Riot Meddler released Riot’s plan to tackle the issue. The plan is divided into four separate phases:
- Right now
- Short term
- Moderate term
- Longer term
Right Now
As of right now, Riot is trialing improvements on how reporting and notifications work in League of Legends. These tests are live on the North American server, and if they prove to be effective, they will go live on other servers. These improvements will help players see when their reports result in punishments.
Short term
The short term plan involves dealing with toxicity in League of Legends‘ Champ Select. Currently, players don’t have many options to deal with players who are being toxic there. People can hold a game hostage with no fear of punishment and force others to dodge or put players in an awkward position. Soon, players will be able to report in Champ Select, which could lead to punishment.
Moderate term
For its moderate-term plan, Riot wants to find ways to punish players who ruin games through intentionally feeding or deliberately trolling. Meddler states that this has been difficult in the past because it is hard for them to tell the difference between a player that is intentionally trolling and one that’s just playing poorly.
Reports aren’t necessarily trustworthy either, as many players will report someone for playing bad even when they aren’t intentionally throwing the game. This makes it difficult to tell the difference. Riot doesn’t want to punish someone for having bad games, and they don’t currently have an easy solution.
Longer term
Meddler states that the long term plans are “to be determined.” Most likely, what happens in the coming months with the new strategy will determine how they tackle future issues. If Riot can find solutions that work, they will be able to build off of those.
Game Ruining Behavior.
TLDR:
Now – Improvements to reporting and report notifications
Soon – Report in Champ Select
After that – Testing better automated detection
Ongoing – Monthly comms about ithttps://t.co/ieuJFxW80G
— Andrei van Roon (@RiotMeddler) May 8, 2020
League of Legends is notorious for having a toxic community. Hopefully, Riot can find strategies to give players a more fun and fair playing environment. It will be interesting to see how its new plan plays out.
Published: May 8, 2020 04:25 pm