League of Legends, despite what you may have heard, is actually apretty solid video game. Riot Games' mega-popular MOBA, which is said to still boast8-million concurrent players each day, is to this day one of the most popular games in the world but has long had a negative connotation surrounding it due in part to the game’s “toxic” community. Fortunately, Riot is now looking to take more drastic measures in 2020 to clean things up and has today summarized some more plans in which it hopes will improve the game.
Outlined on theÂLeague of Legendswebsitetoday, Riot’s Cody Germain outlined some new systems that are being put in place to deter common occurrences in the game such as players griefing, going AFK, or intentionally feeding the opposing team. Riot says that with its new systems that are slowly beginning to roll out, it can identify when players go AFK or feed the enemy team at double the rate that it was previously. It also is allowing players to take action against these griefing players more frequently, with new implementations such as reporting or muting players in the pre-game lobby now becoming a permanent fixture toÂLeague of Legends.
Perhaps most important, it seems as though Riot is now looking to have a bit more grace on players who end up having to deal with toxic or griefing teammates that they get matched up with. Some of these solutions include allowing players to surrender even earlier in a match once the game realizes that a player has quit the game. Additionally, in regards to the ranked games specifically, players who were in a game with a player who went AFK will lose less LP than they would in a normal loss. This is something that I specifically have been begging to see come toLeague of Legendsfor years at this point, so thank goodness that it’s finally arriving.
In many ways, Season 10 ofLeague of Legendshas slowly started to become defined by the community’s voicing that it is tired of these negative practices being so common in the game. One of theLoLÂcommunity’s most popular streamers and players, Voyboy, went semi-viral earlier this year when he released a video talking about how exhausted he is to even play the game anymore due to how frequent some of these aforementioned actions have become, even at high-level play. Since this time, Riot has been more outspoken about how it is looking to finally address these longstanding issues.
Whether or notÂLeague of Legendswill actually see its player base become less toxic over time remains to be seen, but at the very least, Riot is seemingly taking some real implementations to rectify many of these problems. At the end of the day, players who want to ruin the experience for others will likely continue to do so, but hopefully, these same players will be met more quickly with bans and other warnings on their account faster than in the past.
