League of Legends, notorious for the toxic behaviour prevalent during matches, has launched its new 'remedial' ranking system to combat this. It seeks to enforce improved behaviour by obligating misbehaving players to participate in normal matches before they get access to ranked games.
Amongst the gaming community, League of Legends has earned itself a reputation. This stems from activities such as intentionally sabotaging games to create content or poor in-game manners exhibited by even some of the game's most prominent professional players.
The developers at Riot announced early in 2023 that they are exploring a variety of measures to discourage such verbosity, intending to penalise players who engage in activities such as being AFK in games, BMing their teammates, and other unsportsmanlike behaviours.
Their latest system, however, represents a more severe approach to dealing with misconduct. Players who AFK in games or BM their teammates will be obligated to play normal matches, becoming ineligible to queue ranked until they've played a few matches in good behaviour.
New League ranked behaviour system ignites controversy
A new ranked behavioural penalty system has been introduced, freely compelling players who exhibit toxicity to vacate their ranked games temporarily in favour of normal matches.
Players familiar with ranked queues have thus far discovered a variety of ways to circumvent the restrictions that Riot has instated. Even with intensifying penalties on actions such as abandoning games or evading lobbies, a significant proportion of dedicated players have several accounts that they can swap between without hindrance, allowing them to continue queuing regularly.
While the existing system's time-based penalties and chat restrictions manage to hold these accounts at bay, the majority of League's infamous ranked players can comfortably switch to another account, circumventing these barriers and rejoin the ranked queue right away.
The latest system launched by Riot, however, is designed to significantly disincentivize players who switch between accounts.
According to the development team, 'Offenders must play remedial games in a non-ranked queue demonstrating good behaviour.' These alternative modes comprise virtually anything that is not ranked. The caveat being that only players who uphold good behaviour during these remedial games will be permitted to re-enter ranked match lobbies.
As yet, the number of matches required to regain access to ranked match queues has not been confirmed. However, one thing is certain; players who switch between accounts will no longer be able to simply idle until a timer has elapsed. They will now have to participate in several matches on the account before they can resume their journeys in the ranked matches.
Although many players appreciated this change as a positive step, some individuals who do not engage with ranked and simply want the peace of playing regular games expressed their concerns.
Critics of the system argue that regular players will now have to contend with toxic behaviour from the ranked matches that seep into their normal games. Critics of the system claim this change puts innocent players at a disadvantage as they may have to interact with the very toxic behaviour they're trying to avoid by not participating in ranked matches.
This change is set to be introduced with patch 13.19, which, according to the released schedule, should be around September 26, 2023.