Ever since its inception, League of Legends has had an ongoing struggle with toxicity in all of its game modes, no matter how many initiatives Riot Games has put out. However, this time around, the developers of the immensely popular MOBA are taking a different approach to deal with its community issues.
Riot Games has announced new changes to League of Legends' current behavioral system that will add Champ Select reporting and build on the Honor System with new rewards and more. In combination with tons of new insight on toxic behavior in the game, Riot is taking big steps to clean up the community.
LoL dev details changes to current behavioral system
A new dev post by TimTamMonster, the new product lead for behavioral systems at Riot, detailed major changes coming to League of Legends' system this year. The post also updated players on behavioral findings around the current system.
According to TimTamMonster, only 5% of League of Legends players are considered "consistently disruptive," whether through intentional feeding, win-trading, or other methods that purposefully ruin the game for others. The other 95% of players are on the receiving end of 86% of reports despite not consistently engaging in disruptive gameplay.
To help with these problems Riot will soon add the ability to report during Champ Select. This will work similarly to post-game reporting and will carry out similar punishments. "Champ Select reports only make up about 3.2% of reports today," said TimTamMonster. "But we know that your experience in every part of the game still matters."
Along with this addition, Riot will also evolve the Honor System with new rewards for those keeping out of trouble in-game.
Riot adds new rewards for honorable behavior
Iterating on the current Honor System, Riot will reward players even further by introducing a a special recall animation for those at Honor Level 5 and those who were honorable in their previous games. Additionally, an "exclusive skin" is coming for players who reach Honor 5 as part of the end-of-season rewards for Season 12.
RIOT GAMES: LoL 12.6: Zeri Nerfs coming to reduce mobility and damage
These new rewards are additional, meaning players will still receive annual rewards for high Honor levels including new wards and skins for Warwick and Twitch.
These changes make it clear that Riot is emphasizing player behavior in LoL Season 12, giving players more power and incentive to clean up the community.