League of Legends Honors Well-Behaved Players

[Marshall Honorof]

League of Legends Honors Well-Behaved Players

A new system rewards good behavior instead of punishing wrongdoing.

Everyone who's played games online has a story about that one guy. You know, that one guy whose barely pubescent voice squeaked out all manner of unspeakable acts for your mom to perform while gamboling joyfully into the other team's crosshairs. While there are plenty of systems in place to shun and punish bad players in online games, there are comparatively few that actively reward gamers who take the time to practice old-fashioned concepts like respect, cordiality, and good sportsmanship. League of Legends, the popular MOBA title, will soon embrace just such a system. The Honor mechanic will allow players to pinpoint the islands of politesse afloat in a sea of rage and sexual slurs.

"Everyone's had one of these days," says Jeffrey Lin, a LoL designer. "You are struggling in a game and find yourself in a situation where a teammate could have easily trolled or flamed you, but instead goes out of his way to be a helpful, compassionate team-player." Enter the Honor system, by which players can point out acts of kindness and help friendly competitors get rewarded for their kindness. Lin does not describe exactly what Honor is or how it will work, but assures LoL players that it will be more than a passing accolade. "Through Honor you'll be able to give something lasting back to those players who went out of their way to make your game experience better."

LoL already has a number of systems in place to punish misbehaving players, such as the LeaverBuster and Tribunal mechanics, but proactively promoting good behavior is very different from simply punishing its opposite. Will Honor make LoL a friendlier place, or just promote cliquish behavior among Honor-seekers looking for an easy boost?

Source: League of Legends Forums [http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=29448823#post29448823]

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[Bat Vader]

That is a pretty nice thing the developers are doing. I wish more game developers added this to their multiplayer games.

 

[Innegativeion]

So basically exactly what Dota 2 has been doing xP.

Not that I can blame them, it *is* a really good idea.

 

[Rednog]

I'll say the same thing when valve proposed the idea of giving discounts/rewards to "nice" players.
You never dole out rewards by putting the power in the hands of players. People can and will abuse the ever living shit out of the system for the rewards. Hell, even if it's just a skin or a title people are just going to form groups to farm it up.
I really wonder if Riot and other companies live in la la land and are completely oblivious to the real state of their games.

Hell I've tried time and time again in various games to help people because in turn it will help me. Oh you're playing jarvan jungle, well you should go tanky, so you can live through your initiate, and once you go tanky throw in some light dps....oh you rushed nashor's tooth...you really shouldn't be building attack speed and ap on jarvan...oh I should go fuck myself?
Or even in something like TF2 where you think weapon choices in MvM would be pretty freaking obvious. Hey you're a scout great, their debuffs to the robots are awesome...what do you mean mad milk sucks...it slows down the robots and lets us heal from them...oh you want it for more dps...well at least you have a fan of war or a sandman right...oh you're using the bonk bat so you can get an extra jump.

No matter how hard you try to help people, they'll "play how they want to" and take your advice as a personal insult.

 

[chadachada123]

It's a fantastic idea in theory.

However, in practice, I imagine it will end up being like this: Enter game, click every other person on your team, say that each one is honorable, and then play the game like usual.

I see few instances where actually honorable players will receive more than their average or even dishonorable peers.

 

[beniki]

I'll say the same thing when valve proposed the idea of giving discounts/rewards to "nice" players.
You never dole out rewards by putting the power in the hands of players. People can and will abuse the ever living shit out of the system for the rewards. Hell, even if it's just a skin or a title people are just going to form groups to farm it up.
I really wonder if Riot and other companies live in la la land and are completely oblivious to the real state of their games.

To be fair, I think they are aware of the state of their games... hence the Honour system.

You're right though. Unless they make it like their Tribunal mechanic, it's going to be exploited like crazy. And I really don't think people would want to spend time on that kind of thing, where they didn't have the chance to ban a player afterwards.

I get through trollers by counter-trolling. Every time someone says something insulting to someone, I say something nice in return. Usually ends up with the entire team turning sulky silent though.

 

[Falterfire]

Yeah, my first thought was also: How will they prevent abuse?

Because usually help other people systems go one of two ways: Either they're easy enough to use that they can be horribly horribly abused, or they're so convoluted that nobody can be bothered to go through the trouble of helping others.

 

[brunothepig]

I am really happy with this. Yes, the system may be open to abuse. But if they throw this out, then they can find problems with it and fix it. I'm sure there's plenty of solutions to boosting, as people are already predicting. For example, players can only "honor" another once. There. If you want to boost, you're creating a bunch of new accounts. Players can't honor another until level 5. You can hit that in no time at all. Barely an inconvenience for new players, but when you're doing it 20 times over... Yes, players can just bot accounts or something, my point is there's solutions. And simply saying "oh this will never work" means it never will, because no one will experiment with it.

Plus it encourages team play. Even if someone isn't sincere, as long as they're not whining and yelling at the rest of the team/players then I don't care.

 

[Naeras]

Yeah, my first thought was also: How will they prevent abuse?

Because usually help other people systems go one of two ways: Either they're easy enough to use that they can be horribly horribly abused, or they're so convoluted that nobody can be bothered to go through the trouble of helping others.

How exactly do you abuse a system like this?

 

[Best of the 3]

I think it might actually better to reward than to punish. It won't prevent anything but it could encourage better behaviour. Punishment does nothing to encourage good behaviour as far as I see it.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Yeah, my first thought was also: How will they prevent abuse?

Because usually help other people systems go one of two ways: Either they're easy enough to use that they can be horribly horribly abused, or they're so convoluted that nobody can be bothered to go through the trouble of helping others.

How exactly do you abuse a system like this?

You and your mates join a game, spam, troll and be right shits. Then they give each other thumbs up while giving averone else a thumbs down.

 

[FitzOmega]

You and your mates join a game, spam, troll and be right shits. Then they give each other thumbs up while giving averone else a thumbs down.

Well I can easily see how to prevent this problem (how I see it.. don't really know) :

1. Honor can only be given once to a player (so you need multiple account to farm).

2. Honor can't be given when pre-made

3. Honor is removed by report from others players via Tribunal.

This could work.. at least i guess '^^

 

[Aeshi]

Because that worked SO well when TF2 tried it, didn't it?

 

[Evil Alpaca]

I'm thinking this won't work. Trolls are going to report others to prevent honor gain or if the system is too confusing or even time consuming, people are just going to skip it. I'm also curious if people on the other team get a say in this as well. Since they don't see team chat, do they also have the option of selecting people as a team-player?

Perhaps punishment in LoL might be more effective if it was something other than being banned. Something like a leaver buff that reduces IP earned or removes champions from your roster. Part of the problem with the current approach is that it just causes people to set multiple accounts. My little brother and his friends all have multiple accounts set up so they leave or troll games and then switch accounts.

One of the more effective methods I've seen was in a Warcraft 3 clan that had a bot that tracked player's leaving games prematurely. Whenever a player joined a potential match, the bot reported what percentage of games they stayed through. Something as simple as that might help with the rage-quitters

 

[Fasckira]

Hurrah for implementing a popularity vote!

Best way this should have been done is simply reward people who are consistently not dicks. Basically, if you're an average player who only has a few complaints against you (you're always going to get a few from people you've just beaten) then give 'em a little reward.

Letting players honour each other is a dreadful idea though, just turns into a back-scratching event.

 

[Uratoh]

Smite has a fairly decent 'don't be a douche' system, even in beta. you get a 2% Goodwill bonus to your gained 'favor' (the non cash currency) every time you play a game through to the end (IE, your team didn't surrender and/or you didn't rage quit). It stacks, up to a 30% bonus. It's reset if you disconnect from a match in progress and don't return. Unsure if surrendering resets it or not.

 

[Timberwolf0924]

I play the heck outta LoL and I love it. Everytime I do a ranked game I make sure the comments are filled with witty and fun comments.

"I'd hate you, but that was a good gank"
"Your mom was here earlier, she made me a nice dinner! Thank her for me!"
"I think you should just wait at your base and let us deal with all your damn super minions first!"

Ya know things that make people go 'smh' or 'lol'

 

[Naeras]

You and your mates join a game, spam, troll and be right shits. Then they give each other thumbs up while giving averone else a thumbs down.

I don't think you can upvote a person more than once, which is kind of the point.
Upvoting friends/premades would also be kind of stupid.