A few weeks ago, the League of Legends community saw a large controversy begin to rumble across SoloQ and the high ranks. According to many players, the game is practically unplayable at higher ranks due to the problems with getting into game. It is no longer about how long it takes to find players, instead there are many players who are focused on dodging games so they only compete in games where their team has an advantage.
The dodging drama took on troubling overtones, a call-back to the toxicity crisis that Riot Games faced early in the COVID-19 pandemic. The penalties given for wasting others' time were not enough, and players just bore the brunt of it as it did not outweigh the gains. That is why Riot Games has decided to take additional action, which it has explained in a development blog.
A Third of Dodges from Diamond 1
The data above shows that only 42% of the games that the system creates end up being played. Although there will be a small percentage of errors and, of course, players simply not accepting the game; the most worrying trend is that 33% of the players leave the game intentionally.
Although only 1.6% of players leave the game in champion selection on 3 or more occasions a day, the positive is that 80.1% do not dodge games. We can say that this is a minority, but it's hurting the majority of high-ranking players. With 10 players per game, it is normal to fall victim to several dodges a day.
So what is Riot going to do?
The table above explains Riot Games' new punishment levels: "One dodge will move a player up a tier (or three failed ready checks—this has been true for years but we haven't talked this deeply about dodging before so it's not common knowledge). We also want to acknowledge that this doesn't address some of the other root causes of dodging; more on efforts to tackle those in a bit."
"We're also changing the reset strategy we use. Previously, we completely reset dodge tiers 24 hours after the last recorded dodge. This'll change to reduce dodge tiers by one every 12 hours, making daily consecutive dodgers face these restrictions sooner and helping legitimate dodgers recover faster.", explains the developers.
Although perhaps the most interesting thing is that they will carry out actions against the specific causes of this problem, which will be based on adding new penalties for reports sent from the champion selection. There is also talk of modifications to the use of autofill and the secondary role players select, meaning there should be less autofilled players on both teams; which can be seen as a cause to dodge.
We've got all the details for the next League of Legends patch — and this is the first patch of the Sentinels of Light event, meaning there are a lot of new skins.
