How Riot Games is Making Online Gaming More Enjoyable

If you have ever played an online game, chances are you have encountered quite a few unpleasant or down right obnoxious people. I don't mean the type of people who blast music through their headsets, but more the ones who love insulting other players or dropping slurs every 5 seconds. Unsurprisingly, this leaves anyone with even a shred of maturity or self control to be turned off from online gaming entirely or forces them to simply mute whatever chat system the game uses. Even worse is the fact that most game companies really don't do anything, or just not enough, to stop this kind of behavior. Of course, League of Legends, was no exception to this, but Riot has stepped up and added new features in an attempt to reel in these kinds of players.

The first of these features implemented is called The Tribunal. Basically, anyone who has been reported several times for foul language, leaving a game, or just general trolling will have a Trbunal case created for them on the Leagoe of Legends website. Each case is presented with usually 2-6 instances of when the player was reported and includes full chat logs for each game, the date for the game, the type and match length, as well as the items and K/D/A the player had by the end of the game. You are given 20 seconds before you can vote in each case and,if your judgement is in line with the judgement of other players, you will be given a small reward of in-game currency. Should a majority of players find someone guilty of breaking "The Summoner's Code", then the case is forwarded to a team at Riot who determine what the punishment shall be for the rule breaker.

The next step Riot made to ensuring all players behave themselves was the "Honor Player" system. After a game, you are given the option to reward a player for their behavior. There are four categories that you can place one point into after a game: helpful, friendly, teamwork, or honorable opponent. Gather enough of these points and you will earn a green (for good team player) or red (for honorable opponent) banner around your profile name that appears both in-character select and the loading screen for both teams to see. Because of the fact that your Honor points will reset should the Tribunal ever find you guilty, this sends a clear message to the community that these players really do go out of their way to be cooperative or polite. You may be thinking "a little banner around my profile name doesn't seem like much of a reward", but you would be surprised by how many players do try to acquire it.

Both of these systems rely on one aspect that really makes them unique: the players themselves enforce the rules that Riot has created and judge players who don't follow them. Not even well-known or professional League of Legends players are given much leeway when it comes to these systems. Just recently, a professional player "IWillDominate", was banned from the game after he was found guilty in the Tribunal 8 out of the 9 seperate cases that were brought up. The fact that Riot Games is willing to punish their most high profile players gives me a tremendous amount respect for them. The decision to harshly punish one of the players that represents their game and participates in most major tournaments could not have been an easy one to make, but I'm glad they did.

So, what can we learn from all this? Well, firstly, that not all players of online games are obnoxious. Given the right incentive, most players will be willing to cooperate and be civil with one another. What is even better is that this proves that you do not need large reward to encourage this behavior either; a shiny banner is really all you need apparently. The fact that all of this is also run by players means that people are willing to enforce a game's rule set even without a way to exploit these systems for easy rewards. I really feel this shows more developers of online games need to take an active role in enforcing good conduct. This does not mean monitoring every player 24/7 or being ban happy, but a player run system with small rewards that cannot be exploited really seems like the ideal way of handling online communities. I really do hope this will become a trend that finds its way into more and more games. I am sure that most of us have played a game that could benefit from this.