League of Legends Proposal Overview

Samantha Rivera League of Legends Project University of Central Florida

League of Legends, based on number of hours played, is the most popular video game in the world. With over 12 million daily active players, it is a wonder how so many different personalities get along. The truth is that, quite frankly, they don’t. Though League of Legends is the most popular game, it is also infamous for having one of most, if not the most, toxic communities in existence. Most players, or summoners, understand the need to reduce this toxicity brought upon the community by ragers and trolls. However, most players do nothing except occasionally report someone after the game. Even then, it is not guaranteed that the toxic player will be punished. To reduce this toxicity, I proposed a system based on giving players’ incentive not to troll or rage; the theory is that rewarding a player is more effective than punishing him. League of Legends Sub-Reddit I first proposed my solution on the League of Legends sub-Reddit. I used short sentences and kept the message concise, jumping straight to the point. There were only a few lines of context. This target audience tends to have a short attention span, especially for new posts that may not be worth their time. I used bullet points for the various levels of rewards to keep it organized. They also served as a focal point, so the eyes jumped straight to the suggested reward system. The post was entitled “College Project: Reducing Toxicity! Please help!” to encourage people to click it. An older post from months ago had “College Project” in the title and was one of the highestrated in history. Adding “Please Help!” compels the more opinion-oriented and helpful Reddit users in. I added a TL;DR for those lazier users out there, as so not to exclude their potential input. Unfortunately, the post was quickly lost in the shuffle. I believe that many of the other new posts’ creators downvoted mine to get to theirs to the top. Thus, my post received a mere 15 upvotes and two comments. However, these comments provided insight and proved helpful. With their suggestions, I believe this potential solution could be revised and later reposted. League of Legends’ upcoming Team Builder, based on World of Warcraft’s Dungeon Finger, took over a year for Riot to take notice. It is to be launched early next year. With enough revisions from suggestions and support from the community, I wholeheartedly believe that reducing toxicity is a plausible venture. League of Legends Forums I posted the same content onto the League of Legends forums as I did the sub-Reddit under the board “Player Behavior.” I, however, left out “college project” from the title because this audience is more serious about reducing toxicity. They do not need to know that the post was a school project to prompt them to view the post. I received four comments and 78 views. Even if the potential solution went unnoticed, those who happened to read it stopped to think about the possibility of something being done about the toxicity problem, if only for a moment. “Prisoner’s Island”

In my original proposal, I mentioned that one’s MMR, or match-making rating, should expand to include honor. This feature is known as Prisoner’s Island in Dota 2, which is another multi-player online battle arena. It works for them, so in theory it should work for its counterpart, League of Legends. I withheld this proposed solution from my proposed solution on the League sub-Reddit and forums because 1) it has been suggested before and 2) controversy surrounds the idea. People argue that one might be stuck in the land of the trolls accidentally. Also, queue times, or when the game searches for and selects one’s teammates and opponents, would increase. For my post, I wanted the focus to be on the suggested reward system. Even if this would have sparked an argument and gotten the post more views, it would not be about the problem at hand. It would give the cyber-bullies a reason to argue with one another, which is the very thing I want to prevent.