With the upcoming patch 13.19, League of Legends is bringing a big change. Anyone who misbehaves in the game will receive a new punishment. Players will be excluded from ranked matches but must actively serve time in the game.
What does this new punishment look like? According to the LoL Dev Team, players who behave toxicly will be banned from the rankings for a certain number of matches in the future. This means: Anyone who is punished must first play normal rounds, ARAMs or the rotating game modes in order to be allowed back into the rankings.
This affects:
In the future, toxic players will not only be excluded temporarily. The previous penalties were relatively harmless for many because they simply switched to another account or ignored League for a few days or weeks. When they returned, everything continued as usual.
The new system actually hurts, because many players almost exclusively play ranked matches because they have a particularly competitive feel and are usually the most fairly balanced. But in order to be allowed to play again, they first have to perform in lower quality matches. Because anyone who continues to be toxic will continue to be excluded from ranked matches.
When will this change come? The new patch 13.19 is scheduled to release on Wednesday, September 27th. It will also be the patch used in the World Cup – apart from perhaps small hotfixes for Briar.
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How is that received? Just this week we reported that toxic players and trolls cannot be automatically permanently banned because the system could also affect innocent people. One developer explained that bad behavior is still a reason for hard bans.
Now Riot has apparently considered this interim step.
How is that received? Basically good, although there are some concerns. One user writes on Twitter that the affected players will hopefully win the matches and not just have to take part in them. Otherwise they could ruin it again or at least put in little effort in order to be allowed to play in the rankings again.
Others fear the change could introduce more toxicity into non-ranked matches. This could ruin the game for casuals who would like to play a Normal or an ARAM. In addition, this will not solve the problem of toxic players in normal matches, which is also viewed critically.
Overall, there is praise for the change, because players with bad behavior should have no place in the ranked matches. Some people say that anyone who misbehaves too often should be permanently banned from the game.
How do you see this change? Will it really help or hurt the casual side of LoL? Feel free to write it in the comments.
Recently, not only players, but also champions from the rankings were called for to be banned: LoL players demand after debacle with new champion: “Ban them all for at least a week”