Honor in Summoner’s Rift? Positive reinforcement coming to League of Legends

Summoner’s Rift is not a place I was typically describe as ‘honorable.’  Mainly for the fact that you have ten champions locked inside trying to beat the piss out of one another.  The other reasons have to do with the attitudes of those players behind the champions trying their very hardest to enrage you.  Never feed the trolls.      

Historically though, Riot has done their darndest to punish those players who would try to make the League of Legends experience worse for other players.  Riot commonly calls these players ‘toxic” (I really enjoy this term for some reason). Through the creation and support of the Tribunal, players have been able to judge these potentially toxic players to see if they are worth punishing or not.  The Tribunal awards users IP for their time and effort for cleaning LoL’s community.

I have a background in education, if there is one thing that is drilled into you is to give positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement when dealing with children.  Riot will be taking this approach with players in the near future with a mysterious system called ‘Honor.’  Instead of slapping the wrists of toxic players, they will be rewarding those supportive players. 

I know what you’re thinking… there are positive players in LoL?  They do exist.  Hopefully this honor system will influence enough players to step up their positive game a bit.  How it will work is still completely unknown.  From personal experience, I once saw a ranged AD clearly disconnect in the middle of the lane and the other team didn’t kill him when they could have easily done so.  That sort of thing is both surprising and heartwarming.

Lyte, Riot game developer, posted about honor in a community post.  He says we should keep an eye out for honor in in the next PBE update.  Most likely we’ll hear more in the next patch.  I support this initiative (being positive already).

[LeagueOfLegends]

Historian, teacher, writer, gamer, cheat master, and tech guru: follow on Twitter @AndrewC_GZ