Riot: ur doin it rite
Email thisI would love to not write about harassment, trolling, griefing, and racism anymore. It would be grand.
The good news is that, today, I get to write about a positive spin for it! This isn’t another “u fuked up” post, but a post giving kudos to a specific game: League of Legends.
There are two things they have implemented recently that have shown a positive affect on the community (both from a statistics perspective, and also from my personal perspective): Honor System, and ranked judging (or whatever they’re calling it officially).
The Honor System
And it works! Kind of crazy, but it does!
The Mary Sue did a write up about the honor system that says exactly what I want to, so I’ll just link you to over there. I’ll also throw in this quote to show why the honor initiative is so awesome:
I initially thought it would be a disaster. No rewards? Ha! Like that’s going to work!
This is where things get serious. Isn’t this what Scott has been talking about the whole time? The difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. People don’t need rewards to stop acting like assholes. They just need some intrinsic motivation to do so. In this case, it’s the honor system. Sure, you could argue that receiving honor is in itself a reward, but I see it as an almost intrinsic reward given from the community. It’s a recognition of “yeah, you do have the correct intrinsic motivation, keep it up big guy/gal!”
It sure works too. Before, when playing LoL, I would try and tune out all chat during a game. Now I actively try and participate because of the change to be a positive voice in the community. Before, chat only had the consequence of being trolled, harassed, or yelled at. Now, there’s an opportunity for honest to god human interaction! (inorite?)
So, Kudos to you Riot.
Justice Review
So it’s officially called Justice Review, and it’s basically a meta-game add on to the justice system that LoL has. Where the honor system is for those players that “done good”, the Justice Review is for the asshats, but it’s player run. Players (of a certain level), vote whether to “punish” or “pardon” an offender, then Riot hands out the final punishment. Pretty straightforward.
Now, they’ve added stats for the reviewers, % of cases judged the same as the majority (I won’t say correctly because I don’t think that’s always the case), # of Toxic Days prevented, # of players PermaBanned, and the coolest, in my mind, an honest to god ELO ranking system that mirrors the LoL in game (ranked) ranking system. It has definitely motivated me to participate more often (even though I was doing it quite often anyway).
Here’s a taste:
A quick screencap of what the Justice Review looks like
Again, pretty solid work on the part of Riot. I think my Accuracy is a bit lower than most people because I’m fast with the “punish” button for almost any offense.
Side note: I hope there’s a way for them to make sure no one is gaming this system to just get ranking points. I would like to see people voting how they think someone should be dealt with instead of “oh, this person is a dick, but everyone else will pardon him, so I will too.”
tl-dr
Good on ya Riot, you’re implementing systems to get rid of trolling, griefing, harassment, racism, and many other bad things in your game. Keep it up.
Ding! You’ve Leveled Up! Please see your local librarian for training.