Will reporting players in champ select solve anything?

More than a month ago, we posted an article about the LoL Solo Queue Problems and the solution Riot never acknowledges. It began with Voyboy posting a near 10 minute video on his Youtube channel, addressing the poor state of solo queue and the game in general. Riot Meddler, the game director for LoL tweeted a follow up a few days later, outlining steps they look into and investigate to create a better environment for the game.

We gave our potential solutions to the problem and waited patiently for Riot’s move. Finally, after a month and a half, Riot has officially announced plans of champ select reporting and muting to decrease negative behaviour / experience. The test is currently live on the North American and Korean servers for patch 10.13, with other regions set to receive it anytime between now to patch 10.14.

© Riot Games

Champ select muting & reporting

The new options give the ability to mute players in champion select, this mute will carry over to the in-game stage. Interestingly, these mutes will last to future matches with the same player again, however, will not apply to the post game lobby. Riot has done this, as they only wish to see the impact of muting in champ select for the upcoming game. This will likely mean you’ll still get flamed at the end.

The initial experiment for champ select reporting will not be linked with the penalty system. Currently, Riot seeks to extract data to determine the link between negatively behavior in champ select and win rate. However, Riot has made clear that future revisions of the champ select reporting system, once tests have ended, will be linked to the penalty system.

Is this remotely enough?

As highlighted by a reddit post gaining over five thousand upvotes in less than a day, people do not simply want champ select reporting. Instead, the community wants the existing report system to matter. The current system relies primarily through the detection of key words to gauge toxicity, an extremely poor design considering many toxic players easily work around it. On top of that, the system does not police and punish players for inting.

The never-ending fight in tackling players’ toxic behavior is not going to be won by simply adding another report feature. No real commitment to reward non-toxic behavior or even to properly punish toxic players has been enforced. The Tribunal system was a laughable system as well.

It is not only about the blatant blue Singed / Nunu going 0-30 in a game that should get punished punished. INTers who are a bit smarter never get banned. This is because Riot revealed they do not punish players for poor play, or off meta picks. So if you want to ruin someone’s game all you have to do is be mildly toxic, while actively sabotaging your team and you are free to go.

Unless Riot implement champ select reporting in the future, that they will police with active staff, and penalise toxic behaviour in chat instantly, the system will likely act as a placebo effect once again. Forcing players to dodge or banning players in real time for toxic bahvarior while in champ select would be great, however, only time will tell Riot’s commitment towards fixing the poor state of the game.

Read next: Streamer Sexual Misconduct Allegations – Does Twitch Need to Do More?