Work has again begun on League of Legends honor and reporting, with the Riot Games developers now preparing another sweeping rework into the behavioral systems.
League has had the same honor system since 2017, when the developers shipped a sweeping update that fundamentally changed the way players interacted post-game. At the time, Riot said it wanted to put a bigger emphasis on teamwork—and in the process, the devs seem to have lost sight of making the program about “true honor.”
So, after eight years working under those rules, Riot is taking another crack. This time, Riot’s leading designer for motivations Evan Humphreys explained, the team really wants to focus in on rewarding good behavior instead of highlighting “how many games you’ve played and how well you’ve played in them.”
From September, League players will again be able to honor more than one teammate. The ability to share honors with the enemy team will also return for the first time since 2017, when it was removed. Rewards will also be updated at the same time; at very least, players can earn new Three Honors skins for Akshan and Malzahar.
Said Humphreys, “We’re making changes to the system that let players identify and reward others who are truly honorable, not just cracked at the game.”
There’s more “long term plans” coming too, but Riot isn’t revealing them yet.
This huge League honor rework is also coming bundled with more crackdowns around “soft-inting” and griefing, both of which caused widespread uproar when Riot took aim at them earlier this competitive season.
On that front, Riot has finally shared what it sees as soft-inting: “Taking deliberate actions with the intent of reducing the team or a teammate’s likelihood of success.”
Between a whole lot more bans for soft-inting and heavier punishments for other toxic actions like chat abuse, AFKing from games (not playing), or even just simply feeding, the League behaviors team sees 2024 as the perfect season to ramp things up—and hopefully, stamp out even more bad actors across League.
Nothing will be perfect, Humphreys conceded, but Riot’s “committed expanding the effort to the best of our ability” as the war against toxicity rolls on.
