In the most recent League of Legends patch Riot made some drastic changes to try and combat toxicity, but now they need to make some adjustments to keep a specific group of players safe.
Toxicity and online gaming go hand-in-hand, and it seems no matter what anyone does, whether it's Riot Games, Blizzard or Epic Games, there is no way to completely get rid of it.
Well, in League of Legends the devs have decided to try something pretty drastic, which went into effect in LoL Patch 13.19, but it has since created some backlash from a whole part of the League of Legends community... and it isn't the toxic players that are mad.
LoL: Toxic Players Will Now Have To Play Normals
Riot made some changes in LoL Patch 13.19. One of the biggest quality-of-life changes came from cutting out toxic players from ranked queue completely. This meant that players who were too toxic in games would be suspended for a specific amount of time from ranked, and they'd have to play a set amount of games in either normal, rotating or ARAM queues.
This is what was written in the official Patch Notes:
- Ranked Restrictions: Now when receiving penalties for disruptive behavior you can receive ranked restrictions in addition to your other penalties. These keep you from playing ranked game modes until you clear them.
- Reenabling Ranked: Get rid of your ranked restriction by playing 5 games of a non-ranked mode. These queues include Blind Pick, Draft Pick, ARAM, and Rotating Game Modes.
This caused many ARAM-only players to notice an increase in toxicity within their games, as players who were locked out of ranked wanted to quickly play a few games, so they could then move back into the ranked queue.
The devs listened to the ARAM community and decided to make some adjustments to their ranked restrictions. Starting in LoL Patch 13.21 it seems like players that are locked out of ranked queue will now have to play normals instead of ARAM.
Stricter Restrictions Possible In The Future
Another thing that was noted by HuntedFork on Reddit was that if the behavioral team notices ranked restricted players forcing quick losses, they will continuously have their ranked restriction extended.
This could also mean that if players force quick losses to games, then the behavioral team will enforce players to earn five wins, instead of just playing five normals before they can play ranked again.
So, will this actually change the toxicity in League of Legends? Only time will tell as these changes settle down.