LoL devs are trying to even out the fight against the multitude of trolls and toxic players in League of Legends. With LoL Patch 13.19, a new feature will go live which could change things forever.
League of Legends is not always the most family friendly game, especially when looking through hundreds and thousands of chat logs. Words can easily become harsh after a bad play or a stubborn overextension, which can cause players to get heated – especially when LP is on the line.
To try and combat toxicity in the game, Riot has tried multiple approaches, like adding more rewards for good behavior, or even adding stricter rules when players go AFK in the middle of a match. Now they're also going after those who are chat restricted.
League of Legends: Players Will Get Locked Out Of Ranked
Recently, someone on Reddit asked whether Riot was still working on locking players out of playing ranked when they are chat restricted or just have contributed to toxicity in the game. This prompted one Rioter to answer and give the community an update.
Riot dev HuntedFork revealed that the behaviors team is still working on implementing locking toxic players out of ranked queue, and a later announcement confirmed that this feature will hit the live servers pretty soon. After this change goes live, toxic players will start to get locked out of ranked games.
How Will The Lockout Tool Work?
New ranked queue penalties will be coming in Patch 13.19.
— League of Legends // UK, IE & Nordics (@LoLUKN) September 20, 2023
Stand by for more details when the patch notes land next week. pic.twitter.com/UK6kQVhbxO
On Reddit Riot HuntedFork explained how the system will work and it seems pretty straightforward and easy. Players that have severe chat restrictions will receive ranked queue bans until they've re-earned their right to play ranked once more.
So hypothetically if you leave too many games to the point where you finally catch a 24 hour queue suspension, when that suspension is up you'll be required to play 5 normal games before you can step foot into ranked again.
For now the behaviors team wants to keep it at 5 normal games, no matter how severe the suspension was beforehand, but they are open to making adjustments if the need arises in the future. So anyone who has hit this point with enough warnings could be locked out of ranked for a while.
The important thing to mention is that if you're hitting this point you've possibly caught a few infractions, and have already encountered a few queue delays or honor impacts before you hit this point. (Or did something so severe you got fast-tracked to it).
However, Riot also confirmed that this does not only apply to chat behavior. Many other in-game offenses will lead to Ranked lockouts too, like intentionally griefing games or AFKing. Do not worry about technical issues, though – if the current leaver buster system is anything to go by, you will have to AFK repeatedly in a short amount of time to trigger a Ranked lockout.
Riot Will Also Monitor Normal Queues
Of course, simply sending these toxic players into a different queue won't end toxicity altogether. Riot will make sure to monitor normal queue as well so that they don't just shuffle toxicity from one queue to another.
Let's see whether this is one of the solutions players have needed, or whether this is just going to make other parts of the game more toxic instead. Make sure to be on your best behavior!