Red Post Collection: Meddler on Gnar, Lyte on Behavior Systems, PBE Sanguine Blade changes, and more!

Posted on at 7:30 AM by Moobeat
This morning's red post collection features Meddler with a brief comment on Gnar's release,  Lyte with oodles of discussion on the current and upcoming player behavior systems, a few notes on the Team Builder role icons for EUW and OCE, ManWolfAxeBoss on the Sanguine Blade PBE changes, and more.
Continue reading for more information!



When Will Gnar Be Released?

In a thread asking when Gnar will be released, Meddler commented:
"We haven't locked down an exact date yet and won't until we're confident Gnar is ready . Most often though new champions get released in the next patch after they've come out on PBE and at present we're putting out a patch roughly every two weeks.'
Should you need more Gnar action in the mean time, be sure to check out our PBE coverage of the League's latest addition.

Lyte on Behavior Punishments, Positive Reinforcement, and more!

Lyte popped back on the forums to answer more questions regarding behavioral punishment, reports, upcoming system changes, and even share his thoughts on positive reinforcement.

When asked if chat restrictions actually improve player behavior or if they just frustrated the toxic players even more, Lyte noted:
"This is something we're reviewing pretty closely. For 75% of players, chat restrictions don't frustrate them more, and they simply improve their behaviors and move on without ever getting a 2nd punishment.

We also have to consider what the alternative punishments are: is a ban more frustrating than a chat restriction? For behaviors like in the OP, it's negative, but not something that we'd warrant a permanent ban for... so they got chat restrictions, which are less frustrating and less severe."
He continued, explaining how the team arrived at that statistic and why mute is not the solution to a bad mouthed summoner.
"Actually, yes, we've done surveys and focus group testing of players with chat restrictions. We also have systems that track players when they get out of chat restrictions to see if they are getting more reports, acting out more, or improving their behaviors. "

Quote:
Is either one even necessary to begin with? Why isn't mute viable?
Frankly, if you're asking me, I'd say the chat restriction is more frustrating.
Well, for 25% of players that don't improve after 1 chat restriction experience, you could argue some or all of them might find chat restrictions frustrating. We're not saying it's not frustrating for anyone. 
But, no, mute is not viable. Whenever a player has to mute someone, the damage is already done. When a player has to mute someone, it's already become a negative experience, and they are having less fun. All mutes do is stop or curb the damage from continuing, not erase what's already happened."

As for if a few negative games ( "bad days" ) flag you as a negative player, Lyte commented that around 95% of LoL players have never been punished for behavior:
"No, a few negative games usually don't put you into a bad standing unless the offenses were extremely severe (like a RL death threat, or excessive racial slurs). I've mentioned this before, but something like 95% of League of Legends players have never gotten a punishment from any system."
He continued:
"Quote:

Since Lyte is answering questions, I have never gotten a ban or even a warning for being toxic but sometimes I lose control and my rage gets the best of me. I try to be positive in most of my games but I worry that someday I will get in trouble. I have over 1700 normal wins so maybe I just play too much and rage from time to time. Do I have anything to worry about?
Most players are probably like you. You have bad days and mini-rage once in awhile, but really you aren't a bad person and understand that you just got frustrated. Your mini-rages aren't too severe, so you aren't flagged by the new systems either.

Right now, your account is in good standing. It's always surprising to hear negative players claim that everyone is banned or everyone is getting chat restricted or every game is toxic. Fact is, something like 95% of players never get hit by a punishment from any player behavior system in the game."


As for players who don't want to change after several punishments, Lyte stated:
"You don't have to change. However, if you disagree with the community standards and don't want to change, then just take your time elsewhere and play another game.

The League community almost universally agrees that stuff like racism, homophobic attacks or sexism have no place in League. If you disagree, then really you don't belong here."
When challenged about his knowledge of what the community wants, Lyte replied:
"I don't, but I've seen enough data from reports, Tribunal, Honors, etc to understand generally what the community thinks about these behaviors."

Lyte also answered a question regarding the volume of reports one must receive to get a behavioral warning ( small pop up warning the player about their behavior ):
"It depends on the behavior. Warnings are pretty early in the process, so going from a warning to an actual punishment is actually a pretty large gap for most players unless you do something pretty severe.

If you just got 1 warning and haven't seen anymore, I wouldn't worry about it."
He also shared that reports decay over time:
"No, reports decay over time. You have to be pretty consistently negative or have a few really severe cases to have a negative standing."

As for concern about false reports ( that is, players being reported maliciously for things they didn't actually do ), Lyte explained:
"There's a lot of rumors from players who are banned/punished that it was all because of false reports. There's actually an entire system in place that checks reports for accuracy. If a player consistently abuses reports and uses them against players instead of using them responsibly, their reports completely lose power in the system. If a player uses reports accurately, their report "power" goes up.  
So, false reports aren't something players should be worried about."

When asked about his recent forum presence in threads containing players challenging their recent bans, Lyte noted:
"Yes, I'm prioritizing the 14-day and permanent ban posts. I'm not in Player Support, but they are trying their best to handle the tickets that also include chat restrictions."
As for a better solution to inform summoner's details regarding their behavior punishments, Lyte noted:
"We agree, the Tribunal System has something called Reform Cards which shows chat logs to banned players, and allows banned players to share them on the forums.

However, Reform Cards and Tribunal are going through a massive upgrade period, so they are offline currently."
He continued:
"I'm hoping to do some larger discussions that dive into the designs of these systems in the future. We're working on the features, and want to make sure we're closer to launch before we dive into the discussions. We've been dinged in the past for talking too early, and players gripe that we're just talking and not working."
Lyte also commented on positive reinforcement and the goal of some of the upcoming systems:
"To address player behavior, we really need a full spectrum of systems. We're always going to need systems that address persistently negative players who engage in racism, sexism, homophobia or excessive verbal abuse and refuse to change--we need to get these players to just take their time elsewhere because they don't belong in our community. 
However, for a group of players, we need systems that focus on reform. Players join League from a variety of different backgrounds; everyone has a different culture, education, family background, gaming background and more. For example, League players come from FPS games, MMO games, Puzzlers, Platformers, Fighters and more. Some of these players may have "learned" that it's OK to express themselves through racial or homophobia slurs, or make sexist comments all day because they were never penalized for it before; however, we need systems to educate these players that that's not OK in League, and they'll improve their behaviors and make the community a better place. 
For all players, we need systems that focus on positive reinforcement. We need to show players what it means to be a positive member of the community, and we need to give players more reasons to be good. We need to make "being good" the easiest choice in every situation. We need to create tools for these players to shape the community for the better, and help cast out the negative players who are just damaging the negative perceptions that gamers have.

We have a long road ahead, but we want you to join us in this journey."
He continued:
"We agree, if there are rewards for being good, many of the rewards should "disappear" if the player stops being good. However, some rewards can be permanent.

But, you'll note I said we need more reasons for players to be good, and we need to make being good the easiest choice--these don't necessarily mean physical rewards!"

Update on Team Builder Role Icons for EUW and OCE


As mentioned in the last red post collection, the Team Builder updates and new role based summoner icons are being rolled out to each individual server. While they seem to be out on most servers, we do have some notes on their availability for EUW and OCE.

Here's Riot Draggles with information regarding the icons on EUW and  the issues that have delayed things a bit.
"Hey folks,

You may have seen the summoner icons we are awarding you guys for playing 5 times as a certain role on Team Builder, but we ran into a couple of issues that prevented us from getting these to you on EUW. Needless to say we are identifying the issue and are committed to getting the icons to you as soon as possible. We’ll keep you updated in this thread as soon as we make progress.

However, good news! While we are working on this, any games you play on Team Builder now will still count towards your total, but you will have to play one game to make sure it unlocks when the process is fixed.

While this is happening, tell us what you think about Team Builder, and we’ll be announcing the upgrades to the system on EUW shortly (and if you want, you can get a sneak peek at EUNE's article here!)

31/07 - 20:44 GMT+1: We are still working to resolve this issue. Thank you for your patience! 
01/08 - 11:13 GMT+1: We have found a potential solution and it will be implemented in the next 24-36 hours. Sorry for the delay, this bug is affecting multiple regions simultaneously and our teams are working hard to restore service."

As for OCEANIA, Team Builder will be returning the server on Sundays from 3 PM AEST to 1 AM AEST starting on August 3rd. More info can be found here on the region specific announcement or here in the OCE forums.

Thresh's E Bugfix

Thanks to a summoner's bug report submission, it seems that Thresh's flay bugs are close to being splattered!

CertainlyT replied to the bug report, saying:
"Wow, thanks Enix_Blaze. This is incredibly helpful. Look for this longstanding bug to be fixed next patch."

[Continued] Sona rework discussion

Patch 4.13 contained both aesthetic upgrades for Sona and an update kit by Fearless, who has again returned to the forums to address feedback concerning the gameplay part of her update and how the communities feedback was handled while the rework was on the PBE.
When asked how long it will take to gauge the effectiveness of the rework now that it is on live, Fearless noted:
"So one day of play (almost two now) in a handful of regions doesn't give us accurate data. There are regions that still haven't even gotten updated to 4.13 yet. Right now, we're looking at the feedback on the forums, community sites, streams, etc. and then trying to see how she feels in the live environment, but all of that is anecdotal. After much more time, something closer to two weeks, we have a very authoritative block that will also have given people time to learn the new mechanics and decision making, find strong builds, and have opponents play against that fully understand what they are up against. It's mostly that adjustment period that we have to wait for before the data becomes useful."
As for why Sona's Q only buffs one auto attack instead of all for the duration of Q's aura, Fearless noted:
"These are things we are working on right now, and looking to figure out where we get the most bang for the buck. As for why we empower a single auto attack per Q per ally, this is about creating windows to actually fight back against Sona. If Sona could give her ADC 5 seconds of auto attacks empowered that the current level, or anything close to it, it would be very hard to trade at all for the entire duration. Making it one attack gives Sona's enemies a chance to react her actions, which creates more choices for Sona on how to optimize the use. Old Sona Q should be cast on cooldown if there are targets and Sona has mana. Making that choice deeper gives us room to make her more powerful. 
I'm totally open to other outlooks. Mostly try to understand the outlooks right now, and figure out what improvements we can make in communication and satisfaction that don't impact balance before we have enough data to make any conclusions about her power level or success rate."
Fearless also, again, replied to criticism that he PBE testers felt their feedback went unheard :
"I was not taking downvotes personally, but i was understanding them as a measure of the communities desire to be upset versus having an actual discussion. When I have measure every action I take in its value to the game (which I think everyone at Riot does) I did think that, after trying to engage in meaningful discussion, and having very little success, it was better to make sure Sona wasn't buggy. 
I had no expectation of anyone jumping for joy that I was reworking their favorite champ. I've worked on enough treasured material in my history as a game designer that this isn't something I ever expected to happen. 
I'll totally admit to not making sure people were not heard. I'll continue to own up to that every time you bring it up. 
Around the criticisms: They were heard, they were tested as risks. They were a key point that were carried into our test environments. I didn't do nearly enough to communicate this, see above point. The feedback was heard, was tested, and was addressed where research and testing backed up the concern. I did much too little to make sure the people giving the feedback could appreciate that."
He continued:
"This is something I've admitted to already, but I have also talked about the trade off I made. The times I went quiet on PBE were due to being deep in bugs and analysis for Sona, and I valued a less buggy release over communication I was worried would be viewed as empty. That judgement was wrong in hindsight."
In response to someone suggesting a "read by Riot" feature on the forums, Fearless commented:
"Interesting idea, but I think our community deserves more than that. It's been very educational for me to see that pretty simple responses make people feel a lot better. The button could do that, but usage could be problematic. I know I'll personally be working hitting the level that I've come to understand people appreciate, even when I can't make substantial comments. This is also something I've already talked with in small conversations, but will be something that I try to pass on in general."

If you are looking for more information on Sona's rework, check out the dedicated champion update page or see what Fearless had to say in the Patch Rundown for 4.13!

Sanguine Blade changes coming to PBE

As you may have noticed, Sanguine Blade, an item exclusive to Dominion/Twisted Treeline/Howling Abyss, has  received a few changes on the PBE to bring it closer to The Bloodthirster.

ManWolfAxeBoss confirmed the current set of changes are to be reverted and a new set will be tested:
"There will be some new changes on PBE tomorrow. 
Initial changes have been reverted. 
New SB stats:
Passive uptime increased from 4 seconds to 8
AD increased from 40 to 45

LS decreased from 15 to 10"

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