Riot introduces new queue lockout punishments for AFK players
Riot is taking the next step in fighting players who AFK during games by introducing new punishment tiers that will lock out players from all League of Legends queues if they AFK or leave games too often.
In a
recent dev blog
by the product leads for League’s behavioral system team, it was revealed that an update to tackle AFK’s will be hitting live servers soon. The new penalty type called “queue lockout” will help to punish disruptive behavior by locking out players from queuing up for a certain amount of time depending on the penalty tier.
With a total of four new penalty tiers, it will now be possible for players to be locked out of queues for up to 14 days when in the highest punishment tier. A total of four tiers will be included in the queue lockout moving forward, which will make it much harder for players to consistently AFK without feeling heavily punished.
Riot tries to curb AFK players in LoL
When the new system is completely launched on all live servers in LoL, Riot will reset all players at a high tier back to tier 3. This will give all players who afk a chance to reform right from the start, as no one will be affected by the queue lockout right away. With that said, players who are being reset back to tier 3 will have to be careful, as it won’t take many violations before tier 4 or above kicks in if they start going afk during games again.
To help evaluate behavior with the new penalties, Riot will also be moving to “a more sophisticated model” that will help players who are showing signs of reforming go back into the lower tiers.
Previously, players who have shown good behavior after being hit by penalties have struggled to lower their punishment tiers back down. This new model that will look at multiple factors, and is meant to be more rewarding for players who actually choose to reform and learn their lesson from the queue penalties.
It’s still unknown when this new system will be rolled out onto live servers, as Riot will be testing it on a select few servers at first. After these tests are done, players should expect to see the official launch in the patch notes.
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