Riot needs to Address AFK players and how they impact the ranking system

Resif

NA
TLDR: Make afk players lose more lp, mitigate lp loss to teammates they affected, aside from their duo partner if they have one(To prevent cheating) Riddle me this: You're in a game, 15minutes in your top laner dies to a jungle gank. He flames your jungle, asks for a gank, respawns and dies again. You're bot lane, with maybe a kill or cs lead under your belt and you're watching this from afar. But you say nothing and focus on your play and make sure you can pick up the slack from your top laner. BOOM Your top laner AFKS. Suddenly your chances of winning this game have completely dropped, and it would take a miracle for you not to lose LP this game, from your top laner AFKing. Not because you played bad, not because you missed cs, not because you failed a flash, not because of anything related to you, YOU, are losing lp. Why is it that Riot has NOT addressed this whatsoever, what have they done? Give them a suspension? A timer before they can join game? A warning? What does it matter? Even if they dont afk again for months, your LP and 3 other team mates LP is affected because there's no system in place to protect you. The reason why this is so bad is because not only are you losing LP, the measure of your play and how proficient you are, the enemy is GAINING lp. In a game where you might have won because you were a better all around player, you will lose lp, and in some situations the enemy could've lost, but now they're gaining lp. This ruins a lot more than just my patience, it completely ruins the ranking system. When a player afks, you are nearly guaranteed to lose that game, and there's nothing you can do about it. ***SOLUTION*** Implement a system that punishes players who AFK, and mitigate the damage that they have on other players: Idea: The person who AFKS, loses double LP.(Bring down the hammer hard, or it's not gonna matter.) The rest of the allied team loses half LP, or zero lp.(This game is now out of their control, regardless of why the other player afks) Enemy team: Receives standard lp for the win, since they also can't control the other player afking. *Special circumstances* The AFK player has a duo partner, what about their lp? What if the person AFKs to save their duo's series/lp? Simple, the duo player doesn't receive half the lp loss or zero, they lose the standard amount. The system gets implemented, but the player is trolling by sitting in fountain or base instead: Implement an algorithm that tracks if a player doesn't leave fountain or base for a prolonged period of time. Search for specific things: Placing a bunch of wards in fountain, selling all their items and buying tears, sitting in a lane without using abilities and attacking minions for PROLONGED periods of time. Regardless of if there are ways to circumvent things, I think that taking absolutely no action at all to mitigate damage caused by AFK players is the worst idea. I have easily lost more than 300+ potential lp from games where i've had afks. I'm not saying i would've won them all, but i had NO chance to. I don't care if this specific idea goes live, just DO SOMETHING. I'm tired of losing lp, series, and time becsause people are too mentally weak to play a game through, and i shouldn't be punished for a player afking.

Posts are displayed here in chronological (time, oldest first, newest last) order, like a regular web forum.

hyperion3182 (EUW)
Repeated AFKs are already punished by LeaverBuster and losing LPs, even if they reconnect before the end of the game. You cant double/half the losses/gains because it would mess up the ranked ladder and the correlation with MMR. Exception is loss prevented activated for everyone during a server issue. And probably some messed up ways to abuse with smurfs and win trading. That being said, AFKs dont damage the ranking but they damage the fun: Regardless of their %, AFKs are irrelevant to your ranking for a simple reason: they can ALSO be in the opposing team and allow easier wins. Use your memory and remember that you lost some games BECAUSE of AFKs and you won some game THANKS to AFKs. Over a Season of hundreds of ranked, their presence evens out = no impact on your ranking. Simply our brain is wired to stronger remember bad experiences. That being said, its frustrating of course and should be better identified and punished, hence the announcement from last week. Foutain AFKing or running around should be targeted indeed. https://euw.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/dev/dev-ranked-and-matchmaking-in-2020/

Resif (NA)
It doesn't matter if i've had afks on the other team before or not, and one could also argue it's not a perfect 1:1 ratio, so it's not a good excuse. They absolutely mess up the ranking system, it stops the progression that the game is supposed to have. I lost 4 different promotion series last season to AFKers on my team, tell me how that hasnt impacted my rank? If someone afks, it's not longer who needs to gain lp gaining lp, now its just the side that has 5 people so i dont understand the one dimensional thinking behind your argument. People can rank up that are NOT supposed to, and people that ARE supposed to rank up can be held back by AFKs. How is this not an issue to fix? It's clearly not working.

This is a fanmade archive of the leagcy League of Legends forums/boards. LeagueBoards.net isn't endorsed by Riot Games and doesn't reflect the views or opinions of Riot Games or anyone officially involved in producing or managing League of Legends. League of Legends and Riot Games are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riot Games, Inc. League of Legends © Riot Games, Inc.