Red Post Collection: Using the PBE for "crazy ideas", Taric Being Worked on, Lyte on Positive Reinforcement, and more!

Tonight's red post collection features Ghostcrawler commenting the PBE will soon see more testing of "crazy ideas, not all of which will make it live", Riot Repertoir noting he's currently working on Taric, Lyte discussing positive reinforcement for player behavior, and more!

Continue reading for more information!

• 8/8 PBE Update - Gnar Login
• Red Post Collection - Soraka Rework Discussion and Recap, Gnar PBE changelist, Darius Rework "de-prioritized"

Using the PBE for crazy ideas

Ghostcrawler tweeted out earlier today that they will be using the PBE to test more "crazy ideas" that may never see it to live.

"We're going to slowly get back to using the League PBE to test crazy ideas, not all of which will make it live."

He continued, replying to a few follow up tweets:

[1]"Yeah we need to try some things beyond just knobs."

[2]"We know players get upset over PBE updates but we need somewhere to try new things. Hopefully we can change mindset."

[3]"Yes and we deserve some blame for not iterating enough. Leads to PBE always means live. :("

Taric being Worked On

Over on reddit, Riot Repertoir commented that he's actively working on Taric's kit but it is too early to give any real details:

"Taric is on my radar on the design side. Though the project is nowhere near ready to have its details talked about, I am pretty actively working on him."

Lyte on Positive Reinforcement, Honor, and Team Builder

Lyte popped up on reddit and the forums to talk more about Positive reinforcement for summoners, a small hint on the Honor systems updates, and Team Builder.

When asked why the player behavior team has put more effort into punishing toxic players rather than rewarding positive players, Lyte replied:

"This a great question, but as we know, perception tends to be influenced by recent events.

When we first started work on Tribunal and Reform Cards, there was a lot of forum discussion on the behaviors in Reform Cards, and a lot of focus on punishment. At the time, there were lots of questions about positive reinforcement, and if there were any future plans on the 'positive' side of things.

Then, we started work on Honor, Teamwork OP, Team Builder, Santa Baron Icon, and personal rewards (where players who were positive secretly got a signed poster from player behavior Rioters). All of these systems were focused on experimenting with positive reinforcement and creating positive environments, to see what rewards would be effective, and what systems we'd need to build to sustain these positive behaviors long-term. During this time, a lot of players voiced concerns about new punishment features, and some more things we could do in that area. In fact, you'd see lots of posts about intentional feeders, what we were doing about new kinds of verbal abuse, etc.

Right now, we're working on a new system that aggressively addresses severe cases of verbal abuse, Leavers and AFKs, and intentional feeders. However, we're also working on a new Tribunal system that allows players to review both negative and positive behaviors--and even have the ability to reward players for their positive behaviors. There's more in the works that we're not ready to talk about yet, but they are a mix of punishment and reward systems.

It just so happens that recently, some of the punishment systems are going through testing and closer to "done" than the other stuff--so, it may seem like we're only making punishment features or you may perceive that we think we only need punishment in League, but that's false.

We've always known that we need systems that address both punishment and rewards; however, we jump back and forth between the two types of systems depending on what we think the next piece of highest value is to players."

He continued:

"No, I said what the teams work on jumps from punishments -> positive -> punishments -> positive. The teams switch back and forth.

Right now, there are a few punishment systems in development, and a few positive behavior things as well. I also mentioned that it just so happens, coincidentally, that the punishment systems are testing on live earlier than the other stuff."

When asked what sort of rewards we might see when these new systems come up, he noted:

"Nothing is off the table, we're considering systems that may provide intrinsic rewards (social status, reputation rewards), and perhaps some extrinsic rewards like Santa Baron icon."

In response to a comment about the frustration of hearing new systems coming without seeing them implemented soon there after, Lyte replied:

"So do players prefer no information at all about what's coming in the future? Because we could just release information when systems are done, but I don't think players want that.

You can already "see" the effects of the new systems that are in-development--you can see the results on the forums, etc. But, if the preference is to not talk about things until they are released, that's important to know."

Lyte also briefly touched on the Honor system, sharing minor details on upcoming changes to the system:

"What Xyltin said is true. Right now, about 20% of players have badges, but they are mostly Co-op vs Bots and ARAM players.

We have plans to separate it into top 20% of each queue, as well as some more incentives for both giving and receiving Honor."

When asked why Team Builder doesn't use normal MMR, Lyte commented:

"It does use Normal MMR; however, a lot of Ranked players (who don't play Normals as often) were recently in Team Builder trying to get icons, so matchmaking was a bit wonky."

He continued:

"It was definitely expected, and we expected it to last ~4-6 days. However, long-term, the icons are a cool thing to earn and Team Builder is the only place it made sense (since you don't choose a role in the other queues)."

As for why normal blind pick queues haven't been replaced by Team builder completely, Lyte noted:

"It's something we're considering, but a lot of players love Blind Pick for various reasons and we have to respect that too."

He continued, noting a few changes or experimental ways to improve the TB experience:

"We're going to be making a few changes to the system so that almost full groups get higher priority, so groups tend to fill up faster and launch into a game instead of multiple almost full groups constantly getting a cycle of players.

There's lots of things we can try, such as replacing Blind Pick for a day, possibly giving small bonuses for playing high demand roles, etc."

Lyte also replied to a summoner suggesting Team Builder ditch the champion select option and only use roles to speed things up, saying:

"Actually, the champion pick doesn't delay the queues at all. A Captain only selects the position/role they are looking for, and players aren't declined often because of the Champion. We could try a version of Team Builder where you can't kick players and see how queue times are affected though, because it would help solve the issue of solo players trying to jump around too many groups.

We already have systems in place to limit the number of groups solos can jump around to, so we can try some interesting tests. We could even do it so that Team Builder just makes a complementary set of roles (that isn't necessarily strict meta), which would reduce queue times dramatically; but, it depends how much players value having more control, versus more speed--very easy for us to tweak one way or the other."

As for how the system treats smurf accounts, he noted:

"There's actually quite a few things the matchmaker does to smurfs that result in long queue times--we generally don't want to encourage smurfs unless it's specifically to play with a new friend... and even then we want to find new ways for players to do that."

Lyte also commented on the average queue times, saying:

"For something like 95% of players now, queue times shouldn't exceed 10-15 minutes. I'd like to investigate any specific cases to see if it's time of day, weird specs, or these in combination with a high or low MMR that led to long waits."

He continued:

"10-15 minutes is for 95th percentile.

The average player sees queue times 2-3 minutes, and many players see < 1 minute."