After player concerns about AFKs and how they ruin games reached high point this week, Riot Games development team is looking at modifying how loss mitigation works in League of Legends matches
Riot has taken note of league players’ complaints about recent difficulties with ranked loss and significant LP losses despite early AFKs or departures impacting matches.
On August 14, designer Jordan “BarackProbama” Checkman revealed Riot’s plans for loss mitigation adjustments, explaining that the present algorithm evaluates the player’s odds of winning at the instant the player is flagged as AFK.
The afflicted team is given lower LPs compared to a typical defeat based on the differential and lesser possibility of winning.
However, if a player AFKs at the start, the difference in gold is so small that the algorithm feels the side without a player still has a chance to win. “At 3:45, you are probably 50/50,” Barack Obama stated, adding that the system will reward the impacted team with the least amount of mitigation.
BarackProbama considers the problem to be a “bummer,” owing to the fact that the mitigation parameters have grown obsolete as developers have continued to increase LP variation. Fortunately, the team notice the problem and will check into it in the next days.
The author of the Reddit post related a narrative that enraged other players, in which he lost virtually all of his LP after a four-minute surrender that was out of their hands following a close, drawn-out win that gained him 21 LP.
Other players in the community expressed disappointment with the system improvements, wishing Riot to implement a third-party system comparable to FACEIT for Counter-Strike. However, such a system is unlikely to coexist with Riot’s present system.
Meanwhile, we can only hope for less LP losses and more punishment for League of Legends AFKs.