Riot is once more altering its strategy on punishment to include AFK players in the system
Several system updates have been made to League of Legends over the past few months. It all began with the ranked adjustments that allowed for two divisions in a season while also providing players with more and better prizes. Additionally, Patch 13.5 raised the Dodge Penalties. In addition to that, Riot made numerous other behavioral and communication system changes to address the game’s widespread toxicity problems.
In the past, the AFK approach was modified to help players remake games more quickly or avoid being held captive. Riot will be making more adjustments to the list of sanctions for AFK players.
Updated AFK system in League of Legends
The Leaverbuster method will now include AFK players in addition to the following modifications.
- There will now be a 1-minute queue delay penalty for all players that AFK or leave games.
- Fixed a bug where sometimes frequent leavers would not get a penalty.
The official Leaverbuster FAQ states that fines for AFK players will also build up over time to compensate for queue delays for frequent violators. Players should be pleased that Riot is finally beginning to take firmer positions against AFK players because this is such a welcome shift.
Other changes to improve the punishment system were also approved by League community as a player pointed out about pardoning the AFK players instead of punishing him in a Reddit post.
In other words, penalizing a player for something that is beyond their control shouldn’t be a choice if they are friendly, don’t purposefully feed kills, and play honorably.
Hopefully, this will improve the situation and Riot will take additional action now that the tides appear to be changing.