Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games always tend to bring out the worst in players since they are dependent on the team. While both League of Legends and Dota 2 have their fair share of toxic players, Valve recently put its foot down and introduced strict behavior and communication scores to Dota 2 as part of the new Summer Client update. As part of this change, if a player's communication or behavior score tanked beneath a certain level, they would be penalized in-game.
Now, over the year, Riot Games has rolled out many updates to tackle and curb such vile behavior. But it always seemed like the community needed something more stringent to deal with the toxic players. Therefore, as part of the upcoming LoL Patch 13.19 update, Riot Games developers will be introducing a new solution to finally mellow down the virulent players in League of Legends, especially in the ranked queue.
Here's all we know about this new ranked queue penalty coming soon to League of Legends.
Toxic League of Legends players will be penalized via new ranked queue penalty
On 19th September, Riot Games via its League of Legends Dev Team page revealed that there will be a new penalty for offenders in ranked games starting with LoL Patch 13.19.
It wrote, "In 13.19 we're adding new ranked queue penalties for most offenses. Offenders must play remedial games in a non-ranked queue with good behavior. These queues include Blind Pick, Draft Pick, ARAM, and the Rotating Game Mode queue. More details to come in the 13.19 notes!"
As a result, if a player gets flagged for their behavior in a ranked game, they will have to serve their remedial games via other modes including Blind Pick, Draft pick, All Random All Mid (ARAM), and whatever the rotating game mode queue at that point is.
The developers further clarified, "As far as "which offenses?" This would come into effect for Leaving, AFK, Gameplay, and Chat penalties."
This means, Riot Games will be monitoring a player's chat in-game, flag them if they go away from keyboard (AFK), or run it down in their games.
More details regarding this new ranked queue penalty will be provided when the new patch is rolled out and will be spelled out clearly in the blog post by the publisher.
Notably, LoL Patch 13.19 will be rolled out on 27th September worldwide. Here are the key timings of the patch roll out for all regions:
Oceania: 10 am AEST
North America: 3 am PT
Europe West: 5 am GMT
Europe Nordic and East: 3 am CET
South Korea: 8 am KR
The game will also be down for a while for maintenance before the patching begins.