League of Legends looking at long lockouts for AFK laggards | PC Gamer - walkergloold

League of Legends looking at seven-day lockouts for AFK laggards

(Image credit: Riot Games)

Developers over at Riot Games are broadening their strategies when it comes to countering behavior they don't like, and are going to trial new penalties for players who leave or engage in AFK behavior during matches. According to Riot, about 9% of players ecumenical engage in self-consistent AFK demeanor.

Riot defines AFK as two behaviors that wild time for others: people who idle during matches and people who merely up sticks and leave the match entirely.

Right now, the worst those players can get is a queue delay: "Queue Delays are a speed knock against on an sinning player's way to their next a couple of games: Upon clicking the trifle button, the queue blocks them rear end a unmindful timer. The purpose of this is to change behavior," says Riot.

Today, however, players can receive escalating penalties of between 1 day and 14 years of a queue lockout. That agency no performin at each: They're removed from the player population exclusively. "We're removing the instrumentalist from the population for a while thus they dismiss't continue to AFK in games," says Rioting.

For now, the new punishments are being trialed in special regions, as Roister is concerned about certain region-specific connectivity problems. (The Suboceanic region, at least in other MOBAs, is notorious for connectivity issues that players can't control.) Players who would be immediately subject to the new punishments have been reset to a lower tier, so they have a alter to change their ways before the new punishments are levied.

You can read the whole developer log, with stats, on the League of Legends site.

Nice spot, Eurogamer.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an panoptic background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.