Disclaimer: this article represents the opinion of the writer and not necessarily that of Team Dignitas.

Greetings Summoners!

I'd like to discuss the Honor system and analyze why it seems to have lost its value as of lately. I've been going over it with people and experimented with them on accounts and pretty much no matter how well a game was played no one would gain any honor in almost 40 games in a row, despite being the most valuable players in many cases. I remember posting the picture you see below somewhere on the league forums, however can't seem to find the original topic/post – it was a "positive feedback" suggestion and kinda made me giggle when they introduced honor with pretty much the same idea behind it

The system had a great start simply because it was something new and people love new stuff and love being part of it. It was nice to get honor and it was nice to give honor – it felt as if you did something good, noteworthy and "helped" make the community a better place. Statistically the overall gameplay seemed to have improved, but alas numbers on a lorge scale don't mean much and won't change a lot.

For some time it probably worked as intended – people would force themselves to be nicer just to gain honor. I remember that everyone always said "hi" in all game chat and tried to make some random joke just to get noticed as friendly. Some people would even collaborate on making up deep interactions with the team in terms of strategies and plans. The game somehow seemed nicer even though it was fake at most of the times. IMO; I don't join games to have cute conversations or to drop phun jokes every 45 seconds. I don't join games either to type every move into the chat – I kinda expect people to know what they are supposed to do. This topic is just an example of how fake people can/have become – let us not create mindless adults of the future, hm?

And let us be honest here – typing never results in anything positive. The more you type the sooner you will get reported and eventually banned. Doesn't matter how constructive it is – some people will notice it as spam, some as blaming, some as flaming and some simply as negative attitude.

Hence why the system isn't working anymore – the time of the initial "fake, happy" phase has passed away and no one really seems to care about honor anymore. But why? I still to this day give out honor in every game; sadly only teamwork and honorable opponent. Let us go through all honors and maybe we can get a better and more clear picture about its current situation. Let us try to get a constructive approach towards the existing honor choices, shall we?

Now this honor is just playing dumb and stupid. When and how are you supposed to get this honor? Telling someone they have to position better makes their ego respond to you in a defensive mechanism and since they CAN they will simply call out a report on you for blaming/flaming. Telling someone what to build in order to survive the lane phase will again awaken their ego in a defensive mechanism and lead to a verbal fight. I had a Riven building MR against AP Tryndamere – guess what - I didn't get a helpful honor for trying to explain to her that she is wrong – I got a report for blaming and flaming and she even managed to influence that onto my whole team.

You cannot help anyone within the game – it is pointless. The level of ego within people playing this game on a daily basis is so huge, it would take months to first lower the level of the ego and then months to open their minds to suggestive talk and criticism. This would be a full personal life-changing experience. It is simple – for an egotistic person it is easier to accept the gift of being able to report someone than the acknowledgment of being wrong and agreeing on criticism or simple tips to play better. I always find it hard to believe that people rather lose than try to improve themselves.

Helpful honor? Useless.

This one is just trying to be as fake as possible, or simply is trying to force people into being fake. As said, it worked for a while and you still might see from time to time someone who is really trying so god damn hard to sound nice that it makes you wanna puke. Alas, the more they try, the less they focus. These "nice guys" eventually lose in quality and will experience a massive reduction of skill. Games are meant to be played, to be won, to be taken serious and by doing so to be fun. There seems to be something that has been forgotten with the new age of gaming – it is about fun yes, but the fun was the result, not the initial factor. You played for challenge, for competition, for victory and that whole process was meant to be fun. Now it seems that the whole term of gaming is being dumbed down year by year to include more and more people who just don't actually care about gaming, hence the millions of butthurt people worldwide who rather focus on talk than actual play, who rather lose intentionally than want to win, who join games just to troll rather than becoming better with each game, who ruin the experience of the whole game just to have people respond to them and have material that might be ban worthy in someone else’s eyes. What does it mean to be friendly in such a highly competitive game – and what does that term actually mean in such an atmosphere?

Play serious. If I wanted to have a chit-chat coffee talk with you I wouldn't be playing ranked, I'd probably be playing normal games or guess what – be outside in a coffee bar; and it dazzles you when you realize that sometimes normal games simply seem to be more effective than actual ranked games – the logic here is simply again beaten down by the ego – no one "cares" about the normal games and people play with such an empty mind that your reflexes take over and guess what – you play better than ever before. Alas, while playing ranked most people turn on their invisible ego shield and that is where everything seems to collapse. It gets frustrating. I have been talking to so many people about this as of lately and it seems to be the same routine with everyone – one cannot be forced or asked to remain calm every game if you keep getting those persistent trolls who go on a feeding rampage. Anyone will eventually explode and just have to respond or say something to those guys – the game itself has become so involved in everyone's life that everything about it feels like RL. Fact is – gaming before had much more LAN involvement, communities were smaller and everyone knew everyone else – thus people were more polite, there were little to no trolls and everyone wanted to be involved in making the game experience better. Now, we have to create SYSTEMS to keep the game "alright" and to maximize the effect to shut down and avoid trolls. The sad part is that honest, true and hard-working gamers who actually care about the game get beaten down by the same system that was created to protect them. If someone keeps destroying your experience at your job, at home, wherever – you will confront those guys and the same thing is happening in the game for most people. Some of them are so persistent and are the main reason police and laws exist. A made up system to keep trolls in RL away as well.

However, never should the person who is intentionally doing badly be favored just because someone is telling that person that he is – simply put – terrible. A friend of mine told me that he kept getting feeding people – 0/12/0 – or even worse cases. The situation of the team would turn out to be like this : the troll manages to be ignored; some players want to obviously surrender while there always seems to be at least that 1 optimistic guy who thinks that the game can be saved; a conversation between the players starts, while the game is already lost anyways due to the feed, lost map presence, objective control and even jungle control at that point of the game. In the end the friend said he got called out for negative attitude reports just for being realistic and wanting to end the misery of the game and continue to a new queue. Interesting, aye? And I said yes – the same routine happens in my games as well.

Problem is people seem to have lost a realistic approach to the simple math behind a game – there is a certain amount of mistakes which may happen before you can officially call a game to be lost – if you have enough game knowledge to know when that time has come, you will of course have an easier approach towards calling the game to be done. Some people are unrealistic, overly optimistic or simply don't want to accept the fact that they have been trolled to lose a game, thus become overly attached to this one particular game and start being difficult to cooperate with. Some even hope for 2-3 enemy DC's which I always find rather stupid – we lost fair and square – give the people the deserved (oh well, can't really call it that way aye?) victory.

So where exactly does the friendly honor become important? Nowhere. It's a 20-60 min game in which everyone should be highly involved in trying to win. I'm not looking for humor, for stand up comedies or for cute phrases – I'm looking for good, honest, serious games cause I want to have fun. As long as everyone keeps it that way I don't see any room or reason for hostility.

Friendly honor? Useless.

The only honor that actually refers to the game and actually means something. When you see someone with a high % value of teamwork honor points it really tells a story about him. Even though the description of the honor is somewhat weak, in most cases it’s the only thing you will give to someone after a fair and square won game. Teamwork is required in this game more than anything else and should be praised high by players. This honor speaks for itself and should only be rephrased to be more effective. I want more real, simple and honest sentences.

Some players understand that teamwork leads to victory. It is one for all and all for one. These players understand what it means to follow up on calls, focus in team fights and win the game by objective control. They will struggle to keep map vision and map control in your teams favor and understand that being selfish just doesn’t work in this game.

Teamwork honor? Useful.

An honor that is useful but should be rephrased in a more realistic way. Most of the times honorable opponents are simply those players who won so hard that you just remained sitting there in silence. They had great mechanics, they abused every open opportunity for damage and performed wonderful in general. The only important part that you are probably looking for is - the end – if they type some cocky crap you probably won’t honor them. Of course, if an opponent performed great, but eventually lost the game with a bad team you’d still honor him – especially if he shows a sad smiley acknowledging that he himself realizes that he couldn’t do any better.

Sometimes you run into an opponent who plays great, is the most dominant factor in the game and remains humble in victory and graceful in defeat. These players embody the spirit of sportsmanship and great skill.

Simple, honest talk.

Now, the question remains – what to do about Helpful and Friendly? Remove them. Make room for something more useful, reasonable, and honest. Honor points should describe a character, his play style and should be able to tell me what I can expect from him. Having a friendly dude in the team doesn’t mean anything If I’m eager to win. Having a guy with teamwork on the other hand means a lot. What qualities and terms are we looking for then in players?

Skill, mechanics, game knowledge, great call initiator, opportunity maker, farm god, role specialist, high general/overall skill cap, play maker, life saver, intuitive, serious, honest, constructive criticism, adaptable, realistic, time tracker, lane control, pick and ban strategic, math mind and others.

See where I’m getting with this? These are terms that describe an honorable player within the game. The problem was the approach – instead of trying to "force friendly/helpful" people, point out the real qualities of players and let "friendly/helpful" happen by itself. If everyone has those above mentioned qualities while playing there won’t be any arguing within a game. If everyone is trying their best to be recognized for such honorable terms there won’t be any bad player qualities anymore. Of course trolls remain trolls, and I hate them (probably like everyone else) from the bottom of my soul.

Now how can we combine all those terms into some 2 simple and realistic ones?

This player is a walking Wikipedia. His game knowledge, general skill cap, constructive criticism and strategic approach ensure an honest and fun game. This player is a great asset to any team and someone who other players can look up to for insight and help.

This player is exceptional at one thing – playing the game. He impresses with plays, farm, calls, skill and mechanics and seems to invent new aspects of the game as he plays. A serious, intuitive player who doesn’t leave the game unnoticed.

See the difference now? Now you actually have to consider what honor to give to someone after a good game. Was the guy only good at team work? Or was he himself the MVP who impressed you so much? Or was he the guy who coordinated the game from the very beginning? These are truly characteristics worthy of an honorable player and enforce a more constructive player base.

‘Till next time – and may the number of trolls and butthurt people in the world fall to zero!