In order to curb this bad behaviour in their massively popular free to play title, League of Legends developer and publisher Riot Games has been trying out several different methods and the latest of these is to dole out freebies to good players. Following the IP Boost (IP is the currency earned from playing games and can be used to buy new champions) it gave out in 2014, Riot will now be doling out a “classic Mystery Gift”.
Riot explains:
In a further post on reddit, Riot’s Lead Designer of Social Systems, Jeffrey Lin told players that:
He also stated that these rewards will be a “surprise” and not “deterministic”, i.e players won’t be able to work up to them with 10 games of good behaviour and will have to exhibit good behaviour all of the time if they don’t want to miss out. This is inline with Riot’s existing “punishment, reform, and positive reinforcement” method and it follows on from the instant and permanent bans it introduced back in July and the rolling suspensions for competitive League players that they introduced back in November.
For neutral players, this effort might convince some of them to put in that extra effort in a few more games to get the next surprise. For toxic players, this effort might also encourage a few to change their ways though we expect the biggest impact to be with the neutral players. It’s important to note that we did 2 tests of this design before (with Santa Baron icon and IP Boosts), but in future roll-outs it will be possible for players to earn the next surprise if they’ve been positive since the last surprise was awarded. So, if you were chat restricted and missed a surprise, you will still be eligible for the next surprise if you were positive in the time range between the 2 surprises and are not blacklisted for life."
But will some League of Legends disregard the rules anyway? With the latest mystery gift each player will have saved around $10 each but exactly how effective this and the rest of the 2015 freebies prove to be will have to be seen.
Source: Riot Games
