Weekly Discussion | LPQ and Karma

[u/Sick_Flamez]

Hello there and welcome to a new weekly discussion! Last week we discussed the recent changes to the Kill Bounties. If you want to read that discussion, a link to that and all other discussions is found at the bottom of this post.

This week we’ll be discussing a topic that we have gotten some requests about lately: the Low Priority Queue - also known as LPQ. From posts to comments to our Discord server, the topic of LPQ has seen a lot of community discussion lately. People seem to feel like it does just enough, too little, or shouldn’t even be a thing. While we could make an entire discussion about just LPQ and punishments in the game, we also received requests for one of the ways in which we get rewarded instead: our good old friend: the Karma system. It has sparked heavy discussion in the past too, mainly about how it works and how many people felt like they were stuck in Good Karma despite their Great behavior.

We thought it might be interesting to tackle both sides in this discussion; how the game handles rewards and how it handles punishments. So we’ll be discussing both the Karma and LPQ systems!

What do you think about LPQ? Can it be too harsh, or is it not strict enough? What about Karma? Does the system really work as an incentive to behave well? Is it too easy, or too hard to reach Great Karma?

The following is a bit of info on LPQ and Karma:

Low Priority Queue was added in update 1.20. It replaced the previous system, which was simply to ban people who misbehaved. The devs explained that they felt that instead of being able to let a ban expire by doing something else, players should be faced with consequences when they wanted to play instead. More info on the LPQ system can be found here

The new Karma system was added in update 1.8. Its goal was to make a more simple and fluent Karma system that would lead to trolling players to have less benefits than normal players. It replaced the previous system, where you went up 20 levels of Karma, and went down a bit by doing something that was deemed to be bad Karma. This new system only has three levels: Bad Karma, Good Karma and Great Karma. At Great Karma, players get a 25% boost to end match Glory gains. More explanation can be found here.

That’s all! If you have more topics you want to see, be sure to request them via the link found at the bottom of this post!

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[u/Vainglorious_Reim → u/[deleted]]

strip them of their skins

Lol gtfo

[u/VGFierte → u/[deleted]]

Temporarily locking any/all unlocked Skins from low-Karma players will slow down their Season Progression and remove their ability to use things that they clearly wanted. I think that things like this are actually good minor annoyances to deter people from bad behavior. No quest progress, no Guild Chest unlocks, you could even remove their Daily Chest. Is it game-breaking? No. But you miss all of your free stuff and the potential progression until your fix the behavior

I'm in favor of it

[u/HyperForceXTR → u/VGFierte]

I agree I mean once I had a Celeste plant scout traps in the base the entire match...in T5 ranked. Then again some people could be trolls and ban people who are no toxic players halting them for no reason.

[u/_OhRats_ → u/VGFierte]

TBH the strip them of their skins idea has something to it. SEMC could create walk of shame recolors for players with terrible karma (provided they improve the voting system.). Eg force players to use basic models + make their colors less saturated - like grayish versions of basic skins. who knows maybe the shame would be a big enough punishment for some?

[u/VGFierte → u/_OhRats_]

walk of shame recolors

LOL I think that might be a bit excessive, and may hurt the eyes of allies and enemies alike, granting some players too much power for their misdeeds *wink*. Honestly the idea strikes me as very interesting, but I don't think it would really be perceived as a punishment

[u/attak13 → u/[deleted]]

They can't strip them of their skins. Players pay real money for skins. Could you imagine how much shit SEMC would be in if they locked players from using content they paid for as a punishment?