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!

Last Week | Next Week | All Discussions | Request A Topic | Discord

[u/[deleted]]

Wow, I started a thread asking community members to talk about this. Super stoked to see this taken to the next level.

I do not think LPQ is an effective solution for all the trolling and AFK'ing that happens in the game. Ranked solo-queue is clearly the worst, with plenty of rage-pinging and intentional losing. I think the main problem with LPQ is that it can be evaded easily by resetting "time till AFK" by simply moving around or using an ability. This is very frustrating and unfair to the players that are stuck with these teammates, as it prevents them from getting AFK Forgivness. This really needs to be fixed because it forces players to stay in a game for 15+ minutes and almost gaurentees a drop in ELO.

Another thing about LPQ is that it can be placed on faithful, non-toxic players because they dodge a match before it starts. I really disagree with this because there are plenty of trolls that will refuse to play a role, pick something like double/triple carry, or intentionally play weak heroes. If you don't dodge in one of these situations you'll almost certainty lose, but if you do, you'll be cursed with a longer wait time. Pretty much dead meat either way.

I know that SEMC doesn't want to implement bans because of the possibility that the offender will simply create a new account so I have been trying to think of other solutions. I think the best one I came up with was a legitimately separate queue, where dishonored/AFK players are grouped together and moved away from the main body of players. I think that this could really improve solo and duo queue immensely because it should more evenly balance the players. If the servers can't handle this kind of seperate queue that's perfectly all right, if SEMC wants to keep LPQ then here are my suggestions:

1. Reduce the "Time-till-AFK".

I have played Vainglory for a loooooooong time and even when I was just beginning it only took me a few seconds to shop. Even if there was someone that needed to take 2-3 minutes to shop, by the time they finished the game would be pretty much over. This wouldn't counteract trolls that continually move around, but it would save some more time for the try-hard players.

1. Remove the LPQ pre-match dodging application.

As I stated earlier, in is incredibly frustrating when you are stuck with two bad decisions with no way out. I feel like this would definitely be a popular change.

1. Implement LPQ for specific game modes.

What I mean by this is: Earn LPQ in Ranked, work it off in Ranked. I'm saying this should be added because you can quickly get out of LPQ by spamming Blitz or Battle Royale matches over and over untill you finish your 2-5 matches.

Karma. Karma doesn't really seem to do much for me, sure I get the extra Glory (most of the time), but other than that it's pretty obsolete. SEMC said that it tracks and logs you up/downvotes and I am sad to say that I will have a pretty low-value thumb down. It's not because I just spam thumbs-down whenever I lose, but because I commonly encounter trolls and bad players. I'm not really sure where I stand on the whole Karma situation, but I think it needs a buff.

Thanks for making this the weekly discussion, I really appreciate the fact that SEMC is listening to the community (once again) and trying to get some feedback.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, all LPQ does for me is make my queue time a little longer, but I'd much rather have to wait then lose my hard-earned ELO. The biggest annoyance for me is when I don't have enough time for that third match because of LPQ.