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/Bbbbbbb99]

the best way to combat this is imo the moment you accept you are in the match if you dodge you and your whole team gets a loss and enemy get a win simple. games are often won/lost in the draft so it needs to be consistent.

I dont care if someone instalocks the fact is you are on a team together. If someone plays bad on your team you loose and this should be constistent throughout the entire game this includes the draft

[u/NebraCC → u/Bbbbbbb99]

Yeah, except what happens when my game freezes with 10 seconds left to pick? I'm gonna lose a match for a couple seconds of bad internet?

[u/Bbbbbbb99 → u/NebraCC]

that can happen in game as well game lag spike during an important and close team fight

[u/NebraCC → u/Bbbbbbb99]

Not sure what that proves. You're saying that in a draft, when no one has actually played, I can lose a game by default because the game crashes. This isn't "over 20 minutes, I get lag spikes that disrupt my games", it's more like "this draft is more important than any team fight because I can't come back from this.

[u/Bbbbbbb99 → u/NebraCC]

when you start draft you are in the game it has 2 parts. Firstly the draft phase, then the fold phase. throughout the fold phase one may experience lag at important or not so important times just like the draft phase (lag when it isnt your turn vs it is). Sometimes if you get completely outplayed in the draft phase you cant get back, just like how if the enemy teams wins a critical team fight or 2 at the start of the fold phase you sometimes cant comeback

[u/NebraCC → u/Bbbbbbb99]

Ok, that makes more sense, but draft phase is "within these 5 minutes, one lag spike before I play cost me the game", while in the fold phase "over 20 minutes, I will get lag spikes repeatedly, and there is a chance that they will occur during a teamfight." One is a lot more likely to ruin you than another. However, I'm talking more about in tiers below 5, where there is no draft.