It seems like the Ranked Lockout System is coming soon in League of Legends.
Ranked is undergoing a lot of changes in League of Legends. In this year alone, we have had the addition of Emerald, the increase of two Splits, the removal of Promotion games, and more. All of this was to improve the Ranked system in Riot’s eyes, and it’s been pretty good so far.
However, Riot is going to take it a step further as they will be introducing three Ranked Splits in 2024. Also, Riot laid down what sort of other changes Ranked could have to support the shorter Splits from 2024 and beyond. With that said, we are expecting a lot of things in Ranked soon.
One of the previously announced things about Ranked was the Lockout System that Riot discussed before. While there were no details mentioned, it seemed like a nice idea. Players wondered what had happened to it until Riot responded that this system would be coming to League of Legends soon.
Here is what we know so far.
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What is the Ranked Lockout System?
The Ranked Lockout System will essentially punish players with suspensions/severe chat restrictions. As put forward by Riot HuntedFork, Riot is planning to punish those players with these categories and force them to not be able to play Ranked.
That player will have to play 5 Normal games to gain access to Ranked again. Riot has said that they will keep this to 5 games for the release and then change it later if needed. To hit this point, a player will have dealt with many penalties and negatives to the honor level.
Riot also mentioned that actions such as Feeding, Leaving, going AFK, toxicity in chat, etc, will get you a chat ban. There are also other transgressions that could net you a Lockout, but Riot has not specified that yet.
Riot also talked about keeping people with similar behavior in the Lockout as opposed to letting them out after the 5 games. They will keep monitoring the system to keep bad actors out of queues. If needed, a win requirement may be added by Riot. Hence, Riot wants to treat this system as a remedial feature as opposed to a punishment.
When asked about Smurf accounts, Riot HuntedFork had this to say below.
So, Riot wants to prevent account hopping with this system. As most of the punishments are time-based, the Ranked Lockout will be different. It is a strict number of games that players have no way to work around. Thus, these players will have to come back and play these games eventually.
Furthermore, Riot said they will keep tabs on the system and make more improvements, such as adding features.
The system has a lot of promise in removing bad actors from queues. All the information available signals that Riot intends to force players to fix their attitudes by locking them out, thus improving the community.
Whether this works out or not is another thing; we will have to see how that goes.
Release Date
According to Riot HuntedFork, we will see this feature in a patch or two. This would put the feature for a release of either Patch 13.19 or 13.20. So, we will have to see when Riot has the system ready and has more to share about it.
