How it Works
So how the system works is that there is no guaranteed extra IP. You have a chance at getting a percentage bonus to the IP you would have earned that match, up to a cap based on your party size. The larger the party the higher the potential rewards. Here are the max rewards based on party size:
Party of 2: 400%
Party of 3: 600%
Party of 4 800%
Party of 5: 1600%
To be clear, earning the maximum reward is very rare, and players will usually earn the smaller amounts; as little as 10% bonus IP. So, basically, if you're a party of two you have a chance at getting anywhere from 10% - 400% bonus IP. Sounds great right? WRONG.
System Failures
My biggest beef with party rewards is the readability of the system. I played around 15 games with friends while the system was active, and I never really knew if I had gotten any bonus IP from the deal. If I did it must have only been the 10% because looking through my match history at the time my IP gains looked pretty normal.
By asking around a bit I found out that it was presented in the IP breakdown bar, but the issue is I never look at that bar. Ever.
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| Does anyone actually read this thing? |
Here's what I know about IP: I get a certain amount of IP when I lose, and I get approximately double that when I win. Oh, and there is a "first win of the day" bonus that I can earn for a large amount of bonus IP. That's it. That's all I've ever needed to know, and thus I have no reason to look at the IP breakdown bar.
So if that's the only place the information is presented then it's going to go largely unnoticed, especially if many of the rewards range from 5-30 IP. It's not like that amount of IP is making the bar so much longer that a player is really going to take note.
Point is...I think they should make party rewards a lot more visible. Don't lump the party rewards in with other bonus IP, give it its own section on the bar. Additionally, there should be a pop-up at the end of the game, hell, it can even be one of those treasure chests that gifted skins come in, that says "WHOA DUDE, GRATZ ON THAT 10% BONUS IP!" Riot is usually great a making those impressive little animations for pretty much any in-client event so I'm surprised they didn't at least re-use one for this system.
It should even be in your match history. Party reward games should be marked, and they should show the extra winnings you earned so you can look back and say "wow, I got a lot of bonus IP from that, I should do that again!" Instead, none of things are present and to this day I really have no idea if I earned any rewards at all.
System Feel
While writing this article I felt that I should reach out to other summoners on the issue. I have my own limited experience, but what did they think? So I made a "Discussion" on the General Discussions board asking them, and their experiences were about the same as mine. Most seemed to think the system "sucked", and many were unsure if they had gotten any rewards.
Then again, there were a few people that had received substantial rewards, and, of course, noticed the large IP gain, but many recieved very small rewards, and were quite unhappy. I think that's a big failure of the system. It doesn't feel very good to get 10 bonus IP. It's like if someone came up to you on the street and hands you a nickel and says "don't spend it all in one place!" Sure you'll probably take it, but you're not going to be particularly grateful, in fact you'll probably be left wondering why he gifted you with such a paltry amount.
I think that small gains shouldn't be possible. When you win something, you want to feel like you won something of value. I think the minimum win should be at least 50 IP. That's like an entire game's worth! Wow! Even if Riot balances the system so that we'll end up with same amount of IP as before, but we'll win it in bigger chunks, I think it feels a lot better to "win big".
Honestly I'm really surprised that Riot didn't account for this. They've always seemed to put a lot of stock into anthropology. Hell, they even studied how the color of the tooltip text affects player behavior! It's fairly shocking to me that they think players would be content with receiving 5 bonus IP.
The Pain of Grouping
Grouping up can really suck. I feel like the larger the group I'm playing with the more hardcore the opponents become. It's like my group always seems to be pit against TSM's sub team. Even when grouping with one other friend the game seems to get harder. It's like it's punishing you for the extra coordination it believes you must have because you are in a party.
Plus, many times when you make a group, you're doing so because you want to play with irl friends, and many of these friends are either brand new to the game or very casual, and that makes the game a lot harder. It's fun playing with them, but at the same time it's very painful as they will usually make a lot of mistakes.
So where am I going with this? I think there should be a minimum IP boost of maybe 5%. That way players are always rewarded for grouping, while keeping the boost small enough that people won't mindlessly group up for the bonus. The whole idea is to encourage interaction and if the sole purpose was for IP then people would treat others as a means to an end rather than actual people. But with a super-small bonus many wouldn't bother creating those types of groups, and it would consistently rewards folks who go through the often painful process of grouping.
Conclusion
I think the system is honestly really cool, but I feel like Riot is really shooting themselves in the foot with how little effort was put into this trial run. My biggest fear is that they're going to review the data and declare the whole system a failure, when in reality the real failure was in how little effort was put into system to begin with. Hopefully they come out soon with their conclusions soon, but if it's something along the lines of "well, it didn't really work out" that's no fault of Party Rewards...simply Riots poor presentation and execution.
