Crest of Honor
Honor is a point system introduced to League of Legends on October 1st, 2012. The Honor system was created to incentivize positive behavior among the League of Legends community and identify summoners that would be considered pillars of the community. Currently, Honor does not provide any rewards or perks other than the points themselves, though this could change in the future.[1]
Players can only honor other players in matchmade games (including Co-op vs AI), as this feature is unavailable for Custom games.
Honor Categories
- Friendly:
- Summoners who would be honored through this category are those that have a positive impact on your game and make the match enjoyable, win or lose. Rewards yellow ribbon.
- Helpful:
- This category is for summoners that share their know-how and actively help other players improve their gameplay. Rewards blue ribbon.
- Honorable Opponent:
- Honorable Opponents are players from the opposing team that remain humble in victory or graceful in defeat and/or behave in a positive manner throughout the game. Rewards red ribbon.
- Teamwork:
- This category honors players that put the team ahead of themselves. This includes anything from forming great plans, helping struggling lanes recuperate, and more. Rewards green ribbon.
Honoring a Player
Click on the "Thumbs Up" button to honor a player
Honor allows you to acknowledge other summoners that have had a positive role in any of your matchmade games. Similarly to reporting a player for negative behavior, you can honor others at the result screen at the end of a match. By clicking on the green "Thumbs Up" button next to a summoner's name, you will be given a choice out of three of the honor categories for allied players, or you may select "Honorable Opponent" when honoring enemy players. Selecting one of the options will grant that player honor in the selected category. Honoring a player makes it impossible to report the same player for negative behavior. Inversely, reporting a player makes it impossible to honor that same player.[2]
Do note that every summoner has a limited amount of honor to give, which is dependent on the number of matchmade games you play. This is a safety measure put in place to prevent players from trading honor or "farming" it. Players using the system responsibly and as intended will never run out of honor to hand out. Honoring players at every opportunity or trading honor will easily make you reach this limit.
Honoring friends is completely acceptable and it is encouraged if the summoner in question is truly being an honorable player. On the other hand, constantly granting honor to the same person after each match will be detected by the system and may involve consequences. Players will be granted a different amount of honor depending on who honored them. For instance, a player that was honored by a stranger in a matchmade game will receive much more honor than a player that was honored by a friend that they queued with.
Reviewing Honor
You can see your Honor, separated into the four categories, on your summoner profile. Honor is displayed directly above your Stats Overview and shows each category's individual values. This bar is visible to all players that view your profile, and you can see others' honor as well by visiting their summoner profile.
Losing Honor
Honor is not a currency and cannot be spent, and it is not set to innately decay over time. The only way to lose honor is through negative actions. Ways to lose honor include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Trading or selling honor:
- Mentioning, in-game, that you will honor others if you are honored in return is considered a punishable offense and should be reported to the tribunal under the Spamming category.
- Riot staff may also detect this and take action without the input of the tribunal.
- The Tribunal:
- When a player is punished by the tribunal their honor drops down to zero. Note that having a case in the tribunal does not imply a loss of honor, only being punished will remove it.
- Any player that has been punished by the tribunal may still gain honor in the regular manner after their punishment has ended.
Crests and Ribbons
When a player has gained enough honor in a particular category, they will be presented with an animation on their summoner profile. This animation represents the crest for the honor category they're being recognized for. The animations for the four categories can be seen here.
After a player has been presented with a crest of honor, they will also be awarded a ribbon of honor in the same category. Ribbons are visible to other players during champion select and on the loading screen, during which the ribbon will be placed on the corner of your box. The ribbons for the friendly, helpful, teamwork and honorable opponent categories are visible to allied players. The honorable opponent is the only one that appears visible for the enemy team. All ribbons are visible to spectators. As of the late October patch (Shadow Isle), the honorable opponent ribbon has been made viewable to both the enemy team and the players own team during both champion select and on the loading screen.
Crests and ribbons are temporary rewards designed to encourage players to remain honorable even after receiving the recognition. As such, they can be lost if players stop acting positively and no longer receive honor. Being punished by the tribunal will also remove all crests and ribbons from a player, similarly to honor points.
Please note that there are currently no specifics given by RiotGames regarding the exact numbers or formulas used in order to award medals and ribbons to honorable summoners, though there are rumors 100 Honor Points are needed for Friendly, Helpful and Teamwork Ribbons and 30 for the Honorable Opponent Ribbon, although it is confirmed to be possible to get the teamwork ribbon without 100 Honor Points. Medals have sometimes been awarded for being honored as little as 10 to 17 times in a given category.[3] Lyte, a member of the Riot staff, had this to say about the way crests are awarded:[4]
- "Crests aren't based on Honor counts in your profile.
- Honor assesses the value of all your exchanges to determine how Honorable you are compared to the rest of the population."
Lyte also hinted that the crests besides the Honorable Opponent are not as straightforwards, saying: [5]
- "Here's a secret, the base Honors (Friendly, Teamwork, Helpful, Honorable Opponent) are not 1:1 with the Crests of Honor.
- There's the Crest of Honor - Honorable Opponent that many have unlocked and yes, you just need Honorable Opponent Honors to unlock that. However, the other Crests are not so simple...
- In fact, has anyone figured out what the other Crests are even called? ;) That might give you a clue about how to earn them."
Great Mentor Ribbon - the ribbon is greenish blue - this may be a combo of Helpful and Teamwork
Supportive and helpful, a Summoner that teaches players about the league.
Great Teamate Ribbon - the ribbon is green - Teamwork
Cooperative and works with teams to secure victory.
Some hearsay indicates that the Great Leader or Commander (Yellow) crest can be gained from winning games and being honored as friendly in them[6], but another source indicates that you need a combination of Honorable Opponent, Teamwork, and Helpful[7]so nothing is sure.
