My suggestion to solve all QQ about leaver penalties once and for all (well not quite but most)

Implement an AFK check at champ select countdown. If at 0:00, somebody hasn't selected a champion, that player is kicked, counts as a champ select leaver and the remaining players are put back into queue as if that player had left during countdown.

There are no drawbacks to this as anybody who wants to random should just select the 'Random' option instead.

Please vote and make your voices heard! =)

EDIT: I realized that the current Random option tells you what your champion is. Alternative suggestion I propose that the Random option make the current champion a question-mark instead.

There can also be a 'Random All' button instead. Clicking this button would replace all portraits with question marks (both summoner spells and hero icon).

EDIT 2: As of today (27/02/10), I fell victim to a person who AFKed at champ countdown, the game started, he discovered he got randomed, raged and AFKed and we lost due to getting out-pushed (even though we played better, they simply turtled and they had a Sivir).

EDIT 3: If this gets implemented, I sure would find it awesomely cool as a good-bye gift (since I'm SEA) to see my name in the credits

EDIT 4: 1000+ upvotes and still no second response from Riot? I'm sad.

Nice poll. Curious to see the responses.

I think not choosing a champion to get a hard random is valid though. But what about if they didnt choose *anything* and are truly afk. No spells, no runes, no chatting, etc?

"hard random"ing seems very out of place in a game with summoner spells, masteries, and runebooks.

I don't think there's a need to auto-random if you don't choose a champion. There's a random button already implemented, if that's what you want then at least use it to let your team know what you're doing.

I haven't used Random, but from my understanding you can see the hero you get when you click Random before the champion select is over. Why not just rework this so you don't see the champion? That way it will be a true random and they won't see it until the loading screen.

This will also alleviate the issue where people just don't pick their champion for the "true random" and I doubt the "soft random" would be missed. If you are going to pick random in the first place then knowing your character kind of defeats the purpose.

Click it and close your eyes. You may not want to know who you're playing but it's just asinine to not give your teammates at least a chance to try to build a team that you'd work well with.

Edit: PHREAK STEALIN MAH IDEAZ.

Close your eyes, take off your headphones, and click.