League of Legends patch 13.22 came with one feature that’s currently causing controversy among the community: A change to how the game’s pinging system works.
Intended for communication, the pinging system is most often used to flame your teammates in the middle of a game. Pings are contextual, but there are certainly times when it’s overused to the point of ruining player experience. However, there are legitimate reasons to want to use the ping system, and they don’t all revolve around toxicity. That’s, seemingly, what Riot Games balance team member and popular community figure Phreak understands, but oversimplified to make a point.
Phreak says that pings aren’t wholly necessary because you can just type your message instead of completely misunderstanding the importance of pings in fighting.
However, when players aren’t in voice channels with each other, fluid communication is necessary, and typing is clumsy.
The player base is pretty upset about these comments. A post on Reddit called attention to this line of thinking, stating that “The player base is not able to properly communicate in a video game that is team-based to the core, and instead of creating a safe space for everybody and everything, we should rather find solutions that do not restrict its most crucial communication tools, but rather combat the real issues why there is so much in-game misbehavior.”
The top comment on the post hit the nail on the head: “Wasn’t one of the main selling points for being able to ping ally ults that it’s faster than typing it?”
The players are correct. Annoying miscreants will find a way to flame you using any and all of the tools they have in their hands. Taking away one way of being a nuisance is just going to give rise to another, it does nothing to attack the root of the problem.
