Riot to further move towards the direction of positive ping changes and then polish them accordingly.
As is often the case with most multiplayer games, toxicity always makes its way through the abuse of communication systems. In League of Legends, there is no voice chat feature to communicate with non-premade teammates. That’s why pinging has always been the backbone of communication in the game.
However, this never really stopped some players from misusing it to spread toxicity among teammates. We all have witnessed the ‘?’ spams and continues ‘alive’ ping on us and our allies at the hint of slight misplays. That’s why Riot brought some significant changes to ping behavior in patch 13.19.
Removal of visibility of scoreboard ping, blocking ping on ally ultimate and summoners spells, and removing bait and vision clear pings were some of the highlights. Some of them were removed for their lack of use, and some for their misuse to promote toxicity.
However, this posed another challenge. Some players were locked out from using pings to relay very important gameplay signals. For example, if your Karthus is at top and your enemy adc is low HP in bot, you can’t signal the Karthus to use R. Yes, you can use the chat, but that is quite sub-optimal. Likewise, players from higher elos have reported their inability to use the ping for crucial gameplay-related issues.
Despite the controversy, Riot has decided to opt to stay with the changes. Because statistically, most people have reported less toxicity since the modifications were made in 13.19. Also, Riot is open to making some ping restrictions more permissive based on scenarios where they can’t be misused. One example is allowing the ‘ally alive’ ping for 10 seconds once you secure a champion takedown from patch 13.20 since it was mostly used to uplift good performance.
These are the summaries of the ping changes and the aftermath. Now let me inform you about what Riot plans to do from now regarding this matter onwards.
Read More: Riot Talks About Social Media Feedback Regarding League of Legends
Reverting Ping Lockout Time Increase in 13.22
As a part of Riot’s objective to make communication through ping positive and effective, they increased the ping lockout time in patch 13.19. However, it was not included in the notes.
Ping lockout occurs when you spam a certain ping consistently. Usually, the lockout occurs after 6 consecutive pings within a 5 seconds window. Once one got locked out from pinging, players couldn’t ping until 10 more seconds had passed. But from 13.19, this 10-second window was extended to 60s or even 120s, as some players reported.
Riot Auberaun, in League of Legends subreddit, explained in his reply to a post that Riot is going to revert this change from patch 13.22.
Earlier in Patch 13.21 overview video posted on YouTube, Riot Phreak explained how the ping changes have resulted in staggering positive feedback from the community. However, Reddit and Twitter communities have been largely vocal against it. Yet, Riot believes the vast, silent majority of the player base has welcomed these changes.
Thus, Riot wishes to continue on this path and make adjustments where possible to ensure both functionality and a positive environment in-game.
