League players rebel against devs’ decision to remove communication tools

League of Legends’ developers have been putting a lot of effort into finding ways to reduce the game’s infamous toxicity in solo queue matches, but the most recent changes have seen many communication tools like vision pings getting completely removed.

With a game like League of Legends, finding ways to get players to be nice to each other has proven an immense and perhaps impossible to solve challenge for the developers.

League requires a great deal of communication as it is in order for a team to function, but many of the game’s more toxic players have found ways to use those tools to BM their allies.

Devs tried to fix some of the unintended side effects of some pings being removed in the prior patch, but these fixes came with many pings getting removed entirely. Moreover, changes to the prior set of allied pings that were recently removed haven’t rectified many of the issues players had.

League players slam devs for removing communication tools

League of Legends is an incredibly complex game with a lot of moving parts. The skill floor when it comes to understanding the game’s base mechanics is much higher than most other competitive multiplayer titles.

As a result of this complexity, being able to communicate things like vision, enemy positioning, and your goals going into a teamfight are essential parts of winning matches and keeping your team on the same page.

While some of these communication methods like pinging your teammates ultimates or status were being used to be toxic, they also had genuine value for many players. Even pros are calling out Riot for the pings that they’ve removed and aren’t happy with the direction they’re taking with the game.

Pings for allies are enabled for 10 seconds after a takedown, but that doesn’t fix the problem of global ultimates on champions like Karthus, Shen, Ashe, and others that can be crucial to tell your team about before anyone dies in a fight. And that’s without mentioning other crucial CDs like active items or Summoner spells.

Amid calls to revert changes to pings toward allies, the vision wheel has been completely removed along with the bait ping. This has given some players trouble as they’ve tried to communicate with their allies, leading those who didn’t see the most recent set of patch notes to wonder why tools they used weren’t in the game anymore.

Additionally, players have already found new ways to be toxic with existing tools. The bait ping was removed for looking like something other than just a fish hook, but an existing ping has taken its place as the unofficial “guillotine” ping.

League players have made it clear that they don’t like the direction Riot has taken with changes to the ping system. As a result of recent changes meant to give players less ways of being toxic to each other, those who genuinely want to communicate with their teammates are getting caught in the crossfire as toxic players find new ways to berate others.

This is far from the only controversy in patch 13.20 considering many game-breaking bugs were discovered in the hours after the patch went live.