The League of Legends team has been grappling with the challenge of reducing toxicity in the game, but their efforts seem to have backfired, leading to an increase in toxic behavior among players. This is particularly prevalent in ranked queues across all skill levels.
Riot recently introduced significant changes to the ping system, aiming to address the misuse of communication tools for negative purposes. The key modification was limiting team-based pings, such as teammate spawn timers, simple portrait pings, or item cooldowns, to be visible only to the player activating them.
LoL players find new ways to remain ‘toxic’
Previously, players could mock underperforming teammates by spamming the “Champion – Alive” ping, flooding the chat with reminders of their mistakes. Now, players are adapting and finding new ways to express their dissatisfaction with their peers.
Even professional players are exploring innovative methods to criticize their teammates. While Riot’s intention was likely to eliminate negative uses of these pings, it’s important to note that they were also commonly used for positive reinforcement, such as praising teammates for significant plays.
“You can no longer ping for example “Lee Sin-Alive” anymore in league for your team mates to see but league players have now just began to write “Lee Sin-Alive” in chat instead and copy paste it 5 times to get the point across they will always find a way”
However, the current situation indicates that the changes may have inadvertently removed the positive aspects while preserving the toxicity. The attempt to curb player flaming appears to have made the problem worse. It seems that if a player wants to be toxic, they will find alternative ways, even if they can’t use pings directly from the scoreboard.
In conclusion, it seems like Riot’s removal of the allied ping system hasn’t effectively addressed toxicity, as players continue to find ways to express negative sentiments towards their teammates.