In the pre-patch of Season 13 Riot Games experimented with a new ping system, after now less than a year the developers see themselves forced to remove parts of the new means of communication from League of Legends again.
The new pings are coming to the game
The development team at Riot Games had noble intentions in introducing the new ping system. In addition to the existing signals and chat, players should be better able to communicate with each other through the new symbols and sounds
A signal wheel with smart pings have been added to the old existing signals.
- Retreat
- On my Way
- Asisst me
- Enemy Missing
- Push
- All-In
- Hold
- Bait
What’s the problem?
The update basically had little effect on gameplay, so most players barely noticed it. However, players found another use for the new icons.
League of Legends and its community is known for its toxicity, so sometimes pinging a fellow player repeatedly with a caution or danger signal is used to passively aggressively harass others.
players saw the interesting shape of the bait or lure signal, which symbolized a fish hook. Therefore, it came as it had to and players repeatedly exploited this symbol to tell their teammates to hang symbolically.
The reaction of Riot Games
The reaction of Riot Games was clear and unambiguous, they did not want to give players another opportunity to behave unkindly towards their fellow players.
So Riot Games redesigned the hook so that it clearly looked like a fish hook.
In 13.19 we’ll be making scoreboard pings for allies visible only to yourself so pinging things like “Kha’zix – Alive” 6x can no longer be used to harass teammates. We’re maintaining the allied ping functionality so that you can still see exact allied ult & item cooldowns.
– Chris Roberts (@RiotAuberaun) September 20, 2023
However, this did not stop players from abusing the signal. Now a Riot employee announced the removal of the decoy ping, which will be replaced in the future.
