Some League of Legends players are not happy with the way Phreak, a well-known game dev, has been handling the situation regarding ping changes in the game.
Riot has been making some questionable choices in terms of communication for League of Legends players. Voice chat has never existed in random lobbies and Riot is adamant in keeping it out of the game, but with recent patches they've made communicating even harder.
Now, one of the biggest faces in game development, David "Phreak" Turley has made some statements which rubbed a large part of the community wrong and some even called him extremely insensitive.
LoL Players Slam Phreak For Communication Comments
Phreak stating that you can type "Karthus Ult" instead of pinging it underlines his sheer oversimplification of the use of communication by u/Barb0ssaEUW in leagueoflegends
Recently, in a YouTube video, Riot Phreak, made some comments which infuriated the community. Riot have been making multiple changes and adjustments to in-game pings, removing some of the ones that were deemed toxic, while also disabling player pings as well.
This means, that teammates are unable to ping their own teammates by pressing tab and then clicking on either their ultimate ability, or their status, which can cause quite a lot of issues for communication within a game that already has such limited ways of talking to one another.
The community has not been happy about this, especially since pinging a teammate is certainly not the most toxic thing someone can do, and is actually something that you, yourself can mute in the settings if you do not wish to be bothered while playing.
How does Phreak react to players voicing their frustration? He tells them that instead of pinging the allied Karthus to ult, you can simply write it into the text chat.
This has upset many fans who feel that the dev has lost touch with the game. In high-stakes situations it seems almost impossible to simply type out 'Karthus please ult' especially during teamfights or when you're tying to kite an enemy while they're chasing you.
Players believe that these changes to the ping system and the reaction from Riot show how out of touch the company currently is with its player base. These changes have made players want voice chat now more than ever, and many believe that restricting communication like this will only lead to more toxic behavior in-game, like people running it down or obstructing someone else on the team.
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