New LoL ping punishment could have huge consequences on solo queue

League of Legends‘ 13.21 update brought a lot of changes, with some not even included in the actual patch notes. One unannounced tweak involves adjustments to pings—and players are not happy.

In a Reddit thread from Oct. 29, a player complained about the latest ping changes that were introduced with the 13.21 patch on Oct. 25, explaining they were unable to send pings for two minutes in a game because of new restrictions.

“As a support main who pings a lot, that amount of time is so huge that it negatively impacts the entire team and game,” they wrote in the thread.

The thread garnered significant attention where players massively agreed those changes would hinder communication as a whole in ranked, and in solo queue in particular, where players won’t communicate in voice chat.

“Pinging is literally what got me from silver to plat,” wrote the thread’s top-voted comment. “Punishing people who shotcall is such a bad change.”

Others are begging the developer to revert those changes, saying that while they reduce the chance of players spamming, they punish players who use pings correctly. “It’s still so weird to me that they keep taking away pings,” wrote a user. “You are literally able to fully mute a player’s pings with one simple click.”

Pings are the most practical way to communicate with players you don’t know in League, since they’re fast to use and easily recognizable with specific sounds. Restricting them could significantly impact how solo queue games are played, in particular.

Those alerts can also be used in an abusive way, including to spam allies when they make mistakes or to insist on a strategic suggestion. This has driven Riot Games to implement changes such as removing scoreboard pings so they “can no longer be used to harass teammates” in September. It seemingly pushed those changes further with the latest update.

It’s still unclear what new ping restrictions have been implemented with Patch 13.21, however, as they’re not mentioned in the notes. The developer has yet to react to the community’s feedback on the matter.