‘Ruining it for others’: LoL players demand Riot block anyone with high ping

Incensed League of Legends players are today calling on Riot Games to implement more technical features that would prevent those who have struggling or poor internet connections from queuing for ranked matches.

One fed-up summoner sparked the discussion about the treatment of players on high ping on the League subreddit on Feb. 19, noting that a number of their games have been spoiled by a teammate who is suffering from latency issues. “There is a point to where it’s just ruining it for others if your monitor shows the team fight after it’s over and we’re all dead because one champion didn’t participate,” they said while demanding changes.

For some, high ping in League (and online gaming in general) cannot be helped. South African League players, for example, do not have a server nearby geographically, with many forced to play on EU West servers—and thus 150 to 200 ping. An obvious solution would be for Riot to roll out more League servers to cover all regions; one South African player said that it wasn’t ideal to play on over 200 ping, but the alternative was not to play at all. “It’s the best I had, so should I not have been allowed to play the game then?”

Interestingly, Riot rolled out servers in South Africa’s capital of Cape Town last August, but at this time they are only used for VALORANT. Sure, ping matters more in a first-person shooter, but can the capacity not be raised to cater to the League community too?

But what about players who might have intermittent connection problems? League used to display a player’s ping in the scoreboard, but the removal of this information to curb toxicity has left players in the dark should a lag spike occur. “It also could be nice to receive a warning if when queing [sic] my own ping is above a certain threshold,” one player said.

Such a feature is available in other titles like rival MOBA Dota 2, which provides a server picker, shows the player’s ping to each server, and even flashes a warning if their ping exceeds average limits before queuing. That is a feature League players suggested and quickly agreed would work well, with [even] a simple ping indicator in the role selection screen” enough for some.

Time will tell whether we’ll see any new connection-based features like a ping indicator come back into the League client, but I wouldn’t be holding my breath right now.