We have been through extremely toxic weeks and I think the player base and the developers are equally responsible for the situation. I would like to give my feedback on this topic.

I would start with Us, the palyers. The community’s understanding and knowledge of the game is extremely low, which is responsible for some of the toxicity. We can’t read data, we are quick to judge because of the former and we don’t really understand why changes are happening or just biased towards their picks. We are also too sensitive and over reacting at the same time. I personally try to work on this by constantly analyzing lolalytics and u.gg sites. Doubt most palyer do it.

Community, overall, works something like thisn(no offense): if “surveys” come to the conclusions that less communications = less toxic behavoir theny i don’t see any work has been done. Because:

1. Reducing players communications -> you won’t notice negativity. Thats the point. There is no positivity from it but no negativity eiteher. Sounds nice huh? Too bad mute buttong existed thus this is a bad change. They should have made mute buttons more accessible.
2. We honestly don’t know why changes happening and we believe the most possible options because we don’t get informed properly. Hence the Auberain stuff. Or the Syndra-Orianna vocals.

If data says otherwise then present that data in a way that palyers understand it. What matters here is to inform the palyers before you make big changes to the system. Give it a dev update like post in size. Writing them is no big deal honestly.

Community’s approach can be changed if League developers could open up more.

• The monthly dev update is nothing. These are more like teasers than actual updates. Thats not communication since since developers blog posts are a thing.
• Dev blog articles usually arrive at the same time and they would serve their purpose without the dev videos.
• Devs could implement preview and rundown of Phreak’s style of explanation in video format within the client. That would make things way more well known. Doubt most palyers knew about Phreak’s making such videos…
• Bi weekly patch notes is often incomprehensible and contains incorrect statements in several cases. THIS is a bad format. You need to summarize the changes briefly and make a video for it that is as detailed as Phreak’s and share it in the client. (block comments if you do).
• Phreak’s patch updates were the only real content of communication towards players. That was not perfect as we seen in 13.22 but more than anyone else offered and it would be sad to see it gone forever.
• Major changes should be communicated more openly and in more detail than what happened with pings. Using twitter/reddit to announce “this will be changed” while community’s opinion wont do any good.
• The opinions of high-level players who are independent of the developers should be much more important and valued. How else could we avoid a situation like Zeri last year or K’sante this year. Wonder how much a champions economy is hurt by the scenarios they have went through.
• Developers giving community mixed messages are not helping. Telling outright how Syndra players are threatening the devs yet listening to their feedbacks is not good way of communication when other, peacful feedbacks yield no response at all, like pbe skin issue feedbacks…

I mean look at TFT. All in all the way the TFT Team takes criticism and adjust things at lightspeed, adds Bpatches if needed is just great! The League team could get some coaching from them because they are the real MVP at communicating with community.

Because I blame both parties for what we have now. People getting tilted over something so dumb is crazy and Devs for listening to them. The whole situation is being handled unprofessionally in a very immature fashion by pretty much all parties involved regarding the ping case.

I would like to know if those surveys covered how much the teamfight experience has changed since you can’t ping, and in what direction.

• How players feel when they loose a fight due to unpingable factors that were existed before (how often this happens?).
• How these experiences affects the flow of the game (win/loose ratio belonging to these changes).
• How these unpingable factors affects players mental post scenarios where pings were options (teamfights, calls)?

TL;DR: Community of competitive games are always toxic and dealing with it is really an issue which can never be solved properly but there are options to increase the positive relationship between the 2 groups and work on reducing toxicity.

• Use Phreak’s method to create a video of Patch rundown and previews but this time share it in the client. Draw more players into it.
• Developers need to change their habit of making one sided decisions and allow some community feedback.
• Make playerbase feel involved, make them feel they are matter because recent changes or dev feedback on skins and pings are just alienated players in many cases.
• Playerbase is extremely toxic BUT they are willing to leave this behind if they can see the bigger picture. As it was proved time and time again or during dev blog releases
• Without offering something for the majority you will not see the positive side of the community.
• Devs should the proactive group here because playerbase usually the reacting part of the equaton.
• Just look at Mort and TfT. They are peaking.

Hate is never ok and both sides needs to work on it but closing doors between groups have never helped to find solution before. Open communication did.