In his latest patch run down, he is saying in a condescending manner that you can actually type in chat “Karthus Ult” instead of pinging it if you want to make your teammate aware of a kill opportunity.
Completely ignoring various complex situations that could arise:
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You could be in a teamfight which does not allow you in that timeframe while for example chasing, disengaging or/and anticipating flanks, etc., to type during all of that “Karthus Ult” (you rather want to press Tab > ping the Ult)
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There are many players who have their chat muted since they do not want to experience the toxicity and blaming that is going on, rather focusing on the game itself (So, how you gonna tell that Karthus to Ult, should I spam my pings in his face so that he certainly won’t think that I am flaming him?)
It just shows that Phreak, whom I have nothing against since I think that he gets too much heat just by being a popular figure in the Balance Team, is instead of thinking in-depth about the negatives of the ping changes which are stifiling necessary communication in a team game; he rather is doubling down with such an oversimplified, contemptuous reaction towards that criticism.
The player base is not able to communicate properly in a video game that is team based to the core, and instead of creating a safe space for everybody and everything, we should rather find solutions that do not restrict its most crucial communication tools, but rather to combat the real issues why there is so much in-game misbehaviour.
And that is also easy to answer with a very simple, but a revealing sentence:
“I can mute your chat and pings, but I can not mute you from running it down and therefore ruining peoples games”.
These negative behaviours occur because of your neglience for so many years of not actually barring players from Ranked Mode who run it down, rage quit, intentional feed and therefore nearly always get away with it, ruining countless other games. And the only “revenge”, if you can call it, is then the community using profane language and abusing communication tools to get their frustration out somehow since you guys are not doing anything about it in the first place!
That’s an interesting point about how the community is perceived and riots attempt to battle that perception. I don’t think it’s really relevant though. Acquiring new players is already hard, the game has an insanely high barrier to entry, and their tutorial for such a complex game is, frankly, a joke. I don’t think voice comms could do any more damage to acquiring new players that those other 2 things don’t already.