Summoner Icons & Ping Displays on Loading Screens

Posted on at 1:01 PM by Moobeat
Here's Riot Pwyff with details on the upcoming change, currently being tested on the PBE, that lands summoner icons on the loading screen in place of the ping display.
"Hey Summoners, 
It’s time to bust out those rare Summoner Icons! Within the next little while we will be rolling out a new change to the champion loading screen that will allow players to display their hard-earned icons while loading into the game.

In addition to this new feature, we’ve also collaborated with the Player Behavior team to drive a smaller change where we will be removing all latency (ping) displays except for your own. Through our studies on toxicity and ping displays, our data suggests that showing pings during loading adds more toxicity to games before they even begin. Ultimately we came to the conclusion that removing the ping display on champion load screens would lead to a healthier overall community, so we acted on it.

All in all, we’re excited for these new loading screens, and we're looking forward to seeing you all show off your favorite Summoner Icons when this feature rolls out. Check out the picture below for a glimpse at what’s coming soon to a loading screen near you!"
Continue reading for more discussion!.


As for why the ping was removed, Riot Pwyff took a stab at why showing player ping can be a bad thing:

"While Lyte might be able to shed more light on this topic, the one thing he mentioned to me that really stuck was the fact that players who have a high displayed ping tend to receive more reports, even when the same player had lower ping. I can think of a number of situations where players can react negatively to ping displays: 
- seeing all the same ping on the enemy team and deciding you'll lose because they're all on a premade team
- harassing a teammate for a particularly high ping
- assuming a teammate is of lesser skill because they have higher ping (there is some nuance here I won't go into) 
In terms of positive things coming from ping displays, I honestly can't think of anything that shouldn't be solved with good communication. In other words if a teammate has high ping and it's affecting his play, he SHOULD be communicating that to his teammates to allow them to accomodate to his playstyle. He shouldn't rely on the ping indicator at loading to communicate this.


Hope this makes sense."

No comments

Post a Comment