I really think that voice chat in League of legends can be such a legendary addition to the game, why hasn't riot ever implemented it or have tried it out in PBE? people are probably gonna be less toxic once they find out there's a real person behind the 0/9 kayne and be less likely to be toxic in game.
External link →Howdy friends, I'm the design lead on the Behavioral Systems team for League of Legends.
Some quick thoughts:
The core goal and motivation people think about when they ask for broader voice support in League is better team cohesion by increasing communication.
I actually think that's a noble goal and if that were the only thing at play I'd be super gung ho about team voice chat.
Unfortunately what we've seen time and time again is that the more rich the communication tool, the more powerful it is as a means for disruptive behavior. Put more simply: It's way worse to be told you're a noob via voice than it is to be told the same through text.
And beyond that, voice is more damaging and disruptive to marginalized groups. It reveals more information about them that has been repeatedly demonstrated to increase severity and frequency of harassment. (Think gender, accent, dialect, etc)
And to go even further beyond that, voice chat is significantly more difficult to moderate, detect disruption in, and police than text chat or other forms of communication.
In the future, we will certainly be looking into giving players richer communication tools that do not have the same disruptive potential as voice chat. For now, we like voice chat for parties and don't love it for teams.
I'm actually interested in what a good communication tool could be. I think pings are a good idea, but they lack the depth and variety needed. I do think they're a good starting point though, an idea could be to have more ping options, especially for vision ("is it warded here?" "please ward here" and "it is warded here"), or objectives/directions (let's do this objective, let's engage, let's not engage,...)
I think there are games in market that have pretty robust ping systems. Quick-chat is also an approach I am interested in. (Contextually aware messages that can be sent in chat via click/hotkey rather than typed out)
I have to say, i'm not very familiar with other games, what are examples of game you think have a good and nuanced ping system?
quick chat is also an interesting approach, I agree
Apex Legends
I'll look it up, thanks :)
One question, out of curiosity: do you actually study other games as part of tmyour job in the player behavior team, or do you just play apex legends because you want to?
Study, first person games make me motion sick :x
Do you have any tricks for gaming related motion sickness? I have a friend who struggles with this and it very much limits his ability to game with us. We do our best to work around it but...yeah.
That's some shitty ass and shallow opinion coming from a lead ngl. Can't say I expected to hear something smart since you've done absolutely horrible job on the behavioral system so far. Balance team is controversial topic because some agree and some disagree with the balancing direction game is taking, but you my man and your team are the main reason game is at such shitty state and has been for last couple of seasons. If that doesn't scream RECONSIDER YOUR DAMN OPPINIONS I don't know what does. What makes you feel so confident that you are doing the right thing when game never seen as much toxicity, while nothing firm is being done on the topic. My all chat is already disabled any match and it was never a problem, what is a problem however is the team chat that is by far most toxic place, if you completely disable it you can't communicate with the team about important calls, but if you don't disable it you risk getting insanely tilted because of the team that constantly trash talks you, to the point you completely throw the game. Why wouldn't you for a change just freaking TEST the team voice chat for one or two patches, the same way you are testing pointless all chat removal? It's beyond me. And you are supposed to be well paid professionals. Sad.
Thank you for your well formatted and reasoned argument.
Even apex legends has voice comms lmao
Begone
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