Boards›Player Behavior

Pinging is harassment

TrashTyr·10/11/2018, 5:44:14 PM·2 votes·1,463 views

https://imgflip.com/i/2jx6jq

Editted: (Added this picture to visually show you a representation of when pings are considered harassment, and no longer beneficial in any way)

Ok, now a lot of the time you may be screwed either way, but i'm sure there's been more than enough people that have witnessed a 3v1 tower dive, and seen the individual person come out the victor. Now, it may be rare - but it does happen. Perhaps they get one kill while trying to avoid dying, maybe they get two kills, or maybe they don't get any. In any event, pinging in the middle of that particular engagement isn't going to benefit anyone. Are you pinging to let me know you're on your way? Great, that's wonderful. Please use a little etiquette as to not distract me from what i'm doing. I would really like to at least attempt to trade evenly in this situation, if possible, or do better.

What I don't need, is someone who isn't going to be assisting me at all, pinging obnoxiously, to let the rest of my teammates (who obviously are free farming, and didn't call their mia) to showcase a performance for them. We're in the middle of a match dude, if you want to spectate someone's performance they literally have web pages that you can go to and watch people play. You should all be primarily focused on what you can do to create ways that you can help your team achieve victory. In situations like the one posted above, you are actually trolling. You are griefing, with an intent to throw the game. Please stop it.

I checked Google on this topic prior to creating the discussion, and as far as I know the last time it was mentioned was five years ago, prior to the ability to mute pings. Since which, that seems to be implemented. I strongly feel as though there should be an options menu implemented, that you can turn on or off permanently, which automatically mutes players written and their pings. I'm not going to bother making a suggestion since they never get implemented anyway.

To the main discussion; I have narrowed pinging down to a form of harassment. Certainly there are legitimately uses of the oing feature, such as; my lane opponent(s) is/are missing, please be cautious. Or I feel as though you may be encountering some "unforeseen" danger, be advised. That is teammates working together to provide information that can possibly help you achieve a victory. I have no problems with that, unfortunately however, those particular scenarios aren't actually that common in the game, due to lack of skill. And what I mean there is, in general and not all the time, a player won't bother to call Mia on their lane opponent(s), and rather focus entirely on free farming instead. Very common occurrence. 90% of the time a simple Mia ping or a written Mia could improve your ability to win tremendously, either way, I'm not writting a discussion for that. I just wanted to get that out, so the devil's advocates would not give me these one off scenarios to lessen my argument.

What I am talking about are people pinging "? or 'enemy is missing'" on top of players as they are currently being ganked or in combat. Now, I'm not actually completely retarded, only half, so I know why people are actually doing this, but I try and ask them about in game to incriminate them for a bannable offense. It's actually harder than you think it is, because as a toxic person that has been reported before, they tend not to write anything 'verbally'. But the answers I have gotten so far are "voicing a displeasure with your reaction, your actions, etc." Wonderful, that's a real douchebag thing to do WHILE somebody is in combat. You can't wait until after the fight, to voice your displeasure? You feel the need to distract your teammate from reacting to the situation?

Now I'm going to give possible suggestions as to why else this may be used in this situation.

1: Your teammate is actually retarded, and doesn't realize that you don't know that an opponent is fighting you or ganking you, and is adamantly trying to give you some additional awareness that may be of some benefit. "Yeah buddy, you're the spectator, and I'm the one in the fight. Thank you for your awareness, I didn't know I was being ganked, cheers bud."

2: They aren't using it the way it was designed at all, and instead of writing out "What the hell are you doing?" (Something you can be punished for), just pinging it their displeasure instead. "I wouldn't normally be frustrated with this if the conditions were met; waiting until after the fight, and pinging once. Not pinging 5-6 or however the maximum amount of pings you can ping during the fight"

3: They are truly malicious with intent, and extremely toxic individuals that fully well understand that distracting their teammates can actually be deemed as intentional game throwing as it is intentional griefing. They are purposefully trying to put their teammates in on tilt in addition to how they already may be.

This is basic etiquette. When you ping someone multiple times it has the same similarities to a person out of game trying to get your attention. When asked why a person pinged multiple times, they generally refuse to answer. It's almost as if they were trying really hard to get your attention for a very short period of time, and then all of a sudden, had nothing to say.

Obnoxious levels of pinging are harassment, and there's no other way around it. Please use the pings the way that they were intended to be used, and not a way to try to avoid being punished for something that means the exact same thing as typing it out. It's not an alternative, please stop the movement.

I now have to go into the console and mute my teammates pings because they are not being used in the way they were intended. So if someone actually does use it the way it was intended, I no longer know. That's a problem, and it is a very similar problem to people that are verbally toxic. Players shouldn't have to go out of their way to adjust the way the game is intended to be played, just to ignore certain features of the game.

I have some players that claim, and naturally they claim, that pinging in this toxic form is considered an acceptable form of communication at the plat diamond level. (Because you know, everyone is plat & diamond) Yet when I tune into twitch or YouTube and watch some recordings or live streams, I don't see this at all. I don't see any obnoxious levels of pinging toxicity whatsoever, if rarely even a single ping to acknowledge displeasure with someone's action or reaction.

So you tell me. I've tried to eliminate all the scenarios which would make this acceptable, although I'm sure this toxic community could conjure up something else.

What do the pings mean? Are they a sincere form of caution or are they a deliberate form of toxicity? Discuss.

19 Comments

RuFiot10/11/2018, 6:14:06 PM1 votes

I don't agree to your '1', in lower elo they have bad map awareness so

pinging only in your lane that the enemy missing isn't enough, you need to report danger/be careful on the other lane and then again Mia in your lane (so around 3 pings) to help them see where the Mia is and make sure they aware of it.

To help them with the awareness 1~3 (if he noticed it is 1 if not it is 3) 'be careful' pings in their lane when you spotted the enemy jngler in a ward coming for them are usually help them to stop look and retreat, they usually say tnx too

Another time I spam the omw ping is when tping, I tp outside their screen and spam ping it so they will engage or be close and I won't end up 1v2, most of the times sadly they don't get it.

Quiet Dude10/11/2018, 6:14:38 PM1 votes

?????

R107 Games10/11/2018, 7:04:28 PM1 votes

Up next: "emoting is harassment!"

DeracadaVenom10/11/2018, 8:46:14 PM1 votes

Please move this to the correct board, what you are looking for is “memes and games”

TrashTyr10/11/2018, 9:26:26 PM1 votes

Please feel free to add your two cents, as this is a 'discussion', God forbid people can actually sit and discuss something rather than adding to the problem.

Am I innocent in this situation? No, not at all. When I see people making exceptionally questionable plays or misplays I ping them too '?' = What the hell was that?

Do I ping them multiple times because I am extremely frustrated with their play or their misplay? No. I ping them once, and I don't do it while it is interfering with their current play. I have etiquette, and I can express my displeasure with their ability or their inability AFTER the fact.

What i'm trying to prove or trying to show here, is that when you're pinging someone (once again) WHILE they are currently in a situation, you are distracting them to a point where it is difficult to focus on what you SHOULD be focusing on. Nobody should have to stop what they are doing, to focus on the fact that someone is displeased with them. Am I your customer service agent? No I am not. And I am trying to discuss this as pleasantly as I can.

Here is the cause and effect of those pings: 1: It served absolutely no positive purpose whatsoever. You did not inform your teammates of a missing enemy (or you did so with a very slow reaction time). 2: You are putting your own teammates on tilt - (YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS IF YOU PLAN ON EVER ADVANCING)

The entire concept behind a team based strategy game, is to put your OPPONENTS on tilt, NOT your teammates.

I am really not trying to be a kill-joy here for everyone that gets their thrills and excitement off of ruining a random person's day / game who is on the same team as me. I am not trying to implement another bannable feature in the game. It should be considered LOGICAL reasoning (and God forbid logic has any place in this world anymore) that you are trying to hinder your own team.

Arguing the fact that pinging an ally is harassment, is exactly the same thing as arguing that writing to a teammate is harassment. Would you suggest that writing to your fellow teammates has never been a reportable offense? Has it never been something that negatively impacted the outcome of a match? There are approximately 165,000 posts in the Player Behavior forum ALONE, that suggest that it is. So why is pinging not treated in the same way?

I mean the people that do, do this, are trying to promote situational awareness. How can you not be aware of the fact, that your actions are putting your team on tilt? Not only is it going to distract them and put them on tilt, they are going to mute you and your pings, and become even more vulnerable to actual strategic information.

"Well I can just report them for refusing to communicate as a team."

Tell me how well that has worked with verbal communication? If a player does not heed to your written words, it does not necessarily mean that they are intentionally game throwing. Riot has spoken about this numerous times. A player is not obligated to (participate) engage in combat, if they feel that it is a poor decision.

By not heeding to your misinformative or informative pings, they are not intentionally game throwing.

"But it's much easier to Alt + left click than it is to write out WTF"

Perhaps you should take a keyboarding class. It really doesn't take much more time than that. And your written sentence doesn't make the same annoying sound as a ping does, it also doesn't come up blocking your view of what you are focusing on.

If I wasn't a nice guy, I wouldn't have given people an 'out' to this type of malicious activity. You can just claim that you didn't know any better, and you were sincerely trying to promote your allies to be cautious. I'm going to suggest that you are full of shit, but there's no obligation that says I can't do that.

"I'm going to report you for saying the word shit".

And i'm going to be punished for it, but you already proved my point that you weren't actually sincerely cautious for your teammates well being. That single handedly proves that you had malicious intent the entire time, and you were intentionally trying to put your teammates on tilt, so that you could seek out some sort of sadistic vengeance, against a person that has no idea who you are.

Again, this is all logic. And to the person that refuses to adhere to logic or common sense, they're definitely not going to read it, nor are they going to abide by it.

"I'm not trying to harass the other player."

But you are doing it.

"But i'm not trying to."

But you are.

You see, now you may realize what the consequence is. If you truly were sincere about your teammates well being, you would most likely be trying to win the game strategically, and you would certainly adjust your behavior. If you were not trying to win the game, you wouldn't give a shit - hence you are a physically toxic troll that needs to be removed from the internet altogether. I know you're an anonymous person behind your screen, so you don't actually have to feel or show any sympathy for your actions.

Let me put this scenario into a case that you may be able to visually represent a real life scenario.

Someone you work with has dropped a plate of food on the ground, and not only did you refuse to assist them. You went to make sure everyone else that you work with, was also notified of this mistake.

How much of a piece of shit are you, really? You offered absolutely nothing positive to the situation, but a toxic INTENT to harass or provoke a person that made a mistake.

If you read this far, well done. I'm only writing to about 0.005% of the population here, as the vast majority will just laugh at it, move on, and pretend nothing was ever said.

Is it just a race to see how many people you can piss off, report, and get banned from the game? Why would you add to the toxicity of a community? All you have to use is your brain to determine right from wrong, and you still can't do it.

I ask people all the time "What on Earth compels you to ping that many times?". Naturally, no response.

I'm trying to figure this out in my head, what exactly were they doing during the time they had to view what I was doing? Are they just so far above my skill level that they can rotate their camera to a completely different position on the map, input their two cents with extreme haste, and go back to what they were focusing on? Would you like me to stop what i'm doing right away, rotate to your position on the map, and ping you?

If you find that something you're doing isn't benefiting yourself (unless you're toxic as fuck, and it is benefiting you), you should probably stop doing it. But then again...

DON'T LET ME TELL YOU HOW TO PLAY THE GAME