League of Legends removing All Chat with patch 11.21

In an effort to curb toxic behavior in League of Legends, Riot Games is making a massive change to in-game communication. The developer announced that with the upcoming patch 11.21, they will disable the “all chat” functionality in matchmade queues.

In a blog post addressing the upcoming change, Riot stated that the negative interactions currently outweigh the positives of being able to chat with everyone in a match — even those not on your team. R

Riot has made a concerted effort to improve the behavioral systems of League of Legends, but most of the focus up until now has been on gameplay-based behavior like AFKing and intentional feeding. However, with the rise of verbal abuse within the game, Riot has started to focus more on its chat systems.

Players will still be able to communicate with the enemy team through emotes and champ mastery (unless muted) as well as champion actions, such as joke, taunt, dance sequence and laugh.

Personally, when it comes to toxic behavior and verbal abuse in League of Legends, I’ve found most of it comes from my own teammates. Very rarely have I had a negative interaction with the enemy team.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not really great at League of Legends. I used to play competitively, but I’ve since had two kids and, admittedly, I simply can not keep up. I do still play occasionally for fun but I’m not nearly the player I once was. Because of that, I do sometimes feed (unintentionally) and that causes the tryhards on my team — who obviously think they are better than where their ranking puts them — to rage at me. The verbal abuse rarely comes from the opposite team, who I usually joke with when I’m playing horribly.

To be honest, most of my all chat experience with the enemy team is positive. Even when I’m playing horribly and my own teammate takes to the all chat to complain, the enemy team usually comes to my side versus the harassing player.

I realize that my experience isn’t the same for everyone. And for many, all chat is a negative experience. But the fact is, team chat is probably as bad if not worse. And right now, Riot is not disabling team chat. It’s too important for team coordination, so they deem its value as higher than the potential negative experience.

In my opinion, if you’re going to disable one, disable both and then just drastically improve your team communication via hotkeys and pings.

What do you think? Are you happy Riot is removing all chat? What actions would you like to see them make to improve the League of Legends experience?