Curse Voice and 3rd Party Programs

The main thing I have to say, though, is that league isn't necessarily the same as other games in terms of playerbase. It's a much more widespread game with a wider range of audiences. In all the online games I've played, league is distinct in its ability to constantly amaze me with the level of douchebaggery and disrespect. That problem has only gotten worse as time has passed. League players in general are getting more toxic, and those who aren't are getting complacent and stop caring. The trolls who will use it will use it to scare off the ones that do. It's not that muting won't solve the problem, it's that muting will give people another reason to alienate their teammates. Teams shouldn't be given further reasons to have to ignore 1/5+ of their team. And outright ignoring those trolls will only make them troll more.
And for the record, I'm pretty sure 1 game out of the last 20 I've played of Dota 2 ended in a 5v5. I don't think that's a perfect example when people in Dota are even more notorious for giving up on games.

Maybe we're just not getting queued with the same people or you're more sensitive to people in chat. Most of the people in my games are trying to win and, with some persistence, willing to group for suggested objectives. There are of course people raging, feeding, or just refusing to group but I do find that muting actually helps. Maybe it's just personal preference.

And the only reason not many people are using CV is because it's only like a few days old, and the only people who have it are the ones who got keys. The fact that I can hear a subscriber noise go off on a twitch stream like 30 times in less than a minute is rather indicative of the fact that people want it, and when it goes open source people will get it and it will become more widespread.
People want it because it makes the game easier for them. No 3rd party program should ever work that way.
"But people can time their own buffs!" Yes, they can. But no, they don't. People are lazy, don't care, or forget. Giving people free timers for things is rewarding laziness when it should be something they're doing of their own volition. Everyone's acting as if the timers aren't important because people do it regardless, but they don't. I RARELY see anyone who does in Diamond, even. And this feature isn't a non-factor, people are getting it specifically for this.

You're specifically saying that not everyone's going to use it, and that it will make timers and communication faster - ergo making the game easier in more than one aspect. In my opinion, mechanical skill and intuition are two parts of the coin of skill. Taking out intuition is taking out part of half of the players' skill.

I have personally turned the timers off because it does indeed make me lazy. If I have the timers on, I will forget to time dragon/baron and am obviously disadvantaged if we do not have the direct vision which is required to automatically reset them. I've spoken with a few other people and they report similar tendencies. Laziness has it's own repercussions.

I'm confused about what you mean by "intuition". Are you referring to guessing when dragon/baron will come up or improved grouping and objective focus due to voice communication? Knowing what's going to happen from intuition and having the mechanical skill to do something about it are two very different talents. I can "feel" that a jungler may gank my lane soon, but that does not always mean I am able to escape it. At any rate, I don't think we're really trying to discuss this topic.

I think you're vastly OVERestimating the integrity of the community.

And just because a video game doesn't have to create a safezone for racial tolerance, doesn't mean we should allow it to happen. Any steps taken to prevent it are better than none.
For as terrible as League players' behaviors are getting, don't let the CoD mentality make its way into League.

To quote Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race". Censorship (which is what banning voice chat amounts to), does not prevent racism or promote appropriate action for when it is encountered.

My main issue with this is:

If people don't even have an intention of using it, what's the point of it? How much benefit could it actually provide if no one's going to use it anyway? It gives some people an unfair advantage over the others, much moreso than duo queueing does, and it gives people another reason to be toxic to others just as much as lolking/lolnexus does, if not more. Whether or not the features could improve LoL if implemented into the game, 3rd party programs should not be tolerated.

I think people will use it or a similar program. The automatic chat groups are very convenient and the client integration is quite nice. Obviously, voice chat would be pointless if no one is there to listen. That said, I do not see why the popularity of the program amongst some mandates the use by all. There's probably a fundamental difference of opinion on this statement. As for LoLKing and LoLNexus, they mostly provide very useful information to me as a player. I like to be able to track my overall statistics. The unbiased and comprehensive information help me monitor my efforts and improve. If you're talking about knowing eveyone's runes and masteries, I tried using that for a while but it made no impact on my performance and next to no difference in my itemization. It was more impactful with dual specs champs like Yi and Teemo were popular, but Riot has pretty much eliminated that issue anyway. Having the ability to spectate a game without having the client installed is a really awesome and completely harmless feature for instance.

As for DuoQ, all of your apocalyptic prophesies (yes I'm being dramatic) should be happening already. Most DuoQs use Skype for Voice Chat. In my experience, most also consist of two players separated by a fair skill gap. The only difference is they aren't strangers, which presumably limits the verbal abuse problem. I'd be interested to see if you think DuoQ is toxic and fosters laziness, disincentives player improvement, and is detrimental to "intuition" as you claim CV would.

Moral philosophy debate:
If the third party program provides improvements (value criteria: utilitarianism) for free, why should Riot outlaw them?

Third parties have usually been welcome in game communities because they can provide a lot of useful features that are not widely popular enough to get developer support or simply not cost effective. Take a look at skin customizations. These are provided by third party programs that alter only client sided model graphics. They are 100% harmless. Should your broad spectrum third party ban cover them? Should Riot allocate resources to crack down on this practice?

I think not. Third party programs should be evaluated on an individual basis because each has unique impacts with benefits and costs.

I am by no means equating CV with this example, merely trying to illustrate the unfairness and inefficiency of such a policy. Riot chose to work with a fairly open API to see what third parties would come up with. We certainly shouldn't accept everything they do with it, but we shouldn't categorically condemn it either.