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Detailed explanation on WHY the boards have been negative:

Thresh Outta Fux·1/11/2018, 3:29:13 PM·3 votes·2,609 views

Hey boards! I just wanted to clear some things up for people.

Okay. First of all, some of you are wondering; why are so many people complaining, why are people being so negative on the boards?

Well, allow me to explain my dear friends.

You see, let's imagine we have two people meeting for the first time. They begin to talk, and although it's awkward, and may have even been an outright awful first impression for some, but they keep talking and eventually hit it off.

We'll call our masculine individual Ricardo, and our feminine individual Plaeressa.

Our two friends hit it off. They enjoy hanging out together, sometimes Ricardo hangs with his friends, and Plaeressa hangs with hers.

After a while, Plaeressa wants to form a relationship, Ricardo agrees. Ricardo enjoys conversation for hours, long walks on the rift, and giving time and thought to Plaeressa's ideas.

They spend a few years together.

Over time, Plaeressa begins to focus all of her energy on Ricardo. She knows it's not healthy, but she just can't help herself. She starts to drift away from her friends, and her friends drift away from her. Sure she makes a few new friends here and there, but mostly stays distant. Ricardo is the one for her.

A few more years pass. Ricardo makes a new friend named Esperanza, and introduces her to Plaeressa.

Plaeressa nods happily, if Ricardo thinks she'll make a great friend, she trusts his judgement.

A year passes.

Ricardo starts to speak less with Plaeressa. He seems distant, he no longer wants to take hour long walks, fifteen to twenty minutes is all he has time for. Plaeressa attempts to re-connect with him, but any time she tries to hang around with him, Esperanza is there too.

He no longer wants to hear her thoughts and ideas, only Esperanza's.

Plaeressa is distraught. She doesn't have anyone anymore, she isolated herself with Ricardo, and now he's distancing from her. She tries to talk to him. To tell him how she feels. She wants him to remember the good days they had, to re-kindle their love.

But Ricardo won't listen.

She cries, she begs, she rages, she pleads.

All fall upon deaf ears.

Plaeressa may have given up. She may have found somewhere else to go.

Or she may not have given up. She may still be fighting to her last breath to fan the dying coals of her passion.

Some of you may feel like Esperanza. Some of you feel like Plaeressa.

In the end, one will win, one will lose. Ricardo does not have the time, energy, passion, or youth he once had to care for both.

And until one side or the other has a ship to hop to, a new island, a new friend to talk to, they're all stuck here, together.

Ask yourselves, Esperanzas. Would you be upset with long walks on the rift? Would you be against long talks on what does and does not constitute a fair relationship? Does the fast and furious grinding cater more to your style, or could you handle the calm, passionate relationship Plaeressa had?

We know Plaeressa despises the changes, and you, Esperanza, may be happy for now. But how long until Ricardo's unpredictable temperament takes a swift turn, and you suddenly find he no longer even enjoys 20 minute walks on the rift? When his ability to communicate changes, he finds new fancy words you aren't sure you understand. Using a curved tongue to make you think one thing, before taking you completely by surprise as he shakes the very ground you stood on?

Thank you Boards. Please understand in these trying times as we are trapped together.

6 Comments

FourIsTheNumber1/11/2018, 4:01:10 PM3 votes

W-what is this? Why is this analogy so bad? Why was this analogy even necessary? I - what?

Chermorg1/11/2018, 9:19:32 PM2 votes

I think your analogy was well thought out but I disagree with its conclusions.

Riot does listen to the boards. They spent time explaining the BE changes and why they were better, they spend time commenting on skins and making changes when needed.

What they don't do is always listen to a couple hundred to maybe a thousand players, many of whom are in the 13-25 age group and have never worked a day in game balance/design in their life. The balance team at Riot does this type of thing for a living, and it honestly pisses me off to see the community (including us moderators on occasion) assume that we know better when Riot has access to every single game ever played, and we simply don't.

Ifneth1/13/2018, 12:39:54 PM1 votes

I’m neither. I like long games. I like short games. I like mid-length games. I like to play League. And you know what? I do miss that games were once 30-40 minutes long, per the description in the old client. Not long ago, early game champs ran laning phase, middle game champs ran skirmishes, and late game champs scaled. Everyone got their turn.

But let’s not paint the past rose. The game had some serious problems last season. Junglers, midlanders, and toplaners all dove the botlane to grab a double kill and first turret blood. Junglers ran the show, with no catch-up XP and huge XP bonuses for early camps. Laners were taking Gromp and Krugs for a level advantage. ADC in 2017 was also a thing for quite some time, only to be replaced by a metagame of super-tanks, hypercarries, and supports called Ardent Censer rather than by their name.

Games are shorter and snowballier now, with an emphasis on early damage, but things are better now. Maybe the pro players will find more things to exploit, but for now, we have a game whose length is diverse rather than static. There are stomps, there are comebacks, and there are grueling, knock-down, drag-out late-games that ride on a razor’s edge. I wish that games were a little longer, perhaps, with more comeback potential, but that’s also my rank showing. I was level 30 not even a year ago. Games with scores of kills and 50-minute lengths were par for the course. Ah, the glory days.