We need to talk about "reworks" and the message they convey to portions of the playerbase.

Tl;dr at the bottom.

Before we begin, let me clarify that I'm not talking about genuine reworks on the scale of Vladimir, or Cassiopeia, or Veigar - I'm not talking about reworks intended to rebalance an existing character in such a way that still maintains their in-game identity. When they got reworked, it may have been a deal breaker for some, but dedicated players could still apply their skills with these champions to their altered form - a bit rusty to be sure, as they had to learn a few new things, but nothing to throw off a die-hard main by any means.

What I want to talk about is the quite literal deletion of a character under the guise of a rework.

The first in my memory was Sion, who maintained virtually no relevance to the original character. The most recent, of course, and most significant, is Urgot.

Now, I can understand wanting to rebalance these characters to some degree to fit the flow of the game, or to make them healthier - turn a targeted skill into a skillshot, rebalance some ratios, rework the way a passive interacts with the game, replace a skill, so on and so forth.

The issue here is that these reworks did nothing to respect players of the old champion; as an old Urgot main, (Yes, we existed) I simply lost a character from my roster. The very top of my roster, in fact. There is nothing about the new Urgot that resembles the old in terms of gameplay, even thematically. None of his old mechanics are remotely applicable any longer, and his unique identity as, depending on your choice of playstyle, anywhere between marksman/caster/ranged bruiser/tank, has vanished into the meta of generic bruisers, essentially now a watered down darius with the gimmick of supposedly, and barely being a ranged bruiser.

Now, I could get started on how poorly I feel the rework's abilities were handled, but that would be beside the point.

The main point here is that these reworks are, despite all promises to the contrary, being designed in such a way that does not keep their players in mind at all. I can recall a number of times before each respective rework, especially in Urgot's case, where we were told "Their unique identity will be preserved," "they'll still be the same champion," "they'll have the same feel to them," "we're trying to focus their identity more," etcetera.

Well... does anyone still intend to tell me these promises were fulfilled? The new Urgot is, quite frankly, completely irrelevant to me. Despite all promises, I can honestly only say the incredible amount of time and effort I invested to achieve 600k collective mastery and mastery 7 on two accounts has simply been discarded. I tried the new Urgot, I really did - since release day on PBE I've been giving him a chance, and hoping he'll get buffed, but in the end it doesn't really matter - he's a different champion. You could quite literally have released his new kit as an entirely different character and I would never have drawn a remote comparison between the two, except maybe "has range, possibly sturdy."

What I'm getting at here is that sometimes, reworks are excuses to delete a champion Riot doesn't want to deal with anymore - and everybody knows it. Even those in favor of this rework won't try to tell me they delivered on a proper rework, I've instead been told outright "Urgot needed to be deleted."

And on that note, I'm sure plenty of people will tell me, "You're in the minority, it's only natural that Riot would try to please the majority of the playerbase over the minority." The problem with this reasoning is that it assumes: -That the majority of the playerbase is bound to express significant interest in a rework for longer than two minutes -That the rework is guaranteed to be done well, and thus not have deleted a champion for nothing -That you couldn't just leave the character alone and off-meta to instead design what was intended to be their rework as a new champion to please the masses instead.

I still feel that, even if he were to never be buffed again, the old Urgot could have remained in his out-of-meta, usually-useless state, while those of us who loved him too much continued to play him to some decent effect. And meanwhile, his new kit could have been designed for a different character.

Even if you disagree, however, this still brings me to my next point - is any compensation for the mains of dead champions going to be addressed, even a remote acknowledgement of their existence? I still have 530k mastery points and mastery 7 listed as some kind of mocking emblem on the forefront of my account for a champion I don't play. I still spent $20 on skins for a character that has been deleted, replaced by one I normally wouldn't even glance at. I've lost a huge portion of what I enjoyed in League, as well as a chunk out of my champion pool, since I could play him in at least three roles. I've yet to find a replacement for any of that. The skills I developed, the fun I had and was going to have with the character, the money I spent, and the time I devoted to a champion I intended to continue to play, enjoy, and climb even further with. He nearly got me to Gold 2 last season, and here I was hoping for Plat this time around. No such luck now.

Don't get me wrong, I have other champions to play and climb with. But this is a big portion of my experience to lose and just another step towards joining the masses of players uninstalling this season.

I've had a lot of fun with League, not only on the old Urgot and Sion, but on plenty of other characters who are still intact. I don't really want to quit, but when Riot makes moves like this, actions that clearly disregard dedicated portions of the playerbase in an effort to briefly appeal to the people who never cared before and only cared for about a minute after, it feels like the rest of the game will continue to be handled similarly. Will the parts of the game we enjoy continue to be removed and replaced, without any consideration or even compensation for the players who loved it the way it was?

You don't have to agree with me on the quality of the Urgot rework compared to the original. I'm aware I'm in the minority, believe me. But try to imagine for a moment that your own main was deleted from the game forever. Don't try to picture a rework, because that's honestly not what this is, and Riot knows it - I just want you all to think about how you'd feel if your favorite part of the game vanished, and you were left with no reason to feel good about it.

Tl;dr: Sometimes reworks are a clear excuse to delete a champion Riot doesn't want to deal with, and no compensation is offered in any remote form for the people who were promised they'd still have their main. This needs to be addressed.

P.S. - If we're gonna delete champions, I can think of a few bigger nuisances...