Things I've noticed after coming back
I got fed up with this game a few years ago after playing from season 2 onward, I played Dota 2 and Starcraft 2 for a while and here's what I've noticed after coming back. I'll list my grievances then explain a theory I have.
#1 Riot is obvious.
I'd love for someone to tell me exactly when and where and who made some of the design/meta/mechanical changes to this game but, in it's current state, it's not fun, nor is it tolerable. I am level 15 right now trying to get back to ranked level and my last 10-20 games have been a joke. (check my summoner info) 18-5-2 loss, 19-9-8 loss, 14-4-4 loss. Match making is a joke and when there's always someone on my team going 10+ deaths feeding each lane (almost like it's purposefully) it's impossible to play and enjoy. Riot doesn't give a shit about matchmaking or grouping people of similar skillsets together.
#2 "Toxicity" I, out and out, don't give a rats ass about "toxicity" (this ties into my theory about riots business model) it seems like the people who get slapped with "toxicity" as a label are the people who play the hardest and do the best. Is it really "toxic" to tell a 1-17 Graves to stop feeding? Is it really "toxicity" to tell a 0-8 Zyra to leave mid lane during laning phase and get back bot to support the.... Malzahar ADC (?!?!?!?) No. There's nothing wrong with shit talking in an online game. Generally speaking, at least from what I've observed, people start talking shit when other people are acting like idiots and not listening to polite suggestions, IE; "Hey, play safer please, don't push your lane, you're behind, just farm" etc. When that fails it becomes "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS, BACK UP, FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU STOOOOP JUST CHILL" I'd rather have a "toxic" asshole tell me what I'm doing wrong than have them be punished for it. 10 people, 5 of whom are going to waste 30-50 minutes of their lives on a game where one person is the significant contributing factor.
#3 Contrary to a lot of threads I've viewed, I actually don't care about snowballing.
This game needs to be easier to snowball. There should be some algorithm or system in place that recognizes a feeder on a team, and if that's triggered should grant extra minion gold and extra gold per second to the team being F'd in the A by some asshole who has either no idea what they're doing or who is doing it on purpose.
inb4 "but then people will just exploit this for easy wins." if this is what you think, you have zero common sense. In every MOBA other than league there is a provision for feeders and/or leavers to help the team being screwed over. In Dota after 5 minutes, a person is declared AFK and the rest of the team gets their passive gold and their items can be sold to give the team extra gold so the off-balanced team can still be viable. There are no such provisions for league players, and there are really no repercussions for feeding.
My suggestion is this. Take a note from Valve and institute punishment games, either a set number of bot game (wins) or better yet, locking ranked match making until a set number of wins are played in normal matchmaking games. It's not hard to discourage and punish feeding and bad game play. Good players, or players who take the game seriously, shouldn't have to suffer because of some asshole who never gets in trouble and can immediately queue up after going 0-20 and ruin yet another game. The answer is simple. #1 low priority queues and #2 punishment games that require players to win X number of games before they can play ranked again. I guarantee if a player has to win even 5 games to get out of low priority, the number of feeders in ranked (and normal) matchmaking would diminish substantially.
#4 Meta breaking and good gameplay. This is going back a while, but I remember when proxy farm Singed was a thing and I remember riot nerfing it to shit. Items have been removed from the game, champions have been nerfed into irrelevance, all for what? Competitive play? No. It has nothing to do with competitive play. We've seen level 1 3-5 man ganks in competitive games, things which totally go against the "meta" as far as regular skill levels go. It has nothing to do with that. There is a significant lack of imagination and ability to develop strategies to this game which would make it interesting and fresh and require people to actually learn things. Again I cite Dota 2 where every line up carries with it different strats and different counter play, and that's what's missing from league... counter play and strategies... (Has anyone seen videos of hard tri-lane visage in Dota 2? That's some amazing stuff) League tried with bard but there's no fixing the current mechanics of the game without actually changing the mechanics to allow for adaptive and unique gameplay strats to take place. Dota 2 managed to create reactive gameplay and there's no reason league can't do this too.
Theory.
Riot doesn't give a shit about anyone who actually likes their game and has no desire to create a community that supports their property. Anyone who actually cares about this game will inevitably get chat banned or ban-banned so that feeders, idiots, and trolls can continue to play their game. They care about trying to maximize their revenue rather than actually caring about the people who enjoy this game. They don't care about providing a rewarding or enjoyable experience for people who want to support their property, they just want to create a revolving door of 12-15 year olds using their mom's credit cards to buy a skin or two before moving on. Calling them mouth breathing, window licking, rubber-headed inbreds who feed and troll and destroy rounds is verboten because to do so would be to cut into riots bottom line. They don't want repeat customers. They're the video game equivalent of a motel with a flashy exterior, but when you get to your room there are semen stains on the bed and cockroaches in the mini fridge. They don't care if people never ever stay with them, they just want their one time payments.