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Is it me, or has the player base never been more dissatisfied than it is now?

Count Lieberkuhn·8/7/2015, 2:35:09 AM·258 votes·9,627 views

Note: I have expanded on this post in response to some of the posts in this thread. They are after the original main body, if anyone is interested.

Hello. I've been here since closed beta. The first champion release I saw was Nasus. I've been with this game for 6 years now, and I don't think I've ever seen the game in a state that is worse than it currently is. More importantly, I've never seen the player base so upset with the direction the game's taken than they are now. Season 5 as it is now is currently the worst time in league's history. I don't believe I have nostalgia goggles.

A few months ago, League was in fantastic shape. With the introduction of Cinderhulk, a tanky meta emerged. Although tanks were a bit over the top at the time, it brought and end to the assassin meta and the game was in its most balanced and varied state ever. Tanks were viable again, which brought assassins in line, while still keeping them useful as ADCs had once again become truly useful as tank killers, requiring the use of burst to deal with. It was a nice game of paper-scissors-rock which made the game just work. A few minor tweaks were needed to achieve perfect balance.

Then they went and fucked it up. I think it began with the introduction of Runeglaive; a replacement for Magus that nobody wanted or asked for (this became a recurring theme). By removing Magus in the name of 'diversity', Riot succeeded in doing the following: Making Diana and Elise (eventually) viable again Making Karthus and Fiddle jungle no longer a thing Temporarily making Ezreal mid OP.

All this item did is trade traditional mages who could jungle for AP assassins. Why both enchantments could not be kept was apparently a question that never received a valid red answer, even though having both would increase diversity far more than either single item could.

Then they followed it up with sated devourer. People remember Feral Flare; it was nightmarish, so Riot decided to bring it back with a vengeance. Admittedly the old devourer needed an update, but holy balls. It didn't need this. Sated devourer is one of those items that is by existence broken. It synergizes so well with a selection of champions that it makes them broken (Kayle, Yi, etc). The item needs a nerf, but considering Riot's recent response to sated devourer's dominance was to nerf Cinderhulk.

"The other facet of this is that if Cinderhulk has to compete in the end-game against these other two - what it effectively would have to do is create unstoppable characters that cannot be killed - and so even if it does work - it wouldn't be a state we'd be particularly happy with. Therefore, by shifting Cinderhulk's impact to be more impactful mid game and less impactful late game - the item actually has a window to shine - rather than be overshadowed end-game by a devourer or completely dominant when it is good." - Xypherous

This logic is weird. Xypherous is essentially saying that a tanky equivalent of sated devourer would be OP, so lets nerf tanky junglers in the lategame. He is right that cinderhulk would have to be OP to compete, because sated devourer is too strong and too binary of an item. The answer isn't to nerf cinderhulk to have a VERY small window of increased power, but nerf/rework sated devourer into a more reasonable state.

The Kalista nerf was also bizarre, and the most counter-intuitive nerf in League's history. Nerfing the ad ratio on basic attacks makes 0 sense, and only serves to make the champion more convoluted and add even more text to one of the most tooltip-heavy champions in the game. Kalista needs a rework, not weird nerfs that only mask the problem rather than solving it. Just to clarify, the problem lies in her kangaroo hops. They cause some champions to have zero chance of defeating her with any amount of outplay, and she herself is countered by a specific set of champions: those with point-and-click hard CC. Which Riot is phasing out in favour of skillshots. This in itself is not a bad thing, but it only exacerbates the Kalista problem.

And now the Juggernauts update comes along and makes everyone even more angry than before. We have: the Darius update nobody asked for, the Garen update nobody wanted or asked for and adds a gimmick to his ultimate because uniqueness > gameplay in Riot's eyes.
We also have the Skarner update nobody wanted or asked for and adds a really big crystal scar gimmick, and finally the Mordekaiser update that is just a massive experiment and a big middle finger to all Morde players. I only play him on occasion and even I'm upset about that one. Forcing Morde in the lane that makes the least sense, against enemies he is most vulnerable to, and putting most of his power budget into a dragon ghost which will only be useful 5 times per game, IF YOUR TEAM IS DOING WELL. The dragon ghost just seems like a 'win more' mechanic. In most cases, the team who is ahead claims the dragon if they're on the ball.

With this, we have armour nerfs across the board. Some champions are apparently having their armour per level increased slightly to compensate, but most tank items still cost more and offer less. This combined with the BIG cinderhulk nerf is likely to see tanks out of the meta completely again. As we found out a few months ago, tanks being strong is healthy for the game's overall balance, and so making them less viable seems highly detrimental to the game as a whole.

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I've missed out plenty of other missteps that Riot have made and people have gotten deservedly angry about over the last 3 months or so, but it really seems like everything Riot is doing is making people more and more upset and disillusioned by the game. Rather than admit their mistakes and revert some failed ideas like Sated Devourer, Riot seems to instead try to change all other aspects of the game to try and fix the problem, and in doing so create several more. I have never felt like 10 bans were needed any more than I do right now, since the game is in such a horrid state of balance and is basically unplayable now.

I would not be surprised if League sees a significant drop off in players if Season 5 continues down this treacherous path. The Bilgewater event came at a good time for Riot, since the hype overshadows the dire state of the game, but once it goes away, things will go downhill. I feel like Riot will tread water, throwing changes at a wall to see what sticks and hoping the players will not leave in droves before worlds.

Edit:

There have been a lot of responses both agreeing and disagreeing with my post. This is good. It's nice to have both sides of an argument. However, I would like to address some of the more common rebuttals that people have come up with.

The forums and Reddit represent a minority of players

This is correct. The number of players who actually post on the forums are minimal in the grand scheme of things, but arguably some of the most passionate players (why else would people like me spend lots of time writing posts and responding to things if I didn't care about the game?).

My original post was based on the fact that when League is in a good spot, the majority of negative posts are regarding one or two champions who are in a toxic state of balance. Posts are often more positive and constructive when people are satisfied, which is clearly not the case right now. Most posts are complaints, and call for reverts of mechanics that people are not happy with. See: Sated Devourer, Juggernaut update, HUD.

Furthermore, just because the forums represent a minority of the playerbase, does not mean that everyone else is happy by default. I will use my own personal example here. Of all my real life friends who play League, I am the only one who posts on forums about it. However, of my friends, their opinions of the game's current state vary from strong dislike to indifference (with a correlation between frequency of play and dissatisfaction). Of course, my social circle is an insignificant portion of the playerbase, but I highly doubt that I am the only person with this sort of experience.

Tank meta was well balanced, but change needs to happen to prevent the game becoming stale

This is true, but only to a certain extent. The tank meta resulted in all classes in the game being almost equally viable, with tanks obviously being the most viable by a small amount, which was mostly fixed with some tuning. Change is good, but only if handled with care.

They key thing here is that Riot decided to shift away from the tank meta heavily, despite the tank meta being regarded as the most balanced state of the game in years. This was completely the wrong thing to do. By making tanks less valuable, the same old issues arise. ADCs also lose value, and the game devolves into having lots of high burst champions (assassins and some mages) dominating the game again.

What Riot should have done is keep the meta intact, but change the game in small ways that did not upset the balance of things. Sated Devourer was an attempt at this, but it was handled so poorly that it just made a certain subset of champions overpowered. This meant that those champions could not only handle tanks, but they could handle non-tanks even better than ever, invalidating champions who did not have the abilities to abuse the item to achieve the same absurd level of dps.

A better item would have made dps junglers like Master Yi able to handle the tank meta without making them absurd vs squishy targets. Perhaps a jungle equivalent of blade of the ruined king would have achieved this. The warrior enchantment (perhaps with some tweaks) would be the go-to item for being effective against less tanky teams, and the BotrK style enchantment would allow champs like Yi to remain relevant if they came up against a tankier team.

Also, I completely disagree with the notion that Cinderhulk should be made viable by no longer making it even compete against devourer, but shifting it to a brief midgame window. Why shouldn't all jungle items be made equal? Cinderhulk SHOULD be as good as Devourer, or rather Devourer should be brought in line with Cinderhulk as it is before the upcoming nerf.

There is absolutely no reason why a tank item and its carry equivalent should not be equally good at doing their respective jobs. Sated devourer's broken design makes this impossible to do, but by changing it for something balanceable and not simply an item to be abused by certain champions, it would be possible.

Let's look at it another way.

The game is in a lot of ways like paper/scissors/rock. That game is perfectly balanced because each option is strong against one thing, but weak against another.

By weakening rock, scissors becomes OP because although paper will continue to be great at beating rock, there is nothing to stop scissors cutting the paper. And so the game falls apart.

But this can be expanded upon. Let's look at the most popular expansion of the game, 'Paper Scissors Rock Lizard Spock'. It works like this.

Paper > Rock, Spock Scissors > Paper, Lizard Rock > Scissors, Lizard Lizard > Spock, Paper Spock > Scissors, Rock

Now, we have a game which still has the same level of balance. All options now beat exactly 2 other options, while losing to the other 2. The balance is still maintained, but depth and complexity is increased.

Admittedly depth is better than complexity so this analogy doesn't completely hold up, but hopefully it gets the point across. By expanding on an existing, successful meta with new items and champions which challenge the game in interesting ways without invalidating the meta itself, Riot would have been onto a winner.

Hell, there's actually some merit to the Morde update in regards to trying to make a viable botlane which isn't ADC-focused (assuming the ADC would instead go top, i.e. Vayne, Quinn or Urgot). That idea is cool. What isn't cool is that they had to completely rework a beloved old champion into a role that makes no sense for him. If Riot had made an all new champion who was designed from the ground up to be a tanky botlane pusher that is support-reliant, then everyone would have loved it, even if it didn't work.

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tl;dr Riot should have focused on changing the meta entirely when it was in such a balanced state. They should have _expanded _on the meta and introduced new champions/items/mechanics that challenge it enough to shake things up and keep things fresh, without taking away from what makes the game work.

173 Comments

YCitizenSnipsY8/7/2015, 5:58:16 AM93 votes

Honestly its just you, I've been playing since season 3 and I hear this every season. Season 3 was the worst then season 4 was the worst now season 5 is the worst. And every time one of these threads is made people swear it will be the end of Riot but the game has only continued to get bigger. Also friendly reminder the player base is estimated to be about 67 million so please don't speak on all their behalf because of a few whining threads on these boards that 99% of the community doesn't use.

ModKnightsKemplar8/7/2015, 5:50:35 AM39 votes

I know I'll probably get downvoted to oblivion... But I think it's better than ever.

Are they making a few mis-steps? Sure. But for me, it seems like we are generally headed toward a more diverse landscape and a better game. Their willingness to change things more radically on a shorter time-scale will lead to a more balanced game over time, in my opinion. In season 2 and season 3, I was frustrated with how slow things were changing, especially when the changes didn't lead to more diversity anyway.

There are some reworks that I've hated; Soraka, Cass, this new Morde rework isn't too promising. But the majority have been pretty good. Ashe, Sion, and Gangplank were amazing. I think they're headed in the right direction. They are starting to figure out how to make this game work in the long run, in my opinion. There's some growing pains, but we're getting there.

League is more fun than ever for me, and I'm still digging it.

TheShinx8/7/2015, 4:17:55 AM38 votes

It's been a slow death of season 5. And riot hasn't stopped the bleeding at all. I think it was Hai who said this or something along the lines of it anyway: "If riot doesn't start doing things right, the game's going to be dead, or at least the pro scene."

I think when the pro's of your game are pissed off with the state of the game, it's time to get your shit together. At the end of the day, they are what make you money in the long run. They showcase the game in the best way possible.

You nailed the major problem on the head. Riot's backwards logic. Since the exit of the tank meta, the game is slowing becoming something I don't want to play anymore. The introduction of Sated just solidifies my hate towards the jungle role. It wasn't a good item last season and a lot of players didn't forget that. Feral flare was a bad item to introduce and sated falls under that category. IIRC FF was the most hated item last season. Sated is quickly rising towards that place as well for this one.

The AP jungle item change and the time between changes (that were needed) was too long. I can't seem to grasp how this got past internal testing/PBE all the way to live without someone thinking "hey lets try that middle with a variety of AP champs." Sad thing is, it probably did. How did they not know this was going to happen? AP Ez was already something of a power house late game. All that item did was give him e huge boost early on and made his early/mid more reliable and less dependent on skill. Diana was another who became strong because of the item. You could shut both down, but they could easily come back once they got that item.

Then the statement yesterday just drew the last straw with a lot of people. The most requested thing by Pro's/casual players was the 2 things they aren't working on. Sandbox/replay systems. With the Vast amount of replay systems riot could have picked any of them and asked the Devs to come on board and make one that would work in-client. I can't understand how a simple replay system could be so hard for them to make.

Sandbox mode is something riot deemed "toxic" because it would just add a level of "toxicity" that wouldn't be healthy..... What? So saying to someone "go practice flashing over that wall in Sandbox after." is toxic? if someone said that, hell I would be more happy to hear that then "hey go Fuk yourself, and die of cancer." I don't, which is less toxic Riot? You tell me.

MANY pro's are pissed with riot's inept attitude towards giving players the basic tools needed to get better. Thooorin and Montecristo hit the nail home. Here is a Link to Monte's response. Started at a point I think he starts to pick apart the response from riot better. Both share the same View on this. Along with all the Pro's tweets about this, I am surprised at riot's response.

If riot continues this path of not delivering basic fundamentals to it's players I doubt league will be a AAA title in the coming years. It's becoming more of a spectator's game then one people want to play. If riot put 1/4 of the effort into the game as they do making the LCS/Worlds/Other International matches, This game wouldn't be in such a poor state.

It's sad to see a game I have played for so long, just widdle away because the Developers and Management have become complacent with the game. Maybe riot learns, I don't know. But they are up against the wall now, and I think people are realizing that they aren't going to deliver on things the masses have asked for.

I for one will sit back and watch the game fall if riot continues this ideology of systems that they deem not a necessity, but would vastly improve the games overall competitive nature.

EDIT: Here is my comment on the Big Riot plz blog

KING OF MASKS8/7/2015, 7:47:27 AM11 votes

I can only speak for myself, but the timely combination of the Fiora visual "upgrade" (seemingly at the expense of Miss Fortune during her own lore event), the juggernaut nerfs reworks (which happen to include one of my favorite champions), the bizarre armor nerfs that only reinforce the current meta, Riot's warped reasoning behind leaving sandbox mode in the dust, and a purposeless Lee Sin buff to top everything off, has left me in a state of extreme frustration. This isn't to mention the 10 month lore drought that preceded Bilgewater.

I think the biggest issue I have with League right now is how champion reworks are progressing. It really seems to be luck of the draw whether or not a champion gets competent designers (Ashe, Gangplank, Sion), or if they're stuck with CertainlyT or Stashu or someone equally clueless (Cass, Mordekaiser). It's really created this state of fear and helplessness; will one of your favorite champions be next on the chopping block? Hope you get lucky and they come out the better for it, otherwise you're SOL.

gubigubi8/7/2015, 5:23:49 AM10 votes

I have and still do enjoy the game. I think Riot really needs to slow down the change until preseason but It's still really fun.

Now there are things that I still really would like to see such as more skins for champions I play or more attention for champions that get put in a bad spot and stay there. There has been an insane amount of stuff released in the last few weeks for sure but I think league of legends will still remain fun once it all calms down.

I for one can not wait to play this game with under 100 ping once the servers move and I could give 1 fuck less what a pro player thinks about that.

Just my 2 cents.

GetSchmittOn8/7/2015, 3:06:45 AM10 votes

I couldn't agree with all of this more. Riot doesn't seem to understand that saying, "We fucked up, and we're just gonna go back and undo what we did" is an ok thing to do. Sky Williams put it best in one of his videos he made a few months ago: https://youtu.be/G4PbaJL9vAk?t=99 "Riot right now is going through their teen years... 'I wanna be different!' So they're making every champion batshit crazy and stupid..." It's ok to have things be simple and still enjoyable. We don't need Skarner turning the game into a match of dominion. We don't need this absolutely insulting rework for mordekaiser. Honestly I think the Garen rework is ok, but that's just me. Sated devourer is a problem and was already a problem back when it was slightly different and went by the name Feral Flare.

I Main Swain8/7/2015, 3:13:58 PM7 votes

it's funny because not a week ago everything on the boards was thanking riot for the bilgewatter lore and telling them how fantastic they did. it took all of 1 day for that to completely flip.

macdshifty8/7/2015, 9:27:55 AM6 votes

I've been playing since season 2 and I haven't been this disappointed with this many patches in a row as far as I can remember. I think longer time players feel worse about the new changes because they are ruining old time things like release champs (can't get behind gutting garen's w, q, and especially cc'ing yourself when e'ing- I thought you were supposed to be rewarded for playing a champion correctly) and that they see Riot making the same mistakes over again. This including nerfing tanks and turning the game back into the assassin meta where they just treat it like whack a mole, nerfing the flavor of the week assassin and buffing someone else.

Decrit8/7/2015, 2:33:47 PM5 votes

Many people voiced my opinion already, so i am here just to say few things: not always upvotes or downvotes are a measure of how a thing is perceived.

This is due to many factors, for example many upvote because something is worth notice, but disagree or are neutral to the content. I did that myself a bunch of times, with appropriate commenting. Also, not everyone wants to downvote or upvote for a variety of reasons.

Answering to your question - I believe there is more people dissatisfacted, but because there is simply more people, not because the game is going downhill - instead, i think its getting better and better! What i do mean is, if 5% of a population is dissatisfacted out of 100 people, 5 people are dissatisfacted; if 1% of 1000 people is dissatisfacted they are 10, that is more people dissatisfacted, but i consider the latter far better!

And i think this is fine - you can' t like to everyone, but the game is huge and cana ccomodate to amny things. Sometimes they misstep, sometimes they retract, but overall i am happy to have stayed with them.

And i am a mordekaiser fan.

Mubbin8/7/2015, 7:57:25 AM5 votes

We have a reason to be dissatisfied, the big decision makers at Riot aren't listening or making good decisions.

ihaveapotion8/7/2015, 4:04:50 PM5 votes

Ive been in this game since vlad was released, couldve been closed beta player but still played ultima online back then and didnt want to leave that to join my friends already in league yet :p

Imo, the reason rito makes these bad gameplay choices are because of big play $ events, industry always destroys everything it gets its hands on for sheer monetary profit. We as the playerbase should stand up against this practice wich is why all the ruckus and criticism is a good thing, in the end it will make riot understand what makes a better game. And its not flashy 10 minute matches.

Eevee In A Jar8/7/2015, 6:12:32 PM5 votes

I think it's just you. I've been here since the beginning of season 2. I won't say it's consistently been getting better. It had its ups and downs. Every season, Riot does something that the majority of player base feels is dumb and will destroy the game. And every time, they kept getting more customers and more players joining the community.

You might not like the changes because this game has strayed far from what you know it to be. But honestly I feel like you might like Dota 2 better at this point. League of Legends is trying to evolve and trying to change. Sometimes less is more but if it stays static, it will definitely die. Might as well take a risk and change things up, right? If they don't make changes, they will lose player base for sure. If everyone was content doing the very exact same things over and over, we'd be playing Pong not LoL

Syvenon8/7/2015, 6:14:05 AM4 votes

I feel like Riot is kind of reverting back into the Season 3 "release madness", except now instead of just trying to release a bunch of champions really quickly, they're trying to release a bunch of everything really quickly. This season I have honestly just dropped jungle because of how often and how drastically they are changing all of the items in there, I just can't keep up with who is supposed to build what anymore. Additionally, champion concepts are getting so insane that it's impossible to play against them until you have played them yourself (which is true a lot of the time, but I think it's particularly difficult with champions like Tahm and Kalista to understand what is going on just by playing against them).

I started in Season 1, and I took a bit of a break at the beginning of this season and got back into it just as the tank meta was falling apart. I'm starting to feel it might be time for me to take another break, I'm just finding the current state of the game frustrating and even after a few months of playing pretty consistently, spending a lot of time on the forums, looking up guides every once in a while, I still feel like I'm just learning the ropes on a game that I have played for 5 years.

At the end of season 4 I felt unstoppable, like I was finally starting to understand the really complex parts of the game, really on top of all of the items, complex mechanics, felt comfortable in every role (not to mention had finally climbed my way up to gold). Now I feel like almost everything has been unseated very rapidly and I'm left trying to figure out what is still relevant from those 4 years of learning.

Ipressbutton8/7/2015, 3:12:20 PM3 votes

Every single game forum I've ever visited is like this. It's because the people that are likely to visit these forums enjoy and care so much for the game they play, they want to see it become better

Carpe Victoria8/7/2015, 5:54:04 AM3 votes

I haven't been playing very long, but in the time i have been here it seems that they have ramped up the speed they release new content a lot and simultaneously started the task of updating EVERYTHING that got outdated...and they have been releasing these updates without enough positive approval from PBE and general player feedback. There are A LOT of changes that have happened very quickly and it feels like they are choosing to release it- just see how it goes- then modify it over numerous patches rather than take longer and release something thats solid and well received.

They've also had some very weird priorities. Some make sense, as they've said certain things can only come after they redo some base code for the game and overcome server issues, but others like the champ reworks are really weird. Why would they rework Fiora, Garen, and Darius when champs like Taric are from the stoneage and never played.

Ipols8/7/2015, 3:32:22 PM3 votes

A few months ago, League was in fantastic shape. With the introduction of Cinderhulk, a tanky meta emerged. Although tanks were a bit >over the top at the time, it brought and end to the assassin meta and the game was in its most balanced and varied state ever

This. IDK about season 1,2, and 3, but I loved League after the first Cinderulk nerfs. It was balanced and diverse with few exeptions. Why do they have to nerf every tank now? I'm sad

Cloud Potato8/7/2015, 3:05:50 PM3 votes

This game has had problems for a long time. Like, a LONG time. Riot has been doing their best to fix the game's problems, and new ones are always emerging. What you're noticing is NOT the game getting worse. What you're noticing is people noticing it's bad, and acting as if it hasn't always been this way. It has.

War never changes. There's always overplayed champions. Overpowered champions. Overnerfed champions. And lots of other issues. The issues of today are not the exact same issues of yesterday, but they have the same response, a lot of complaining. And if there's one thing that has changed about that, it's the playerbase getting smarter. Or more noticable thanks to the boards, whatever. Before, the way to tell a problem was how many QQ threads there was. Now it's with high quality posts being heavily upvoted (...although there still are QQ threads high up at times).

Right now there's a lot of people complaining about reworks. Reworks on champions who haven't been good in a long time because their kits are not good for the game. I've seen plenty of threads on bringing these champions back, but when it actually happens, the people who don't like it complain. And the people who like it but think there's something wrong complain. And complaints are good. It lets Riot and everyone else know that there's a problem. It doesn't usually show a solution, but that's why Riot gets paid to think of.

But on our side, there's always people to complain, because people are vastly different. Complainers are loud. Louder than everything else. It's the way it is. Some of us have self awareness and know that our opinions aren't fact, but if we didn't get our opinions out there, they wouldn't matter at all. That's why I don't mind stupid people complaining about stupid things. Things I find stupid, anyway. And if there's one thing the boards have done absolutely right, it's making it easy for the people who make good, insightful complaints to be visible.

4 paragraphs later, I tl;dr with: The game hasn't gotten worse. The awareness of the playerbase has gone up. We've gotten better at identifying and speaking on problems in the game, and at talking to each other about it. And it's only through endless QQ can us and Riot identify and solve problems.

Dr Poro8/7/2015, 4:53:02 PM3 votes

Worst thing is the Zed buff right when tanks are getting gutted. And not just the ones like Malphite who like to stack armor. Most bruisers also used to build Randuin's Omen. Irelia, Wukong, Renekton, Vi, Jarvan, and those are just the more viable ones that I can name out of my head. Many more bruisers that are already unviable will become trash tier. Maybe the new armor item will take Randuin's place as the standard armor item, which will, however be a huge buff to ADCs who no longer have reduced AS against bruisers.

Worst thing of all is that the armor items are getting nerfed on TWO fronts. Cost and armor for FH, armor and health for Randuin's, cost and dmg for Thornmail.

MLDzXnRRR8/7/2015, 9:37:55 AM3 votes

Actually many players hated going vs Darius top, he is the biggest lane bully vs melee and useless lategame champion ... I don't know what you like about him - to be able to dominate and then do nothing whole game, after getting camped / kited/ cced the whole time?

SoMNia8/7/2015, 9:07:04 PM2 votes

Well, that depends. Are you looking on the boards? People who are satisfied with the game spend more time playing and less time complaining.

And no, tanks being strong wasn't good for game balance. BALANCE is good for game balance. Tanks were oppressive. Most of the recent changes have improved the game in pretty nearly inarguable ways.

Nimmer8/8/2015, 6:35:41 PM2 votes

Surprised OP didn't mention the Fiora update (both gameplay and visual) seeing as it is the most blatant example of what he has posted. Lots of things Riot has done recently have been pretty bad and don't make much sense. These changes point out something even scarier than bad decision making, though. They're straight up ignoring their last line of defense: us. The community is, supposedly, the last source of feedback on things before they hit live. That's why there's a feedback section on the boards. But, despite massive amounts of negative feedback on many current changes, Riot is pushing them out anyway. It's really quite baffling. The Fiora update is the best example of this. Her gameplay update is arguable and would have received more attention if Fiora mains weren't so overly concerned with the way their champion looked. That's crazy, huh? The Fiora VU is so overly terrible that it overshadowed a complete gameplay update - and Fiora players let Riot know that it was garbage in the biggest outcry of dissatisfaction I've ever seen on the boards. But here we are, ugly skins and all. Riot is making bad content and then ignoring not only the last authority on whether or not the content is good but the same people who play their game and buy their content.

TL;DR is Riot going to keep making garbage content and completely ignore our feedback? And adding a stripe to Fiora's hair when she looks like the bulkiest fencer who ever pranced her way into a mythical battle does not count as listening to feedback; it's called appeasing the masses

Count Buffon8/8/2015, 1:45:02 PM1 votes

The design principles behind "jungler items" fly in the face of "strategic diversity". The process went something like this:

  1. Jungle want2curry, no fair, not want be second support. y israel take camps? (Ok, fair enough sort of. But I don't like where this goes ultimately...)
  2. Screw strategic diversity, let's make a special OP class of jungle items that's so strong that you can't poach camps without them! (Think the very old Spirit of the Ancient Golem, the successful Tenacity item that they eventually put down.)
  3. Hey, these are SO GOOD that TOP LANERS and ISRAEL are buying them! No fair, I don't want the other kids playing with my toys! item 3070 LeeSin item 3070
  4. DRM lock it! Yay diversity! (Spirit Stone now only works when jungling, because (3), and as way of collateral damage, screw you for camping/ganking too. Farm harder, br0.)
  5. Wait a minute, Israel still buyz sometimes!!!
  6. Fine, we nerf dem. But haz to buff others too. Maybe remake all of them over and over.
  7. Devourer meta out of control, better nerf Cinderhulk. (???????)

I used to like Cinderhulk when it was an honest-to-god Sunfire Cape replacement. I never liked jungler DRM, because the whole point was to force every champion in a role to buy one out of one (or at most two) possible item(s) every single game, and to prohibit other lanes from buying it viably 95% of the time or more, or else it's a bad thing for some reason. Yay diversity?

But now Cinderhulk only does 60% as much damage as Sunfire. 60%!!! It was kind of painful but acceptable when the damage had to ramp up, but now it's just 60%, and you just have to shut up and take it. If I could choose, I'd choose Sunfire. But I can't, because Rito forced me into a deal with the devil, and now it's too late to look back - my Sunfire Cape has been DRM-locked into my OP-as-hell jungle item slot, but with a 40% penalty because fuck you that's why. I can't not buy Cinderhulk, because what the hell am I going to do, run Runeglaive Sejuani? Meanwhile, my OP-as-hell jungle item isn't actually OP-as-hell because all jungle items are because of (1), only now there's Devourer which is even more so. Tanks have been exiled to top lane, and might be choked out of the meta entirely with Juggernauts.

I'm completely over the concept of "jungler items", and was only briefly sort of ok with them sometime just after Cinderhulk got mildly toned down and before Sated Devourer released and Juggenauts was announced. if you want to have anything in the game jungle-specific, work some changes into Smite itself or maybe the trinket system. But stop straightjacketing the entire goddamned meta with 2-4 viable jungler items.