Season 9 Will Probably Be Your Last Chance Riot

This is gonna be a bit of a wall, but please bear with me.

I joined the game in season 4, and it was pretty fun until about halfway through season 5 where I had a lot of trouble killing anyone, but attributed it to me being bad as I was only 14 and had no real idea what the fuck I was doing. In season 6, you started the power creep. It was gradual, but you had begun to buff champions to make them strong instead of nerfing those who were strong down to everyone else's level. Damage was much higher than before with Fervor of Battle abuse, Thunderlord's Decree and Duskblade of Draktharr hitting the Rift. You guys implemented the rotating game mode, which was nice, but that was pretty much it. Damage continued to creep, and people continued to complain about the high damage. Season 7 started with the already high damage numbers, and everyone was aware of your blatant ADC favoritism. ADCs were really strong last season, and the prevalence of supports like Nami, Lulu, Janna, and Soraka combined with Ardent Censer was obnoxious and cancerous. ADCs with their high damage and cheap yet effective items, allowed ADCs to get fed and snowball hard off the multiple people bot lane, get their items before the tanks in the top lane or the jungle could get their defensive items, and their supports would buff them to the sky and make them damned hard to kill. Combined with the constant healing and shielding, many marksmen bot lane would build lifesteal, effectively enabling them to be drain tanks that are able to tank more damage than the actual tanks and put out more damage than the assassins. Actual tanks that were played were pretty much only used for the cc. This went on for over half of a season before you guys did anything about it, and is where a LOT of people got pissed off. Plus, for the rotating game modes we pretty much got ascension and poro king year round, and weren't allowed to pick the champions we wanted to play in URF whenever you guys DID finally decide to let us play it. Then in season 8, everyone was doing hella damage. With the new runes, no good replacement for Deathfire Touch, Conqueror replacing Fervor and being even worse balance-wise honestly, and the fact that Dark Harvest was even implemented, were massive issues. Dark Harvest, combined with Duskblade and most champions was terrible to play against. If you weren't playing a tank, you were dying nearly instantly, especially when someone wanted to play Nasus and take DH. Even if you WERE a tank, you were dying very quickly to the people playing Yi, Tryndamere, Darius, or Fiora as they would just take Conqueror and get free AD and then do true damage, negating any resistances you built anyways. Then we had Cho'Gath being able to build full tank and still one shot a squishy on the enemy team with his Feast's synergy with Gargoyle's Stoneplate. Now, in the preseason of season 9, Gold is being thrown around willy-nilly in low elo, because the transparency of the bounty system, the bounties scaling off of significant cs leads, and free bonus gold for taking turrets early, exacerbate these problems. Not to mention the defensive rune shards are inferior to the offensive ones.

And honestly, the worst part is that the whole time, Riot largely ignored its communities pleas and complaints, pushing off fixing the issues for months on end. You didn't want to talk about things for only God knows why, but my only guess is that you feared the community's criticisms and anger. It would never have gotten this bad if you listened to the people that said the numbers were too high or that something was going to be broken. Now we have Neeko, with an insanely high damage ultimate, that for some reason shields her AND stuns the enemy team. It's like Nunu's ultimate except she can get it off with very little reaction time for the enemy team. I guarantee Neeko and current Dark Harvest will have a very unhealthy synergy, and that nobody will like it. I want this game to be fun, because it's one of the few games I CAN play. That doesn't change the fact that I would rather not play games at all, than play a game where I'm in an abusive relationship with the devs who only want money, and ignore anything and everything I say. We don't want you to fail Riot, we play the game because we love the champions and the lore and the world you've built up out of nothing, but please Riot, don't let it end with bitter regret and reminiscing of the good times had years ago, the pain of the recent years still fresh. Let the game end with happiness all around, and restored love and faith and friendship with one another, because you were able to reconnect with the playerbase that keeps your company afloat and your pockets full. Let it end because you were able to move on to another project, full of an intensely fiery passion and a tempered resolve to do the best that you can, make it enjoyable, and make it memorable, all without overdoing it of course.