The contradiction of balance: casual vs. competition

Riot has contradictory design goals with the game right now, which leads to increased toxicity, lower rank integrity and lower game quality.

The first of these problems is the casualization of the ranked queue. Dynamic queue has been pushed on the playerbase as a way to get friends into ranked - which is more important to casual gamers. Serious gamers would have prefered solo queue, to test their abilities as an individual, and full 5v5 team queue, which tests their ability to participate in a true competitive format. In no case would a serious League player prefer that solo and group MMRs be mixed and compared on the same ladder, because then you have no idea what that MMR is measuring.

However, the game itself has become anything but casual. In fact, it has become extremely punishing, so punishing in fact that sometimes to play in mid-high elo (plat) is a frustrating chore rather than fun. Long death timers, jungle autotimers, minion autopush, very large differences between highest and lowest win rate champs, etc. have made it so that the team that makes a mistake stays behind and stays behind hard. This is especially true for large (3+) premades vs. large premades, as the coordination and strategy that a mid or high elo premade offers allows for immensely powerful snowballing. Even minor mistakes are more costly than ever, and more frustratingly, it's the 1st mistake that's the costliest.

Because of these contradictory goals, the game now meets none of the needs of either casual players or competitive players. Casual players are easily turned off by the snowballing, pick-or-ban champs, extremely punishing gameplay, etc. while competitive players have nowhere to go if they want to play as a serious 5v5 team or test their true individual performance.

This has led to the phenomena that was described earlier as "casual tryhard". This is the type of player that NO ONE wants on their team, since they neither invest the time to be truly competitive, yet they want easy results and rage when they don't get them. These types have always been around, but this season has led to an explosion of these types. Just look at all the bronze 5's and silver 5's who think they can 1v1 plats and diamonds when simultaneously whining about elo hell. Their presence leads to lower game quality for everyone.