I can't hold this game to the same standards I hold to other games.

When I play this game, something happens, and it's not positive. More and more, I find myself thinking "well, this could've been done better" or "shame they went through with that". I see stuff that I would be embarrassed about if I had the equivalent in something I had made and more and more, my reaction is "well, that's par for the course".

I remember the big Azir bug on his release and the still-inaccurate (as far as I know) death stats window that still had 'zephyrslamentburn' as a damage source until recently. On a more personal level, I cringe every time I witness the many examples of pub-par hitbox design and still question the logic of being forced into playing an arbitrary number of games after reaching the required amount of LP.

Here's another thing; rank is touted as the 'only' way to gauge your personal skill, yet the game still uses MMR as the primary way to match for play and even then matchmaking would rather group quickly rather than effectively.

Art, thank RNGesus, is one of the few areas that usually doesn't grind my gears. Apart from the Hitbox-visual matchup occasionally going straight down the tubes. Lore as well is an area where I have pretty much no complaints, except for that it would've been nice to have some lore in the intervening months after everything was retconned.

Champion and play diversity is also troubling: I see more and more indicators that this game is headed down a path of "this is the specific style in which we have decided the game will be played, and we will be quietly penalizing styles that do not match our vision". Granted, in a few outlier cases, this philosophy has been obvious for a while.

And now the kicker is that I'm not sure why I play this game some days. Its certainly not for the passable experience, or the morons who say 'gg' after a blowout, nor the thrill of watching a snowballfest in my games or watching the "one-mistake-decides-games" Charlie Foxtrot that is professional play has become. Ironically, I still look to get better and climb, though its basically impossible in bronze given the fact that an unknown genius decided to have personal skill be decided by the binary outcome of team victory or loss.

But, well, that's about par for the course.