"Playing games of League of Legends should be the unequivocal best way for a player to improve"

This is not true for literally any sport, game or otherwise that is competitive. I don't think Riot understands what they are saying here. Let me tell you all the many ways they are vastly incorrect here.

Specific section I'm replying to is from here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/riot-games/announcements/riot-pls

Yes playing League will help you get better, but that alone will not unless you just happen to be a god of analyzing your mistakes, or like most you have friends to buffer off of. I started stagnating once I didn't have friends to play with on a regular basis, so I have a lot of trouble improving. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case for a lot of people.

So I guess that Riot thinks it's illogical for literally every other competitive game, video game or otherwise, has things in place to allow you to practice outside of just playing the game.

Street Fighter has a training mode with techniques and specific scenarios to help you perfect one specific technique. As soon as you are done you immediately go into a live match and try it out against a real opponent without controlled variables. You continue to do this until you reach the benchmarks you want, and beyond. Every single Fighting Game pro or casual plays Training and then goes into a Live match if they want to understand the game better. I fail to see how Street Fighter is/or should be any different than League/

Basketball and Gridiron/Football and Soccer/Football all have their players regardless of skill level constantly practice drills to perfect technique and mentality. Just outright playing a lot of games alone won't always improve your understanding of the game or your technique/skill, if anything it could be worse for you since you will just embed your errors. Every single Sport has casuals and pros training and learning techniques with the help of others in an IRL sandbox mode to help them perfect technique and understand the game better, I fail to see how this is/or should be any different than League.

"We want to make sure we’re clear: playing games of League of Legends should be the unequivocal best way for a player to improve. While there are very real skills one can develop in a hyperbolic time chamber, we never want that to be an expectation added onto an already high barrier to entry"

First off: The Hyperbolic Time Chamber outright vastly improved the Z Fighters power levels because they worked in pairs. This led to Goku/Gohan discovering how to perform SS2 and better understand their power and how to perfect their methods. Even earlier in the series before the HBTC, Gohan, an incredibly weak kid with a pathetic understanding of fighting, trained with Piccolo, an experienced fighter, and BOTH OF THEM IMPROVED AT A RIDICULOUS RATE AND LEARNED NEW WAYS OF LOOKING AT FIGHTING.

Did the Rioter who wrote this look at DBZ and go "yeah training is way too hard for anyone that isn't them and there is no way it has ever helped weaker people" I just don't get it.

Secondly: The idea that a training mode will make the game more difficult to get into is absurd. How would the ability to learn techniques with volunteer player coaches and higher Rank friends outside of overly stressful 5v5 pvp matches make the game harder or the barrier to entry greater? I really don't understand that.

For me and many others that have played Chess competitively, it was stressful trying to learn it just thru trial and error. We felt like we weren't going anywhere unless we just happened to be the best at analyzing why we were losing. When we finally just picked up books and techniques on various openings and strats we improved FAR faster than ever and we were far less stressed while learning more beyond that, which made the game more enjoyable and us better players overall and teachers for future players.

Third and Finally: "The expectation" to train is going to be natural and inherent to literally every single competitive game. Odds are if they are playing normals they won't think about training mode at all even if it's available. However, they will see it and try it and perhaps they will get decent enough that they decide to go into Ranked and try out their new found skills. If someone plays Ranked, the odds are high that they will see Training as natural as Breathing and look at every lost game and focus on what they needed to fix, and go fix it with a friend or a coach/mentor. This idea that a training mode would scare people and put pressure on them is ridiculous.

If you don't want to make a Sandbox mode that is 100% fine, just tell us you don't want to make it yet and it's not a priority. Just don't lie to us with explanations you haven't really thought about or use terms/references you don't understand.