Why the players of League are most notably upset at the developers

Hey there, I decided to make this thread as an explanation (in my opinion) as to why players are so upset right now, and even going to the lengths of calling on the firing of developers (not just Certainlyt, but in general)

The whole fiasco has very deep roots through the past few years, likely dating back to Season 5. "Power Creep" and "Mobility Creep" are common terms thrown out by players in frustration, and understandably so. I like to compare this creep to that of slowly heating up the water in a shower, bath, etc. It changes so slowly that you don't notice it at all until you look back (or change it back) to what it was a good while ago. Players looking back see that over time the game has added so much power creep that we have the mess we see today.

The blame cast on the developers isn't just the blind rage you see in soloq, there has been a lot of constructive criticism for awhile now.

The first big upset to the community was the midseason patch for S7, including big updates to some tanks. Riot had their heart in the right place and noticeably put effort into the redesigns, however in many peoples' view, it was a flop. This can be blamed on the toxic jungle meta that spawned from it. When this occurred, it was a hot topic for discussion. People spouted the ugly term "Tank Meta" about for a good while (which I will probably cover in a whole separate post) and actively suggested solutions to the problem. Some good, some bad. Some wanted reverts, others wanted numbers tweaks, and few even suggested another update. At this point NOT many people were very upset at the developers at all, especially since the start of season 7, after the fixes to adc (and killing our meme), was quite smooth. The real screwup was when Riot actively IGNORED or REFUSED all of the criticism it took from the players.

The next big thing in season 7 would have to be the ardent meta. I myself blame this meta (as a mid lane mage main) for screwing with my ranked matches, seeing as my climb from Silver V to Gold IV, which took place in a matter of weeks, abruptly stopped and I simply couldn't win anymore without a good bot lane. The winrate on my main, Veigar, dropped from a whopping 74% to 66% by the end of the season (and that is over around 70 games of veigar in S7), and winrate overall dropped from around 65% to 56%. This thing made A LOT of people angry. Not because of the actual ardent meta existing in the first place, but because it wasn't fixed at all until about 2 patches before preseason. Riot abused the "muh worlds" excuse way too much and we had pretty much the latter half of the summer and early fall in absolute misery. Standalone this isn't a real killer to the community, but factoring in the tank jungle meta before, and what happened after, it really is.

You see, the reason people kept playing during the ardent meta was because of one promise from the developers: "Preseason will fix most of the problems with the game." When preseason came around, the players were excited to change from the trash meta they had before. Players saw a transition from a teamfight where the adc can literally tank your whole team from all the heals/shields/peel they get, to now absolute kill lanes and players being wiped in seconds. Theoretically, this would be nice, but it wasn't. This is because the added damage was not properly set up by any other balance changes. Think about it. Did mages and assassins become super viable again like previous seasons, or instead did ADCs start picking up full damage + crit and start outputting Burst Per Second that could wipe everyone 1v5? Did the high amount kills around other ever-present gold income from previous metas, like first turret gold, make games way more snowbally? It sure did.

At this point the players' tempers were stretched thin. This was a problem and we looked upon one last promise from Riot: "Preseason may be unbalanced so we will try to fix it." Patch 7.24b was an INCREDIBLE let down. Riot promised changes to top lane, which they did test extensively in the PBE, but ended up just rolling them back. While this in itself isn't a bad move, Riot neglected to replace those changes before the patch dropped. Players now had to endure for the holidays (one of the best times for gaming) with a terribly unbalanced game while Rioters were not even working.

That was the last straw. The entire time players had been offering good ideas and constructive criticism. There are still a plethora of threads, articles, and videos about how the game could be improved, but Riot never listened. On top of that, they actively failed to follow through with their promises of actual game balance, all the while CertainlyT would develop a second Yasuo.

This is the point where players start calling for the balance team to be fired. I agree, this is absolutely unacceptable, and is the first time since midseason 6 that I am actively trying to avoid playing league, even in the holiday season. We, the players have gone through a hell of a terrible ride over the past 5 months or so, and honestly have all rights to start calling out the team for their blatant neglect.

TLDR: Riot hasn't listened to the playerbase over a multitude of patches spanning about 5 months. While their fuckups in balance weren't that bad, the fact that they didn't fix them at all, or until much later, made people upset enough to call on the firing of the balance team.