I love you Riot, but could you pick up the pace a little?
If I had an upvote for every time Riot said 'we want to tackle this problem at a later time' or 'we're looking into testing this in a later patch', I'd be Laughing Fish.
Look, Riot, I love League of Legends. I won't deny I've typed up some pretty harsh walls of text in the past, but I do love this game. A lot. I think you've got a real masterpiece on your hands and I'm excited to see this game grow; I also appreciate you for doing your best to make it work, and for keeping it FTP. But do you know what I am tired of?
I'm tired of class updates that make sweeping changes to the game that just end up breaking it and ruining champions that didn't need fixing, when you could be putting resources into fixing a growing list of problem champions that desperately need a VGU. I'm doubly tired of Riot not learning from these class updates, and continuing to make the same mistakes with them. I'm tired of class updates that only solve fringe cases and not truly problematic champions because you want to give them a VGU in six years - often leaving said champions in an even worse state than before. I'm tired of item overhauls that only add new problems instead of solving long-seated ones. I'm tired of power, mobility, and mastery creep being excuses for rapid modernization for some champions and classes but leaving others in the dust and refusing to balance them when they are struggling against all this new bullshit. I'm tired of playing the same dance every season where the jungle is inexplicably changed to become even more exclusive and meta-tightening so that only Lee Sin and his ilk are able to handle it, pushing ever more tank and AP jungles out of the jungle completely. I'm tired of certain champions like Shen and Malz being bent over every patch but Riot flat-out refusing to nerf champions that are actually overbearing until months after they have shaped the meta around them.
Riot, you are a multi-billion dollar company. Your lore, art, sound teams are all top notch. Your balance team has an immensely difficult task, and I will be the first to admit that I couldn't do a better job. But I know that they can.
Why are you tiding over large changes to tank itemization? You're making some pretty big changes to a few items, and adding two new ones that will without a doubt in my mind be problematic as hell and force a huge section of the mage roster out of the meta. Why are you upping the stakes AGAINST mages when literally the entire LoL community has been complaining about armor pen and oppressive AD itemization that is far and above better than AP? Why are you still refusing to touch the black sheep items like Banner and Ohmwrecker and Zekes and others? Why are you choosing to rework champions that have a pretty good thematic identity, like Zac and Sejuani, instead of the binary Vanguards like Malph and Rammus who so desperately need it? If they need VGUs, give them VGUs. Stop making new champions and fix the champions you already have. At this rate, the 20+ list of champions that need a VGU, you'll never get around to reworking them all before League buckles under all the new champions. And by then, you'll have champions that are considered old and outdated who need to be updated as well. It's like the MOBA Ponzi scheme.
This post is shaping up to be a ramble, but I hope you reader are getting my point. I hate seeing Riot put off things. They are content to release new champions and introduce arbitrary nonsense like elemental drakes and plants that don't fix the problems they set out to whilst also dumbing down the game and make it even more RNG, but not getting done the growing list of VGUs that are ruining class updates because Riot claims they are too afraid to touch problem champions but instead try and 'fix' perfectly fine ones that could just deal with some number tweaks. I hate seeing, especially now, that Riot will give a hidden net buff to ADs but buff MR itemization and hurt health stackers like Mundo and Tahm, and DPS and burst mages alike. You realize how shit Teemo will be after Adaptive Helm comes out? Good luck to that fucker trying to lane against any competent tanky target in the top lane. Even worse, we're going to partisanize tank itemization that makes it even harder for them to stack health and get both of each resistance, whilst ADs can run around getting the best of both worlds from crit and armor pen, when the two should be by nature antithetical, and round up AD items even after AP itemization has lost huge numbers of AP over the years.
Riot, I love you, but you move to slow. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, League is going to buckle and snap beneath this huge pile-up you've built over the years. One of the main things you need to stop doing is turning everything into some big event. Aside from a few mini-updates to champs like Shyvana all meaningful changes to the game are crammed into class updates and preseasons. We have all these huge clusterfucks of changes all guaranteed to completely remake the meta all crammed up with each other, with limited to none community feedback! You need to start being more dynamic with your changes - if you have a new item idea, put in on the PBE whenever the hell you want, not solely at the end of the year. And then be 100% prepared to scrap it if it is legitimately bad. ALLOW champion mains to weigh in on reworks and VGUs, not just one or two from within Riot HQ. This prevents disasters like the Juggernaut update. Stop making new champions. We have enough and they turn out to either be massively overtuned monstrosities or drop off the face of the earth. Update champions and be open with the community - stop with this whole culture of everything involved in a rework has to be a secret. If someday along the line you feel the need to rework Tahm, I'd be much happier if I was allowed to be a part of the process and much more excited when I see it go live than if you ship me a shiny new Tahm that betrays his original identity, and then expected to smile and thank you for it, like Galio mains were forced to. When the community hates changes, don't put them through. We play your game. We generally know if something will be problematic or not.
This probably came out as complete confrontational gibberish, but it's how I feel.
TL;DR The way Riot balances this game is too slow. The most necessary changes are often tided over for 'later'; 'later' is either never reached or too far away to be feasible. Soon this game will buckle under too many new champions and too few VGUs, and the already tenuous balance we have between the old and the new will soon shatter. Riot needs to pick up their game and establish clear parameters and be more open and collaborative when it comes to balancing their game.
