Riot should be held to a much harsher requirement to balance the game

I have serious doubts that any rioter balancing any aspect of this game even plays solo queue, or normals. At all. I really have doubts.

Here's what people wanted in season 8: -Less free damage, in the form of reverting/reworking rune trees to be less impactful -Less snowball, in the form of increasing tower defense, increasing objective risk, lowering jungle presence, lowering objective impact, lowering just about everything jungle actually. -More skill expression in gameplay, derived from bringing back strategic gameplay over bland linear COD/Fortnite facerolling opponents, and from above requests -Itemization changes - fixing items that limit design space, gutting upfront damage that is free and void of condition, and creating items that support situational item variety as well as revamping of abandoned items ( we see you) -Viability of more champions - hitting nerfs where they matter on champions who overshadow other picks, not placebo nerfs that have zero effect, and definitely not skin bias (more on that later) -(insert something here I overlooked)

What we got: Polar fucking opposite Riot has made stat-checking the real strategy of league. Fuck rotation, wave management, and macro based gameplay. If you can 100-0 someone before they can blink, you're doing it right. You're rewarded with a potential 800 gold if you can just out-stat check your opponent. 160 x 5 plates = 800g 800g just for mindlessly facerolling an opponent 550 on first tower blood too Also a giant CS lead Also now you can do what you did to your laner, to everyone else. Champs now get buffed if we know they're getting a skin Itemizing literally can be counted on your fingers. Resistances don't mean shit. Zero variety. Runes have noob traps up and down, left and right, and don't even alleviate blatantly overpowered keystones DURING lane, where they would matter the most. You would like to think that one time you didn't get super stat checked into gray screen, that it was new runes? nah he literally clipped 2 autos, guaranteed. Deathballing is always a preferred play style now. Sieges are too long for LCS - fucking gut it.

If riot actually spent time in solo queue where this happens, they would not only experience GIVING people the stat check dick, but RECEIVING IT, they would have hotfixed this game a year ago rather than blatantly ignore popular opinion, over and over again. They're playing fortnite, or COD, or Overwatch TDM, or any mindless spray n' pray drivel type game and reflecting that nubile FPS angst into their choices on balance

If you don't believe me - look at the rune changes, look at who's strong, look at who carries your games on a regular basis, play those, and connect the dots. Riot can't, won't, shouldn't be bothered to I guess.

People who are saying that data collection is essential to their balance choices, should stop thinking riot gives a shit about actual ingame logistics. They look at spreadsheets of monetary projections over projections of damage charts. They blatantly disregard multiple reputable third party statistic websites just for skin sales, LCS viewers, and advertisement revenue from said LCS vods.