My Goodbye Rant about why Im so glad to leave this game.

Hey all, im going to write kind of a small story here. mostly a good bye of sorts, but its a good thing, because im happy.

I started playing this game in early 2012, when i was finishing up high school. My friends had been bothering me for years to start playing and every time i watched a video of them or even saw them in person playing League Of Legends, I would laugh, call them %%%s or nerds or some shit like that, and move on. It wasnt until a few years of this had passed and I decided, what the hell, ill give it ONE game. just because my best friends plays it and my brother plays it, it could be cool to go on Skype and call and play with them.

So began the decent into hell.

Now, i was well aware at the time that this game was revered, but it was also becoming a popular meme that the League community was "cancer" or "toxic".

First off, let me say this. I fucking hate this word so much. I dont care what you think a word means, toxic has one definition, it has nothing to due with games behavior. Every time I try to argue this point i get some smart ass who starts saying O well its just because ENGLISH is EVOLVING man, u just gotta roll with it i guess. Its a word now and the entire community already uses it so its too late man, its a word, definitely.

No, you are a fucking idiot. If you really believe thats how English "evolves" then you are a sheep. This word is a metaphor, so it works different, because people take the word Toxic and put it into a sentence as an actual adjective. Like my mom always said, its like taking the word SICK and using it as an alternative for the word AWESOME. Thats 2 entirely different meanings, and only uneducated failures of the English language use the word SICK as an Alternative for the word AWESOME.

Anyways, i apologize for the digression. Lets get back on track here... I was saying that at the time I started playing this game it was starting to become a popular meme that this game's community was "toxic" At the time, i didnt hate the word as much as i did now, mostly because i thought it would most likely blow over because i assumed our community as a whole would be too smart to adopt a dumb word like that. Well, apparently Riot had other plans. They hopped right onto the bandwagon and insisted that people start behaving more appropriately and less "Toxic" They took right to gearing this word into a herd of children and uneducated young adults as a word they can now theoretically say they "created" or "keyed the term for"

Now a word on bans. For those of you who were here since the very beginning, im sure a few of you either heard or lost an account to a permanent ban. I had heard lots of friends who had supposedly played for a while and then suddenly one day BOOM... PERMA BANNED! But I guess this was the norm back at this time. Perma bans were issued for every small offence because the tribunal was broken. Obviously over time this was fixed and gradually came out of its hovel.

Then one day it happened. The "Reformed" Ban system.

O great. Thats just what i want to see when i login to League. a new "improved" way to ban players.

This ingenious creation was designed to help automate the weak process of banning that currently existed. However, from my observations, thats not what happened.

Pre-Game loading screens began to update you with percentages that were, well, seemingly.... made up.

• Did YOU know that players who behave in a rude manner lose 37% more games? Then, the game directly after that...
• Players who insult their teammates lose 69% more games WTF. Riot please. We get it. "toxic" players are the cause for lost games. APPEARANTLY
• 28% of players have been punished by the Tribunal since #GivenDate. 90% of these players improve in behaviour after ONE punishment. Pfff HAHAHAHA YEA FUCKING RIGHT. LOL. Riot thanks for the laughs honestly, but you kind of overkilled it. Within a few months, this Shit started happening in pre-game loading screens.
• Riot Games has punished #GivenNumber of players since #GivenDate. Whoop-Dee-Doo. Im going to address this one directly to you now, Riot. Theres several functions which "improve" players behavior. a permanent ban is not one of them.

First off we have the beloved Chat restriction. This forced game function comes into play when people on the other team have their feelings hurt because they** cant find a mute function**. Seriously, chat restrictions were the worst idea to ever come into play in this game. I had several over the course of 2-3 seasons just because I used to play with my one friend who had tourettes a lot. He was generally a nice player, and a skilled one at that, but on occasion he would type something into the chat like this... (Yes, this really happened once) Fidds ult Misses completely Well thats just fucked. That shouldve hit but ok. I hate how they keep changing this champ >Other team player: Yeah, well it didnt. youre just bad at fiddles. He has a free flash with his ult, shouldve been easy to hit RETARD LOL.

My friend retaliated, slightly. I was sitting right beside him at the time and i was like idk what hes talking about and he replied, yea idk. But unfortunately, he did retaliate, slightly. For lack of a better word, this is what he said... >Dude, im not a retard. You are. If you think im a bad fiddles you can 1v1 me if you like, ill show you how to play Fiddles.

Now, keeping in mind my friend was playing fiddles, if you think he was the "toxic" one here, you again, are the retard. He started by explaining to the enemy team that he was a tad flustered about missing. Mind you, this guy could go 20/0 on fiddles on a laptop with a max framerate of 10FPS and he was actually laughing this one off like WOW that was LUCKY.

The enemy player, who i believe was a veigar, had retaliated and began instigating this incident because Fiddles was apparently "retarded" for missing.

Directly after this game had finished, my friend was notified with a chat restriction. This was the first game he had played in over a month. I know because it was exams week and we were both very busy that week. We always played together. That was the first time it had ever happened.

Lets take a small break here. So far we have recapped my hatred for the word Toxic, the hilariousness at Riots attempt to make people believe that Toxicity is the cause of games lost, the punishments of perma bans and then the later refined chat restrictions. The only positive thing i can say that happened here, is shortly after I began to play, the ban system was also refined. Players were no longer perma banned on their first "offence" and were instead turned to something else. All for something that couldve been fixed with a simple mute on the offended players side.

Something that because of sheer numbers or a full premade for the player offended, could be abused into recieving 5 reports for essentially talking back to the guy who was doing nothing wrong. I cannot tell u how many times we had tested this out. We would play an entire game with no chat whatsoever. Fiddles, being his main, would usually stomp out the competition and i would follow along. Neither of us saying nothing the entire team. Of course, you have the occasional infuriated kid who rage types faster and harder than anything youve ever seen because FIDDLES IS HACKING.

There were lots of these games, and i can assure you, Fiddles was not hacking. But sure enough, he would get punishments because of kids who got upset and reported him time after time. Eventually it started happening to me as well. Some days i would defend him, just because maybe it would seem better coming from a "non biased" source. I thought wrong.

I ended up getting chat restrictions and even a 1 week ban once for standing up for my friend, saying nothing offensive, but simply stating that he was not "retarded" or "fucked" or "noob" or whatever came from the other teams chat because they lost to a high level player.

Now comes the time im done highschool. I have a job, I end up buying some RP, and life goes on. Chat restrictions are pretty much permanently in effect on both me and my friend for over 2 years. honestly I could care less.

Then one day my brother comes in and says hello to me, and asks me if I heard about the news from Riot. Of course, i reply What? because i havent, and him being the avid ranked player and fan of "eSports" (Dont even get me started on that JOKE) he informs me of the following...

> On November 8, 2013 Riot Games announced that the company would relocate to a new building in West Los Angeles in 2015. On December 16 2015, Riot Games sold its remaining equity to Tencent Holdings. On March 8, 2016, Riot announced its acquisition of Radiant Entertainment. Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games

Great, an external company now owns 51% or whatever of Riot games. So the game ive come to love is now owned by some Chinese fuckers most likely.

Riot games claims that nothing has changed, but its obviously a lie. Little things start to change over time. Bans become more frequent, Skins are released constantly, champions have little to no effort put into their design or kit or lore even and are pumped out in an effort to keep people putting their money in. Im not saying all the released champions have been a failure, because i like quite a few of them, but i am saying there were areas that the amount of work put forth was obviously MUCH higher than it was for other champions Cough, Cough, KALISTA Cough, Cough, REKSAI Mind you, at some point in this era of sorts, i was highly enthralled to be part of this game. The Ekko comic and storyline had me almost in tears because it was so beautiful and so elegant and i was only disapointed when i saw how overpowered he was.

Heres something else i bet nobody has noticed or, perhaps they just PRETEND they dont notice. Champions on release are ALWAYS broken. In my entire time ever playing this game, I think the ONLY champion to recieve a BUFF from his time in PBE to release was BARD because he was just so weak. It started becoming routine that 2 weeks after a champion was released, they would get a nerf because one of their abilities had incredibly high scaling, or the cost was too low, or the damage was too high, etc. This started becoming clockwork. Champion after champion released, only to be nerfed within 2 weeks time because they are OP.

Let me ask something. What the HELL is the point of the PBE if you cant see that during that time the Champion is OP on PBE, why not fix it and then release it?

I would be giving a specific example here, but unfortunately, i cannot be bothered to research the past 20 champions patch notes from release to current, but lets just summarize what happened.

I remember champ that, upon release, had an scaling ratio of something incredibly high. So high with such a low CD and cost it was just retarded. Now i know Riot likes to give new champions a little bit of an unfair advantage on purpose upon release, (They will try to tell you they dont do this on purpose, but it definately is, and heres why) but having a bit of 'compensation' for a champions damage throughput to make up for the player not knowing their kit or standardized build well enough, is NOT a good way to 'balance' a champion. The second reason why Riot does this, is because it helps generate revenue for players with money who cant wait. Someone wants the new champ right away so they can "OWN THE COMPETITION" with the new PURPOSELY broken champion, doesnt have the IP, of course they buy it. 2 weeks pass. Pretty much everyone has already had enough time for a paycheck and enough time to buy the new champ, it goes down in price. Meanwhile the rest of us players are here still trying to get into a game without someone autolocking the brand new champ and loving the false image they get in their head they are so good at this game.

Ive been typing this for over an hour, and I just want to clarify one more thing, because this last part just hurts me to think about.

Earlier last year, my Fiddles friend died in a car crash. I was left his laptop for purposes to originally hide it and take everything off of it incase anyone had found it. I respected his decisions and formatted it completely, and destroyed it later, but not before i took his league account. Earlier this year, i recieved my first ever 2 week ban. It was the longest 2 weeks of my life. Shortly after, i was perma banned. I began playing on my friends account, even bought a name change so i could perhaps live under the name I had always wanted, but appearantly was not available when i started, but WAS available after my main got banned. I purchased a name change, and was ecstatic to play with my main IGN for online games. Today, I was banned, again.

But its okay. Im older now and i realize that this game honestly was never focused on the players. The amount of effort they put into pumping out champs and skins was nowhere near the amount of effort they made into balancing out bugs, champions, kits, even gamemodes or features that players wanted and beg for.

See here for example

Now, as a guy who has never been banned from any game EVER (well until now of course) I can honestly say, Riot, you tried to fix your community. You really did and i see that. But whatever you did, obviously STILL isnt working. I hope that perhaps you will truly one day have a decent community of people who arent offended so easily, and are perhaps able to use the mute function with ease. I hope that all champs will cost the same as the obviously should. I hope that each game for players is fun because a champion is not incredibly broken (pls nerf Viegers stun) I hope the best for you, and i hope youre happy. Because I am not.

--Retired player.