After 5 years of League, I am calling it quits at the end of the season.

Make no mistake about it, when I say quit, I mean I'm not going to play much anymore aside from the occasional normal game and arams. I also realize that regardless of whether I continue to play or not, Riot doesn't really care and they'll continue to make their money. I am replaceable and irrelevant, I am not trying to suggest I am anything other than that. However, as I have spent quite a bit of my time - which isn't easy to come by - and hard earned money on this game for 5 years, I feel that the least Riot can do is hear me out.

I do not have fun playing league of legends anymore. In fact, this has been the most unfun season I've ever had and that's keeping in mind some of the ridiculous fuckery we've seen in various seasons like the cinderhulk/thornmail tank meta of s5, the ADC meta of s6, the constant top lane mage meta top lanes where the likes of Vlad, Ryze, Cass, Lulu and Lissandra invalidate melees entirely and force them out of the game. I realized that those metas wouldn't last forever and I wasn't obligated to play through them rigorously because they'd change and that's exactly what happened.

My complaints of the game have less to do with balance. I realize there's quite a bit of ADC hate at the moment but that's not new. Truthfully, I find that the balance outside of ADCs spiking a bit too early is fairly good minus a few classes - but that doesn't matter because even if balance wasn't good, it's always subject to change and you can quickly see annoying metas squashed with PBE updates and eventual patch changes. Long story short, riot is pretty transparent about their efforts and attempts to balance the game as well as be open about those changes. I respect that, I always have. It's one of the few things that's kept me around this long because frankly, I've been considering quitting for quite some time. But I have hope that's riot will adjust the current lackluster game.

What I hate right now is very simple: games snowball too hard and end too quickly. Very rarely do I feel like I've had an opportunity to engage in riveting gameplay. If I play fighters, i split push and either my team understands how to play this way or they don't. If I play tanks, I rely on my team to follow up on plays, play around my zone control and not waste my deaths. I have very little ability to carry games because of how quickly gold stacks up for teams. This isn't exclusive to any class, no class allows someone to solo carry and I suppose that's fine but the fact that the games end so quickly now without me contributing much frustrates the hell out of me.

I don't get to expand upon my potential win conditions, those are decided in the first ten minutes. Regardless of how well I perform unless I just flat out feed my ass off, I'm going to do the same thing and I'll do it with the understanding that I won't really have a true moment to feel like "I'm playing the game" because it feels more like simply going through the motions. Lane phase ends so quickly, one teamfight 25 minutes in likely ends the game. Dragons and Rift Harold are laughable easy to kill. Baron and Elder are laughably easy to kill. Towers do no damage and die to paper balls. The interaction between damage and durability go hand-in-hand to ungodly levels of snowball. When you're ahead, you melt everything and die to nothing and wen you're behind, you do no damage and die to paper cuts. I feel like the skill required to function in this game has been removed.

As a long time DooM 2 player from the early 2000s, I'll make a doom reference: I feel like the game went from skill level of Nightmare! to I'm too young to die. I feel like instead of sweeping through the map carefully and dealing with respawning monsters, strong monsters galore like Revs, Archvilles and Mancubi, I'm constantly killing pistol zombies and simply pressing exit. There is no gameplay, it's been so watered down by its extreme pace that many of the finer nuances of the game feel lost. Coming back feels impossible, teamfights end too quickly, CC is out of control, as is damage. Creep block makes playing melees miserable and all of this is occurring with the foresight of understanding that the biggest and most fundamental change to ever occur will take place next season with rune/mastery changes.

My response? No thanks, enough is enough. My time has always been limited but if I truly enjoy something like I did with League for so long, I will make time for it even if it means I lose out on significant amounts of sleep. I value my hobbies and my family understands this and encourages me to do it. But I don't value the current game and the fact that there's no self examination or evaluation openly taking place about the current game pace and he laughably easy amount of effort it takes to kill everything and snowball with games commonly ending by 25 minutes and instead a discussion about adding more broken runes/masteries to the game rather than addressing the former and adding another element of gameplay that further fucks balance and gameplay, I've had enough. This is where I get off. The game isn't enjoyable.

And it's going in a direction that isn't addressing what I find to be massive issues currently when Riot is a billion dollar organization with virtual limitless resources in the gaming world - in other words, there's no excuse for some of the things being as bad as they are as you either allowed it to happen before it got to a point of no return or you simply aren't making the effort required to fix it now.

I am finishing out the season because in my youth, I had a horrible tendency to procrastinate and leave things unfinished. In recent years, I've gone away from that and I finish everything I start. I intend to do that with this season but I do it with the knowledge that while I may quit, I'm not going to do so without at least getting these frustrations off my chest. But this isn't my only complaint, I have one more.

I hate the current rank system that rewards players for playing thousands of games, making it virtually impossible to really demote. This cut off is right at my elo, right around diamond 5 (where I belong) and it makes my elo/rank bracket the most toxic and unfun experience because these terrible players can play 3000 games a season, climb this high with a 47-48% winrate and lose 20-30 games in d5 before even being demoted and all they need to do is win 5 games to get right back. You should honestly be demoted an entire league when you demote from a tier - I.E if you demote from diamond 5 to play, you should fucking demote to plat 5 where your terrible ass belongs because nobody should lose twenty games in a row in an elo where they belong, EVER.

Once again, I realize I'm unimportant in the long run. I understand I'm a spoke on a wheel that will keep turning regardless of whether I remain or not. But I love this game, at least I loved it and it sucks so bad that I simply don't find it enjoyable anymore. I'd rather speak about how I feel and say my piece than silently fade off unsatisified.

Tl;dr there are so many problems with this game right now from game pace issues to creep block that need to be addressed first instead of going to an even more complicated rune/masteries system that will likely take all of next season to balance, further putting off issues that need to be addressed now. And your ranking system fucking sucks.