Agency, and the Carrying problem.

I'm going to start off by saying this may be somewhat controversial to some, but here's a few thoughts on the state of the game and why it's so hard to fix.

Solocarrying is the antithesis of all players having equal agency. In a game where all players have equal agency, one player that's worse than the other players will naturally be the deciding factor. But by default, true fairness in terms of agency, is incompatible with League of Legends. And MOBAs as a genre.

League of Legends, and as far as I'm aware, All MOBAs, are by design, imbalanced games. They have to be. If they're truly balanced, and all players have equal agency, many players will have a lot less fun. Because one player will drag down an entire team.

Riot wants all players to have equal agency, because any one role getting dumpstered and having little sucks pretty bad for any players that get it. Which is why autofill was invented, support had such a long stigma of being the dumpster fire, that even when it's strong and there's fun and unique options for support, many players don't want to play it.

But as Riot recently realized, much of the playerbase does not actually want fairness or equal agency. They just want to have more agency than the other players. And all metas in games spawn from an inequality in agency.

The Duskblade meta was an item giving too much agency to assassins. Deathfire Grasp/Feral Flare/Devourer/Rageblade are other examples of items that heavily skew(ed) player agency. Assassin jungler meta was because specific assassins had too much agency. Skirmisher junglers are meta again because they have more agency than assassin junglers now. The Botlane meta is a case of players conditionally having more agency than other players.

TLDR: Agency fairness and carrying are mutually exclusive.