I haven't played League in quite a while, and now I'm bored and want something to play. The things that made me quit were the stale meta, lazy champ designs that promote power creep and edge out old champions, and bad balancing. The game just stopped being fun. Has anything changed?
Nope.
This season we had:
Champs like Quinn and Graves being the #1 pick in 3 different positions
A system where a 5 man premade can play 5 solo players that was deemed fair.
People being boosted to divisions they don't deserve to be in and getting away with it.
SKT Telecom players being matched with Diamond level players
Champs like Ekko and Yasuo who can basically play any role and win as they have enough options and abilities for 2 seperate champs
A decrease in how long it takes to level 30. This meant more inexperienced noobs and players who got lucky placements.
A high damage meta where tanks are useless and people like Quinn can hit you for 1200 HP 10 mins in.
It's been about as bad as it can get.
Well in terms of the meta, actual gameplay, itemization and objective priority, it's quite a bit different. Toxicity is heavily monitered now with people losing accounts left and right, I'd argue there is much less toxicity than S3. I hardly have intentional feeders or trolls. Dynamic queue has dumbed new players down, allowing them to play only two roles, mainly one instead of needing all 5 prior to it. People play a lot more for kills due to getting an S and getting that flashy mastery emote. Snowballing is a bit more rampant now, and building tanky trumps any other build no matter what character.
In terms of new champs and balancing, it's questionable sometimes. I'd say they're trying to shift from creating front-loaded power champs that are always heavily broken on release due to how imposing their kit is against an inexperienced populace (Think release Ekko or Rek'Sai). They're now trying to create unique, but more balanced champs on release due to the anger of the cash grab of OP release champs. These champs are ones like Bard, Ivern, Aurelion Sol, Kled. There is the fact, though, that their kits just completely out-design older champs. A champion like Warwick or Master Yi have shit-boring kits compared to someone really unique like Kled or Ivern. However, these older kits tend to have a lot of front loaded power to roughly balance it all out, think Annie and her WTF combo.
They're also slowly revamping the old champs. Whether it's full reworks like Poppy or Taric, or QoL changes like Annie (Tibbers) and Vel'Koz, they're modernizing what they can. These class updates are really helping the game. Juggernaut revitalized big bruisers, ADCs brought back trashed marksmen, mage update did wonders, and I'm sure the assassin update will be great too.
Overall, for a veteran, the game is falling. For the new player, it's getting better.
I think it's much better!
It's been good aside from dynamic queue. But in diamond+ it doesn't exist so that's nice and all my quips are solved. ⊙ω⊙
For better or worse, yes. will it get better? yes. Is there still toxicity? yes i recommend watching a few youtubers Brofreshco, Phylol, Redmercy or Anklespankin before jumping back into the game.
