I won't spend another dime on this game.

Over the 5 years I have played league of legends, I have probably spent over 200 dollars on skins. League of Legends is a game I have loved playing. I like being competitive, and have won tournaments and achieved a solo queue rank of Diamond 3 in season 4. I have a problem though, just as many others do that are competitive, I get angry when my team mates are letting me down. Over 5 years, I thought the inconsistency of skill level would be solved and that Riot Games would listen to the community when we complained about things, but I have finally realized I'm talking to a brick wall. Due to my "toxicity" I have been restricted to having to go through 20 minutes of queues, including dodges, just to enter a game in which I have to win the normal draft game in order to make the counter tick down so I can play ranked again. By the time I get through with these matches, I will already have decayed out of diamond. There were skins I was considering buying for this season, but now I will not spend anymore money on Riot games products. I'm sick of corporations trampling on freedom of speech and I'm voting with my dollars.

Freedom of speech is freedom to be offended. Freedom of speech at it's very core means freedom to speak your mind without having to fear consequences from others due to what you said. Although in technical law, our perverted politicians have said that this very principle only applies to government institutions, and does not apply in regards to "hate speech", "racial slurs", or whatever other speech they feel they can make special exceptions for because they have the guns and we don't, at the core the concept of freedom of speech still lives. If you're tired of corporations not respecting your right. If you're tired of them not accepting that you're a human being, that you get angry from time to time and you're going to make mistakes, then do as I am doing and boycott them. There were so many coaches that I had in basketball and football growing up telling me phrases like "pull your head out of your ass" or "don't be a pussy" that I took as constructive criticisms and improved myself for the better. These days, if you say anything close to these phrases people cry, bitch, and report you so that Riot can use the ban hammer on you. I didn't win the championship in my 6th grade basketball travel team because my coach was easy on me. I won because my coach wasn't afraid to scream at us, make us practice extra hard, and pushed us to be competitive. My point is that you can spout all the bullshit you want to try to support your skewed viewpoint that positive reinforcement is the best way to support teamwork, but I have never met any professional athletes that got that way from eating cookies, thinking highly of themselves, and never accepting criticism from their peers.

Lack of respect for freedom is just one of many reasons I will not spend another dime on Riot Games products. I have made several posts begging for ranked queue to be fixed for 5 years and have never gotten a single acknowledgement by a Riot employee about my posts. I'm tired of Riot being hypocrites, trying to sell their game off as a "sport" and demand people show sportsmanship, when they do not show us (their customers) that they can be responsible enough to be in charge of a sport. Let me explain.

Solo queue is a joke. All too often fighting starts amongst players right at champion select. This could all be fixed (as I have been begging it to be fixed for 5 years) just by Riot games acknowledging that there is a meta and allowing players to select a role they want to play before a game starts. When champion select starts, all 5 players have labels next to their name of what position they are going to be playing that game (mid, adc, jungle, top, support). They can then pick their champions just like they do now in normal ranked, except no one has to argue what position they're going to play. What person that plays a professional sport do you know that doubles as a quarterback and a lineman in professional american football? Riot says they want us to be sportsmanlike, and they want us to see League of Legends as a sport, yet they like to force people into playing a position they're not comfortable playing. They force us to play both the quarterback and the lineman. Obviously this is a problem when you have someone at the Diamond, Masters, or Challenger level used to playing a certain position and then they have to switch to something they're not comfortable with. It makes for a bad game for them and their peers that have to put up with them performing poorly at a position they're not comfortable playing. How can we be serious e-athletes if this company disrespects us as customers and forces us to play positions we aren't prepared to play? Again, League of Legends is not a sport. Sports take these kinds of things seriously and that's why I won't spend another dime on this game.

Another thing that is wrong with ranked is that people are allowed to play champions in ranked that they do not have any skill with. This is completely unacceptable and unfair to their team mates, yet Riot Games allows people to enter Diamond level games regardless of how good people are with a champion. This is basically the equivalent of giving someone an uncalibrated gun they have never used before and sending them into a marskman competition. No one knows how poorly or well they will perform. There needs to be a minimum number of games a person has to play with a champion before they are allowed to play that champion in ranked. Again, League of Legends is not a sport. Sports take these kinds of things seriously and that's why I won't spend another dime on this game.

Being good with a champion is not enough though, the last problem is that with the meta. A person needs to be ranked by position and not by what their rank is overall. A person that got to Diamond by playing jungle, for example, is not a Diamond ADC in any respect. There are plenty of players like this that try to switch positions to a new main at a high level and everyone has to suffer because they're learning against experts that are crushing them and making the team suffer. Just from a pure physiological standpoint, muscle memory takes time to train, and people calibrated for playing one position are not going to be good at another position right away. Again, League of Legends is not a sport. Sports take these kinds of things seriously and that's why I won't spend another dime on this game.

Aside from these issues in ranked, how many times have you been playing in a sport league such as basketball and had some kid on your team take the basketball and run out of the gym with it, all while giggling at you and calling you bad names? You probably haven't. You know why? Because in real life that kid would be found and beaten up, then dispelled from the league forever. There are countless times where we have trolls in League of Legends following us around in game, stealing our minions and experience, stealing buffs, and intentionally feeding the enemy team to try to make their team mates lose. What has been done to stop these people? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Again, League of Legends is not a sport. Sports take these kinds of things seriously and that's why I won't spend another dime on this game.

So there you have it Riot Games. Because you don't allow critisim, because you refuse to acknowledge a meta, because you refuse to assign roles in raked, because you let players play positions they are not skilled with in ranked, because you let players play champions they are not skilled with in ranked, and because you do nothing about trolls that don't take ranked seriously, I will not spend another dime on your products. You punish people for the wrong reasons when you have no one to blame for all these "toxicity" problems but yourselves for not holding up to your promises of trying to make League of Legends a sport, and I'm tired of being treated like shit for your failures.