After four years of league, I got banned. And I this is my reflection on the past few months.

Craft Zeppelin·Apr 3, 2018·30 votes·2,837 views

It has been fast. 4 years of playing this game. 4 whole years of enjoyment. But, something I cannot keep noticing is that, almost in every ranked game. More than 2 people are in terrible anguish. As I am a person who is totally blunt at pointing out problems, and want them solved asap, so we do not fail as a team, this was just too much for me.

As an reflection to this. I simply cannot get why I'm even losing, or winning these days. And those "trolls"? I do not even know if they are just having bad luck or legitimately fooling around in rank. This game has become way too snowbally to make this judgement even positive. I'm just so confused. As a result, I was literally pointing things out in every single game. Maybe it is unwise to judge people in 8 mins of the game when they become like 0/4/0 anymore.

I will make a new account. Only to play normals and ARAM and that invite from my chaps in flex que I guess. Winning and losing in this game and being serious on forever, is just giving me headaches. It is just not for me anymore. The past season, were very clear on who is bad and who is not. And it was easy to fix problems. Now the problems spread like wildfire, and cannot be put out.

60 Comments

SirPurrrApr 3, 20188 votes

I remember when people used to say "we can win, just need one good teamfight" like 2 years ago. I rarely hear that anymore. People give up way too easily.

Craft ZeppelinApr 3, 20187 votes

Like I want to win. But now, I do not even know what is going on. It seems I pushed it too far the boundaries, and became unhinged.

Sigh, I know I deserve the ban, but I was hardly mad at the personalities of the people I flamed at. If you get my meaning here, I at my last stage was at a point where i cannot see the difference of a troll or a person doing bad.

Is it because I'm mad of the outcome? Or is it because snowballing refuses a person to play well?

I'm just damn confused. I should have stopped.

AsterfixApr 3, 20186 votes

[{quoted}](name=Craft Zeppelin,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=N96dTZdN,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2018-04-03T06:24:25.157+0000)

Like I want to win. But now, I do not even know what is going on. It seems I pushed it too far the boundaries, and became unhinged.

Sigh, I know I deserve the ban, but I was hardly mad at the personalities of the people I flamed at. If you get my meaning here, I at my last stage was at a point where i cannot see the difference of a troll or a person doing bad.

Is it because I'm mad of the outcome? Or is it because snowballing refuses a person to play well?

I'm just damn confused. I should have stopped.

I get it. You tell somebody what they need to do / work on to improve or help win the game and they staunchly refuse. They or the team dies because of their choice so you reaffirm through their own failure and they still refuse. That's all you can do and after you're out of options you get angry. It's like being a teacher in stoner central.

Craft ZeppelinApr 3, 20186 votes

...I swear quite a lot of my "offences" come from this item. Seriously. item 3123

My last game I got banned? I had a bard who left botlane that fed their brand and just threw it by going attack speed bard. Did I over react? yes. But this should not be the norm. And it is becoming the norm.

Feed kills and give up make a irreversable mistake to prove you do not want to participate anymore. There

tobequitefrankApr 3, 20182 votes

youre right honestly lol

tobequitefrankApr 3, 20182 votes

lmao this guys hilarious. "became unhinged" no worries champ this game will do that to you

TheSingularityApr 3, 20189 votes

Winning wasn't a mentally agonizing chore 2 years ago, it was simply boring and games were never practically over within 5 minutes unless someone was running it down mid.

And I think the longer you play, the less you care about comebacks, even in ranked. When you start, and you first fall in love with the game, like me at the end of 2012, you want to pull off those EPIC COMEBACKS! THE SWEET BACK DOORS! THE SOLO CARRY! THE 4V5 VICTORY! For me, I was obsessed with kog maw, and despite me building him retardedly: beserker's and 5 blood thirster's, it still freakin worked and I felt like a GOD! I'd endlessly back door and if they came to kill me, it would always be a 1:1 trade minimal thanks to my passive. That's if they could eat through 100% lifesteal and 400 bonus AD.

Then it was nautilus, and I derived so much satisfaction from defending my team mates and getting them fed. My KDA may have had fk all K's, but that A counter was through the roof and my ADC/APC's D counter was negligible. Hell occasionally (very very occasionally) I'd get people who recognized my name and pick because I was the dude who got them fed AF and indirectly solo carried them, that and absolutely NO ONE PLAYED NAUT! in that elo haha

That feeling, is kind of like a non-addictive drug, it gets weaker and weaker the more you use the same dose, but there's no way to increase it. And now, there's no thrill, there's no tension because when you've played this long, even at a basic level you can see defeat a mile away and you know full well when the probability of a comeback is essentially zero. Like a sixth sense almost, some of the signs are blatantly obvious like deaths, CS, communication and grouping while others are more covert, like the way your jungler routes (displaying a lack of knowledge) and the way your laners interact with the enemy. Chances are a veteran can tell who's going to win before the 3 minute mark even without a troll.

Now with games that only last longer than 15 minutes because the surrender vote needs all 5 and players don't know how/don't want to close out games, it's any wonder they give up. An expectation of impossible to come back games has been welded into the brains of the newer "generation" of league players while veterans are simply sick of it and can't be fked wasting brain capacity on a lost game

Craft ZeppelinApr 3, 20185 votes

Back before I got employed, I was the worlds 7th place mastery on Malzahar. Now I cannot even bother playing mid at all. They just deprived me of all the fun.

And now since I cannot enjoy the game, what are the remaining fruits? "Victory?" Even if I win. it is because some "troll" inted or got "snowballed". Not because I was skilled. It is not logic anymore in my eyes.

Risen29Apr 4, 20182 votes

I know what you mean. In HotS I played at a high MMR and I could tell in the first two minutes who was going to win just by the way players moved and engaged. HotS matchmaking was really bad in order to lower queue times. You could tell just by how players moved that you got a couple newbs on your team but the other team didnt, so you're going to lose because you can't hard solo carry in HotS.

ADepressedLeonaApr 4, 20182 votes

I've been playing since S1, eight whole years and for the most part, I enjoyed it. It wasn't around till s5 to 6 that it started to mentally exhaust me to play even one game

I started to get cynical, wanting to give up at the first sign of trouble because I knew trying to win was just gonna be exhausting

On top of that, you have the trolls and the leavers who always plague ranked, which made the game that much more frustrating, but I kept playing

S8 has been my least played season to date, I have yet to touch the game since February. After taking a few weeks hiatus, I decided I'd try and do my placements. I pick support Nami with Cait and our mid Yasuo goes 1-6 and leaves the game in my first placement

I stepped back and came to the conclusion that I just don't have another season of this in me. There are a ton of other games that are really fun and relaxing to play

Maybe I'll revisit League in the future, but for now, I'm just done. The game just isn't fun for me anymore, it's a chore.

TheSingularityApr 4, 20182 votes

There are a ton of other games that are really fun and relaxing to play

There really is, league DOMINATED! my time and now my library has grown exponentially. Love chillin for a game of civ, HELL! bloodborne and dark souls 1/3 are more chillax than league.

If you're in seek of somethen different doe, Hollow knight, binding of isaac rebirth and ori and the blind forest are glorious indie games that I.. impatiently waited for to say the least. Binding of isaac has been just as good a time sink as league, only without all the negatives.

KlydeFrogApr 4, 20181 votes

No what's worse is boosters lol. It's why they soft reset every season instead of hard resetting. Boosters are a issue in higher ranks , imagine playing in diamond only to have someone that's bronze level on your team

Flawless FetusApr 3, 20183 votes

Tbf, 2 years ago if your team was way behind you could still get a good team fight. Not so much nowadays, unless your comp flat out counters theirs.

FlameadoDeKoorvoApr 4, 20181 votes

{quoted}

I remember when people used to say "we can win, just need one good teamfight" like 2 years ago. I rarely hear that anymore. People give up way too easily.

Becasue if your team is behind, the next TF ll be a 2 seconds inpass of pain until enemy team gets an ACE or 1 of you survive cause being at the backlane and just run.

AsterfixApr 3, 20187 votes

I don't understand how everyone has this "snowbally" conception a lot of my games last until almost everybody has full build or at least started the last item and it comes down to a single decision in a teamfight between a damage dealer and their banana peeler. In my elo the peeler just runs away from the ADC just to cc somebody havin' a laugh in the brush up ahead while the enemy assassin man-handles the adc. We don't have enough damage to win the fight and boom. Gameover.

Craft ZeppelinApr 3, 20188 votes

Maybe it is my mistake. But by making this game "casual", it is becoming less and less forgiving.

And since in my mind, I thought this game allows "forgiveness" in terms of optimizing builds, changing macro play I thought i could even forcibly push it to the win.

But no. It is not anymore apparently, and everyone knew it aside me.

HelmightApr 4, 20181 votes

Forgive me, but wouldn't a game become LESS casual if it didn't have as much forgiveness?

I mean, I gotta think that a "casual" game would allow for plenty of opportunities to do things over, fix your mistakes, and move on with nary a problem. A "hardcore" game, conversely, would force you to do things right the first time or irrevocably destroy you (a la Dark Souls). The former is certainly more forgiving for an audience with less time to commit to learning the game, no? 'Least, that's how I figure it.

ampheonApr 4, 20181 votes

Perhaps he meant in an attempt to make the game more casual

Craft ZeppelinApr 4, 20181 votes

The casualty caused by this casualness, was that it removed options or expression of strategy when it comes to making a comeback that does NOT involve a high scaling champion.

Everyone knew this, while I did not. And it just reduced to hard core flaming from my part because i thought it was illogical for such a thing to happen. It did.

FlameadoDeKoorvoApr 4, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=Craft Zeppelin,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=N96dTZdN,comment-id=00010000000100000000,timestamp=2018-04-04T09:14:32.450+0000)

The casualty caused by this casualness, was that it removed options or expression of strategy when it comes to making a comeback that does NOT involve a high scaling champion.

Everyone knew this, while I did not. And it just reduced to hard core flaming from my part because i thought it was illogical for such a thing to happen. It did.

Gosthcrawler did it, it's a game desing issue nothing else.

He ruined WoW PvP and he'll do the same here.

HelmightApr 4, 20181 votes

I mean, I still feel as though you have plenty of options for coming back when behind (splitpush, find a pick, force/sneak objectives, wait for a mistake, etc.), but they're almost all composition-dependent. If you're getting teams where everyone is a pure damage dealer, it pretty greatly reduces what you can do beyond hoping you snowball.

Still, I rarely feel as though there's NO strategy I can employ to win a game I'm behind in. I suppose your mileage may vary.

Snowman ArcApr 3, 20181 votes

We are talking about higher elo where people know how to take advantage of a small lead and snowball it. Seeing as you are silver 5, most people there probably just stand around and do nothing, even when they have a huge lead already, or a lead that is enough to take it to a huge lead.

Beast BrawlerApr 3, 20181 votes

I main Mordekaiser top, and I know I'm not that great of a player because I'm only Silver II, but if I kill my laner I can take the outer turret on the first push. Towers are way too weak, which leads to games being shorter and less forgiving for your mistakes. It's not any one thing, but buffing turrets will certainly help the overall health of the game.

CrisisEchoesApr 3, 20185 votes

Its just not as fun as it used to be tbh.

Supreme Senpai69Apr 3, 20184 votes

I just exclusively play normals. I still feel the same way tbh. I would never play ranked because the thought of losing LP due to someone else infuriates me. But it's still very frustrating when you invest 20-40 minutes into a game only to have it be lost by someone else. And I obviously don't mean them having a bad game, I mean trolling or AFK'ing, which is very very common.

Iffy JarlApr 3, 20183 votes

Sorry to hear that happened to you, tbh I don't even feel like games are that snowbally people just like to give up because they think it's too snowbally to come back from. example Jax top dies to Darius uses summoner 12 to try and get the rebound kill, fails meanwhile I'm barely hitting lvl 3 in the jg Jax GG shit jungle time troll

Craft ZeppelinApr 3, 20186 votes

Like yes, I did flame the crap out of people. I know I over did it and I'm sorry for the community. But I have my reasons here. I want to solve problems not spread them. And i do not know how, but it seems solving problems and cooperating for it has become suddenly so hard these days, that it is most of the time cannot be changed.

I failed to notice how hard is it to actually change the outcome of the game, while others did, and it rapidly devolved into meaningless bickering because it is pointless.

Bugger. Even being a critic is hard.

tobequitefrankApr 3, 20182 votes

lol how old are you that you say bugger?

Craft ZeppelinApr 3, 20186 votes

You just need to live in the UK a while laddie.

GripaAviaraApr 3, 20185 votes

People here don't realise some are more prone to outburst. Is not ok, but treating that needs special care and no ban will solve it. When you mix volatile people with busted matchmaking you get toxicity off the charts.

130xApr 3, 20183 votes

[{quoted}](name=Craft Zeppelin,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=N96dTZdN,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-04-03T05:25:58.716+0000)

It has been fast. 4 years of playing this game. 4 whole years of enjoyment. But, something I cannot keep noticing is that, almost in every ranked game. More than 2 people are in terrible anguish. As I am a person who is totally blunt at pointing out problems, and want them solved asap, so we do not fail as a team, this was just too much for me.

As an reflection to this. I simply cannot get why I'm even losing, or winning these days. And those "trolls"? I do not even know if they are just having bad luck or legitimately fooling around in rank. This game has become way too snowbally to make this judgement even positive. I'm just so confused. As a result, I was literally pointing things out in every single game. Maybe it is unwise to judge people in 8 mins of the game when they become like 0/4/0 anymore.

I will make a new account. Only to play normals and ARAM and that invite from my chaps in flex que I guess. Winning and losing in this game and being serious on forever, is just giving me headaches. It is just not for me anymore. The past season, were very clear on who is bad and who is not. And it was easy to fix problems. Now the problems spread like wildfire, and cannot be put out.

Again, this game is NOT SNOWBALLY. I feel the same as you do about not even knowing why a team wins or loses anymore. I can be up 8 kills and twice the cs, then have 2 people take me down, despite dodging all their abilities. Then stay involved in 70% of kills while maintaining cs and sharing kills/ getting every dragon. I will still lose.

What I have noticed is this. The game is now completely dependant on champion base stats. Tank, assasin, fighter, they are all "balanced", in unhealthy ways. Items seem to matter very little now which is why one can't get ahead with gold. So even if you do well with with X champ, Y champ that died 5 times will still be able to kill you when their base stats catch up. Everyone is far too mobile as well, everyone. This makes so anyone anywhere on the map can usually make it to a skirmish, instead of it only being high mobility champs.

Also they are pushing 5v5s by the new instant join, voicechat systems. In this new league, you are so mobile and since no one even needs gold anymore it is 100% about running in a group of 5 as early possible. Teamfight after teamfight after teamfight. So I believe we are also getting grouped against premades vs randoms since usually the enemy is in a cluster with instant yeam response while my random is about 4 seconds behind, myself included.

All of this adds up to tilt. You are "helpless" in todays League, helpless to the matchmaking system more now than ever before. You are helpless in that if you do great and get a big lead you can no longer solid solo carry as in the past. You do not matter, you do not mean anything more than 1/5 maybe less if your champs base stats suck. So you try hard and do well and yet lose, over and over again. Still thinking of how league used to be unable to understand why. "I was at 75% win rate last season, am I really this bad now?" No, you are not. It is just that league has become a dice roll more than ever, they changed so many things without changing core things like matchmaking and the ranked system, which were designed for when you could actually solid solo carry if you outclassed you division.

Basically, league sucks now, bg.

TykennApr 3, 20183 votes

I think since so many people talk about the game being a snowbally meta, it creates a placebo effect so people are giving up sooner than they should.

HugmeharderApr 3, 20183 votes

Its not you, its league thats gone all wrong since the past few years. There's no more fun normals since so many people from before troll, are toxic or just simply go afk intentionally and all that because league has become more competitive which has made the community also salty. I myself play 1 or 2 games everyday compared to the old days when I used to play more than 5 matches when I started the game. league has just lost its touch.

muted team chatApr 3, 20183 votes

I hope you play League better than you use commas in your sentences.

WorstPicnicEver Apr 3, 20182 votes

I feel you.

After years, I've just slowly lost interest in League because I'm beginning to see the "Queue for Game" button as "Get Verbally Harassed for 30 minutes" button.

Branching out and trying other games feels like breathing fresh clean air for the first time after you've spent years living in a swamp.

LoL is without a doubt the worst, most hostile, most hateful community in gaming. And every attempt by Riot to deal with it just teaches people to game the system. The worst decision Riot ever made was to add a "If you're mad at someone else about losing, you can press a button to maybe get them banned". Whatever naive ideology was behind that, the reality is the worst elements of the community feel empowered to further harass and abuse other players through "report!".

After years I finally had the luck to have someone who was SO MAD about losing a ranked game they somehow hacked my account and got my email address tied to it. The account was quickly recovered, but I spent a month getting harassing emails from burner email addresses until I finally went to the police.

It took a month of spamming Riot support to get someone to answer my questions and the only answer I got was "pay $5 if you want us to explain how your account security was compromised."

Nah, Riot, I've stopped caring about the issue. I'll just play a different game, thanks. Contrary to popular belief, there ARE video game companies which listen and care about their customer base.

YaskamasandwichApr 3, 20182 votes

Personally I have been taking more and longer breaks from the game. I am taking normals as seriously as ranked and that is very horribly bad, especially for one's health. I can't but help feel that is just the norm these days, play normals as seriously and try hard as ranked. Had some hard core friends who played the game stop playing. Might join them at some point.

3TWarriorApr 3, 20181 votes

it started with the atrocious season 6. Normals became almost exactly the same as ranked play, even with champion winrates differing by less than 2%

I haven't been around, but by the sounds of things, it only got worse with more and more damage added for free

YaskamasandwichApr 4, 20181 votes

{quoted}

it started with the atrocious season 6. Normals became almost exactly the same as ranked play, even with champion winrates differing by less than 2%

I haven't been around, but by the sounds of things, it only got worse with more and more damage added for free

That be true, I think it was because all the changes. I think mainly the increased rez timers leaving little room for mistakes. Without mistakes one has a hard time learning, and more importantly having fun. Dynamic Que also didn't help along with the Marksmen update upgrades. Which began the whole Marksmen road to supreme godhood.

VvVVvVApr 3, 20182 votes

As for trolls, idk, i mean its pretty easy to tell if someone is trolling in ranked.

Not only by how they are playing but by looking at their match history. If you see someone using a champ in ranked that they have never played at all in any game mode then thats 1 sure sign of trolling. no one that is playing to win will chose a champ they have no experience on.

Pika FoxApr 3, 20182 votes

Eh. Depends. Playing to win is not the same as playing optimally. I can still play to win a game ive never played before. Doesnt mean ill be playing it optimally.

UmbrãApr 4, 20182 votes

Have to agree. You bring up excellent points, assuming I'm interpreting what you are saying correctly. League has become very snowbally, so it rewards people who are reckless and makes the more patient and biding and defensive pay. In-game, people make one mistake, get a little flustered and then can throw a game for the rest of the team. Again, because of how snowbally the game has become, it's very easy to go from 5/1/2 to 6/7/3. And whenever you try to point out something to one of your teammates they just get angry and start flaming you. I feel that it is more of the people coming into the League scene lately that are the problem rather than what people typically blame (that being meta, champs, items, etc.). But, I do think you bring up several understandable thoughts. I do hope that you find your love of League again, even if it is a different form and wish you luck.

EedatApr 3, 20181 votes

Couple of things. People who get banned never are actually just "pointing out people's mistakes". There is always more to the story and usually it turns out they are straight up flaming people and not being constructive at all. Always. Second, you never admit that you messed up and the blame is yours. You just keep trying to divert it away like and play it off like its something out of your hands. You keep trying to rationalize it with excuses. You never admit you did anything wrong. You dont even apologize or even show any remorse. In fact, you try to play it off like its the metagame's fault. Just some things i noticed. Personally I dont really care, but if you honestly want to reform those are some things to think about.

ForFoxSakesApr 3, 20181 votes

So you're getting upset that people arent listening to you, but what's to say that you're the one making the right calls? Why should people follow you if you're making decisions you think are correct but arent, or demanding to be catered to when you may not be the one that needs to be focused on? Looking at your average to terrible KDAs and CS = game experience, I'm not sure I'd want to listen sometimes too

Sylvester DyloneApr 3, 20181 votes

I find it pretty hard to believe that you merely "pointed out problems" and got banned for it.

Chat logs?

Craft ZeppelinApr 4, 20181 votes

The typical flow is like this.

"Please buy executioners calling against swain"
ADC "No i won't."
"We would lose. His healing is insane, only you can apply GV constantly so we can take him down."
ADC "Stop giving orders I do what I wanna."
Loses teamfights row and row with said Swain living all the time.

-Devolves into a civil war.

McsquzzyApr 4, 20181 votes

my only input is this, I found that for me the most tilting thing when i am losing is having to listen to my allies about it. /mute all became my go too in the event i am doing poorly since I really have no ability to focus on what I need to be doing and already am in the wrong mindset to be able to take criticisms or blatant harassment (they are different, one gives how to improve and the other just tells you, you are bad cause this)

IręlíaApr 4, 20181 votes

I have been playing since the beginning of Season 4 and had my account until it got banned late 2017.

Ill admit I was really toxic at that time, but thats what ranked and the other players did to me. It just bottled up and I had to unload on people sometimes.

This game was so fun, but its just getting stressful to play. I really wish I didnt act like that to get banned, had a LOT of cool stuff on that account, but hey, my fault.

I really wish I could go back and do it again, I would.

Craft ZeppelinApr 4, 20181 votes

The honor system sure did its "job". But I fail to see how it solves the root cause.

I'm not quite sure what this root cause is, but it is casting a very negative light upon this game. The so called buzzword "Snowball". Is still yet to be defined what is it, like the damn boogeyman today.

...It "may" not exist, but it is scaring the crap out of players.

Total EclipseApr 4, 20181 votes

Ay, bro, Im jsut saying, this is actually what tencent wants. I want to make a post about it. The more people that go casual, the mroe people that buy skins. Hardcore players that compete for rank dont buy skins. The casuals who play for fun do. Im just saying.

KlydeFrogApr 4, 20181 votes

Well people get butt hurt and will see you as toxic even though riot says it's okay to talk crap