As someone who's spent >$500 and 5 years on this game...
It sure does feel batman that preseason can sweep in and make SR pretty sucktastic.
I played DOTA back on wc3 and I started League about a week or two before Galio. Putsched around in Silver for 2-3 seasons before I realized you had to play a lot of ranked to climb. Got as high as Gold I in season 4 and just haven't cared since. And I've spent money on this game like it's going out of style! SGU and mystery gifting is my weakness.
I remember a lot of massive changes were justified as becoming "levers" to help balance the game/champions better. Yet the balance is worse now than it was pre-lever changes. The compartmentalization of all the "Teams" ("oh that's Champion Update Team", 'i'm part of Champion Team', and "I do Live Champion Champion Team" ) hasn't exactly produced results more than the sum of their parts. It feels like Riot's strategy is "the best decision is the one that can be changed the easiest." Updates and reworks galore for 4+ years and only a handful were in a positive direction.
I've jungled every season and each rehash is more bland than the last. To the constantly evolving aspect, innovation is god, I counterpoint with this.
Every champion has to have five actives, three passives, and X% of your HP is now 1/3 of your total overall AD but your swings are 17% slower when on the left side of the map during Saturdays 6am to 3:30pm (RANGED ONLY). So many strengths and so specific of weaknesses Riot's been backing themselves into item-spewing corner. Make a champion OP? "No worries! We can make 13 more items so everything can all be fair." I like researching builds as much as the next guy but removing 3 powerful items and replacing them with 17 mediocre ones doesn't make the situation better. RIP FON
I never gave a fuck about the league judgements. I'd read them and the JoJ but meh. I also thought the idea of summoners summoning these champions like ice cream flavors for each "league battle" was pretty lame. But I still hated it when they backtracked out of their lore. It felt as cheap as a champion rework and proved just as botched. "We want to be able to tell better, freer stories" has turned into "We don't really tell stories" and it doesn't matter because it always about the gameplay.
Speaking of which, League dumbed down elements from DOTA (denying (RIP Denyplank), GPM, etc) and that made it more fun but it was still a complex RTS(HOTS has dumbed down from League, it's about teamfights and being in lane, abilities are a simpler item system). You had to think on the fly and have at least decent reflexes but now it's who's strong. Bans were away to combat the grotesquely balanced champs but with so many more champions now, even with bans, there's teams worth of unfun, broken ass ninjas. Rift Herald is fucking stupid, Dragon-stacking is dumb (global gold was way more fun), and towers suck.
Lastly, skin favoritism is boinked. Got new 3 skins coming out? Let me guess, is one of them Annie, Jinx, Ashe, Teemo, Katarina, Riven, Twisted Fate, or Morgana? "Well the Skin Team likes to make good skins, so they only make skins for champs they have good ideas for" Goddamn, always the same ones. And chroma packs should have been for champion mastery not more money gouge. No one uses them but it's slightly better than calling Magnificient Twisted Fate a legendary. Should just gave a free skin to those buyers and reduced it's price (I got it off a mystery/rando lol, I never play TF).
TLDR: anybody want my account?