Games are not getting shorter, they're just progressing more quickly

"But isn't that the exact same thing?"

No, and i'll explain the difference.

TL;DR at the bottom, but I implore you to at least skim this.

If games were simply ending earlier, you'd mostly be seeing early game champions and scaling champions like , , or would be virtually non-existant. What is currently happening is these champions are hitting their powerspikes much earlier than they used to and theres a couple reasons for that.

The first and most obvious reason would items and item cost reductions, some examples would be and getting their costs reduced by 200g, and getting it's cost reduced by 100g, all in patch 7.9 This means carries hit the spike sooner by 300g or sooner by 200g And for champions that build reaver, their 3 item core of spike comes 400g earlier. (factor in magical footwear and it's even more)

Carries are the primary source of dps to objectives in most games, and the sooner they come online the faster the game progresses if they have access to those objectives.

Now, those are just the ADCs, but let's look at other sources of gold that help them get items and how those have accelerated the game:

The elephant in the room here is definitely turret first blood, adding a massive 300g(formerly 400g) dump into those nearby when the tower falls This was introduced into the game in patch 6.15 as a response to the boring as fuck 4v0 tower pushes we were seeing nearly every competetive game a while back making the first 10 minutes or so awfully boring to watch. That's 300g more gold in the game that wasn't there before, and what good teams typically do is they all walk away from the tower so the ADC can soak up all the local gold, netting them about 550(?) gold. But that's not all, Riot ALSO made bot tower squishier than any other tower because it lacks fortification pre-5 minutes, to force teams to play 2v2 bot in competitive instead of lane swapping.

The result? Frequent 4-5 ganks bot lane very early into the game to smash that first tower after possibly getting a double kill because it goes down like nothing. But wait, there's more. Riot ALSO reworked herald to be a nearly guaranteed tower for any team that uses it semi-competently unless severely far behind, BUT WAIT, THERES MORE, in their infinite wisdom, Riot also added the demolish rune to the game, so every tank can do their own rift herald cosplay like they always dreamed of.

All this combined means towers are dying MUCH faster and way earlier than they ever used to on average compared to past seasons. Cheaper items means you get them sooner. First tower gives more snowballing gold to pay for those items. More tools to murder towers means even more gold is being earned sooner and leads to a faster game pace.

is also saving anyone who takes them 350g

Also a minor note, but definitely worth mentioning, the removal of (purchaseable) green wards, as well as the addition of means you're saving a LOT of gold over the course of the game, refillable in particular as this pays for itself after the first back and only costs 3 pots worth of gold which saves you a couple hundred gold you would've spent on potions in past seasons when you also factor in you're going to be selling it back later for 60g, meaning you only ever invested 90 net gold into it.

There's also the fact that runes reforged added a lot more damage into the game overall but that's a complete seperate can of worms for someone else to open up and digest properly.

Honestly just removing first blood tower gold would go a long way on its own, it won't fix league completely but it'd make snowballing not so unstoppable. ######The lack of fortification on bot tower would still force 2v2 botlane pre-5 anyways so i don't see why Riot even needed to add both of them. TL;DR, ADC item cost reductions + first tower gold + towers being made weaker/more tower destroying options makes the game progress much faster, making carries scale faster

I probably missed something but Thanks for reading [sg-jinx]