Something may be wrong with the game.

I've been paying very close attention to something the past week. I've been taking notes of how every single game I've played went and discovered something very interesting. Before I explain what it is, I'll give a little background and give the result of this disturbing trend.

Near the end of the season I was trying for Gold for the first time. I managed to only make it to Silver 3 before preseason began. Ok fine. I decided to see if I can get to Gold during the preseason. Now, I dicked around a bit trying out shit like Twitch jungle etc. Whatever. Now, I was playing more seriously for many of these games. I've been maining Fiora for a while now and all the games I play on her is where I really try. I fell to Silver 5 eventually. No big deal. I played badly in a lot of games. Now over the last week or so, I made some massive improvements to my laning or it could just be that my MMR fell low enough that I was up against shitters. Probably a combination of both but I learned how to trade better, I wasn't feeding anymore or hard losing my lane except in cases of extreme stompage where the entire enemy team would come top and just dive me. I've also been winning, or at least going even in a lot of the most troublesome lanes a lot more consistently. There was a time I couldn't do any vs Darius, but now I can consistently beat him. Teemo was impossible, I learned to beat him too. Even her hardest counter, Pantheon was somewhat managable now. I made an effort to learn how to play these matchups and It was working very well. I stopped being the reason my teams would lose any game. I was consistently leaving lane either a couple kills up, even but with good CS, or sometimes slightly behind, like going 1-1 but with good CS and maybe losing my tower. I wasn't getting hard stomped in lane anymore.

Now I thought, ok, I'm definately playing a lot better now, I should be able to climb easier now since from memory, I lost a lot of games because of getting hard stomped in lane, mostly by being zoned out of CS by Darius and Teemo etc. I was feeding, rage quitting etc. But I learned how to manage them and even beat them now. I no longer have to resign myself to a loss when I see a Darius or a Teemo on the enemy team. I learned how to deal with them. I stopped feeding in lane. I was playing a lot better all round.

Now here comes the interesting thing. Over last week, I lost every single game I played up until the time of this post. There were wins dotted here and there but I don't really count them since these were games where I could have been afk and still won. Now, I play like 10 games a day which is a lot. So we have about 50 games where I Iost like 45 of them. Note, I'm not counting the ones where I don't play top lane Fiora. When I play other shit, I'm not really trying. Just looking to have a bit of fun playing something different. Anyways, I started paying very close attention to why I lost these games. I noticed that every single one of these games I had a lane that not just fed, but hard fed I mean like really really really feed. 90% of the time it was bot lane. At first, I figured it would happen just as often on the enemy team and if I remained consistent in my own laning, I would help secure the games where the enemy team fed. All I had to do was not be the reason that my teams lose and I would naturally win a lot more games. I could even carry games where my team was slightly behind. But then it happened, game after game after game. I got hard feeders every single game on my team for the whole week. Right now I'm close to being demoted to Bronze 2. Yep, Bronze 2 from all they way up at Silver 3.

Something started gnawing at me. I started to wonder how is it possible that I could get the short end of the stick so many times in a row. I mean it should have happened as much on the enemy team as on my team. But it didn't. What's even more interesting is that it's not just people losing lane like going 0-2 or even 0-4. Every game was someone going like 1-12 by 20 minutes and ALWAYS on my team. I played over 2000 ranked games this season and this is the first time I've ever had this happen to me. Now, I've had lost streaks before and a lot of them but it could be argued that I was the cause of a lot of them. There were games where I fed my ass off or was just completely useless. I even afked a lot of stomps that perhaps could have been won. But this last week, I gave a 100% in every game and didn't feed or even lose lane that often. I even managed to carry a game where everyone on my team fed out of control.

So, what am I getting at here? Well, the thing that gnawed at me was the fact that it feels very very wrong that such games could happen so very often and even more disturbingly, it was always my team. It honestly feels like something happened in the last few patches that broke the game somehow. Every game is just one lane, most often bot lane, just getting out of control, very very early in the game and just running over everything. None of my 2000 ranked games, wins or losses, before preseason was like this. The snowball potential of the game feels way way higher now. I'm not even concerned too much that they are always on my team. Many of these games would have been carriable before but now I'm seeing guys getting two complete items before towers start to fall after being hard fed. I'm seeing open inhibs before 15 minutes. I'm seeing AD carries leaving lane going 7-0 which, if you could believe it, was a lot more rare before preseason. Now, it's like every game. One lane gets a kill and that laner is almost guaranteed to leave lane with 7 or 8 kills. It really is insane. Before preseason it was typical for someone laning against a feeder to leave lane like 4-0, not 7-0 or 9-1.

So, I don't know. What you guys think? Does the game feel any different to any of you?