Things have certainly changed, haven't they?

I'm not going to preface this with some well thought out argument or some foaming at the mouth style rant about who I think the game should be now, I just want to give my personal opinion of the game at the moment. If you want to read, by all means make discussion. If not, I understand why as these kinds of posts seem to be a dime a dozen now and days.

I'm a player from a long time passed. This account wasn't my first, but it has been my longest. I remember when King Rammus was up for a very short time. I remember when dodge chance was a thing. I remember when Jax could dodge the fountain laser. But those days are long, long gone now. League has changed and adapted over the years, some for the better and some for the worse. But that's to be expected from a game that is constantly changing.

If you check my match history, you'll find that I tend to play a few games every two months or so. I almost never play alone, only with friends. But I don't keep up on patches that well even though I visit the Boards pretty frequently, so when I was asked to play today I thought why not. And when I stepped into Summoner's Rift again, I felt like I was a man lost in time. I had made those new rune pages like I was supposed to, I bought the items I had from years before. But I noticed, I don't know. A distinct differences in feeling. It wasn't that I wasn't having fun screwing around with friends, or that I felt the game was bad, it just felt like something had shifted. Team fights seemed much quicker, the laning phases seemed to end faster, people got objectives like the Dragon, Herald, and even Baron earlier. Some mid game pushes were enough to destroy two outer towers and get to inhibitor turrets. My games lasted a while, don't you think they didn't. If there's one thing I have to say, it's that I believe people greatly over-exaggerate on their fifteen minute game stories. But things certainly felt different. Everyone deals more damage now, even the tanks. What I remember from a long time ago was that tanks were designed to be massive and soak up damage while dealing little of their own. But now they seem to deal the same damage that old bruisers used to, but with the same survivability. Maybe it is me remembering things wrong, my mind reaffirming my thoughts to myself. But I honestly feel like things are faster now. Way faster.

Towers barely put up a fight anymore. They crumble at the slightest provocation. And it is even worse now with a rune that allows tanks to chunk a large section of a turret's healthbar away in one attack. So pushes feel a lot easier now, especially when by mid game players that aren't ADC's or mid laners can confidently walk under towers with no fear of reprisals. And while on the topic of the Boards' current target for paddling, let's talk about the attack damage carries. I thought you had to go for one or the other: have really high damage and medium attack speed, or higher attack speed with medium damage. I was an idiot back in the day and used to build multiple Phantom Dancers on Twitch, so every one of my auto attacks crit and I attacked so quickly the animation couldn't complete fully before the next particle released. On a game I had today, Thursday the 16th of November, I watched a new character called Xayah throw a bunch of feathers at me and deal over 1600 damage in the course of about three or four seconds. Now, I will be fair here (as I feel a lot of Boards members are not). I was relatively unarmored, we were behind, she was fed, and I got locked down by a CC spell that kept me in place for her to attack. It also may have just been her character being strong at the moment, I don't know. The fact of the matter is when that happened to me I couldn't help but think, "Well, I just got 0-100'd in less than five seconds and died without putting up any semblance of a fight. That was fun." And like I said, it was probably just those specific circumstances, I won't believe just because it happened to me it happens in every game.

But my friends, who play the game much more actively than I do, seemed to be quite focused on the bottom lane. If we had a game where we were doing poorly, it was always "Oh well if our bottom lane did better" or some variation of such. At first I thought it was just a regular game of League. When a lane is doing poorly, people generally blame said lane for the team's overall suffering. It is a team game, such a thing can be expected. But the bottom lane seems to have taken a much larger focus in recent weeks, and it seems people are placing it as a higher priority than other lanes. Like the idea is as long as this one lane does well, the entire team will be safe. And I know the term "ADC" is just shorthand for attack damage carry, but the carry seems to have the entire team resting squarely on its back at the moment.

I don't know, maybe my mind is just being corrupted by the frankly endless slurry of angry words and resentment that pours from Gameplay and General Discussion on a day to day basis. Maybe my observations are not how things really are, I'm just seeing things that way. But, even if that were the case, here's the important part ladies and gentlemen: I still enjoy the game.

I still enjoy the game. Yeah that has a lot to do with playing with friends who I can shriek at and call "boosted animals" whenever they mess up a play, but that isn't just it. I have to face facts man, games change whether I like them or not. League of Legends is nothing like I remember it. All the faces are there, but so many have taken on new skin and things feel way different. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Things have to evolve in order to survive, that's just how Darwin put it. And maybe League could be in a better spot at the moment. In fact it could probably be in a much better spot at the moment. But it is the preseason, and traditionally things have always been dodgy during the preseasons when Riot is ironing out all the kinks in their new systems.

If you're tired of it all, I understand. If you've been unhappy with the state of the meta for a long time now, and feel the game is on a never ending down spiral into nothingness, I get it. The game can feel stale, upsetting, and downright unfair at times. And when you're clearly suffering and the company who makes the game seems to not care, it eats away at you. But I honestly believe Riot does care, that they do want to make the game better. The old phrase "if it ain't broke don't fix it" argument is one that has a lot of traction, but in a multiplayer only game I feel that change is needed to keep the game alive. I get that change for the sake of change seems to sometimes be a main design philosophy at Riot Games. The game left me burnt out some years ago, and I took an extended break from it. So here is my plea to you: if you're feeling tired and worn down from years of the same game, and you just feel like thing aren't getting better, take break. Go out and try some new games. See what else the medium has to offer. Try out DOTA 2 maybe, see what the opposite side of the coin is like. Try out Heroe-... okay on second thought just DOTA 2. Maybe try out a new shooter, there's a really fun one called Fistful of Frags that's a cowboy shooter complete with whiskey swilling, fistfights, dynamite, and good old six shooter revolvers. The game is free too. My point is, if you aren't enjoying the game then don't force yourself to keep playing it because that just builds resentment. You'll start to feel like the developers don't care and that the game itself is out to get you, and that's dangerous thinking. And for those of you who think you're done for good, I wish you well and hope you find a new game that will make you even happier than League did. But for those of you who stick around, try to have some patience. Waiting is hard I know, but all things get better, you'll see. Bad times are just times that are bad.

And for one of those TLDR's you people love so much on long winded posts: game may feel bad right now, and that everything is changing faster than it is possible to keep up with. But maybe change is good, and if you can try to have some patience with Riot.

Thanks for listening to this long winded post that I feel like nobody will read. I wish you well, and Good morning. And in case I don't see ya, Good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight.