What if they added random water cannons to the outfield in baseball...
Would it still be baseball? No.
When you change the sporting arena you're changing the sport. Plants in the jg... are a different game entirely. It's a different game mode. NOT an addition to summoner's rift.
It's amazing that RIOT seems unwilling to embrace their identity as an esport when developing the game. There's no "minor" leagues or T-Ball (as in practice modes and cs farmers and alternative game modes that focus on warding or team fighting or jungle pathing) but there's plenty of let's screw up the jungle so the games are harder. Plus every time they change the map it doesn't bring about new and interesting objectives but adulterated something that wasn't wrong in the first place. When you have a sport, you can't change the arena... Football shouldn't be played on a baseball field.... tennis can't be done on a soccer field... and basketball isn't played in a swimming pool (unless you're at one of those really fun waterparks...). The arena needs to be static in many ways because otherwise the individual skill levels of the players aren't as important as the arena... which is just completely absurd. Yes, I'm sure it's insanely boring to play the exact same thing over and over and over... oh wait that's any sport and it's not boring. Granted as an eArena, the rift does offer some things that can be tweaked and should be. But adding an entirely new element for the sake of making jungling harder than "clear my camps, ward properly and decide which lane to gank" isn't going in the right direction.
Just completely sad that no one at riot seems to get these things and when they do respond about it... it's so canned... so political and so pointless that there's no way they could possibly be listening.
