Gameplay / Meta - Why LoL is not as good as in the past anymore.
LoL gameplay and meta game is beeing developed into an unhealthy direction for a long time now. The last state i consider healthy was the period with the so called "tank meta / assassin changes time / ardents op time". At that very moment you missed to create a super fun metagame out of those 3 topics.
In addition to that you are too slow when it comes down to reacting on unhealthy things.
For example: You just nerfed / changed the scuttle crab timers. I recommended that change almost over 1 year ago in multiple feedback channels to you guys, telling you that it wasnt healthy and NOW, decades later you react on that matter? You should have seen and fixed that ages ago.
League actually is on the decline gameplay wise and people slowly tend to realise that more and more, its time to change and shake things up into the old direction instead of reanimating a dead horse. At the very moment league feels like WoW when it reached its zenith.
Game is beeing simplified / casualised, game duration shortened and intensified, while aswell commercialising it further via those tons of new shop items and the rise of riot point costs.
**Never before, has league of legends felt so much like Heroes of the Storm or any simple mobile game than now.
The game has lost its sharp edges, and its identity.**
You are making changes all the time, which is a good thing, but what you actually are doing wrong is the fact that you do not check back on changes you made in the past. The problem is, every change you do to the gameplay might be the right decission in the very moment. But will that change also be the right decission 2 months later? If not, why not revert those changes at that point, or tweak them?
An example for that. A long time ago you made changes to how much wards people have, and how warding works in general. A ton of players didnt properly utilize wards and in lower elo some still do not. But the players did evolve, what was the right warding mechanic back then, might now be the wrong one.
At the very moment league has too much vision at every corner you move. Warding is too easy, having vision everywhere super simplifies the game. People dont need to be cautious anymore or predict things. Or utilize the wards in a smart way or use the poro rune stuff etc. Nah, they just spam wards, because its easy and efficient to do.
The items... well you announced a rework of those.. but common.... end of the year? LoL, meanwhile people are playing with a broken item set for a whole season. I did suggest and criticise the items once again over 1 year back ago, to your feedback channels.. Your reaction times on balance topics are horrible. Its obvious that the items available have been created for another state of the game and have been watered down and changed due to tons of gameplay changes until the very moment, where everything ended up in a huge patchwork system that doesnt really have a focused gameplay plan.
Before that post gets longer and longer i will just speed things up:
#1 Games are too short. LoL isnt a mobile game. Due to the short games you create huge imbalance and frustrations because the powerspikes of items and champions are crashing into each other without any transition. Theres no transitioning from one game state to another anymore, atleast no healthy one. Everything is going too abprupt and all of the sudden snowballs from one powerspike or move into the next one.
The game has been much healthier when the games had been going longer, since theres been a clean transition of early / mid / lategame, diverse champion and item powerspikes and it was much more fun to play around those or tactically avoid specific times of the game as a strategy. This isnt possible anymore because theres not enough time to do so in a good way.
#2 Paper Towers A result of the fastened up gameplay, further supporting unbalanced snowballing and heroes of the storm like handy game casualisation.
#3 Your crit item changes and the ruin of a huge part of the itemization, which aswell led to some extent to your problematic item setup in the shop Also a sideeffect of your decission to give players less time to transition and actually play the game.
#4 Items do not have enough impact on the gameplay of champions anymore. + #5 Basestats seem to have far more impact than ever and overruling item decissions = Those 2 points together are horrible for the gameplay. The choice of items has become nearly meaningless. Tanks arent tanky anymore. Adcs are a joke, and everything in league feels like you could aswell just remove all items from the game and play it like heroes of the storm. The game has lost a huge part of identity because you decided to make item decissions less sharp. Also the fact that the game has been shortened and watered down plays a role in that because fights are shorter and less meaningfull. Which leads to #6 >
#6 Its all about beeing more champs around than your opponent. The game isnt about item decissions ( armor, mpen, etc anymore) or about good plays. Its just about ONE thing, more than ever. OUTNUMBER YOUR OPPONENT. 5on4, 4on3, 2on1. Thats all that matters. It all comes down to who roams and outnumbers best.
Yes all of that mattered before, and should have an impact. But due to the shorteneder game duration, quicker fights, less impactful items etc.. the game has been reduced on that single fact too much, and more than ever before.
League was much more fun when we had long fights, that went over a healthy durtation. You had to reposition yoruself multiple times over the duration of a fight, each gameplay mechanic has had more impact aswell as the counter for it. Which led to the fact, that you had to make multiple right decissions about positioning, focusing, healing, etc over the duration of a fight. Beeing a tank ( and actually really beeing tanky and not smth like a papertower) has had value. Protecting the adc had value. Healing, getting heal reduce, kiting people and repositioning had value.
All of that value is LOST, right now. And a players skill needed to succesfully win fights has been drastically reduced.
A fight is just about #1 > be more than your opponent > #2 spamm your stuff >#3 kill the 1-2 guys that are left #4 erase all paper towers at once > GG
Its easier than ever before to be a good league player and harder than ever to actually set yourself apart as a super good player from rather mediocre ones. Thats not a good thing.
#7 Your balancing mentality "everything needs to be equally balanced" is horribly wrong.. Do you really believe it is possible to balance out a game like this? Its not. Dont be delusional. You are trying to achieve something impossible, and while doing so you are watering down the game to an extent where its loosing its edges and original character. You are killing leagues soul.
A game like this wont ever be fully balanced and thinking that way is the wrong direction for your design team. You should rather think like this:
The game is seasonal and the meta shifts. So just accept that some champs and items will be bullshit for a period of time. Players should need to adapt and rethink the way the game is played all the time rather than to go a standardized way of everything beeing equally balanced. They should think about whats viable and what is not. Deciding for a champ thats not viable at a time should be hard, but rewarding. Your job is to create interesting meta and gameplay value for a period of time and leading the path for a shift in that meta to another one. What keeps league alive is the fluctuation in that so called meta game. Your attempts of static watering down everything to an equal curve is just killing the game and making it less intersesting, and less statisfying.
In addition to that league has become too childish recently. The cats vs dogs event... zoe, yummi. A ton of concepts and stickers and events etc.. I mean its okay, some fortnite players might play league aswell because of that ;D but honestly, can u do some more dark and serious stuff again at some point?
I mean look at the game and how players feel. No one likes toplane anymore.. because its boring and feels absolutely not impactfull. ADCs are absolutely dissapointed for a long while now and even if you did a little for them, they are not purely statisfied by that patchwork gameplay. Mids... well i guess AP mids are in an okay spot, but assassins and off meta picks in general or the amount of worthwhile champs has decresed drasticaly. Jungle.. cmon you total ruined it.
Thats my personal feeling about the status of the game. I will be glad about any constructive criticism or feedback.
