Rant post from a Season 1 veteran player (huge wall of text)

Hello fellow community on the boards. I am a long time league player from the EUW server. The first champion release after i started playing was , so it has been many years for me. It is kinda sad that i barely enjoy this game anymore and only log in every 1 or 2 weeks to play 1 or 2 normals with my friends instead of tryharding in diamond rank soloq like i used to do. I consider myself a good league player but i simply lost interest. In this post i will try to share my thoughts about what drove me to league, what kept me playing and why i think that it is on a completely wrong way atm and driving off it's veteran players.

Let's start with the dark past of league: season 1. no worlds, competitive scene being extremely small, server problems, dat 2 hours login queue on eu (position over 9000 anyone?) and of course the eu server split. new champions got released every 2 weeks. Riot back then was a different company. They were small, had problems everywhere but they still managed to create a game that was just fun to play. Many champions of this era could be played in many different ways. we saw full ap decimating entire teams like an even more feast or famine version of . AP dominated every lane but felt off later. was a huge threat in lategame. could either be played as an early game ap lanebully and roamer or as an hyper scaling late game ad/crit carry with his old 100% lifesteal ult. Season 1's jungle was brutal. only a handful of champions could jungle without losing their entire health bar after 2 camps, namely . got added later and was also seen frequently on top and mid lane. Season 1 was also the time of "better nerf " .

Season 2 got with some changes like a very easy jungle and was the best time for bruiser players. Top lane +Atmas Impaler rush was a cheap but extremely powerful itembuilds which provided massive hp, AD, Armor and even some critchance and made bruisers mid game beasts that no adc could deal with. Mages easily had 800-900 AP lategame and extremely dangerous burst combos with our good old friend "deathfire grasp" which was a 20% magic dmg amplifier as an item active effect,, point and click ofc. Life as an ADC was extremely rough, even in the lategame an adc could not duel a mid or toplaner in most cases, but they were still needed to take down turrets and the extremely strong tanks and bruisers. Tank items back then were more expensive but granted more resistances than today. Supports were ward bots during that season and season 1, all they bought during a game were gold generations items and boots, everything else went into wards an the forgotten "oracles elixier" which granted stealth detection until the player who bought it died.

I remember season 3 as the assassin meta. Midlane was dominated by a mix of AD and AP Assassins just as (yes Kha was played midlane back then). DFG got removed and many AP Items nerfed. It was the first time that junglers also got their first set of jungle Items. The spirit items granted either HP, AD or AP stats while the old wriggles lantern still existed and later it got a new upgrade called "feral flare" which was an inifite stacking on hit items. THis allowed jungle to be played as a late game hypercarry role and champions who could use onhits just as became extremely popular. ADC got more options to their Itembuilds like .

I don't want to talk as much about S4-S7, just some general trends: New Champion releases slowed down and most new Champions got designed to fill a specific role or niche and not to be an entity that could fill different places on the rift. The same happened to Items. was the universal statstick that could fit in anything that wasn't only building AP. It granted Health, Mana, AP, AD, AS, Critchance, Movespeed. Now it got reworked to no longer have critchance and AP but CDR and more AS, and while most other stats got lowered some stats got replaced so it got tailored as the premier bruiser item that we know today. used to have critchance and attackspeed, also gone and replaced by more AD to fit assassin champions. before it was also a good items on some adc's and yi. used to be the most expensive Item in the game, now it is fairly cheap to favor faster game times.

Speaking of game pacing: I think this is my greatest negative point about current league: It is so god damn short and it is all about grouping. In the old times league games had around 15 minutes of laning phase. Top laners had at least level 11 and rank 2 ultimate before they engaged in teamfights, and at least 2 large items finished. And they were ahead by at least 3 levels compared to the bot lane. Top lane melees need to be stat sticks to beat up ranged, and they used to win the 1v2 against the enemy botlane. Now any non tank toplaner is just useless because they cannot build up a lead compared to the scaling botlane on the opposing team. ADC Itemization is too cheap and the current meta and the introduction of keystones allowed adc's to go full damage early on to kill bruisers and mages in seconds. Back in the earlier days, the meta for adc's was to rush to win trades on the lane. Now it is all about killing the enemy in 1 trade and then grab tower and early dragon for an imidate and massive gold and a permanent stat lead (remember permanent stats on dragon kill? it used to be global gold).

ADC is with no doubt the strongest role at the moment. This alone is already bad if you consider the idea behind the role: ADC is supposed to be a damage thread over time to melt turrets and enemy tanks. They are NOT SUPPOSED to make big player or delete someone on the enemy team in an instant. It is not their role. They are called "carries" because of their massive late game scaling with all the multipliers on their Items and their kit, but it is supposed to take time for them to reach that point. Right now ADC's get their powerspile earlier than their counters and that is the reason why they dominate so much. Also remember that counterplay doesn't exist to ranged targeted auto attacks. Melee Autoattackers can be kited and CC'ed easily, ranged can not be kited. The faster game pacing and cheaper carry itemization is causing so many of league's current problems.

Another problem is the missing individualisation with runes and masteries. Let's be honest, the new runes are just buffed masteries while the original runes got removed. And i already disliked season 6's introduction of keystones. You no longer tailor runes and masteries around your champ and your playstyle, your champ and playstyle is all about the selected keystone. RIot killed of so many Off Meta builds that experimentation is no longer a part of league. It is all about copying the most successful playstyle and adapt to it. It is a great way to hook casuals into the game but also a great way to drive your veterans out.

With all these changes leading to a more casual experience, i feel like i am no longer part of the target audience of this game. i'm not a casual player who likes easy games and "lcs big plays" i also liked the strategic expereince, the experimentation and min-maxing builds. That's now all gone. If any Riot'er is reading this, i wish you good luck with the game but i feel like i am no longer a part of league's journey. I rarely play with my friends, i never play league alone anymore. So ty for 7 years of entertaining gameplay.