Why Reducing Champions' Individuality Reduces Enjoyable Gameplay

This is not meant to be extremely in depth, but rather bring to light this issue. To start, I'll explain what I define as Macro Threat Ranking and Enjoyable Gameplay then jump into explanations.

What is Macro Threat Ranking? Put simply, Macro Threat Ranking (hereafter MTR) is the level of influence a champion possesses if they had 30 seconds worth of actions. A more complex look determines threats individually, such as tower damage, roaming threat, waveclear, objective damage. In the spirit of keeping it simple we will look at it holistically.

What is Enjoyable Gameplay? Gameplay is enjoyable when a player is rewarded for skillful and meaningful play. It is less enjoyable when skillful play is unrewarded, and downright unenjoyable when skillful play is punished.

How has MTR increased? Is the game less enjoyable? Have you ever felt like turrets die faster than they should? Or getting ganked happens way too frequently? Maybe spells are too easily spammed? Ever wondered what happened to the the midgame focused champs? We summoners who have played since at least S4 can think back to this time and compare it to the current state. We know these changes have happened. Champions are more similar to each other now than back then. But how do these changes punish skillful play?

Turrets have been made to take more damage. With more starting gold, more passive gold/10, more gold on last hit, first blood turret, minion damage increases, etc leads to more damage on turrets. Where it used to take 25 seconds to take a turret it now takes 20. Jinx and Trist used to have a high MTR on tower taking. Increases to Damage is now a given (normalized MTR) and ADCs have lost identity.

Changes to Mid-Laners, their items, minions, etc have caused them to have more base mana, more access to CDR, easier times clearing waves. Viktor used to be the only meta mid that could clear caster minions early. It is a given to have 30 or 40% CDR. Having a CDR synergistic build used to be a unique thing. Roaming potential used to be something that was factored into champion select, now all mids can roam. Increases to Waveclear, CDR, Roaming etc is now a given (normalized MTR) and Mids have lost identity.

Top lane used to have split pushing be a viable strategy. Turret changes have reduced viability as 4v5 defense of turrets is harder than ever. 1v1 potential is discarded further because of Mid and Jungle ganks. As a result Tops have become standardized (and lost identity) to weather the hardships of needing survivability in lane. Where a gank used to have a trade in opportunity cost that cost has been significantly reduced to the point of near constant ganking being viable.

Supports are the last vestige of what it was like to have a unique champion. Only a sightstone is required of them, and depending on the team comp multiple classes of supports, or non traditional supports, can be played.

Jungle changes have removed objective control junglers by decreasing the value of dragon and counter jungling. Farming junglers have had their playstyle removed as well. Gank junglers once had two playstyles, early ganker or farm to 6 then gank. Jungle now allows a simple clear then ganking non stop for an extended period because the punishment for a failed gank is removed. With so much more mobility only the best gankers exist as a supported role. Massive vision plants and gank cones exacerbate the problem.

New champions, like junglers, often suffer from mobility creep, and is a massive offender to increased MTR. More gank potential strangles skillful choice in lane. The ever looming threat of a gank forces people to play safe.

In Summary My opinion is that with champion quirks and unique identities being removed, and certain playstyles no longer supported, Riot has rewarded averageness and punished individuality of champions. Across all metrics of MTR champions are the same EXCEPT for roaming/ganking threat. Removing champion weaknesses by lowering the bar of success promotes unfun gameplay by having champions be too good at something that doesn't matter. Less time spent by champions killiing turrets/jungle/wave/roaming means that much more time being capable of killing your champion for a mistake.

TL;DR With fewer balance levers to affect champions, Riot has painted themselves into a corner where ganking is too viable.