Why the game is unfair?

Long one. Just grab a cup of coffee before reading. There will be no TL;DR, you can read only those in Bold type.

Firstly, its my opinion after having read tons of documents and done a lot of googling research, like working on my thesis. Constructive comments are welcome.

About me: Season 3 – 4 month before SKT raised their first cup veteran. Peaked Diamond 1+ in Garena Server, season 4-5 before moving to NA and hardly find enough times to play. Don’t want to show off anything, just try to let you guys make sure that I have enough credit to grinding through these researches.

I was, and always having fun playing LoL. I know that every relationship has its peak and trough, and I always told myself: Just take a short vacation, and everything will be OK. But with LoL, it's not anymore. Whenever I took a short vacation, the game immediately went for a big beauty surgery, which was dramatically failed. She was not only ugly as f*, but also rude as f*.

And like every hopeless lover, I just try to figure out what happened with my girl over all that time – and below are my biggest findings.

1. First and foremost, LoL is a team game, but most of the time we are playing individually or small-group individually. And they try to balance only toward team-play.

a. The concept of counterplay is a huge mistake: If you can counterplay something as a solo player, it will be just a piece of cake to counterplay it as a group or a team. In contrast, if some mechanics can only be outplayed by a group or a team (ft. Ryze, Azir, Assassin) it will also greatly UP or OP when you deal with it personally. There is nothing in between, unless you separate those completely, which is impossible. This lead to the next wrong move you have made. My comment is, just leave the unique champ alone and accept the fact that something cannot be better, but don’t make it worse.

b. The concept of balance around specific role is a huge mistake: As noted before, any change to a specific role will affect the game, and make those changes became the ugliest surgeon’s results: I'm talking about the Juggernauts, the Mages, and the Assassins rework. They didn’t need any change or rework, they just need a better gameplay and up-to-date visual effects. You could learn from the past, every rework just made that specific role unstoppable or simply shit in the corner for years before huge buffs made them shine several patches.

c. The concept of balance to everyone having impact is a huge mistake: We have an old saying, which was “If everything were great, nothing would be great.” In a team game, as the natural MOBAs should be, there is someone need to sacrifice somethings for others step up. You cannot make compensate for everything, like push a lot of efficiency gold item and overloaded kit for support just to make them feel more impactful in the game. You are not only messed up the game, but also mentally denounce those supporter, back-officer in real life. They should be recognized not by being have overload item packs, they should be recognized by their contributions.

d. The concept of balance around high elo player is a huge mistake: The high elo players, I’d say Diamond 1+, just account for 0.5% of the game at most. They will make use mostly every mechanics of the game (or I would say abuse them), and it is a sign of bug fixing, or QoL change, but not and never should be the base of balance. Why? Because they are playing for win-a-lot, which mean they are always ready to grins through the hardest environmental with just a little or no complaint, abusing everything they could use and suffer anything to win, while 90% players can’t do. And sadly, they meet each other a lot when queuing, which made their matches shift to the pros play, or a team-play approach rather than personal and contributes for the first dilemma I have explain before.

2. As an interactive game, there are some resources should be scarce and balance:

a. All special stats should be scarce: you know how stacking armor do not work right? Since stacking armor got punished by the formula naturally (if you don’t know, it’s 1/(1+Armor), which mean the greater armor you have, the lesser impactful it is). Same thing should be done for Ms, As, CDR, Crit chance, Slow chance, ArPen and Mpen. Additively stacking is good for MMORPGs when everyone jumps into other’s face and start stats checking, not MOBAs when every choice should matter.

b. All special effect should be scarce: You know what happen these days when reading a champions abilities and passive? There are 2-3-4 effect and special effect packed in just 1 abilities slot, make old champs feel natural handicapped and not fun to play or play against at all. Just make it simple, and unique. You don’t have to get a dash can recast twice, shielded allies, double cast range when duo with your honey, on top of that is a dash with circle knock up, deal a lot of dmg, AND on top of that is an ult can charm and damage while burst your speed to ghost rider level. Gosh I am running out of my breath just to list 3 abilities of a damn champ, who can cast all 3 in literally under 1.5 second.

c. All resources should be balance: When you have 2 people or more, somethings should be different when you are alone. There is no reason 2 people at bot lane should have the same heal and armor turrets, almost same catch up EXP and more gold in total. Simple thing is, when you have more person, you also have more work to do. I would say, when 2 or more people damage, or shield other to damage a turret, it should have 1.5-2 times more HP and armor.

d. Some stats are mechanically better than others, and it should be addressed: It is shield and heal, plus defensive stat packed with aggressive stat in 1 item that work on ranged. I made an excel sheet for comparing shield and heal in equivalent damage number. I don’t understand how a point-and-click abilities that have no way to play against should be have that much number and utility effects, without any punished when stacking?

3. Last one, please re-write your whole report and honour systems.

a. In any fights there are at least two sides: Allies and Enemy. Why can we only recognize our teammates success but not the enemies? That was the fairest thing I have ever seen in LoL until it was removed. And if you can implement a system let me honor Baron, Red or Blue buffs and Scuttle, its incredible.

b. The game start when you clicked Accept button, not on the post-game summary tab. You got punished when you decline or fail too accept too much matches, but why you are not punished when troll picking or threatening everyone that you are tilted and going to troll on the pick-ban windows? Every report subjects to review, so it will not harm anyone to have a report button in the select phase, and it reduces a lot of irritating situations that someone has to suffer a f*ked game just for reporting a troll.