There are too many problems in League right now to even effectively try and speak to Riot about them
Back in something like Season 5, the last season I'd personally say was in a healthy spot balance-wise, the majority of boards complaints would be things like 'damn i hate yasuo' or 'devourer is busted'. They would be individual complaints about individual effects, champions, and interactions that could be solved pretty simply through numbers. Metas would occur, and Riot would not step in to force different ones or routinely enact large-scale updates and reworks in order to shake up the game. VGUs were extremely uncommon. People could play champions they enjoyed. Role diversity was rampant and, for the most part, healthy. Champions did not lean on overpowered runes, masteries, and items in order to stay in meta, and when in the off chance they did (devourer being one example), it was nerfed or removed. Nowadays, boards complains are about the game as a whole. They are about wide scale institutions like runes, reworks, damage, mobility, towers, the meta - as a whole. Dyrus, a beloved and iconic professional LoL player, uninstalled League from his computer and refuses to play it anymore. Pros, content creators, streamers, all have increasingly become vocal that they dislike the direction the game is heading in. There are half a dozen threads a day about people quitting that reach the front page.
Since Season 6, Riot has actively shown their hand by forcing metas, destroying playstyles, and routinely enacting massive changes to the game simply because they can. Season 8 is a culmination of a variety of issues that Riot has either actively implemented or willingly allowed to persist. It should not be a centrist position to say the balance team is doing an extremely poor job. Champions are released broken, or quickly changed to be, and then left in overpowered states until it is inconvenient for them to be in meta anymore. Mechanics that Riot once doled out sparingly (true damage, %damage, targetless mobility) are now staples of new champion kits, items, and runes. Objectives like Dragon, Baron, and Rift Herald have been warped and twisted to be massive boosts to damage and snowballing. Reworks are good, but VGUs now frequently destroy champion identities and leave champion communities lost and angry. The rare good ones like Warwick or Sion are over shadowed by failures like Galio and Aatrox. Ghostcrawler himself put it best when he said that it feels unfair and unfun for Riot to constantly shake the table up on dedicated players. But Riot is too proud to go back on bad changes they have made these last few years.
It really sucks because i really hate how the game is right now, but if i want to say something about it, I have to choose from this enormous fucking list that has accumulated over like 3 seasons and riot has done little to stem. For instance, I absolutely despise runes reforged and I think its the heart of damage creep right now, but I know that Riot is too proud to go back on it, because of nonsense like the sunk cost fallacy or they like their flashiness. I think its disgusting that champions are pigeonholed into roles and lanes at the start. Sure, you can play Irelia bot now or Taliyah jungle, but for every one of those you have Taric top, Urgot mid, Naut jungle etc, and champions that Riot clearly still doesn't give a shit about - Volibear, Karma, Tahm, Udyr, Urgot, ivern. New champions and reworks are encouraged to exclusively go to one lane and build one or two stats. Riot's darling rune system, hailed for diversity, showcases literally every 140+ champions using the same 1-2 pages every game because its the optimal way for them to brutally burst someone down in the quickest fashion possible. Riot has shown us time and time again that they fail to learn from their mistakes and will even make them again years later. They nerf Nidalee in the early seasons for oneshotting you with one ability from across the screen, and then gleefully let Zoe do that but with long-ranged cc, movement speed, and dumb RNG bullshit to boot. They say Sated Devourer is a busted, unhealthy mechanic they didn't like being forced to balance champions around, and then slap it onto Guinsoos anyways. They rework assassins to not instagib you in 0.5 seconds, then nerf every other class and revert those reworks so that they are back to doing just that. Its sad and stupid to watch.
Its exhausting to even try and engage with Riot at this point because we have reached a point in league's history where issues have concurrently reached critical mass. Damage creep. Mobility creep. Towers are fucking dogshit. Runes are overpowered and badly implemented. VGUs increasingly turn off champion communities and leave others in fear. Bad balance decisions and a team that sees League in a state of black and white - more damage or even more damage. Destruction of diversity. Riot hides behind their Youtube videos and their quick gameplay thoughts but in reality they stonewall any and all forms of meaningful discourse about discontent with the game. I hope that they read this, and know that I will always have a special place for this game in my heart and appreciate the things that their art, sound, story, and design teams have given us throughout the years. But the gameplay and balance teams are lagging behind sorely and causing me to just despise the direction they are dragging us in. If this sounds vitriolic, its because I'm exhausted from 3 years of change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change after change over and over and over, path after patch, rework after rework. I'm tired. I want to play the game I fell in love with, not this stressful one it has become.
TL;DR League has become a vast and messy accumulation of problems Riot has either forcibly implemented or allowed to grow, and they seem unconcerned with the needs and legitimate criticisms of the community. They brush aside the Boards as a vocal minority when we are literally their official forum. Its exhausting to try and express this sentiment in an organized manner because a) its all too much and b) I have no reason to believe Riot will ever read or respond to this, and even if they did, very little to absolutely nothing will ever come of it, because I am but one voice of thousands Riot has ignored over the last 3 years. Riot, if you are reading this, watch this video. It neatly sums up what I probably couldnt. You should watch it, watch it again, watch it a third time for the sake of 3-hit passives, and then project it on a big screen in front of the whole staff. And take the time to think about all the mistakes you've made in order to cause this video to exist.
