Remember this?

{quoted}

And there is a reason riot went full r%%%%% the moment tencent took over 100% in s4 or s5 not before that.

And there is a reason you're projecting this.

Riot already held 93% shares of Riot by the start of Season 1, the acquisition of the last 7% frankly made little to no difference. You're just grasping at straws while basing it off a good ol' classic 'equate correlation with causation'.

........

Game's balance has always been utter dog shite at League. I sure hope you didn't forget the literal tank meta of Season 2 where HP stacking legitimately had (almost) no counter and the burning damage meta shit show (similar to the current one) that was Season 3.

Most of the initial problems in the game to this day were never addressed, and now we just have more on top of it which will also remain mostly unaddressed for the future. Riot hasn't gone anywhere, all of this is the consequence of a dev that has always sucked at managing and fixing their game that has led to the problem getting naturally bigger and bigger as time goes on.

If anything, they actually got better at addressing problems in the later seasons, but it's hampered by the fact some of their attempts are misguided and they listen to the wrong feedbacks. For instance, today's assassin dominance is the reenactment of Season 3, which Riot attempted to address with the assassin rework where they had the utterly right idea that 1shot should be conditionally gated even if they had chosen the more questionable route of universal time-gating, and before you know it WE, the players, bitched them into reverting that even if we know it is at least healthier than whatever it was; WE made the Rengar and LB revert happened, and then right after we immediately bitch about their 0 counterplay ass offered by their old kit, funny how that works.

For the same reasons, Riot's hesitating to nerf champs also has a historical root. Say all you praises about Morello now, but players used to hated him with their guts for his 'nerf over buff' philosophy and WE effectively bitched him to the point he went out of job and that was also when Meddler came in because he promised 'buff over nerf'. And on that day everyone toasted with a freshly opened bottle of champagne. But lookie now, we now bitch about wanting Morello back, how cute.

Kit overloading is also largely, the fault of the player. Sure, there is the problem with Riot's hiring policies and their design philosophy and all. But I think a lot of these problems, or rather the direction kit design is heading, is for the very most part the outcome of player demand that Riot as a dev is simply just trying to satisfy. WE have for YEARS, bitched about the confined kits (which were confined for a reason, since it's supposed to be a team game where no one is supposed to do everything) of the older champ as being "boring". Hell, such sentiment still very much exist, as every person that tries to talk about the issue will be met with the counter-force that function on the logic of "but overloaded champs are more FUN and INNOVATIVE". And even then, when it really comes down to it, the overloaded champs are also the ones receiving the most play rate regardless of elo. People may say they want a more balanced game, but when it really comes down to it, they don't fucking give a shit and play the overloaded champ that they believe is more ""fun"". The reason why utter hacks for designers like CertainlyT and EndlessPillows are cherished as national treasures at Riot isn't because Riot has some special favouring for them (maybe they do, but that's secondary), but more because WE, the players, can't stop spamming their broken ass designs, where the demand is so big it ends up bleeding to the rest of the game.

The list goes on. This isn't to say Riot does no wrong since they still do plenty, but it is very worth noting that many of the problems we see are merely the result of Riot trying to satisfy the players who already have the wrong idea about thing so ofc the result is faulty. The actual problem isn't just at Riot, nor some amorphous power of Tencent; the problem is BOTH RIOT AND PLAYER SIDES are broken, individually on their own and their interfacing/connection. All of that needs to be somehow fixed before there's even any hope for League.

Tencent or not, it doesn't even really matter at this point. I guess you can blame them for getting greedier over time and that Riot's now more shameless monetisation scheme can probably be attributed to Tencent asking for higher ROI over time. But that's not the problem of just Tencent, is it? Because then we'd be talking about the problems of capitalism as an ideal and system itself. Tencent isn't doing anything wrong in the capitalist game per se: As an investor of Riot they are only concerned about Riot for as much as how much money can be made out of it, all they are doing is playing the capitalism game in a capitalist economy that fundamentally (especially in big cooperate level) encourages and rewards greed and aggressive anti-consumer practices and doesn't give a shit damn about things of any value so much they can try and sell it for profit margin. If you have issues then you should take it to capitalism itself, and not just Tencent.

To pin the problems of Riot and League onto this malevolent, ambiguous external force that is supposedly ruining the days or whatever instead of examining the situation as it is, which is mainly the failing of BOTH Riot and the players (and I guess capitalism), is the hallmark of conspiracy theorist and should not be taken seriously. It may have come from the position of ignorance, but otherwise if your intent is just finding a scapegoat to piss on than the actual root of the issue then you're not fit for discussion. A LOT of people in this kind of subject like to look for scapegoats than actual reason to the problem at hand. It however, doesn't make them any more right than mumble jumble.