The Game in its Current State
Hi, long time player here, something like 6 years now. After having played League as my main game for the last 6 years (definitely not because it's my favorite game, its not anywhere close anymore) and hoping that by the time we reached the spot we're in, the game and the community would be in a much better spot than where it was when I started, I finally don't believe that will ever happen, if Riot continues the way they're going.
I really enjoyed League for the first few years of play, and it WAS one of my favorite games to play at the time, and in my opinion, season 6 is where the game started declining in quality, sure the player base still grew, but that was bound to happen after continuous years of success. Season 6 was the first year where I started getting heavily annoyed with the game, and eventually stopped playing for quite a few months, expecting it to get better, when I came back, I noticed that the same problems were still there, but the meta changed, so it was "fresh".
Then season 7 comes, the problems from season 6 only escalated, the game is becoming a lot less fun to play and individual skill is significantly less important now, I took a lot of breaks during season 7 just from being fed up with playing, but a meta change here, a new champion there, and a few reworks is enough to make me want to play again, not because the game got any better, I just grew tolerant of its issues at this point.
And then the big one... season 8, where riot "reworked runes" by removing runes, reworking the masteries AGAIN, and then renaming masteries. A flashier mastery system that was simpler to understand without rune stats to worry about, disappointing knowing that they just abandoned runes rather than making them all free for every player, but that's not where the main issue comes in. I only played for about a month before i got tired and skipped out on more than half the year because I didn't care for the frustration that playing the game caused, both dealing with the community of people who were just as annoyed as I was, and the game's more and more apparent flaws. I came back around August maybe, and learned once again to be tolerant of the issues.
Now we're in preseason 9, and I finally understand what's wrong, and why this game keeps growing less favorable to me. Riot's trying year after year to make this game faster and faster, more arcade-like than individual/team based strategy. Ever since s8 now, and maybe even before, everything has been about damage, how much damage can I do, how much damage can you do, how fast can one team oneshot the other team and win, try not to get oneshot in lane so you don't automatically lose your turret. RNG dragons, plants in the jungle, Rift Harold, champions like Zoe, Kai'Sa, Pyke, and Neeko, Reworks like Akali, and Irelia. It all makes it so clear that Riot is trying to change the face of the game, and the way it's played, they put all this flashy new stuff to get people's attention and don't worry as much about overall quality, it looks cool so therefor it's good. But in reality it's not the same game I (or we, if you relate to this) played six years ago, it just looks the same, and feels the same, and if Riot continues doing what they're doing, it'll never be the same again, and I don't want to quit because I want to see the game improve, not degrade, but it feels so hopeless at this point.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading, this is about 3 years worth of thoughts that I finally decided was worth putting together.
(edit: changed the title to make it less negative)
