To everyone complaining about dragons

Let's look at some of the major preseason changes over the past 5 seasons or so:

• Complete jungle rework, preseason 5
• Scuttle crab introduced, preseason 5
• Jungle items altering smite (using on champions for extra effects), preseason 5
• Rework of potions/elixrs, preseason 5
• Removal of purchasable non-control wards, preseason 5
• Mastery rework, preseason 6
• Rift herald introduced, preseason 6
• Lethality introduced, preseason 7
• Jungle plants introduced, preseason 7
• Masteries/Runes rework, preseason 8
• Guinsoos rework, preseason 9
• Turret plating, preseason 9

This isn't even everything, but is some of the major things. I understand not everyone has played this long and won't remember half of these things never being in League. You know what the similarities between each of these things are? They're all ones that I can remember quite a bit of backlash in various places about how "unbalanced" or "unfun" or "unfair" they are. This happens with a lot of changes, but it happens a lot with preseason changes because preseason changes are the largest changes to the game.

Some of these things released so unbalanced they were hotfixed. There are lots of hotfixes and huge buffs/nerfs and/or OP/underpowered things during preseason. This is normal - it's not a sign Riot has screwed anything up. Making extremely large changes like this will require an extremely large amount of time to perfect. If you think of balance like a valley, where you're trying to get to the lowest point of the valley (i.e. the best balanced the game can be at the time), preseason changes are like taking the ball and putting it at the very top of the hill on the side - it will roll down, back up the other side, and go back and forth for a lot longer than the small changes during the season that barely nudge the ball.

There's still people who complain about some things above, sure. But the majority of things that were introduced as preseason changes are either still around and not complained about, or have been made workable with changes over the years. Does anyone really hate scuttle crab? "It gives free vision of dragon and baron areas! WTFFF!" - nobody remembers the amount of changes that had to happen when this came out? But now? Not only have they been completely integrated into the game but they're very accepted as an integral part of balance as an independent objective.

So yes, the dragon changes are quite unbalanced. But there's been tons of unbalanced things that have come in preseason and taken time to make workable, but in the end left the game in a much more competitively interesting state than before. Instead of simply complaining that things should be reverted, discuss what needs fixing about them.

Going back to the example of the valley (and getting a bit into calculus), people forget that a function can have multiple "minima". If you consider the two dimensions of League of Legends balance, and a function like this:

https://33.media.tumblr.com/515b052849edbd6b6bf35059cc39310a/tumblr_inline_npz2dsoaS81rnd3q0_500.gif

Then you have the ball in the local minima. Riot tries during preseason to kick it out of that local minima to another minima that, while still not global (there will never be perfect balance), is a local minima that's lower (i.e. more balance) than the prior one. This looks easy in 2 dimensions - just get it over that one hill and it'd roll down to the global minima. Balance in League is thousands of dimensions - every single number/champion stat/item stat/rune/summoner spell/experience... everything is another dimension. Riot looks through these thousands of dimensions and identifies large changes that will get them out of the "rut" of the previous season and towards a better place in the next season.

Sure, this involves massive changes, which require players to relearn the importance of various things and to learn new playstyles. But it's in the name of better balance eventually - which is why these things are important. To end... I'd love to see more discussion about how to improve the new changes - not simply complaining about "removing" this, or "reverting" that. Is it possible that some effects may be removed? Sure. Is it likely that the primary effects (ex: the dragon effects or the soul effects) will be removed or changed? Probably not. So instead of complaining that "mountain dragons make tanks too strong", discuss what level of armor/MR given would be appropriate for each dragon on a per dragon basis. Instead of complaining that only seeing three unique dragons in a game is stupid and should be removed, figure out a way to change that (ex: make all dragons independently weaker, and give three unique dragons that spawn quicker before the "soul dragons" and map change occurs slightly later than it does now).

Help Riot make the changes even better. Stop asking for things that will not happen.