Why I enjoyed seasons 4 and 5 but not this preseason.

I don't know about you guys, but for me, the game is not about just winning or losing. It's about thinking. We are not primary school students who need gold stars and to be told that we are WINNERS. I don't give a fuck about winning or losing itself; I don't play this game to make money or to compensate for real life insecurities like some ppl out there. I play because it was a fun game that involved both mechanics and strategy. I liked the game before when most champs were playable and to win, you had to think. In the current game, it's either stomp or be stomped. Only lane matters. If one lane loses, better hope you had another lane that won hard, because grouping and out-rotating won't matter: towers are so weak that if you fail a rotation, you lose the entire lane.

I just played a 12 minute game where our no CC, no mobility mid (Varus) leaves lane at level 3 to gank a top Tryndamere who was vs. Singed.

That's typically a terribly stupid move. However because Tryndamere got flung mid-dash by Singed and Varus landed an arrow, afterwards both mid and top snowballed. Opposing team just AFKed in base. From minute 10 onwards, it was just us AFK pushing towers and waves.

How is this fun?

The most exciting game of my league career was a plat 1 promo game as my main (Hecarim) back in June (before I tilted back down to plat 5 and then clawed my way back to plat 1 in October). It was down to the wire in mid-late game where everyone had 4-5 items. Any single mistake could throw the game, any single outplay could win it. We planned an outplay bait at Dragon. We were blue side and knew their comp could jump walls easily; I told my team to collapse in from mid while I went around enemy blue. I initiated with ult onto the enemy carries. They had nowhere to run because any wall jumps would just put them closer to our base. I got the enemy AD very low but I was also low due to focus. I ignited the enemy AD, ran away while Qing, and barely escaped while the enemy AD died to ignite.

That was enjoyable and memorable because our solo queue team planned a strategy based on our comp, the enemy comp, our relative strengths and weaknesses, and the terrain. It required perfect positioning and coordination from my team. If anything was off in that team fight, like if I didn't initiate on time or if my team didn't follow up, it would've been a wipeout.

Are these games still possible? Not on this preseason patch. There's no excitement anymore. There's no feeling of "this is going down to the wire" anymore. It's all stompy.