A Riot Lecture (Redo)

So I made a post about this a couple weeks back framed as a talk with Riot about how and why this season is such a shitstorm of awful decision making and in what ways it's inferior to season 5. Unfortunately, the comments consisted almost solely about how it was a very, very long post that I had created only to ensure that the usual onslaught of people who completely either misconstrue or spew out stupidity from every orifice could not in any way, shape, or form argue back against it. So it explained to the letter exactly every point with excessive examples.

Apparently that's going overboard.

So fuck it. This will still be a long post due to the amount of fuckery I have to cover, but not nearly as long. And for those still worried: there is still a TL;DR at the end, do not panic.

Riot, season 6 sucks. It does, don't try to defend the decisions. You screwed the pooch so many ways that (insert very disturbing analogy here). Compared to season 5 where - besides the competitive scene in the jungle - most of the champions were balanced enough to be entirely viable and justifiable picks, you now have a small handful of champs that are either permabanned or seen every goddamn game. The variety is ass and the mechanics are even more ass.

So for gameplay, you've got a combination of issues that creates the circlejerk you're currently looking at:

• First of all the altered minion mechanics makes teammates impact the game more without actually causing more teamplay. If somebody loses a lane, chances are you will, too, if you don't have better waveclear than your opponent. This is what instigates team-centered snowballing because global gold has a tendency to pour rather than just drizzle. This is one reason early game champs have a tendency to win games. This also means that your team's actions will always and far more heavily impact you than before, making you as a standalone player basically meaningless without your teammates.

• Second of all, with keystone masteries offering "unique and meaningful choices for players", the result you get is certain champs removing their primary weaknesses through these masteries. You get champs like Graves and Fiora whose weaknesses were getting bullied out of lane suddenly sticking out their counters because they now have very strong innate sustain. Bruiser Yi existed (and still does, honestly) because Fervor of Battle offers a massive AA steroid that made him damage-viable despite dedicating half his build to bulk. The issues isn't the champs or even really exclusively the items - it's that now there's no weaknesses to them. There is another half of this coin in which champions that use these masteries to amplify strengths rather than cover weaknesses can also be incredibly overbearing (see getting touched by Malzahar's E in lane while he has Deathfire Touch equipped for details), but that's self-explanatory. In short, laning is made to suck absolute ass because champions with specific weaknesses can now ensure they don't have any, resulting in the player facing this issue feeling completely bloody helpless to do anything at all when faced against these champs - choosing counterpicks included. Fuck keystone masteries.

• And third of all, you have the item changes and synergy issues. Combined with keystone masteries, early champs who basically relied entirely on facerolling early now have much easier access to their items than before even (rather than getting their items in equal measure), which means faster facerolling even earlier. A lot of this has less to do with full items and much, much more with the base items which now tend to be overloaded for minimal cost while only really mattering on champs that can actually use them.

So what results are quick(er) games that tend to feel very chaotic and out-of-control for the team that's behind at any time. Does it mean that a team that's behind can't come back because of the snowballing? No, because minion mechanics means that with stronger pushes from your own minions, one team can be starved for creep if they fail to continue pressuring while allowing the other team to farm up. This also causes the game to be increasingly difficult to gauge because gold flow is so asininely tied to minion push algorithms rather than, you know, actual clever teamfighting and play that the dominant strategy is to continue pressure all the goddamn time forever and always, leaving no time for a breather.

Now all of this could actually be overlooked. It honestly could. There's enough good gameplay to cover ground for the bad. And here is where you, Riot, royally fucked up:

Dynamic queue. Is. Ass.

It's pretty, it's good on paper, it's something I would like. I hate it because the execution is so piss poor. In fact, the only reason I hate it is because it's so piss poor.

There is no team/solo lockout alternative, meaning you run the risk of finding either very organized teams or being a gross minority on a team with a pre-made.

Your role-choosing has "exploits" people like to try and use which seem to always fail in my games - resulting in some jackoff assigned to mid asking me to trade my main role because he "didn't think he'd get mid".

And worst of all, unless you're playing exclusively support - and dear god if you are, I'm so sorry because that role is only suited for masochists right now - the queue times are so inexcusably long that the only justifiable reason for such long times would be that the game borders on flawless. If I had had to wait 20 fucking minutes to get into a game of fucking Dawngate I would have uninstalled it and never played again - and I loved Dawngate. It was fucking fun. And I felt like I could actually do any number of goddamn things and win my games. I'm thoroughly upset it was canceled.

So the reason I'm not hopping back on and playing any League tonight - or probably for a while even - is honestly that you have removed all balance from risk, reward, and punishment. This concept is key to making a game enjoyable - you want a balance of these virtues because it is the sole reason that even the best games continue to see play.

Let me translate this concept to your game then: Why would I want to play a game where I run the risk of getting faced against a full pre-made team of 5, have to deal with infuriatingly poorly balanced gameplay in situations where I am almost meant to feel helpless, feel like I hold no weight or merit on the game flow by my lonesome, either lingering at my turrets for tens of minutes trying to prolong the inevitable or continuing to hold out for victory in an ultimately stagnated game, and then have the game end incredibly anti-climatically only to have to wait for upwards of 20 minutes to try this bullshit all over again?

So here's the endpoint I'm reaching here: Fuck you. You can keep saying that Dynamic Queue was a great success and that so many players prefer it with completely rigged and leading polls that you damn well know you're designing to ensure the results lean in your favor, and you can keep playing along like the LCS isn't a fucking snorefest right now with absurd stomps and little to no gameplay besides teams dancing around the fog of war for half the game clearing any of the seven wards that a team can place at once the literal second they pop up, but the fact here is that you have made the game absolute bollocks compared to what it once was. I fucking hate the gameplay changes and I fucking despise how you released Dynamic Queue to us.

And don't give me the dynamic queue justification that "the game is meant to be played with friends". Tell that to the fucking teams you so fervently shine the limelight on - Samsung White's players almost all hated each other. Several of China's teams were thrown-together moshpits of players from different Asian countries, and every one of them wanted the other burnt on a stake. Normals is for friends, ranked is for competitive measurement, and there's fun in both concepts, one of which you have so boldly ignored like a brain-dead man ignores the fact he's on fire.

Here is the TL;DR: You have eliminated the single player, forced the game into something it shouldn't be, fixed issues that never existed by destroying everything else in terms of gameplay, and then tell us all that you're better than you've ever been. You have been taking so many steps to try and match the Heroes of the Storm model without realizing that Heroes of the Storm was widely considered a completely soulless and anti-fun game from the fucking release.

You have been so intent on making us take the piss that you've resorted to taking it yourself. Are you really so daft?