Forgiveness is a Virtue; a Philosophical Rant

Riot seems intent on destroying any amount of fun that can be had by relatively casual players, as well as creating an environment that seems to just breed toxic personality traits. I know this, because I read it from the devs.

Riot, if you want games to be shorter, then bring back game styles like ARAM, URF, ARURF and make them permanent. Stop it with the tank-shredding, true damage fetishizing, and the nerfs to shielding and healing. It is breaking the very core of your game, and creating tremendous amounts of animosity between players that should be working together.

Regardless of what you do, how you change abilities, or what sorts of maths you try to invent, the basic Summoner's Rift game is by its very design, a game that is focused early on individual player ability to maximize their champ's choice and itemization, mid-game on how well the winners can pick up the slack of less competent player's weaknesses, and late-game on how well the team as a whole can group together and synergize with each other. This is notable by the very shape of the map, starting small at home, pushing outwards in the middle, and then coming back together as you approach the enemy or target base. This very nature is, through natural consequence of this design, something that is naturally going to take a bit longer to finish. When you factor in the length of time it takes to traverse the entire map, this becomes a bit more evident, and when you factor in the peculiar mechanics of the game such as last-hitting, and shared XP gain, aggregate minion damage, and things such as positioning, minion wave mechanics, and some of the rarified champions' basic design, there are a bunch of things for any player to learn or pick up on in order to become 'good', whatever that may be considered.

And there are some people who will just never, ever in their life be 'good'; who are unable to master or even learn some of the more invisible advanced concepts of the game, but those players could still contribute to their team's success by being able to play bruisers, or tanks, or healers/shielders and actually help a team win. This current release, v8.12, is headed in the wrong direction. Nerfing the heals and shields, along with the previous patches' limiting and destruction of the tank classes basically is pushing everyone towards a certain style of play that really only appeals to a certain few personality styles--and it's making the game rather unpleasant for many others, and overtly brutal for a few more. There are the people who enjoy playing assassin and slayer types of characters, there are the people that enjoy basking in the thrill of coming out on top, being the last man standing, and finishing the game with 20+ kills under their belt; but there are also the kinds of people who enjoy sitting in the back and chunking out objectives, just as there are people who enjoy playing protectors, wardens, and healers. If you look at any society, organization, or culture, anywhere really, you'll see all of these personality types at work, going different jobs that suit them and the way they like to work.

The changes of late to this game are not only critically pushing the less aggressive playstyles by the wayside but also making them overall liabilities to their team. If a passive but good Soraka player is unable to effectively prevent teammates' deaths through her incredible healing abilities, then she is just a squishy, practically useless non-damage dealing champ with a giant target on her forehead. Sure, if she isn't positioned very well, and she over-extends without vision, then she should rightly get caught out and die as a result; Sure, support characters that heal or shield should have to manage resources as a part of their core skill base, as well as working with a normally smaller gold intake; but they should still be able to earn an MVP esteem by doing that job better than killing mass waves of minions or whole teams of champions.

Likewise, Tanks should be enough of a threat to the enemy team as far as being a damage sink with a key disable or something that they should be able to cast some fear into the enemy. A built Amumu should be able to strike fear in the opposing team for his ability to swing in to the thick of battle, surviving everything they can throw at him for a second or three, cast his Ultimate and stun the whole enemy team, allowing his teammates to pick off the most dangerous of the enemy team, and be able to walk out of it alive. But if you're building the game so that no amount health, stack of armor, or ability to heal is going to be a game-changing thing, then we all might as well just play every game with Yi, Yasuo, Kayle, Kog'maw and Pyke, and whoever screws up first loses as the enemy scales out of control. Don't blink, or you'll get caught unaware and die.

The scaling, snowballing, and degree of invisible mechanics required to learn in this game were already bordering on obnoxious, but the lack of tank viability and the most recent nerfs to shielding and healing have really made the game not fun to enabler-types of personalities and too unforgiving to new players.

When a newbro doesn't understand what he is doing wrong, such as positioning incorrectly, or not comprehending how to look at what the enemy laner is building, and how to counter it; then the newb WILL inevitably feed his opponent--with the current level of scaling in the game right now, that often snowballs into something unwinnable for almost any team. This degree of snowballing breeds toxicity into the attitudes of their teammates, because those paying attention can see a near unwinnable event building up before the 10 minute mark, but then have to suffer through the last half of the game watching the avalanche roll down the mountain destroying everything in its path. Most players of this game will choose to abuse and harass the poor newbro, who probably won't be able to learn exactly what he was doing wrong during that game and correct it. The truly stellar players of the game, assuming that they have the right combination of champ and ability to itemize, might rise to the occasion and shove hard enough to turn things around, turning a 15-20 minute snowball into an hour-long epic battle with every inhibitor exposed having respawned at least once.

The very nature of the ranking system attracts those that value competition, competence, and dominance; however, you will always have those that prefer to just stick to normals, and do not value the extreme competition. Invariably, these sorts of people will wind up playing in groups with those that the competition attracts. By their very nature, these personality types will not play very well together--and it doesn't take long to find a game where the aggression and playstyle of the ADC/bot lane and their support don't mesh well, and one goes in while the other retreats; usually ending poorly for one if not both players. With current scalability in place, if things don't get sorted out immediately, then it will often transition into a total loss. With the current and projected pace of the game, there often isn't time to sort things out via chat, unless both players possess an exceptional typing rate, which is normally something that takes years of practice to develop--something that I would argue most players don't have, considering the demographics of the game.

Considering the nature of the ranking system, the Pareto principle, and just the general laws of nature, it is inevitable that the vast majority of the player base will be found lurking in the bronze and silver categories of play, where these types of things are a daily spectacle. Just based on personal experience, and minimal observation, there almost isn't a single game at that level where a competent player won't say, "what in the hell is <Player X> doing?" Now, I want to be very clear that I am not advocating for Riot to cater to players in these categories, but without allowing for these players to screw up, learn from their mistakes, and still come back and win the game; I would expect for the player base to eventually wither and shrivel up and die off; because spending half of the game just waiting for it to end because someone screwed up and fed the enemy team before the 3 minute mark, which made it easier to be repeated again before 6 minutes, and before 10 minutes, twice more with the assistance of their team.... well, it just isn't any fun, which is the whole point of playing this game, or any other, for 99.99% of the population.

In order to grow as a company, and to make more profit, you should really consider adapting the game to make the game far less obnoxious to your more casual crowd. Some people like to just collect things, like having all the champs, or all the skins for their favorite champs, or for just taking an hour or two to do something that provides them with a little bit of joy in their life. Some people will want to charge hard into the jungle, and climb their way to the top, but far fewer will ever reach it. Thus, the current lack of forgiveness in the game for any mistake is too harsh for most of the players who just want to have a little bit of fun without taking anything too seriously. Some people don’t want to, or can’t afford the time to live, eat, and breathe League of legends, watching or reading strategy guides to improve on all the little things in the game. Some people can pick up on things like zoning, lane control, minion-wave management from a few games or a quick chat, others won’t pick up on proper farming and last-hitting despite playing the game for over a year.

The censorship in the game, and the banning of players because they felt the need to rage at a newbie for screwing up because of their own ignorance comes dangerously close to trying to fix people. You can’t fix people, and you never will be able to. Throughout history, you can stumble across certain individuals that thought it might be a good idea to try, and it always ended in disaster and catastrophe. Rather than try to fix people, or design a system that is so unforgiving to weed out the weak; it is far better to build the system with a fair amount of forgiveness so that the new can learn and recover without penalizing four others for their weaknesses. Over time, people will settle in to where they feel most comfortable, or climb to their point of maximum failure. And only one will win the game.

Also, you should really consider a hardcore math major with sociological populations study experience to take a look at and possibly try to fix your MMR/ELO system, because it seems far beyond broken.