What has League Become?

STOP CENSORING PEOPLE WHO SPEAK AGAINST RIOT! Why has this thread been deleted 4 times already?

I recently received a 14 days ban on this account. This led to me take a step back and think about my experience with League. I have realized that League isn't anymore that casual and fun game that you play with your friends to see who can get to level 30 faster. It has become a grinding addiction for LP filled with anger and frustration, with occasional glimpses of what once was League of Legends. I hope to give my opinion on a matter that seems popular these days: "League is dying, or "Riot is ruining League of Legends". I am not making this post to bash Riot, I want to fix this game so we can play the beloved game we all fell in love with. First I need to make clear that I do not want to remove my ban, I truly deserve it, but I also want Riot to realize they need to fix their game. Lets begin with the Pros and Cons of League of Legends (I will later go in detail with these topics).

Pros: -Incredible characters with interesting playstyles and personalities -The lore -The casual and user friendly aspect of the game -The replay value -The community (outside of game) -It is free and has multiplayer (always a win for me) -Awesome skins -Limited events -Competitive environment -The game itself is a great concept in my opinion (like all MOBAs)

Cons: -The team aspect of game -Toxic community (inside of game) -The report system -Forced meta -Rank system -The game is not actually fun -Riots decisions

I will continue on to explain only the problems with League of Legends, but keep in mind this is just to skip unnecessary rambling about the positives and not to make the game look bad. Also I want to clarify that I am just a bronze/silver scrub with no professional opinion. But I truly believe that if Riot wants to appeal to your everyday player they need to acknowledge these problems. Also, I am the same rank than their Balancing Team so I have the same capacity as them :P.

Team Aspect of the Game: League of Legends is a team based competitive game, I get that. But I feel that it lacks essential components to make this formula work. First of all, there is no voice communications. Secondly, you have separate lanes with essentially no interaction between each other for 20 minutes, and only one roaming role (jungle). Thirdly, you punish players who leave lane to help others by adding First Tower Gold and towers being too powerful in the early game. What I mean with this is: Players are encouraged not to leave lane because they might lose first tower, get out leveled or out cs-ed, and they might only get a few kills and nothing else, in a team based gamed. You make early champions OP like Lee Sin and Elise (always played in professional matches) so they can dominate when the players don't actually group and start snowballing. How are ADC's and Supports supposed to win if Mid and Top feed (just an example). You give power to the bad players to single-handedly ruin games because most of the time you are helpless or simply can't help them in the early game. How many times has a dude who goes 0/8 ruined your game, even though everyone else is fine? A lot probably. You have created a team game where bad players drag everyone down they feed and let the other team snowball, but you also force the solo players to play in a team and not shine by themselves. Some may say: "You should be able to carry." You are right, but the problem is that most players are not 10 times better than everyone in the match, so even if they are better, they are not good enough to carry. So then rank becomes this grind for LP instead of it measuring your real skill, because you are let at the mercy of the RNG Gods to see if you get a decent or terrible team. Many people deserve to be higher, but are not because the game is designed to be addictive (to LP that is) and not rewarding; because then people waste money on silly skins. Imagine if Dynamic Queue actually worked, then we could have teams of good players with voice comms and synergy climbing the ladder faster than those of same skill in solo queue.

Toxicity and Report System: We first need to get this out of the way: I might be biased for my toxic behavior, and yes there are some people that should really be banned. I feel like this topic has been touched on many times by people like Shaclone, Dunkey, Tyler 1, and many more. But I feel that we need to continue on pressuring on Riot to change. Toxicity is caused by the game and not by the "terrible people". The game is not fun, sometimes you lose because of bad players (or even trolls), you get taunted or attacked with passive aggressive bs, or sometimes people just don't make good decisions while playing. I doubt any of you wake up and think, "YAY LETS PLAY LEAGUE OF LEGENDS." You probably think: "Geez, today I am going to do my promos to Silver 1, I really hope we win!" What happens if you lose because some Nautilus top lost lane to a Fiora 1/7 or your jungler misses smite on baron and you proceed to lose the game? I truly believe it is in the right of the players to flame them. It isn't morally correct, but sometimes you just deserve to get shit talk for wasting everyone's time. Not only the games take longer and longer with each season, the surrender vote is only open till 20 minutes. When you play bad or troll, you waste the time of other people. This frustrates a lot of people, and we need to understand this. Plus, we have a mute button and chat filter for a reason. If you do not have a backbone to accept you are an "idiot for going 2/12" then just mute him. Chat bans should still be a thing, but perma bans for talking shit is just silly and childish. Considering trolls, passive aggressive players, taunters, "experimental picks and builds", and afkers are banned is seriously outrageous. When Riot decided to automatize the report system instead of using real people to see: "Maybe this toxic Thresh isn't the problem, but actually the 6 Doran Ring Nami ADC" we have a problem. Because the rank system is too punishing and not so rewarding, it causes toxicity in players no doubt. Most people are not toxic because they are bad people, but because the game breeds toxicity.

Forced Meta:I think we are moving into the decline of League of Legends, and I credit it to the tank meta of Season 5-7. No, League isn't going to die. But we haven't seen any growth in players in League of Legends in a long time. The Tank Meta has been a huge failure on behalf of Riot. I don't mind strong tanks, but this is too much. It is just getting worse with the Mid Season Update. Tanks are not fun, they are just good in low ELO because they are not mechanically challenging, and generally OP in MOBAs. Tanks need to either have too much CC or some form of damage to actually be relevant in a PVP environment. In PVE they just simply tank the damage of bosses or any enemy, but in PVP players actually know how to focus the damage dealers (not like AI from PVE games). But Riot, has taken this too far. Tanks deal too much damage, or too much cc. They can out damage even ADCs because of their huge health pools. The Riot balance team really needs to change their personnel. You can't expect bronze and silver players to decide whats good for the game. Champions like Shaco or Darius are considered OP at this ELO, but are never seen in professional matches for obvious reasons. Furthermore, they only look at raw numbers like win rates. I think we can all agree that Elise is OP, just look at her play rate in professional level. Still her winrate looks normal, and thus Riot does not nerf the spider. Something also that shocked me was the Singed support main that was threatened to get banned. Riot was literally punishing players for creativity because "he didn't cooperate". Why aren't people that farm for 40 minutes, or say "mid or feed", or simply refuse to speak with the team banned? We should stop investing so much money on skins and put it into balancing a 100+ champion game. I hope Riot realizes this is no easy task and they need to improve their balancing team. You can blame this on the company that bought Riot; but if Riot keeps saying that the Tank Meta is okay and denying the forced meta, then they are just as bad.

I hope to spark a conversation between the community and Riot because Riot tend to ignore people who speak against them (Dunkey, Tyler 1, Shaclone). I made this post not because I hate League, but rather because I love it and want it to become fun once again. You are free to disagree with me and tell me to kill myself. But I hope someone actually continues this conversation with strong arguments. Lastly, if anyone actually sees this post, could you spread the word or add any of your opinions to the post. I will try to include them in the main post if you have a valid opinion and I will make sure to give credit.