The real problem riot games has: Visual aesthetics and marketing > gameplay

This season was a damn mess as someone who started playing in season 5... 7 for me was the most roller-coaster experience ive had as far as balance and especially snowballing.

#What Riot is doing right so far

In my opinion the new rune reforge is a step in the right direction, players complain about HUGE changes when the runes you WOULD otherwise have on aka "9 armor yellows" etc are already applied now, the old masteries actually brought a lot of damn problems with viability and champions for certain trees paired excellently and others with no direction at all. The new runes reforge gives a player options to play different play styles with a champion. We now have way more several ways to use strategy on the rift.

With new runes comes brainstorming you MUST brainstorm and think thru what path you must take just because you have a hunch "this" might work and fails doesn't mean reforge is a failure, it means you need to go back to the pages and take into consideration what works and what doesn't work with this or that "path". Its all about trail and error and learning from mistakes literally.

#What Riot is doing wrong

Visual aesthetics and marketing > gameplay. This means here at riot games we are more concerned with how pretty the flowers look on the rift rather than why "X champion" is causing terror but that's because WE intended it to be THAT way. Because if Riot didn't then why is "so & so champion" bringing in skin sales periodically and visual aesthetics seem to be more and more improved? notice how nobody really complains how pretty, shiny, and visually appealing the skins are getting? then look at gameplay. Now look at skins, Now go back to gameplay.. its a huge problem when you look back on this season and look at every champion that has received a skin more than half them you can tell are strategically selected this is because the overall discussion is discussed ina meeting or sorts.

In my theory even though i dont work for Riot i;d imagine it goes like this for example: "We need a theme for January" after that then there are skin candidates a few are chosen perhaps based on popularity but iam 100% certain they candidate champions that will shift the meta or something they can just "milk off" no pun intended.

for example, recently in the jungle quite a few patches back mana restoration was buffed in the jungle i believe then paired with the buffs tuned him just enough to become popular in the jungle, this would not only cater to youtubers posting "NEW EZEAL BROKEN SEASON 7" vids but also Riot themselves for they KNEW what would eventually happen. The results are skin sales go up. How would i know that? because if you buff something it causes a placebo effect when this psychological instance occurs more and more people are more likely to play the champion, even skin releases themselves can have this effect and Riot is damn well an abuser when it comes to placebo effects on the game. So when the placebo effect occurs the principal simply is:

More people play X champion = More people pay for skins for X champion

Because if your winning nonstop or simply feel like a collector for your new favorite champion why not buy skins?

This ultimately effects gameplay itself and keeps league in a non stop loop of imbalances.