[Gameplay analysis] We like to complain about the young kids in this game but...

What I really want to know is why they're here at all, because if you think about it LoL (ranked at least) is aimed at a very specific person: the serious competitive type who gets satisfaction from mastering the game.

(Edit: I realize there are mature 12 year-olds. If you are one, good on you. You're not the person I'm discussing here).

Take a look at, say, Zelda (or really, replace Zelda with every other similar franchise, that works too). I personally enjoy this kind of game, but if you look at the gameplay half of it is just a mess of superficial obstacles set up so the player can effortlessly knock them down and thus feel like they accomplished something. You're never punished for your mistakes, since the game is usually bending over backwards to make you feel like a badass, and that's fine, that's what kids want out of a Zelda game.

Now look at League. It varies a bit between roles, and mechanics are a big part of the game, but what League really rewards is patience, the ability to read a situation, foresight, decision-making, nuanced talents like that. That's not even getting into interacting with your teammates. This doesn't have much in common with the games made for a younger audience, does it?

Finally, there's the learning curve. You get through the frontloaded tutorials in a Zelda game and you're basically prepared for everything that's to come, at least well enough to adapt to everything that shows up. I've never heard of anyone getting stuck in a Zelda game because they didn't understand it well enough (only because of stuff that's hard to notice, like swimming under that floating block in OoT water temple). Compare that to League, where half an hour of tutorials might get you ready to go even against Beginner Bots, and the hundreds of games it takes to get to 30 often aren't enough to prepare people for Ranked. We call League simple because DOTA exists, but it's still a hell of a lot more complex than any other game that isn't a moba.

And that gets to the point of this: how does one learn League? It helps if you have a friend explaining things, but 90% of your game knowledge is going to come from just learning from your games, especially from your mistakes. This is something younger players are just biologically weak at, especially when nebulous roles like Jungle and Support exist for them to blame. I'm not trying to disrespect, but at the same time I know if the game had been around when I was 13, I would have been stuck in bronze and blaming my team like the best of 'em.

I get that the game can just be played for fun, trying out random stuff in norms and playing with friends (aka the Keyori and SivHD playstyle), that isn't really engaging to me but I acknowledge that it exists. That's norms though, the question I pose is why people who one would assume derive little enjoyment from Ranked, are in Ranked. All I can think of is that they like wrecking people, even though there are all sorts of games that deliver on that better (basically why CoD is a thing) and in League they'll spend more time raging at their team than feeling satisfied.

tldr: someone explain how the crying rager types have played hundreds of games of this when this game just fundamentally isn't aimed at that sort of person.