My Journey with League for ~6 Years and My Feelings of the Current Situation. (Please Read) (Long)

This has been on my mind for quite a long while, and with how this season has been, has finally given me the courage to speak and share my experiences of this game. I share to all of you my experience/journey, and how I feel of our current situation. I don't know how long this will take me to type, but I will post that towards the end of the post (Idk how to center words with the current board function, but wish there was a button that could do it). If you want to skip to the second half of this post, then feel free, just know that to understand where my feelings come from, the first half provides info for it. Hope you guys can tolerate the length.

-The Past and How I Got Here-

So I began playing during either before or after 2013 Worlds concluded with a few friends of mine that migrated from a game called Elsword. The reason why we migrated had multiple reasons, but my reason was that KOG (whom owns Elsword's NA server) had no real idea on how to balance the dungeon and arena aspect separately, and had the people who grinded over and over in dungeons with tons of time to use be the people destroying arena, while people who were skilled at their said character and their class with less time available had to play catch-up and get remotely close to the top equipment to be of any contention. [S4 & S5] So, I ended up playing casually for both S4 and S5, even though i'm ranked silver in both seasons (I mainly did my placements). The reason for not climbing was I had no motivation or want for it. I had a lot of funny moments when playing causally during those two seasons, including one moment that kills me inside (figuratively) just thinking back on it. I built 3 Triforces on Lucian, not knowing the effects didn't stack. That should tell you something. Those seasons were the most fun i've had in a long time with playing the game casually. It was during S5 and part of S4 that I also found my love for playing Toplane. I chose Top because of the insecurities I had during the time. It was a island for most of the game and I didn't have to worry much about people getting mad or upset with me. I just played how I played and then tried grouping with the team when I could. [S6] Next came S6, and I finally decided to start playing the game more competitively than casually. The reason was that I wanted to see how far I could get with my play, and to my amazement and absolute shock, I made it all the way to Plat 3 0 LP by the time the finals for the NALCS came up from what I could remember. I still had time to climb, but I decided to call it quits there since I doubted my abilities to climb any higher because of insecurity that was plaguing me for so much of my life. It was definitely a shame to not finish the season higher than that, but I don't regret stopping at that point either since I set Gold as my marker for that season. However, halfway through the season I stopped playing only top because I felt I wasn't doing enough to climb no matter how hard I worked on my play. It was then that I switched to playing AD and Top, with AD being my most played in the second half of the season. It was during this time that the tank meta was in its infancy. [S7] Then S7 happened. As much as i'm proud of the improvement I had during that season, it was during that season that not only myself, but the community, started to split with the issue of balance. It was this season that the Tank meta rose to glorious heights, and warped Top lane to be nothing but tanks being played left and right, and where ADs were the only people that mattered at the end of the game. Even with this very unhealthy meta, I rose with my Toplane play and got to as high as D5 promos midway through the season. Then that series ended with me not getting diamond due to trolls ruining both game 3 and game 4 (I was 1-1 before that point). After that, I suffered a fall from grace, which landed me in P5 O LP 3 or 4 weeks before VS. During this fall, I was at my worst. I was blaming others, flaming people, and more so being a all around asshole in game. I still tried climbing with this happening, and it still got me nowhere. It was when VS came out that the last straw broke. I got hit with a 14-Day ban and pretty much lost every use of the VS pass I bought. It was during that time off that I slightly reawakened and realized how blinded I was with myself and my play. After the ban lifted, I quickly readjusted my attitude (only slightly sadly, I wish I did a full adjust, but I was just simply ignorant during that time) and got back to climbing. Tier after tier, I rose with not my 1v1 skills but my teamplay skills instead. I had a good champ pool, especially with my Maokai which was around Top 20 in NA according to LoLGraph since not only did they calculate their rankings by rank, but KDA as well as games played and winrate compared to OP.GG who only bases it on games played in D2+. I reached D5 promos once again, but on the last day of ranked. Sadly fell short to trolls once again, this time 2-3, with the final game being the last loss. I ended the season in P1 64 LP.

This season however, was not an easy one for me to cope with at the beginning. I grew very depressed and had a falling out with the friends that I joined League with, leaving me confused and alone for a long while. As the year continued on, League was always there for me to return to. Whether it be new skins, new balance changes on the PBE, reworks, etc, it made me look forward to each and every day. With the terrible times behind me, I reflected on my journey so far and appreciated all that Riot has done for the game, and loved the community for being funny and witty as always, making me smile even in the worst of times. This led to me wanting to give back to not only the game and the company, but the community as well.

[Present Day]

We now have arrived to the current season. The season started off on a bang with the tank meta (and the very bland Ardent meta from worlds) coming to a end, the split between the community comprising of casual, hardcore, and pro dividing heavily in comparison to last year, which can be reflected by the beginning of the season to midseason with AD being fine in Pro play, but terrible to deal with in soloqueue and runes and masteries getting a massive overhaul in the preseason, making this year the first year of testing said system with the entire playerbase and not just the PBE playerbase. Once the midseason patches rolled in, chaos consumed both Pro and Casual alike. The thing we had for almost every season, a meta, was non-existent for about two months (3 patches (8.9-8.11) to be exact). Pros, hardcore, and casual players alike voiced their anger during the entire midseason. Afterward, Riot saw said mistakes and noted that they wouldn't do anymore big changes till preseason due to the feedback the community provided as a whole (yet people still expect them to do large changes with the meta just barely being stable).

My experience with this year is mixed, but hopeful. On one side, I was forced to adapt my playstyle and champion pool on the fly constantly, which made climbing extremely painful during some patches if I lost a whole bunch of my pool. On the other side, I didn't have to worry about not having rune pages being only tailored to one champ or two. I can change them on the fly with the new system, and no longer are champs tied to having specific rune sets for specific match-ups that would take two pages. Even with the chaos, I still managed to make D5 promos, but even sooner than last year. I made it to the promos within the 2nd or 3rd week of the season. However, I lost due to trolls once more, but managed to keep hovering in P2-P1 for several weeks till the fated week. That week had me bouncing between a game away from promos, and in promos 5 times, with the 5th attempt finally being successful after 4 games. I was ecstatic, so much my roommate in college (who was a friend of mine in highschool) was very confused as he witnessed me semi-screaming and running in joy in the common room of our dorm room, where our PCs were set up.

I got back to climbing when I was done with the first year of college, but to my dismay the meta was in shambles and my pool was limited to a small handful of champions: Darius, Pre-rework Aatrox, Gangplank, Cho, and Swain. My pool before that had champions like Maokai, Ornn, Sion, and Kled added with those handful of champs. So I tried climbing with this small pool, and ended up seeing mixed results. Then right after MSI ended, my account failed to see wins 15 games in a row, thrusting my account down to P3. I then started blaming other people again, then myself, then other people in a endless cycle that spanned weeks. I then decided to give up climbing on my main, and looked to my secondary account, which made G5 the past two season to claim the ranked rewards. I took that account, which was mainly an account that I tested new builds and champions on, and began climbing with it. It took me about 450 games to get into Diamond with my main during the beginning of the season. With this secondary account however, it took roughly 225-275 games to hit Diamond, and won the series the first try 3-2. I was astonished. So I ended up playing ranked games here and there while the meta was beginning to settle down after getting into D5.

However, after getting in D5, my pool got clamped down very hard, starting with the Aatrox rework. The champ that I always used Lethal Tempo on, even when Conqueror came out, was changed. Most of my winrate on him now is from the old Aatrox games I played. After several changes and patches, my pool went down to two champs: Darius and the reworked Aatrox. My climbing potential was at its worst due to the lack of champions I had tons of games played on that were still meta. Roughly 2 months later, I decided to give my old account one last shot, and it began to pay off. I started climbing back up, slowly but surely, into Diamond 5 again. That was only made possible by two things: Jhin being a strong and reliable pick at AD (I did switch to AD several times when I was in D5 after Sion's Q was gutted, and several times when climbing back up on the account) and the return of Sion. Funny enough, Sion was the pick that got me into D5 at the beginning of the season and 2 patches after I returned to the account. The buffs did in fact help, but it was the fact Sion played to my playstyle better than Aatrox and Darius did that gave me the extra hand I needed to get back on my feet. Both of my accounts currently sit at, from main to secondary, D5 91 LP (Balterein), D4 14 LP (Kyoya Kujo). I am not posting my rank with the accounts to show off, i'm posting them for people that like to check that stuff and save them the trouble.

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-My Feelings of the Current Situation-

The segment that I find very important to talk about, even now, is my feelings of the current situation we sit at. From the community distaste of having less changes in the back half, to current pro play with franchising, to the Kotaku report, its been a rough year for Riot and the community as a whole from what I can gather. Before I start diving in, I will say i'm neutral altogether with the current situation which is this season compiled. This doesn't mean that I don't care. It more the less means that I personally don't want to take sides. This is also personal opinion and observation about this entire season, so people can disagree and have different viewpoints. The two topics I will talk about, but combine them together, are balance and the community since most of the other topics I would have talked about would require a lot more of nit picking through tweets, media, etc. There is also the factor that most of the stuff I would be able to access for those topics would be more opinions more than facts, which doesn't help in a lot of cases if I need correct information.

[Balance & The Community]

These topics have been very touchy for quite a while, and gameplay has been in the forefront of this year a lot. The questionable planning of the midseason changes being spread out instead of being one patch being one point. I don't recall midseason being spread out over multiple patches before, so they took a shot and it missed hard right...sort of. So yes, doing it spread out was a terrible idea, but it was never done before, so how can we say it was gonna be a disaster in the first place when it was never attempted before? Sure, pro would prefer it be in one patch but at the same time casual and hardcore would like more changes over time to give them something to work with. They tried catering solely to the casual and hardcore side and it didn't work as they intended (they even mentioned that how it went was far from what they expected). They learned from it, and it won't likely happen again when a similar situation comes up. What also made it difficult, was the new rune system being the great frontier. It was a brand new system that on the outside doesn't look huge, but in the inside changed a lot. Champs lost or gained stats, items were not hugely touched, and most spells were not touched in terms of ratios and base damages until after preseason. Even if they were tuned, the spells were balanced around the old system of runes and masteries, which has a different balance set than this system has, which causes some things to be left untouched in fear of it either breaking or ruining said spells. It was a brand new system, and Riot was taking a chance with it to make it better in the long term for balancing. You can be mad and angry and keep asking for the system to be reverted, but at the end of the day, the system will be better in the long run compared to the old system.

Another point to look at would be Pro V Casual when balancing the game. Due to midseason, Riot had to cut back on large patches to avoid breaking the once broken meta that took a few patches to stabilize. To pros, that is a good thing since not much will be disturbed and they can focus on practicing the same picks without having to adjust to the next large patch. At the same time, it isn't so great for casual and hardcore players due to if something is broken and it would require a lot of changes to fix it, it would likely not be fixed till preseason, Jhin being a good example. In one hand you have the people devoting life and limb to play the game as a pro, and in the other hand you have the casual and hardcore part of the community, which makes up a majority of the playerbase. It becomes very difficult to balance in favor of both sides with how things are right now, but I have an idea that might work that was used not too long ago:** 3 week patch, with a mini balance adjustment patch in the middle of it. ** I liked the idea of the 3 week patch with the sub patch being released around halfway through the patch to clean up a few loose ends. On one side, Pros get more stability with these patches, including large ones since they would be spread out long enough for them to adjust. At the same time, the sub patch caters to the casual and hardcore base because of the adjustments that would come with the sub patch, creating more opportunity in other patches to help soloqueue and casual play if something is running a tad bit rampant when it shouldn't. This also could help not needing a hotfix all the time, especially when a rework just came out, as with the mini patch being guaranteed gives them a long enough window in certain cases to figure out what is overtuned or undertuned, without having to do it on the fly. Or if they do, they can gather the data long enough to see if the hotfix was necessary or not, and can either keep it or remove it on the micropatch instead of waiting a whole 2 weeks.

The last point would be the boards, specifically the Gameplay board. The Gameplay board has long been the venue of where casual and hardcore players would vent their frustrations with certain champions, suggest changes, etc. It wasn't an issue for a while, but very recently has become an issue in terms of trying to communicate with. More times than not, people would rather post "X champ is broken, please nerf" with very little info which might be incorrect and demand for the nerf, instead of saying "X champ is overpowered. Here's why:" and provide correct stats and info that would back up their claim without needing to be "hostile" and demand the change. This issue is why Gameplay + was created in the first place: to provide a board where people can post (under supervision) topics they think people would agree with or would bring up other ideas that could do what the topic is about better, without hostility ruining very well thought out posts and topics via downvotes. As much as I don't want to bring this up, it figuratively makes sense to me: Just like how Riot is dealing with the sexism issue, the gameplay board is dealing with hostility that is very deep rooted in the community (hence people saying League's community is the most toxic compared to other communities). The community this year did show unity in certain parts of the year, especially when the PBE had Yasuo and Lee get buffs to stuff their kit didn't need, and the community came together and said those are not the right changes to do, and the changes were canceled not long after. Even the Rengar changes to his R were shrunk to just being a cooldown reduction buff in the early game. The community together said the stealth duration buff was not needed, and they were heard. If the casual and hardcore part of the community comes together to fix these issues with the board, it could make talks between Riot and the community via the gameplay boards (or other boards) be not only more viable, but also reliable when needing community feedback for certain changes.

-Final Thoughts-

I don't have any regrets coming from Elsword to League, as League brought not only a new style of game I never played, but Riot had passion for making the game balanced and enjoyable for everyone. There are things that I could have done better during my journey, but i've accepted what happened and moved on to right my wrongs. As for the current situation, things could have been planned or worked on sooner than they were, but in end, its up to not only Riot, but us as a community as well, to change for the better and work towards a common goal. I'm aware of the posts that say "The game is dying", but the general truth of it is that with all games, they will lose players over time since those people also have lives outside of gaming. WoW had that happen, and many other games like them. Will the game die next year? Not really unless they manage to screw up massively, but S9 is gonna be make or break for Riot in terms of franchising and game balance. I feel like this is a stretch or has been a thing and I haven't known, but I feel like there should be a job at Riot that works with the balance team by not only communicating with the community and their feedback, but pros and their feedback, and think of ways to reach a middle ground for patches and champion balancing that caters to both or close enough. Not only would this act as a bridge that connects to both casual and pro play, but also bring clarity and transparency to insure the community that they are being heard, be it balance changes or updates. I'm not saying the balance department isn't doing enough to be communicative with the community (take Meddler's posts, the preseason posts, and Scruffy's post that outlined what is being addressed coming into preseason as proof that they are), but I wonder if this would be beneficial or not. This took 7 1/2 hours to type since I was planning as I was typing, but I had this idea in my head for a long time, so I knew what I was going to talk about. Thank you to everyone who reads this post, as this might be the biggest post (I know it beats any post i've typed that is similar by miles) ever posted. If I had to wish for anything, i'd wish for unity between Riot and the community to be greater than it has ever been.

• Balterein