See you later, maybe.

I'm going to take a hiatus from League of Legends. I'm not enjoying this season and haven't felt any real high points in the overall feel of the game in even longer. I feel like the game has been stagnant and stuck in a bad place for a long time. I think Riot is generally out of touch with the playerbase, or at least their vision no longer matches the kind of evolving game I personally want to play.

I am a bit frustrated and disappointed. I've become too pessimistic and cynical about the game's direction to still feel that providing feedback or ideas to Riot is actually worth the effort. I am not obligated to stick around and spend time on a game that I am not enjoying. I've played since season 2, and have taken long breaks from the game before, so it's possible that I could return again if things improve. However, it would probably take a very significant meta shift and a large volume of new content releases to bring back my interest.

Some points of irritation are the high champion damage outputs, short fights, excessive snowballing, lack of utility/tank champion presence, lack of lategame fantasy for entire champion classes (damage scaling totally overshadowing everything), stagnant meta (ie., ADC still mandatory for 8+ seasons and counting), constant rehashing of the same rotating dominant champions, lack of new content, worsening gameplay experience for the roles I am drawn to (support and jungle), apparent disregard for general player frustration warning flags (ie., a certain champion reaching 65% global ban rate), total lack of progress in resolving low counterplay mechanics (ie., <1 second burst from mobile/stealthed/ranged champions), distasteful (too blatantly manipulative) marketing ploys, my paranoia of Tencent, distrust in Riot's unnecessarily intrusive anti-cheat 'spyware' (keylogging browser searches is alarming), and that's only touching the surface of my current pain points with League of Legends.

I don't think I am being needlessly negative or narrow-sighted. In passing judgment, I am more than willing to factor in the changes that I consider positive improvements to the game, like the addition of turret plating and the Nunu rework, but these positives haven't even come close to balancing out the negatives I've felt over the last year or more. I'm not providing any ultimatum and I am not so self-important or deluded as to think that it would matter if I was. I doubt this feedback will make any difference. The reason I am posting this is so that I can conciliate myself with the knowledge that I thoroughly tried to make my voice heard before giving up.