Thanks for 6.5 years

I've been with this game since shortly before Garen came out (April 2010). If you count the time I spent enviously watching my friends play before I had a decent PC of my own, I've been with this game since the very beginning. I've been on both sides of all the coins: player and analyst, soloQ and semi-pro, writer and doer. Anyone interested in my analysis blog can find it here. I followed the competitive scene only loosely at first, and then religiously for a couple years (between late 2013 and 2015). I've had my share of tryharding and of playing casually, of being ultra-meta-locked and of picking nothing but cheese for weeks on end.

I remember every cheese build and I remember all the godmode periods of various champions. I remember LeBlanc being so outrageously broken that they had to hotfix nerf her the day after she was released (the reverse of Ivern). I remember when champions were released every 2-3 weeks. I remember being super excited to buy my first skin, Bewitching Nidalee, when it originially came out (because I was an AP Nidalee mid one-trick). I remember Dominion, and ARAM being a custom mode on Summoner's Rift. I even remember tryharding on Twisted Treeline before it got updated.

I remember how Riot used to give out RP if the servers were being particularly finnicky for a weekend or two (it was 250 RP, to be exact). Then they transitioned to giving IP boosts as apology gifts. Now they give nothing and defend their Chicago server to the death.

And that's the big story here: the game and the company are both moving into places that I cannot follow. I don't find the game fun anymore, even with close friends. All I can see is the same, tired old cyclical imbalance charade being played out without end, and Riot Games greedily grinning at the milk splashing into the bucket. You see, after a while you realise that there's a pattern to the pattern of buffs and nerfs, of invisibility and relevance. Remember when Maokai suddenly got good again for a month this year? Remember when the Meowkai skin was released? Yeah, same time frame. The storyline of a fully balanced game that's a homogeneous, centre-clustered mass is a pipe dream. It doesn't exist, and Riot's patch notes are selling you snake oil by telling you they're "doing their best to balance outliers". Who knows, maybe they even believe that the concept exists and are blindly chugging the Koolaid. As a player who's also a hobbyist analyst and statician, it's pretty insulting to be fed these sorts of outright lies meant to disguise a business model.

Speaking of analysis and statistics, the state of the pro scene is also pretty insulting. For every good thing that happened competitively in the first 3 years, ten bad things have happened in the last 3. The LCS system and Riot's judge-jury-executioner style of competitive ruling reek of corruption and inconsistency, of power complex and blind lust for control. Having no open circuit and mere breadcrumbs of international competition make the game incredibly boring to watch and analyse for years on end. Imagine an open circuit like CS:GO with invitationals and qualifiers, with teams allowed to play in whichever tournaments they pleased, wherever in the world they pleased. Imagine TSM or C9 or FNC or whoever your favourite team is---imagine them able to travel the world and qualify for multiple international major tournaments a year. Maybe then the gap would really start to close (MAYBE). Maybe then you wouldn't have to dream of the day Bjergsen squares off against Faker: you'd see it every couple of months. Maybe then you wouldn't have to judge how good teams are based off a double round-robin of Bo1's in a groupstage of a single major per year.

What has happened on the pro level is a macrocosm of what has happened my player experience. For every good memory I made in the first 3 years, I've made ten bad ones in the last 3. I never considered quitting for years at first...and within the past two years I've taken at least two breaks, each at least 3 months---because I couldn't tolerate the incessant patching and how blatantly Riot shoves the meta around to suit which champions they need to market next. To put it simply, the last straw has been placed on the camel's back this year. I'm transitioning out of League of Legends entirely, as a player, as an analyst, and as a writer. You won't be seeing me around this game anymore after this year's World Championships.

So before I leave, a few things for LoL posterity: ---The meta will always go ADC -> assassin -> bruiser -> tank -> repeat. ---Mid will need waveclear, and you should always draft some hard engage. ---Buy lots of pinks and place lots of pinks. ---You can't call yourself mechanically proficient unless you can unconsciously hit at least 8 CS/min every single game. ---You're never as good as you think you are. ---Communicate with your team more. ---When you die, never think "my team should've done X", but instead think "I shouldn't have done Y".

So thank you, all of you, for the sick outplays, for the moments of hilarity and boosted monkey fiestas, for the hard games and for the easy games. Thanks to the Riot art department for some of the sick skins that I sank $350-ish into. Thank you for nurturing my passion for video games, and giving me six and a half years of pretty reliable entertainment. Thank you, and good luck moving forward.