Account Deleted

I have requested that my account be deleted, I have been playing since Season 2 and have spent hundreds of dollars on champions and skins. The purpose of this post is not to flame or insult anyone who plays this game. More so I felt the need just to explain why, after such a significant time and monetary commitment, I decided to leave. Maybe it will make some type of difference, likely it won't but that's okay. I owed it to myself more than anyone else to explain. I am not a toxic person in my real life and no game has ever affected me the way League has... it got to the point where my wife would say that she hates the person I am when I play League. Regardless of the outcome of any match, win or lose, I never had any fun playing the game anymore. It became a destructive addiction. That, ultimately, is why I deleted my account. So I started to ask myself why the game made me so mad and this is what i came up with, in a nutshell:

Kills matter too much

It is too easy for someone on an opposing team to get "fed" and then what you have done in your lane, even if you have outfarmed and performed considerably well (maybe up a kill or two) is completely negated by the failures of another of your team members. You have no control over how other people act or choose to play the game. I won't play this game again, and can't now. It has been awhile since I've felt better about any decision I've made then deleting this account. But for those of you who are still playing here is what I propose as a fix to what I believe is the biggest problem in League:

1. Make players kills award no gold
2. Increase the experience gained from player kills
3. Increase the gold gained from killing minions and accomplishing objectives

We say the game is about objectives but it isn't. The game currently grants too high a reward for a situation in which one player has a significant skill advantage over another player allowing them to "snowball" a lane, kill that player multiple times, and get completely out of hand. I believe the game needs to reduce the importance of kills and increase the importance of objectives. The reason that they won't do that, I believe, is because League has become a spectator sport designed for top level play. People want to see action and kills are action. I don't think that this change would affect the spectator product as you will still need to kill your opponent to accomplish objectives but what it will do is limit a situation in which 1 or 2 kills completely takes someone out of a lane and makes it so that they feel they can't participate. It creates a sense that, even if you make a mistake, the early game isn't over for you. All you need to do is farm and you will catch up. The game is currently designed to reward significantly skilled players and severely punish mistakes (by lesser skilled players in a matchup). For the significantly skilled players (maybe 1 in every game) I'm sure this is an ideal situation but for the rest it creates a sense of hopelessness.

I'm older than most of the people who probably play this game... maybe my hand eye coordination and reflexes aren't what they used to be. Video games used to be about having fun, if you as an individual player are having fun right now then more power to you. I was not anymore, so my story ends.