I'm completely jaded on this game, I want to fix it.

Hey, I suck at this game, but I like to pretend I know what I'm doing, now that you know this, I can explain where I come from.

I started this game roughly near the end of season 2 with a friend named Jamie, he was cool but really toxic and at the time I didn't ever think I could play a PVP game, so I forced him to play bot games with me for an entire year, not really paying attention to the game or how it works, I picked what I wanted to do and I'd play it regardless of what you're actually supposed to do. But I still had fun in games where I was GP and chasing Annie Bot to the ends of the Runeterra's mid lane so I could shoot her in the face with my Q. It was whacky and stupid, but I had a pretty good time, I even made some friends.

ARAM came out, that was my first proper experience with PVP, yeah it was mostly because I thought the event was really cool and I liked the lore behind it (that was inexplicably never updated past that) and I began to learn how the game works at least on a technical level, how to play random characters and eventually I became a lot better at playing to the point I learned about roles and lanes. I swapped to normals, though mostly still ARAM's because whenever I joined blind pick, I wanted to think about the Role I was doing before I picked a character, and most blind players didn't think about that.

Teambuilder came out back in... I think it was season 4? It might've been season 5. I was so goddamn happy that came out, yeah it had flaws and the queue times were long, but I finally think I hit my stride. Team builder was no ranked, which I've been avoiding because I'm a bit thin-skinned and have trouble dealing with people who are provoking me, I'm aware of myself enough to know that might not work out for me. I played the most games of League in one year that I've ever played before, even more than ARAM and eventually got to playing roughly 500 TB games total over my at the time 300 or so ARAM games.

They gave TB the axe and brought in the new champion select. I don't like it as much as I liked TB but I lived with it, it was serviceable because I at least got a tiny bit of control over what I was doing, even though I hated the fact that if I picked support at all, I'd be support for life, which sucks for a guy who likes to occasionally support. Though I noticed something I was having trouble with, I had trouble keeping friends. It's hard to facilitate a discussion and get people to like.. connect with in the game, I guess a lot of people aren't interested in that but it just feels like I need friends already for me to enjoy a 'friend' experience, it sort of encourages cliques over meeting new, cool people.

But I'm having trouble doing that, not only am I not gaining friends, I'm slowly losing them. I've felt like I hit a plateau. I'm not even that good at the game, but I've just... stopped getting any better. I used to be able to feel like I contributed and won games, sometimes even carrying my team to a win but now I just feel irrelevant. I'm either breaking even, losing or feeding and I can't really make up the difference. I don't know if it's my champions, or me, or the fact that I've noticed that it just feels like I'm losing my edge. I took a pretty long break, about 2-3 months of not playing the game to see if I could refresh myself but coming back still feels like I'm playing in this pit where no one gives a fuck.

I used to suffer from a pretty heavy depression, and after getting a job I've slowly clawed my way out of that problem but like.. playing League reminds me of those days, where I hate myself and feel like I'm stuck and can't change anything by just wanting it to change hard enough. I really like Riot, even if I don't like some of their business practices and balance decisions sometimes but every game company can be guilty, or even guiltier than that and I don't think that's the problem. I'm not a 'serious' player but I love to learn, improve and implement strategies over just trolling and fucking around, I want to become good at the game. I blew up at a friend that I've been hanging out with for over 3 years, telling him how much I fucking hate being around him and calling him a stupid bitch just because some assholes ingame got me mad, that was one of the reasons I took a break. I just want to figure out how to like.. go back to having fun and not worrying about comparing my own performance and feeling like complete shit about myself because I am constantly failing my own expectations. I want to go back to making friends and making stupid jokes in /All and not worrying about if I'm making people mad, but I have no idea how.

I feel like quitting this game, but I've spent a lot of my time and money into it and I want to like it, but I don't have a solution to make it more fun or more enjoyable.

I feel like a moron for spilling my guts on this, but it's hit that critical point where I need to decide on what I'm going to do next. Fuck it, I'll just leave this here.

[zombie-nunu-bummed]