This game, man...

I love League. Most of my friends play it, and we all have a blast while doing so. If I have free-time, I'd most probably spend it on this game. But, League can be just as unenjoyable as it is fun. There are some times where I just feel ... sad ... at the state of this game. I only joined League in preseason five, so I can't say much about it before, but I've seen how amazing this game can get, while simultaneously seeing crappy it can feel. There are many problems I believe Riot should address that could most likely vastly improve the game.

First off, let's talk about the shitty new player experience. We've all been through it at one point. The 1 to 30 grind, runes, masteries, all that jazz. But, I doubt most people remember how crap it was. I had a friend who wanted to start League, so I made a smurf to level with him, and oh boy, there were so many tryhards. I know that Riot can't stop smurfing, but it's still a major problem in the early experience. If you make an account just to Rofl-stomp new players, you're instantly one of the most despicable type of player in my eyes. These new people just want to learn the game, but if they just get pooped on by everything, they won't learn shit.

Don't even get me started on Runes. Did you know that I recently finished my 2 rune pages about a month ago, but I started this game in December? It took me over SIX MONTHS to finish 2 PAGES. You know why? As a leveling player, I wanted to get as many cool-ass champs as I could. Whenever I looked into the "Runes" section of the store, I'd just see a shit load of numbers and not understand what they meant. So I just said "Fuck it, I'll do runes when I'm 30". So time passes, and I hit level 30. I looked up some simple Rune Pages online, and I nearly cried. It was over 19,000 IP to fill two pages. Even after that, you'd still have to buy extra pages for 6300. Again, I said "Fuck it" and I went back to saving for cool-ass champs. But, at one point, I was forced to get runes. This happened in a Talon game I played. It was a mirror match up mid-lane. I was confident in my abilities, but the enemy would ALWAYS out trade me. We both had flask, so I looked at his stats. He had 30 more AD than me. That's a shit ton early game. I couldn't keep up that game, so I lost. Not only are runes poorly explained and expensive, they give an edge to players who actually spend the time to get them.

Secondly, there is no longer a reliable way to punish people. The tribunal is gone, so all of the punishing is made by robots. This can lead to some very bad situations. Here's an example: have you ever played a game where you have a troll that basically handed the win to the enemy on a silver platter? In that same game, is that troll in a premade that won't ever surrender? Because of that, you would be stuck in that game essentially for 30 minutes. During those thirty minutes, your face is getting butt-sexed hardcore by the 22-5 Zed who got fed off the troll. You can't leave the game because an automated system would believe you are abandoning your team and would punish you. This situation happens too often to me, but the sad part is, a non-automated system could fix it. A Human could look at the score and chat logs of that game and use proper judgment to punish the trollers, not the person just trying to play another game.

Lastly, the champions in this game can just be so UNFUN to play against. There are some champions that are so poorly designed that when you play against them, your gameplay experience just sucks major ass in general, even when the enemy does bad. Along with some bad design, Riot lately loves to make a select group of champions overpowered in comparison to all the other ones. I'm looking at all the Sated Junglers and Juggernaughts out there. I feel like that if I don't choose a power pick in champion select, I'll never have a chance at winning without working my asshole off, and I play this game to have fun.

There are many things wrong with League right now, but it's not like Riot is completely incapable to fix it. I know they love their community, and I know they love their game. I just hope that Rito solves these problems eventually.