It's Rant Time Folks. Herein lies The Problem

"Write my thoughts" the text box says. Welp, here it goes. I hope you're all ready:

I've been a longtime supporter of League of Legends, and an active member of the PBE. This game has always stuck out in my mind as being one of the most immersive, aesthetically pleasing, well-thought out gaming experiences I can think of. The game is well-constructed (for the most part, of course), its influence is massive, and its explosion in popularity has worked wonders for the video game medium as a whole - expanding the horizons of games to come. It's not weird to hear people you don't even know talk about the game in public, and frankly, it's one that I can enjoy with a vast majority of my friends who don't otherwise play games - including the love of my life. League of Legends is undeniably a success, and a worldwide phenomenon that captivates players the world over, and I can totally understand why - for it has done the same for me.

. . . That being said:

I started playing this game in late 2012. I can't say I was here for the "glory days," nor will my merit be steeped in any extensive long-term knowledge, but I have been here long enough to know that many aspects of the League of Legends experience have been gradually depreciating with time. Many do not see it under the new facade of texture updates, reworks, and the explosion of LCS popularity, but under the surface, League hasn't been aging well. This includes in-game balance neglect, lack of player appreciation, a distancing between company and a vast majority of clients through factors other than the "size creates an impersonal gap"excuse, nitpicking a target niche market for pampering, attitudes towards toxicity, and several others I will surly mention in due time. I am not saying that this game is going to hell in a hand-basket, or any kind of horrifying ultimatums, because this negative direction in which Riot is careening can be turned around if we catch it in its relative infancy before it gets worse. Of course, plain-old shit talking for the sake of being disrespectful isn't going to help anyone, so I'm going to explain my stance respectfully, and as thoroughly and accurately a I can. If we stay positive and maintain a level headedness about this, we can fix a hell of a lot if we can identify the underlying issues that are gnawing away at the quality of the general player experience, and if Riot will listen and act upon constructive feedback for a change. Who's with me?

Chapter 1: The Champion Imbalance in a Nutshell

Yes, I know what many of you are thinking, and it goes something like this: "There are a lot of champions to keep track of, and it's no wonder some of them end up hilariously strong." Before I continue, it's not so common knowledge that being a game designer is no easy task. Yes, this is true - you can take my word on that. However, the solution to this problem has something to do with changing less about the state of the game than facilitating EVEN MORE change. Many of the balance changes and tweaks that have been implemented the last few seasons are merely instances of change for the sake of experimentation rather than necessity, or even for the fun factor. If anything, it caters more to LCS than the 80 million+ players they make content for. That's not a traditional, nor effective way to balance a game. It takes trial and error, control groups, etc - not changing dozens of aspects at once. Sure, the addition of new items is always a difficult task to tackle - especially given the diverse champion pool, but it does not mean that champions need to be changed around them simultaneously. If a single champ becomes stupendously strong after the item's release, it ISN'T THE ITEM'S FAULT. Changing the item then affects other champs who didn't need any tweaks, and therefore distances the power gap with additional variables that will be harder to fix later on. This begins a consistent cycle of champions who go from an incredible surge of power - to being completely irrelevant for a year or more - often with changes that were prematurely implemented, and never fixed. This brings me to what I call "Jax Syndrome."

A vast majority of League of Legends champions suffer from "Jax Syndrome." Allow me to explain: After season 3, when Jax was once the dominating top lane pick for almost any ELO, Jax did not change while the preseason 4 changes rolled out - It's just that almost every other champ became slightly stronger through individual balance tweaks and itemization changes - thus leaving Jax in the non-meta limbo which consumes approximately 30% of the LoL champion pool. However, due to other nerfs, and buffs to itemization and such (never directly to Jax, of course), it seems Jax came back as being one of the highest ban picks a the start of season 6. Jax is almost the picturesque example of what I am talking about. He is never in the pool of most popular champions, but he often sees time windows in which he is horrendously broken, or just plain good, and then he becomes secondhand news soon after. All it takes is changing something like BorK or Hextech Gunblade to make Jax's performance drop, but why not JUST FIX JAX? those changes then make other champs stronger - champs who counter champs who use such items. Maybe you might see more than the same 30-40 champs in any given game. There is even a champion limbo - for champs like Yoric, Urgot, Galio, Swain, Rumble, and recently, Skarner and Mordekaiser (oh yeah,_ THOSE_ guys! They're in this game?!). Some have even referred to this group as "The Giant Minion" category, but something like this shouldn't exist because of balance reasons, and for the most part, it does - otherwise this group wouldn't change as frequently as it does - for character design and popularity play a role too, but those numbers don't shift on a regular basis.

There is also a growing disparity between champions with toxic kits, kits with too much utility, champs with not enough utility, champs with utility kits with ridiculously high base stats, champs with the exact opposite problems that struggle to keep up, champs capable of fulfilling multiple roles, champs pigeonholed to a very specific role, champs that are anti-fun to play, champs that are anti-fun to be against, and anything in-between. They all stem from the same problem: It's Riot that ultimately decides what is unfun, toxic, needs a rework, and most of the time, this never reflects the truth, nor do their changes reflect the community's experience and struggle. Many of the reworks we get, claiming to solve these problems, are unwanted, and end up making matters worse. (Yes CertainlyT, I'm talking about your Mordekaiser abomination - your personal "Citizen Cane" that effectively ruined my favorite champ). They were changes for the sake of facilitating change - not based on any feedback, constructive criticism, or in-game necessity. They were never or the sake of balance, or even for the fun factor. In fact, many of these radical balance changes made the champions less valid, and in some cases, less fun in general.

Some of these were absolutely devastating failures, which were never remedied. This also includes changes to skins, color palettes, splash art, etc. - things people grow accustomed to, and then have to accept that they were effectively reworked - wether they like it or not. Of course, people don't agree with everything, but for instances where the public outcries were overwhelmingly negative, the change still goes through. Of course, there are successes amidst a vast and sad display of heinous incompetence, and frankly, neglect. I can assure you that their current model of troubleshooting and balance is not only rooted in questionable practice, but it's seeming narcissistic to the point where they can get away with just about any new direction - simply because of who they are - which brings me to my next topic:

Chapter 2: The Transcendent Rito God Figure

A transcendent being is one whose influence reigns from above, distantly, and adoration for such a being is strictly unconditional. Riot fancies itself in the clouds as of late - making sure they grace us with their presence to make us feel small - all whilst still claiming to be the player-friendly company it was back in its infancy (I know of another company like this, and this company that produced Star Wars Battlefront shall remain nameless). In the early days of Riot Games, their humble beginnings kept it at the level of the people it catered to - in which community feedback, praise, and constructive criticism were taken to heart, and genuinely appreciated - even acted upon. As the revenue grew over the course of the following years, the company became a goliath in the industry - loosing its personal touch, and connectivity with their fans. Their business decisions were always about turning a profit, but the old strategy accomplished this by maintaining very much a part of their own family of gamers. All humility and shame have since been left in the wake of the newfound Riot - a company whose footsteps shatter the Earth, and topple mountains. We're supposed to look up to them now - as we scream our problems to them as they look down from their clouds at our mere mortal community forums and laugh. It's an amusing and satirical image, but it's rooted in undeniable truth

Riot, as a collective (not calling out anyone else in particular) has such an ego trip with their own cashgrab existence that they forget about the very player base that launched their free-to-play game into the multi-billion dollar empire it has become. Their net worth has exceeded our worth - thus with such a large company, there will always be deeds that go unnoticed by we, the lowly consumer. Our voice no longer impacts there monetary gain - thus these forums become irrelevant. The player feedback system may as well not exist - if nobody is even there to hear or even care. Sure, Riot has attempted to make the forums much more personable by utilizing the help of elected "arbiters," but we need something like them for legitimate concerns about the game - a decent Q.A system that listens to us, and results in noticeable change, or even JUST A MESSAGE BACK. A good moderation system knows that the greasiest wheel does not always get the grease, but SOME wheels can every now and then. The current system, where a Riot employee will peer down from their heavenly roost now and then to check the boards, but will never take what they see and make any kind of meaningful change.

When a company of this size and magnitude blatantly ignores the outcry of a large portion of their fanbase, it's a massive blow to their public relations. When something they muster goes horribly wrong, they usually suffer for it - rightfully so. It's somewhat comforting to know that a PR disaster isn't without its financial consequences - something Riot sees as much more of a slap on the wrist than, say, someone screaming on the community boards. However, no matter how hard their wallets are hit, they just bounce right back. They are far too large to care at this point - they can mess up al they want, but the profits will roll in somehow or another. It just pains me to know that an enterprise such as Riot Games can continue to reap and sew - even after their blatant ignorance towards the masses they claim to cater to, and after never owning up to their mistakes. You might see an employee here and there pop in a "sowwy :3" on a forum or Reddit A.M.A with a nihilistic attitude that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, but it's never anything genuine or truly heartfelt.

Riot's word is final (which, to be fair, it is THEIR company - they've made that quite clear), and that's what makes this so frustrating. You can yell until you're blue in the face, but Riot's end of the line is radio silent. The fact is that most of these outcries have been said in some form or another - most of which being rooted in HARD fact, are probably being heard, but definitely not taken seriously. They're too fixed on delusional sense of genius - they could care less if we're not having fun - much less offer an apology for misunderstanding our interests, or blatantly ignoring very insightful player feedback. No matter how intelligent, thoughtful, inspired, kind, or helpful your comment or argument may be. It's all treated the same - it's just babel from the peasants below. Oh what a great way to transition to the April Fools 2016 fiasco.

**Chapter 3: "Appealing" to the Mob? ** Part 1: "Draaaven Day"

As we know, Riot's April Fools did NOT go as Riot planned. Their so-called "game mode" was shut down for being overly obnoxious. For the record, URF may have been a fun thing to do this time of year, but I would have rather had a mode like ascension. To be honest, I could have been happy with anything - as long as it wasn't the ungodly, Hindenburg-level catastrophe that was Draven Day 2016.

It's tough to talk about it with some people without rehashing the "WE WANT URF"/"THEY TOLD YOU THEY WEREN"T DOING URF A MONTH AGO" argument, but to be honest, this wasn't so much a failure on the community's level as it was Riot's inability to deliver a fun, healthy experience for their players. With such numerous resources at their disposal, and a marketing staff that claims to know their clientele, it's hard to believe that the day could have been such a flop. Instead, what we got was an empty display that publicly revealed JUST how distant Riot really is, and blew apart their facade. IT's not like their April Fools scheme (yes, it's a scheme) was half-assed. It probably took a lot more time to design and code that Draven webpage and make such a huge launch campaign for the Draven event as a whole that it would to fine tune URF mode, or any other mode, for another release. This plan was in the works for a very long time, and clearly, the player's best interests were not in mind. We're not so much mad that we can't play URF, but that Riot is being somewhat shady about the whole thing, and that this kind of behavior might become the norm. You'd think that such a PR disaster would result in some kind of statement, but it seems that their blind eye to the outcries seems somewhat routine. The curtain has been lifted, so-to-speak, and people really don't like the Riot that they see - one that is becoming more and more anti-fun as time progresses - one that values their forced Draven humor over actual player experience, and doesn't care what you think.

Draven Day didn't exactly deliver on a level that many would consider acceptable. It's not unrealistic to expect that a multi-billion dollar enterprise would have the wherewithal to make an intelligent marketing decision instead of teasing us with experimental cashgrab gimmicks. We were really supposed to think it was clever in some sense, like it's some kind of genius self-revelation that they hold over our heads, like that friend of yours who KNOWS they're funny, and never ceases to let you know. The whole thing just came across as being childish and immature. Their expectations were horrendously high, and embarrassingly so. They expected us to be on board with it, and even if some of us were with them, there are still FAR more people who were into the whole URF thing that were let down (even if it was never planned to begin with, it would have been an ok alternative to this shitshow).

Part II: The LCS Kiss-ass Phenomenon

I'll keep this one short and simple:

For most games, pro play is usually secondary to the common user experience. Usually. For League of Legends, it appears to be the center of life - the driving force behind the game's unparalleled success. People live for LCS, but LCS definitely doesn't live for you. One of the things that is essential to understand is that LCS is not really the same game that the standard user encounters. The stakes are much higher, the communication is at an unfathomably higher caliber than solo queue (and arguably, many ranked pre-mades). Whenever some kind of big balance exploit is found in LCS, it is usually acted upon, and the average lay person feels the impact. They make changes to the game to cater to less that .02% of players - in a game with over 80 million worldwide users. To be clear, many of these changes for LCS are things normal players wouldn't normally encounter, nor would be able to at an effective rate. Riot is somewhat of a kiss-ass - they are much more willing to fix things for this handful of players, and ends up messing up the game balance for the rest of us. It sickens me that so many players have to receive the backlash for this, and with no remorse on the part of Riot. Again, our interests do not matter, but they should. In most other gaming communities, they would. Just saying.

Chapter III: Tribunal? Where?

I remember a time when people were afraid of being reported - a time before temporary chatbans and low priority queue. There was once a time when a group of players were in a tribunal of in-game justice, and would hand pick cases of abuse, toxicity, trolling, and judge their validity, and ultimately, dish out punishment. The system worked pretty well for the most part (Definitely better than it is now). Hand-on justice wasn't easy though. Back then , tribunal members worked for quotas - often receiving RP in small increments for the amount of cases they solve. In some instances, this was abused, and sometimes, these cases were basically thrown just for the sake of completing a payment quota (It worked a bit like speeding tickets).

Inevitably, the system was reworked, and now it is almost exclusively automated. Very rarely do cases end up reviewed by live people. The punishments are not severe, the punishments are dealt to people who are ganged up on my premade lobbies of trolls, because nobody is mediating the chat logs, or who entered queue with whom. People are being punished and trolled for having bad games, for picking certain champs (RIP Bard), and/or breaking meta. None of these so-called "offenses" are in any way against the summoners' code - something that the new system rarely abides to or acts upon. YOu can be punished for something that isn't even punishable - all it takes is a group of people to gang up on you, and report you for the same, unrelated offense. It look slike a genuine complaint to an algorithm, so you're essentially screwed from the get-go.

It is also unfortunate that those who are punished still come back to do it more. For most offenders, their punishment almost never more than a temporary chatban or being banished to the low priority queue for a fixed number of games - definitely not enough to deter this sort of behavior. This sort of thing even happens to repeat offenders - they're far too patient to care about such a mild hinderance. They will continue to plague the system if the punishment doesn't reflect their actions, and knowing the difference may require the re-introduction of the human element.

The community deserves hands-on justice. How would we go about this, you ask? If you ask around, there are THOUSANDS of wonderful people on these very servers who would love to make a dent in the bullying that occurs on this game on a regular basis. They would do it for FREE (hear that Riot? you wouldn't need to pay them precious money). They would do it to see the quality of the average player experience improve - to make the game more enjoyable and safe for one another. Riot certainly hasn't stepped in to do this, and people are genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of the game they cherish. Players shouldn't have to put up with death threats for having a bad game, or unintentionally ruining someone's winning streak, or anything of the sort. People shouldn't have to be in fear of scrutiny on a game. They're supposed to have fun. It's a game for most, a business for some, but we're all in it together, and hopefully, working together would make it a much better, safer, more fun environment for everyone involved.

Closing Thoughts:

It is up to Riot to want us to stay with their product - to give us a reason to play their game, to keep it exciting. That's what a compelling game company does - they try to keep old fans whilst appealing to new clientele, but is should be up to us to help them understand what needs to change from within. Only we have that ability, as active participants. Even if this post itself doesn't make it far, it's at least a start in the right direction - to hopefully spread awareness of some of the issues that threaten the wellbeing of a pretty great game. Many people have hindered experiences on League - be it their champion isn't good anymore, or they're being bullied on the creation boards for not being a professional artist, or someone who was targeted by trolls and wrongfully chatbanned, or receiving a salvo of hateful slurs for not having a good game. I just want to help steer things on the right path - to improve the overall quality of a game I thoroughly enjoy, and still plan to for a long time to come. Hopefully Riot can finally understand that the community and Riot itself must work together on this, and understand that it's not all one person or group's fault. It's about understanding that mistakes, oversight, and other shit happens along the way, and it's about working past that to get something done.

Thanks for reading my humble words of wisdom - It feels good to finally get all of that off my chest.