Riot, the PBE simply isn't supported by you anymore
So in my years of playing, I have been active in the game since the beginning of season 2 and active on the PBE since halfway into season 2. I had aspirations to actively test and look for issues in the game, report them to the company, you know, the standard fare that proper beta environmentalists undergo.
For a large chunk of the availability of the PBE, it was inaccessible because the server was either too small, or everyone and their mother was joining at the same time because it was 100% hand-outs. What should have been a proper testing community was a toxic cesspit that rivaled the lowest rank in bronze. Login times exceeded that of four hours because no one wanted to log-out to deal with the login times.
And oddly enough, Red activity was seen on the PBE forums. Even with so many people who were not actively trying to test for any big issues, it was still not uncommon to have your query responded to with at least a "We thought about -this-" or "We'll look into it"
After Riot tightened up the PBE, and I mean REALLY tightened it up, locking it down and either upgrading server size or purging sizable amount of problematic players, the game was testable again. It was possible to actually log on. Sure, a patch hits, custom games have to be limited for server space issues, it's to be expected.
However, in that transition, Red response to anything on the PBE forums has been proven to only occur once every blue moon. In fact, it's in my firm belief that you do not even check it until an intern pops on to give a minor, "Oh, we're going to be adding a -miscellaneous change here-."
You may try to deny it, but I could only be proven right on that week in Pre-season 4, where the PBE was rendered unplayable to 90% of the playerbase due to a mastery issue, and then a proceeding three day period to about 50% for the exact same purpose. There was only a single red mention that stated "In reverting mastery changes, any accounts that had a point in Trap Master suffered a severe error where the account was inaccessible due to a point being placed somewhere that didn't exist. We have rolled back the mastery changes." In the same day, they release a patch that reverted that change, and half of the playerbase that had finally managed to get on and test the new changes were immediately locked out. Three solid days of players requesting for a response from riot, just a single rollback on masteries that was proven not to be that big of a deal.
This occurred on one of the biggest patches of the season, the Pre-season, where any balance testing is imperative. Instead of a solid few weeks of testing, I think pre-season 4 managed a grand total of a week in beta. It's become clear that active avoidance of the PBE forums is now the norm.
It also became clear that most of the fixes occurring are issues that occur in-house. Very blatant issues like patcher problems.
This takes me to my second point: The PBE is no longer reasonable for bug testing, and this has been proven time and time again. Most (and I say, confidently, that we are talking in upper 90%'s) bugs that occur with the game occur in transition between the PBE and Live. All of these clear issues that would have been seen worldwide were never seen. On top of that, several issues that were already an issue with the PBE, even after repair, have been launched into live. That patching issue is step for step the exact same as what occured on the PBE.
However, this is amongst one of the few issues that slipped through. There are many issues that just slip through without ever appearing on the PBE whatsoever. In live, headhunter Nidalee spears are invisible, Teemo shrooms are being destroyed by skillshots, wards are twice as big, scuttle ward is the still-living crab itself, incessant bugsplats, crashes upon loading any screen on the client, from home page to champion selects, shops, customs, just random things. Match making errors are occurring in severities that have been seen before, where ranked queues are getting bodged into normal queues, champion selection pages have massive holes where champions should be, but aren't.
This leads to the final two statements:
- Whatever method RIOT uses to patch is abysmal and needs to be optimized immediately.
- The PBE needs more red activity. At this point, it doesn't feel like there is any point in saying anything on those forums because they are being ignored for things stated on a subreddit (which is where I assume you're pulling any "community" feedback)