An Open Letter To Riot, From A Veteran Player

Before I get into my thoughts, I just want to say that I do sincerely enjoy this game and appreciate the effort Riot puts into LoL. This is probably my favorite game I've ever played, albeit I have not played many. These are my thoughts, opinions and experiences. I'm not here to tell anyone what to do or call anyone out. I'm gonna break this down into 2 parts: about my experiences and my current thoughts. I'll label where each begins in case anyone wants to read only a certain part. (I'm gonna try my best to make this not look like a wall, I find it easier to read like that)

Experiences

I've been playing since preseason 3, the first week Thresh was on the Free Champion Rotation. In fact, I remember my first game: a TT bot game as Thresh. He looked so cool and instantly caught my eye and I went to try him. Needless to say, it was not pretty. I remember I stood in the middle of the lane trying to understand what his abilities were meant to do. Kind of ashamed to admit it took me an absurd amount of time to realize I could recast his Q to leap toward my target.

I quickly fell in love with LoL and played whenever I could, and didn't really understand anything whatsoever (I tried playing AP Kha'Zix on Dominion because I didn't realize AP didn't increase every abilities damage). During my time playing League, I mained Top (Jax and Tryndamere when I was new), then mid (Zed, Syndra and some Ziggs), and finally, and currently, jungle (too many to list).

I'll be the first to admit that I'm bad: like I said, I've been playing for years now, and the highest I've gotten is Gold 4 (in part to stopping playing ranked). Regardless of my skill (or lack of), I have devoted countless hours and some money (nowhere near as much as I've seen other people spend) to this game, and I love it. I've has the emotions everyone else has while playing this game, the excitement, the frustration, the happiness and exhilaration.

The reason I'm making this post is because this game has become so different, for better or for worse, from when I started and it makes me sad that I want to write this. I understand that change is good because it keeps the game fresh and (kind of) balanced (for the most part). I think that, for the most part, Riot have done a stellar job of maintaining and updating their game, and I sincerely thank them for providing us with this gem known as League of Legends.

Current Thoughts

As I mentioned earlier, this game is very different from when I started. I don't have solutions or answers to the problems I have, and for that reason I think it's unfair for me to expect Riot to have any solutions, let alone do anything to fix them.

Here's what I currently like

1. Large, diverse champion pool with unique mechanics

2. Minions feel balanced (I think this is underappreciated)

3. Game looks very nice for the most part

4. Not-so-new champion select

5. Autofill (don't jump down my throat, I'll explain soon)

6. High-quality skins and splash arts (that Blood Moon Diana is amazing)

7. FREE TO PLAY

8. I thoroughly enjoy playing a lot of different champions and having options of mechanically easy or difficult champions with unique mechanics. Some of my favorites include J4, Lee Sin, Thresh, Azir, TF, Kha, Vayne, and Vi. I could go on and include some of the champions I enjoyed in the past but you get the idea.

9. This is a weird one, but I don't think I've ever felt like minions made the game worse or were annoying, except with creep block.

10. I personally feel the need to have the game I'm playing to look decent. I honestly really like the visuals, be it the map, the items, the champions themselves.

11. I cannot overstate how happy I was when this came out. For those who didn't experience the old champ select, you didn't miss anything. Honestly, I feel that the new champ select made trolling and miscommunication go down a ton.

12. Kind of ties in to my last point. For those who played with the old champion select, you all remember how chaotic and dysfunctional it could be. I honestly don't mind being filled once every dozen games or so. I don't mind taking one for the team and for queue times.

13. Gotta say I think Riots art team is amazing. They've made a metric shit ton of good skins, splash arts and in game models. They're consistent, high quality, well thought out skins and if I had the money, I'd drop a lot more cash on RP.

14. I'm not into buying games. I don't like paying for something that I don't know if I'll enjoy or not. I've bought maybe half a dozen PC games over the last 5 or 6 years (played Wii when I was younger, so I can't say I didn't buy games). I think it's great there are games like LoL where you don't need to put a penny in and you get the same in game experience as the guy who put in $100.

Here's what I currently dislike

1. Too many new champions

2. Overloaded kits and imbalances in power

3. The vast majority of the people I play with

4. Lack of itemization options for certain classes

5. Lack of Riot acknowledging mistakes and correcting them Ina timely manner (See: S6 Ranked Flex)

6. Lack of care for certain champions that are bad and seem to get ignored for the most part

7. Games are too fast and too much emphasis on eSports

8. Too many high quality skins that I can't afford

9. Slow down on champion production, focus on getting old, outdated champions or unhealthy ones to a better place. I like seeing the next new champion, I really do. But I feel like Riot neglects some of their existing champions in favor of pumping out new ones.

10. Here's one of my main issues. As far as I can remember right now (it's almost 3 am as of writing this so excuse any mental lapses) things got really bad around the GP/Juggernaut reworks. There were OP champions before, but never an unmanageable or overwhelming amount. From here, there was just OP after OP champion, and it really got out of hand. IMHO there are just way too many champions that need to be banned right now, either because they're too strong or because they're not fun to play against.

11. Now take this with the knowledge that I'm not singling anyone out, but rather calling the community, myself included, as a whole. The current state of the game has a minimum of 2-5 people bitching and moaning, flat out raging or trolling every single game. It is very rare I get a game where no one is toxic or a prick (you don't have to be toxic to be a prick, but it's best to be neither). And I only know what goes on with my team as I have /all turned off. Rite now it seems to be acceptable to cry and rage when you don't get your role, someone else dies more than once, you lose your lane, you die more than once, and you lose a tower or dragon. I could go further into this but this isn't the point of this post.

12. I think we need more items in the game. Currently, there are only two MR options for tanks (Banshees and SV), mages don't have the same mana regen items that they used to, supports get forced to buy certain items (sightstone, although Riot did help with the updated support items, currently Redemption and previously Locket).

13. This is another big one. I am specifically referring to the S6 Ranked Flex Queue disaster. I remember watching the boards light up with "THIS IS A REALLY BAD IDEA, PLEASE REVERT" posts before it hit live (I agreed with those). After it was implemented we had the "FKEX QUEUE IS TRASH, PLEASE REVERT" posts (again I agreed). Riot didn't revert it. To me, this is when it really started to hit me that this isn't the same game as it used to be. Before, I honestly believe Riot would have reverted it, rather than waiting a whole year and then saying "Yup, we fucked up. Oops."

14. Now I really don't give a shit about Yorick or Urgot, but I think it's overdue that they get skins. Another example is Aatrox. He has 4 skins and champions released well after him have the same, and sometimes more. I think this has to do with popularity. And it's not just skins. For a while I spamming the shit out of Azir (this was before he was popular, at least to my knowledge), and I was getting decent at him. Then he becomes popular and Riot dumpsters him and suddenly my then-favorite champion is trash tier (I still play him occasionally, but I primarily play jungle). I feel that Riot should either rework him (preferably into a long range poke Mage Azir rather than shurima shuffle Azir), or try to buff him, which they have done a little. But it's not just Azir. There's plenty of other trash tier champions with cool kits that should be reworked (hi Kalista, Eve)

15. Some may disagree with me, but I actually enjoy 45 minute slugfests, that go back and forth and need good decision making rather than "first to 5 man bot/team with better jungler wins." I'm a bit biased here, because I really don't give a shit about eSports, but I really wish Riot stopped putting so much into it and focused more on the average player. I don't care about icons and LCS and TSM. I care about the B5 through Challenger players. Not the SKT, TSM and C9 teams. Ultimately, I think this game should be shift more focus to the individuals rather than ESports.

16. Damnit, Riot, you're making me want to spend money I don't have. But seriously, good job with those skins.

To wrap things up, I feel like the negatives are starting to outweigh the positives in LoL for me, and this really saddens me. Sorry if this is a really shitty post, but I wanted to say something about my thoughts and it's now about 3:30 AM and I'm kind of tired. I probably went off on a tangent or two. Oh well. Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day :)