Game Over

This is going to be a very long post, I apologize. I trimmed it down as much as I could, but there was a lot to be said and information to be shared. If you find this post interesting, positive, righteous [garen-swing] or helpful in any way please upvote. I want to try to reach out to as much of the community as possible and get as much feedback as possible. Thank you for your time :).

I've been playing this game for about 6 months now. I'm not the most knowledgeable on the subject given its a short time,but I've been doing a lot of research and put a lot of time outside of actual gameplay trying to understand the game state and community as a whole. Here's what I find completely wrong with it, and some personal experiences that have started to turn me away from the game.

1. The meta is forced. As much as Riot claims it's not. Champions are patched based on the .0001% of games that are pro play (ex. Ryze/Azir/Sejuani), often times at the expense of the rest of the community. Playing off meta things is said to be okay, even encouraged by Riot publicly, yet punished in cases like this with very questionable and contradictory reasoning. The constant complaints of the power of bottom lane gameplay and the lacking in other roles, and no sign of significant change is a clear indicator of a disconnect between the community and the company direction for the game.

2. Not only is the meta forced, but so is player behavior. Never have I played a video game that decides to strictly enforce a moral code onto its players. Steamers, friends I make in game, ect, all point to a time before I played where the gameplay was not only more fair, but behavior and free speech was less regulated. When I was growing up playing video games, half the fun involved was telling the other team they were shit after beating their ass straight up. When I got mine beat, I was expected nothing less from the enemy team. Why are people such snowflakes now? Why can I not call people on my team idiots when they ignore every ping or warning I give them, and then try to blame me for what happened to them? Why is something like having a "negative behavior" enough to suspend or permanently ban someone's account who has spent countless other games in comparison reportedly being a positive and productive influence? (I have recorded over 250 Honors in the past month on my account...yes I play a lot of games, 3 total games of chat got me a suspension...more on that later)

3. Now, lets accept the premise that we should all behave at a Disney G rated level because that is right for the game and if you don't you are going to be punished and put in time out. The only problem with that is that there is a very well documented history of inconstancy with the reporting system and following punishments. Don't believe for a second what any Rioter tells you about this outside of legal testimony. It's their job to say it works a certain way to make people feel relevant and thus improve customer satisfaction. The algorithm used is programed to throw out reports from players with low reporting power. If you report someone and that report does not result in a punishment because the person in question did not say any specific keyword to trigger a response, your report score goes down. Eventually you will hit a level where your report will not register any response, despite its potential legitimacy. Personally, I have had exactly 9 encounters in the last month with people saying overtly racist and sexist things, wishing death upon my family, and threatening violence towards me. These are all 0 tolerance according to Summoner's Code, yet every single report I made on those people was not validated by the system supposedly upholding that code. I went so far as to followed up weeks later on all the incidents on op.gg and all accounts remained active, despite what should be by definition slam dunk perma-bans. Eventually, I had to personally submit support tickets, and have someone manually review them to get the justice I felt was deserved.

4. What sent me on the tipping point to actually caring enough to write this post out was my recent 14 day suspension. It's not that these points weren't relevant until now, it's just that I have more personal motivation to say what I am saying. As I mentioned before I received this suspension on a total of 3 games, including the preceding 25 game chat ban. The most inflammatory thing said in this span was the phrase "fucking idiots." This statement was in response to a duo-qued bot lane calling me "feeding troll, you're dying too fast, not building tank and intentionally thowing, ruining the game, ect" I had built Cinderhulk, Tabis, Iceborn, Dead Mans, and Thornmail and was trying my hardest as a 65% WR Warwick to lead my team to victory despite the incompetent flame I was receiving. I had experienced countless games of bullying like this before from salty premades, and despite keeping my cool in the vast majority of them I fell victim to my frustration. A frustration that had been building up around the game state, around people constantly harassing me and never being punished from my reports. Having to send in support tickets on the very extreme but way too common cases just to get a sliver of justice that would encourage me to keep my composure in the future. This time I was just tired of it, and in the heat of the moment I barked back. I instantly received my suspension from the system after the game, and the giddy duo(happy to get instant-feedback) sent me friend requests to harass me further. Instead I typed out a lengthly explanation of the situation and reached out to support to vent my frustration ask for some sort of possible reversal of my punishment. This is the response I received. Does that look professional to you? Does that sound like someone who wants to sympathize and be a part of the community and help better it from a personal level. Keep in mind this is the only specific faction of the company that is supposed to represent that exact thing. If thats the type of behavior you see from them, what should you as the consumer expect from the rest of the company?

5. I asked them at the end of the conversation what the company's target audience was. I fight passionately for every game I can, I don't troll or int. I complement and positively instruct my team to make plays when they are open-minded enough to listen(keep in mind I am in low-silver elo). Yes, sometimes I flame when someone with a a bad attitude wants to test me. I've spent over 1000$ on in game content, and have gotten several other friends to play the game and get invested. Yet, at the end of the day, I am the type of person they are trying to alienate. I either have to reform my behavior by muting all and limiting my interactions, thus making the game less engaging; or at some point, my frustration with having to persistently deal with toxic people every single game(some worse than others) will naturally lead to another reactive outburst and permanent ban. Apparently calling someone a "fucking idiot" is bad enough to remove someone like me from the community. People like this though, I guess get a free pass to keep playing. If you don't know who Omar Mateen is, he's the mass murderer who killed 50 people during summer 2016 in a Florida nightclub. Only someone extremely messed up in the head would make that their League of Legends username in "commemoration of his memory." That account is still active, still flaming, still a part of this community. How about these two. They were saying racial slurs all game, on top of that one fo them was playing Aurelian Sol jungle and had 20 deaths in 20 minutes, often times turret diving and using no abilities. Both of their accounts are still active, still flaming, still a part of this community. The sad part about it is, those two separate incidents are amongst dozens of others I have saved in a folder, just from this past month alone. And all of those don't include the 9 incidents that I previously mentioned that were so bad that I felt morally obligated to report them to support firsthand. If I hadn't done that, people even worse than these people shown here would still be playing the game. At the end of the day though If you don't think that is enough proof that there is a clear inconsistency with the justice system, and you are being lied to, then I don't know what to tell you.

        Outside of just my personal experiences the biggest fundamental problem I see overall is simply a conflict of interest. Riot has made an extremely competitive game. Yet they unrealistically expect everyone to behave cordially at all times, something that has never happened in any competitive environment ever before. Even if you are a good boy/girl, just one instance of frustration amongst hundreds could result in severe punishment. Reactionary talking can often result in unfair one-sided punishments as well. In any form of normal competitive environment, its always a double technical or a double ejection or disqualification if two parties are in conflict. This doesn't happen in League of Legends, its almost always one side being punished and its determined mostly by which side has enough reporting power. Very often that side is the majority(often pre-made) who are initiating the conflict to begin with. It's bullying, and its disgusting, and it goes against everything the company itself claims to stand for yet doesn't follow through with. Does that last part sound familiar at all to the problems people are complaining about with gameplay balance? Riot says one thing, does another, and I'm starting to believe its because they don't care about us at all and want just make it look like they do to the people who are stupid enough to believe it.