Dear Riot: My 3 Year Story

Warning: This will be a long post. I've been playing this game for almost 3 years now, and I just want to recap on my side of things. Warning: I'm not posting on my main because I transferred to LAN. I'll discuss why later.

I really, really hope a Rioter reads this. Hopefully someone who's been around long enough to empathize.

I'm going to cover:

1. The first 30 levels
2. Season 2 ranked
3. My gameplay preferences
4. How the game has changed
5. Why I transferred
6. The death of 3's

1. The first 30 levels

As I said, I started playing league around 3 years ago. I immediately fell in love with this. It was highly recommended to me by a friend, and I played regularly through level 30. At first, I had absolutely no idea what masteries were or what they did. This is expected of a newcomer, and I eventually figured it out. Runes were an absolute nightmare. I purchased quite a few up until tier 3, and I think I had 1, maybe 2, pages by the time I hit level 30. The rune system is a complete nightmare, but I don't want to discuss that today.

Starting out, I played 5v5 bots like everyone else did. I enjoyed the idea of a big map with mini 1v1's and 2v2's often. The meta was apparent at this point, and mostly enforced. Generally, people played for fun. You took whoever wherever, and just played. I did this for awhile, and then I discovered 3's. 3's became my absolute favorite gameplay mode. For those of you unfamiliar, in Season 2, 3v3 consisted of a jungle above top lane, which housed: dragon, 2x monster camps, and 2x movespeed buff camps, plus between the two lanes we had red buff. Also, WARDS! 3's was seriously a condensed, fast pace 5v5. It was scaled down and had reduced teams. I love the shorter gameplay, the quicker teamfights, and the larger stress on taking control of the map early on.

2. Season 2 ranked

Upon hitting level 30, I didn't even own 16 champs. This took me quite some time to achieve. Like I said previously, I was never a big 5's player, but I like partaking in ranked play. Season 2 had the elo system, and I started out in bronze elo. I didn't play much after that, just returned to 3's. What tears me up is that we've seen 1 change to ranked in the 3 years I've been playing: elo was replaced by divisions. That's it. League is a very popular, very competitive game. Why is everything revolved around Summoner's Rift? Why has there been one change to ranked itself? Sure, we've seen changes to gameplay, changes to strategy, changes to what Summoner's Rift really is, but we've seen no changes to how players progress through the ranking system. We've seen no attempt to have players competitively play anything else. One may argue that we have team 3's, but I'll be honest.. That's a mess, too. I gave team 3's a try, and it didn't work. Every game was against a plat/diamond solo queue trio who had been labeled bronze for provisionals. What if one of my teammates isn't on? What if I want to practice 3's in a competitive, non casual manner? I can't. For some reason, having a 1+1+1, 1+2, or 2+1 ranked queue in 3's has always been too much to ask. We've seen Summoner's Rift diversity, but why nothing else?

3. My gameplay preferences

Note: All champs were broken in Season 2. I hopped on board right before release Darius/Draven/Diana/Zyra. Katarina, Talon, Fizz, Veigar were all running rampant in every game mode. And you know what? I enjoyed it.

Anyway, maining 3's showed me my love for bruisers. In every game, I thoroughly enjoy tanky DPS characters. Darius and Jax were my biggest mains. You may cry that these champions are broken, but when you're going 1v3 at level 18 and walking out with a triple kill, I guarantee it takes more than spamming skills to do. In 5's I'd always go top, and I found it mostly enjoyable. Even in ranked play, I'd go several consecutive games without having a single gank. I liked having the persistent 1v1, it's mostly about champion knowledge and ability timing. That's what I enjoyed. Sadly, bruisers are hardly viable with this % max hp, hyper hard CC, perma disengage meta. It's not even fun anymore.

4. How the game has changed

Going off my previous point, I've lived through several difficult metas. Season 2 was definitely the bruiser meta. If you were an adc, you fed miserably because you'd just be useless against boots 1 + randuin's (which now, you kill a bruiser with this build before they touch you). Riot worked towards helping out the ADC's and balancing the bruisers. And honestly? They didn't do half bad. In season 3 we had the HP meta. This was annoying. This was when support Volibear had 1k hp at level 1, and could tank your turret while his adc got first blood. People were building warmog's katarina, and I remember double doran + warmog's was the best build possible on zed's early game. I carried countless games with that. Riot deleted Madred's Bloodrazor and introduced Blade of the Ruined King. They nerfed warmog's and the HP meta ceased to exist. Season 4... Season 4 has been my least favorite thus far. Riot completely deleted bruisers from the game, unless they have obnoxious point and click cc, disengage, or sustain. I've regarded Season 4 as the children era. This is when the younger players started hitting level 30, and they're too afraid to fight. Ranged tops started dominating, and every single game is plagued with easy disengage, and any form of hard cc. Basically, Season 4 is home to people who don't want to fight, but just harass from a distance, and run far away when you engage. I fear that Season 5 will be the same thing.

5. Why I transferred

I transferred from NA to LAN about 8 months ago. In NA, most every game I played was unbearable. The vast, vast majority of games had a horribly toxic person, or 1-2 people who just weren't at their computer. You guys see it on the forum every day, but after well over 2 years of playing this game, I absolutely could not take it. If I didn't have a game with someone else ruining it, the game itself would be failing. My ping would be persistently doubled, and every other game was DDoS'd. I had enough, and I transferred to LAN. I'm on the east coast, so the ping was cut in half. But the community! They rarely spoke, and I enjoyed 5's (they didn't have 3's at the time) because they just wanted to win instead of rage. That was honestly a very good decision. The server very rarely gave me problems, and the community was enjoyable. I learned a lot of Spanish and made a lot of non-English speaking friends. I'll admit, the November/December timeframe drew a lot more toxicity because of the end of the season, but right now ragers are almost non-existent.

6. The death of 3's

This is my most important, and most sentimental topic. I hope this is taken seriously.

One thing I forgot to mention was that shortly after hitting level 30s, I came across a duo in 3's. We got stomped and decided to play a second game. The girl in this duo played as much as I did, and it turned out our playstyles were very similar. The main difference was she preferred mages (assassin mages, fizz, leblanc, etc), so our mixed damage was too much for teams to handle. We played, and we played, and we played, until the point where we just considered our games 2v3 because we never needed that third person. If they didn't feed prior to level 6, we generally won. And this is mainly why I am writing this today... She's been my best friend for 2 and a half years, and we've been dating for over 9 months. I've traveled to see her and I drove hundreds of miles while I was out there just to see what things were like. I'll be seeing her again in a couple of months. I just really, really miss the old days. It tears me up that 3's has been sent into oblivion. 3's is the reason I stuck this game out, and I haven't played more than 5 games since July. 3's was my main focus of this game, and I'm incredibly short on reasons why I still play. The Twisted Treeline is no longer a part of this game, and as someone who's played for years, that's something that tears me up. As a 3v3 dedicated player, I have had these things taken away from me:

1. Dragon
2. Wight buffs
3. Lizard elder buffs
4. Monster camps for bonus exp
5. Laning phase
6. Wards
7. An enjoyable gaming experience

That's it. That's all for today.

TL;DR Read number 6. Riot, please bring back The Twisted Treeline. You've got the resources, I know you do.

**Edit: After some discussion, I want to add two basic statements:

1. The old Twisted Treeline was a miniature, fast paced 5v5. It was condensed and the teams were cut to 3. We used to have 2 buffs, dragon, and jungle with monsters. I'm not sure why it was completely removed.
2. I feel Riot needs to put more time/effort into all game modes, as opposed to just the one. There's a reason one mode dominates the rest... You've gotta make the modes, you know, playable in order to raise the level of players who enjoy it.**