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1How Can Riot Make LoL Great Again?
2
3This is not another Trump interview, instead this piece will feature a variety of topics, all of them under the umbrella of how League of Legends could be improved. Needless to say people will not agree with every opinion, but nevertheless, enjoy it. One thing I want to stress though is that while this piece will focus only on the negative, Riot has done a lot of things right and has created something beautiful for which I'm fairly grateful for. I really mean that.
4
5Let's start with something that's relatively abstract and is a topic that I should address now before I continue. Riots view on their own game. Before that, I have to tell you a little story. 
6
7There was once this game called S4 League, a game I played for years, on and off, and tremendously enjoyed. It was a pretty big hit in Europe (don't know about other places, it was certainly played in Asia) and if I remember correctly a company called Alaplaya made it. Eventually, you would even see the game advertised on prime time TV spots (sometimes one second of advertising will cost up to 150,000$, or even more) and the game had millions of players, although I don't believe exact numbers were released. It was an incredibly fun game with tremendous potential. As it got more popular, the creators, who clearly did not believe in their own game and saw it as a ship that will sink eventually, sold out completely to a Chinese organization that hosts multiple of these sorts of games (free to play but with a cash-shop) and the game got more and more pay to win. It was sort of a shooter (with parkour in it and abilities that allow you to fly for a few second, or create a huge wall in front of you etc.) and as it got more pay to win, you could buy guns for real money that did double the damage (which obviously for someone like me who played it at a relatively high level was just ridiculous and destroyed the whole point of the game), or clothes that had insane defensive stats where people would just turn into raid-bosses and not die. 
8
9It got more and more extreme and while at the beginning, because the game was so good, I actually went along and spent a bit of money for a change, at a certain point it just got too preposterous to continue, I had to quit. Now it's 2016 and I recently checked out and downloaded the game and I shit you not there isn't even 1000 players on it.
10
11Now League in comparison is so much more successful, and has become a cultural phenomenon like almost no other game has, but I do worry that this is how Riot (or Tencent) sees this game. They seem to be convinced, based on everything we know and all the rumors about how LoL 2 has been in the works for years now (not just LoL with a new client!) and how they never bothered to make the hard decision and just create a new client because they worried their game would not survive the “hit”, that League would fail eventually. 
12
13Of course it's easier said than done to “just believe in the success of your own game”, but still, it's not impossible. All I'm trying to outline here is that a) I don't think Riot ever believed in their game as much as they could have and b) even a game that was actually superior to League in many areas (in terms of game-play not success) died pretty quickly because the owners sold out. 
14
15I don't know the exact details of the contract that Riot has going on with the Chinese company Tencent, but I do know they, Tencent, don't give a flying fuck about the game, they just want to squeeze as much money out of it as they can and I'm sure at many points in time Riot even wisely took measures against their intentions (I'm willing to bet Tencent wanted to increase the RP costs of everything to extreme degrees). League has already committed a transformation of enormous proportions. This was a start-up company somewhere in the US with a few employees and now they are a billion dollar entity. I believe it's in Riots long term financial interest to keep the player-base happy and League has become such a cultural phenomenon that it won't go away. It's not like other games in that sense. It's the game that is living and breathing and in some sense created the cultural revolution (perhaps a term that is too grandiose here but just roll with it!)  that is happening at the moment in terms of esports acceptance and recognition as a high level, complex activity. 
16At the end of the day some of this is just speculation and I shouldn't dwell on this, so let's dive into the actual subject matter. 
17
18Riot Lyte has to go
19
20Sounds harsh doesn't it? Especially considering he gave you all this beautiful PR, we all remember the articles about how Yagami Lyto has created the “Minority Report” style system that will forever solve the problem of racism and any sort of xenophobia and people raging in video games but of course it was all nonsense. In fact, I don't think he's done a single good thing for the company or the player-base, instead he's done a lot of things that actually damaged not just the fun you have when you play but actually the brains of the young children that play this game (recently saw two 11 year old's talk about LoL on the train, they were so wrong about Black Cleavers effectiveness but anyway). Now this sounds even more harsh but I'll break it down. 
21
22Speaking as someone that has literally played this game since beta, on 3 different servers (NA first, because there were no EU servers at the time, then EUW for years, short trip to EUNE, then back to EUW and I know a decent amount about the Korean servers – played at all levels on the western servers from bronze 5 to D1, admittedly never played in challenger but it's hardly a fantasy world of joy and imagination), I can very confidently say the game is much more “toxic” and unpleasant than it has ever been. This is not just nostalgia, it's simply not the case that the word “report” (perhaps this is something that my EUW brothers will understand better than my NA brothers, NA server is arguably less toxic) even came up in Season 1, or preseason, or even for the first half of Season 2. 
23Sure, it would come up here and there, and it's not like people were better humans back then (Ember reference game on point) and everyone worked together and no one ever raged but I'm telling you straight up if you play a game on EUW right now, especially at high elo it's just a cancer fest  clown fiesta. Pretty much every game you will hear people whine about reports, everyone has these terms, toxicity, reports, feeding carved into their brains. It doesn't have to be like this. It's not like this in other games. In other games, you just play the game. You don't have to worry about getting banned after jokingly saying “gg ez” to a friend. This is not normal. Of course, we never talk about muting someone. You press tab, you press the speech bubble, done. Hell, players like Doublelift, for most of their careers didn't even read chat or type in it, ever. This is the mentality you should have when you play ranked. You should play to improve yourself, not your team. If someone is raging, mute him. Move on with your life. Why is it that the tip in the loading screen is “if someone is harassing you during the game, you can report him after the game”, why isn't the tip “if someone is harassing you in the game, mute them and enjoy the rest of the game”? In the past, Lyte has used phrases like “if someone rages at you in the game (paraphrased), muting doesn't help, the damage has already been done”. What damage? 
24
25Do you remember when Dunkey got banned? https://ask.fm/RiotLyte/answers/132485638338 
26
27Here's Lytes response. I'll highlight the most bizarre part. 'This isn't really a debate about whether trashtalking is OK or not OK in games; we've talked a lot in the past about how we're OK with players bantering with their friends but you should be careful when interacting with strangers who may not understand your intentions--especially if you're using hate speech or slurs. We have a zero tolerance policy against hate speech, racism, homophobia, and sexism and that policy stands whether you're a random player, a pro player, or a Youtube celebrity.'
28
29Now this is actually pure insanity. If you are a regular LoL-player, particularly if you are young and impressionable, maybe this will seem normal to you, but I assure you it's not. Look at the phraseology here. First, it is implied that there's even a debate to be had about whether trash-talking is “OK” or not. Almost every sport in the world has trash-talking, it's fun for everyone involved, because at some point even if you are terrible at the sport you'll get to do it and it actually toughens the bond between the participants, because you always shake hands after the game (unless someone crossed a line, which you can decide for yourself and it's fine). But I don't even want to get into that, let's grant him this line, that there really is a debate to be had. Let's pretend that's the case. I don't even want to focus on that part. Let's keep going. 
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31“You should be careful when interacting with strangers who may not understand your intentions- especially if you are using hate-speech or slurs.” 
32
33What the hell is this? What is this protectionist, paternalistic, social justice nonsense? So what if they don't understand that you were just joking because they spend their days on Tumblr worrying about triggering people by clapping their hands (Yale students reference game on point)? Almost everything Lyte says is just not objective, there is an agenda here and it's hardly hidden. 
34
35“The damage has already been done” (Referring to written text in an online-game! Damage!), “be careful when interacting with strangers”, these are the exact same phrases the social justice warrior types use on campuses in the year 2016. “You can't clap, it may trigger someone who got beaten as a child.”, “Your difference in opinion is damaging me, triggering me.” 
36I'm sorry but this is not just childish but contemptible behavior and it will be treated with contempt. 
37
38The worst offense of all of course, is repeatedly abusing the word hate-speech. Let me give you the definition of hate-speech. “Hate speech is a communication that carries no meaning other than the expression of hatred for some group, especially in circumstances in which the communication is likely to provoke violence.“
39
40As an aside, I doubt dunkey hates minorities and implying he does like Lyte did is utterly deranged behavior. 
41
42Now tell me, do you think saying “faggot” (oh boy, I forgot the trigger warning at the beginning) in an online-game, in a context where you obviously mean something that doesn't even have anything to do with homosexuality (don't get me started on how the meaning of words changes over time and depending on culture and sub-culture, I study this stuff...) is a) hate-speech and b) likely to produce violence? It's not even possible for it to produce violence. It's not even conceivable. Unless of course, you define anything you disagree with or don't like as hate-speech, particularly under the context of text in an online-game “damaging” you. Remember guys, there's no point to mute people, the “damage” has already been done. God forbid you take some responsibility for your own well-being.
43
44I could open the can of worms here, where he never ever gives sources to his ridiculous claims, or just says “university research has shown XYZ” because he knows the community consists mostly of people that haven't been to university (spoiler alert: there's an incredibly wide range of university research, there's proper statistical polls for example that are quoted by CNN and god knows who, and there's some nerdy student asking people if they like Pepsi or Cola more with a terrible sample-size) and will be impressed by big words and won't ask any further questions. But people should ask further questions. I sense not only an agenda in Lytes thinking, but it seems to be deeply unscientific as well. 
45
46It gets worse though. Like I already outlined earlier, based on tens of thousands of hours of personal experience and talking to this to hundreds of people, the game actually got more toxic and more vicious since Lyte was hired. Is there a casual link there? Probably only to a minor degree, but still. Look, in the loading screen it says Riot has bans 100,000 people per year. Rumors say the games player-base exceeds 75 million players (67 mio. at least). Think about this for a second. It's unspecified if the bans are permanent or temporal (I really doubt they perm-ban 100k players that's insanity from a business standpoint) but I like to be generous so let's just assume they really do perm-ban 100k people per year. That would be the removal of 0,0013 of the player-base each year. The player-base probably grows by multiple percent each year. Half of the banned players probably just make another account, so it's even less. The chances of  getting matched up with someone twice is unbelievably low anyway. So actually it's all an illusion. The tribunal, the reports, it's all bullshit. The game just gets more and more toxic. 
47
48We can talk forever about Lyte, but this piece isn't just about him, hell, I'm sure he's a nice guy. At the end of the day though, you can't solve the problem of toxicity. I'm not sure it's even a problem. I actually think it's good for you to experience massive amounts of flame in the games, because it will prepare you greatly for real life, which is absolutely brutal. Ranked in particular is a highly competitive, testosterone filled environment. No one ever talks about toxicity ruining the game in Korea and they are vicious. And they produce winners. Maybe we should raise kids to take responsibility themselves, mute people, grow a bit of a thick skin and this way we can avoid the disaster that recently happened at Yale, where students cried (no, I'm serious, they literally cried) about helloween costumes. And even worse they used the exact same phrases Lyte used “we've been damaged (!) by your email professor (an unbelievably mild and friendly e-mail where the professor explained people have the right to wear whatever they want and native American costumes aren't a big deal). We can also talk about Lyte's love of public shaming (generally referred to as “smiting”, where he shows he doesn't care one bit about reforming someone but just likes to shame them and scapegoat them). But enough of this! 
49
50To wrap up this topic I'll leave you with this, incredibly tragic piece of writing.
51
52http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/6/8161955/league-of-legends-online-happy-place 
53
54Let's talk about something more fun (but still negative, cause that's what I'm like, fun at parties). 
55
56Learn from Valve
57
58Valve does some things wrong. Valve does some things right. Riot does some things wrong. Riot does some things right. I'm not going to talk about which company is better or worse, I don't have the expertise to do that, but what I can talk about, as someone that actually “recently” quit League for CS:GO, is what some of the cool things that Valve does are and what Riot could learn from them. 
59
60Let us start with crowd-funding. Here's a statement for you, we could easily have a 45 million dollar worlds tournament. I know what you are thinking right now, that's utterly insane/impossible/would backfire. Around Season 2 if I remember correctly, Riot did a charity event where they gave away the revenue of an Akali skin (I believe it was nurse akali) to charity. I believe it made around 20 million dollars pretty quickly. That was in Season 2. Where the player-base was actually not nearly as big as today. We can, whenever we want, have a prize-pool that just crushes Dotas International (wouldn't that be fun?). I know what you are thinking “but what if we do a 45 million dollar tournament and next year it's “only” 40 million dollars? Wouldn't that make it look like the game is dying?”. I'm afraid that is not a sufficient counter-argument to the awesomeness that a 45 million dollar tournament would be. By the way, it doesn't have to be 45 mio. $. Look, Riot does a similar thing to what Dota did, they do it over a period of time, you can buy god knows what, minion skins that only work in normals and ARAMs where the minions wear your teams jersey (just a random idea, Riot has much smarter people, I hope, that can figure out something even better), they generate let's say 60 mio. $ (this is a reasonable amount, believe it or not, they could make that much money). We don't have to use all of that on the worlds prize-pool. How about we do 3 worlds a year, each of which has a 20 million dollar prize-pool? That would be utterly amazing. Or if they don't want to change their current system, how about we do a 35 million dollar worlds and save the 25 million for next year. 
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62So next year, if god forbid the game really does decline a tiny bit and we “only” get 40 million in the prize-pool-thing they do (in this example it would still be enough to do another 35 mio. Dollar tournament), and a year after that let's say the game declines massively and we “only” get 15 million, we can simply use the reserves we have to round it up to 35 mio. 
63
64I'm purposefully choosing these very high numbers because I assure you Riot could do this if they wanted, the game has utterly insane resources and popularity that other games don't have. They could really send a huge signal here, especially towards the rest of the industry. They could also be altruistic (or smart) and just give companies like MLG/ESL some cash to up their game in terms of production value. You want 100 cameras? There you go. Of course, some of this is not feasible. 
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66As an aside, I haven't even mentioned the global publicity a 30 milllion dollar tournament would generate. It's inconceivable, millions if not tens of millions of people that have never heard about esports would see it on the news and frankly it would draw the curiosity of thousands of sponsors and investors (admittedly we are heading towards that path anyway). 
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68But this isn't the only thing they can learn from Valve.
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70Give the community tools and they will create.
71 
72I realize the client is such a pile of garbage that this may not even be feasible (frankly I am not an expert on coding and the only spaghetti I know about is moms spaghetti) but Valve knows if you give a million players the tools to create, they will create amazing work. They will improve your game for you. Counter-Strike was originally just a Half-Life mod. As far as I know Valve proceeded to acquire the game and in fact hired the creators of the mod. 
73
74In an ideal world, and if this piece shows one thing it's that I'm a dreamer (not really I'm dead inside), Riot gives us the tools to create skins, custom game modes (Donger Dash anyone?), custom maps, map skins, champions, mods, abilities, items, masteries, runes and they have an infinite pool of creativity where they can a) find and hire talented people b) make money and improve the game 
75
76Battlegrounds - American Civil War, Eternal Silence, Dystopia – Cyberpunk, Age of Chivalry, Insurgency, Resistance and Liberation, Garry's Mod, the infinite amount of Skyrim mods which makes the game so much better, the very difficult Portal 1 mod that was better than the whole game, the list goes on forever.
77Voice-Chat
78I can't speak for Dota cause I don't play inferior games (the damage has already been done, don't mute me now!), but I do play CS:GO and this is a game that relies on communication (“There's a guy around the corner! Behind you!”) and this is why they have voice-chat. The thing is, League relies on communication, too. 
79
80SivHD, a popular youtube content creator for League, made a video once where he actually outlined why voice chat would not be a bad thing at all, I recommend you watch that. Let me copy some of his arguments and add my own flavor as well. Let's address everyone's first concerns first, no, it would not increase toxicity. It would decrease it.
81
82It's very difficult to be toxic on mic, like genuinely hurtful. It's one thing to write “kill yourself” to a guy, which is fairly rude (be honest here, most of the time it's not meant literally and just written out of frustration, which doesn't excuse it, but still this point has to be made) but to actually say it on the mic and really mean it is another thing. I say it when I joke around with friends (in the virtual reality dream world where I have friends) but we know in our small sub-culture it has a different meaning, but even I (and I'm toxic as fuck mate) would struggle to say it to someone on the mic. There's a level of intimacy there and also vulnerability (even if you have the deepest voice in human history someone is always going to throw “haha girl voice!” at you, to tilt you) that makes it so you actually don't flame the crap out of someone. Also, biologically speaking, if you hear in someones voice that he's actually sorry about having to afk for a minute and losing the round/throwing an advantage, it will actually trigger the empathy part of your brain and you will feel empathy (unless you have some sort of illness). 
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84The distance of written text and also the anonymity of it is actually the main reason people are such douchebags online (and god knows I include myself). 
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86As you can tell, I mentioned earlier that it would decrease toxicity. How on earth would that be the case? Well, my proposition to you is this: We've all been there. You want your jungler to gank but you want to trim the wave first but it's impossible to communicate this in time because there's only a time-window of like 3 seconds where the enemy mispositioned and the jungler goes in too early, you feel forced to follow up, you both die, the game is sort of over (I'd argue games are never over unless you are very high-elo because people throw so often it's actually absurd) and the lack of communication and misunderstanding causes tremendous frustration (by the way here's some trivia for you, one of the reasons babies cry so much is their inability to communicate their thoughts because they don't know the words yet). 
87
88The level of game-play would be so much higher if you could actually talk to each other, we could implement a culture of in-game leaders (like they have in CS:GO) and shotcallers and foster shotcalling talent this way. 
89
90You may be wondering, as a League only player or someone who simply hasn't played a game like CS:GO where there is voice chat, if what I'm saying is really true. Is it actually less toxic? I'll break it down for you, but first here's an important bit of context: unlike in League (EUNE) there are no real Eastern European servers in CS:GO. That means that the Russian player-base (which is a huge part of the overall player-base) can't play on their own servers, but they have to play with people that speak English. Without wanting to open the can of worms that politics is, for various reasons, there's a level of hostility (some of it probably justified, certainly from their historical perspective and context) and anglophobia which causes a lot of friction. On top of that, they have a completely different economical approach to the game which is terrible in a team-environment. Even with all of that, I can confidently say I enjoy CS:GO more than League, because those moments where you call every tactic properly and out-strategize the enemy (even though in matchmaking it's all on a very basic level compared to pros) and everyone works together and the engine of teamwork and synergy is running beautifully, those moments are beautiful. When you can actually work together as a unit of strangers to out-perform another unit of strangers, it's great. Not to mention all the times I heard people beat-box and attempt to rap on the mic, that's always a classic. 
91
92Apparently we can't have this in League. Despite having much more servers and much more unity in that sense (which should lead to even less friction) and the player-base being younger, we can't have this. Why? Yagami Lyte, and I don't want to dwell on this, outright stated one of the reasons (the real reason is of course that it would cost money and effort and Riot are afraid they would screw this up) is that women receive more abuse than men on the mic, quoting an unscientific source (I remember the details of this exactly) which, coincidentally, was actually used in one of my statistics courses recently as an example of an unscientific source, but nevertheless, again I have to stress that you can mute people in one second and based on thousands of hours I've invested into CS:GO, I've actually never once seen a woman harassed on the mic. It is true that many of them don't talk on the mic (because you will get “lol grill? Omg a grill!”) which can be annoying and I'm sure there's a sense of vulnerability that men perhaps don't perceive (this is all debatable and there's no proper study yet), but again, you can mute people instantly, you can even set up a bind to mute them in 0,1 sec by just pressing one button on the keyboard, you can play with friends, you can not talk on the mic as many women (and men!) do. League doesn't need as much communication (in match-making) as CS:GO anyway, CS:GO is more fast-paced and has less down-time (again I must stress, in the context of match-making), I think voice chat would be awesome.
93
94Sandbox Mode + Replays
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96You knew this was coming, didn't you. I don't want to open this can of worms, people like Thooorin and Montecristo already did their videos on it and they are excellent and highlight many of the issues that exist particularly in Riots justification of why they don't want to implement it, but perhaps one thought I can add is this one: Take one second to think about the greatness we see in pro play. Fakers Zed outplay. Fakers Leblanc fluidity and speed. Uzis kiting. Defts reaction time. Defts team-fighting. 
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98What if I told you that's not the limit? What if I told you the horizon is actually much greater, there is even more depth in the game than you could possibly conceive of? It may sound far-fetched, but I assure you it isn't. 
99
100Take a look at Lee Sin. Do you know when Lee Sin was released? 5 years ago. In fact, almost exactly 5 years ago (in one week it will be 5 years). People are still figuring out new Lee mechanics. Master Yi was one of the original champions of the game, released almost 8 years ago. People just recently (maybe 1-2 years ago) figured out the W-auto reset and that you build mov-speed, run at people, reset autos which requires tremendous practise and then you Q the enemies burst and cc based on prediction/reaction time. The Irelia E max. For years people played Irelia with W max, then someone figured out Q max (it may have even been Wickd, I don't remember frankly!) and after years people figure out E max, the CD is low, the spell is impossible to trade against almost and the base damage is actually great. The Kayle Runaan build. Item builds are really one thing where it would be so pleasant if you could just set your level to 18, or give yourself a lot of gold and just test various item builds.
101
102 These are just random examples. There's flashes through walls, entire vision concepts and mechanical executions and a whole new level of performance that we don't even know exist but we could explore given proper tools. Riot already has a Sandbox mode. They use it all the time in their champion spotlight videos. That's all we need. It doesn't have to be perfect Riot. Even URF-mode would be enough. All I want is to see Faker, the ultimate genius, hit the next level and I believe he can. Or maybe it will be someone else. There is a gem here, I am convinced of it. Maybe there isn't. Maybe I'm wrong. But we will never know unless we try.
103
104Lastly, there still is no replay system. It's been 6 years. This is a big shame. Very low energy Riot. Very low energy (this will be the first and last Trump meme I promise...).
105
106Announcer Packs
107
108This is a very small point to make and hardly something urgent but it's an absolute mystery to me why Riot hasn't gone crazy with announcer packs. Imagine your favorite pro player, caster, TV personality shouting PENTA KILL when you get one. I'll be honest here, there seems to be money on the table and a lot of it. Why Riot hasn't jumped on this opportunity is unclear. 
109
110Maybe the next part will explain it.
111
112Office culture
113
114I doubt I'm allowed to link the source, but a few years ago, maybe even as little as 1 ½ or 2, there was this big leak from an ex-Riot employee where he basically broke down how the office culture enshrined by the management is making it so people are lazy. Several other sources, such as ex-Rioters (and of course there's no hard evidence for most of this) have stated that the office culture is too unprofessional, people are too loud, it's unsure who has which responsibility because no one wants to be the 'bad' guy and the lines between work-life and private life are not clear enough. We can all name like 10 separate instances where Riot missed the mark in terms of delivering on time (or delivering at all) and if those, let's charitably assume they are, rumors turn out to be true, it would explain A LOT (I didn't say anything about avoiding DJ Khaled memes). 
115
116However, there's more to be said about the culture that Riot bases their actions around. We need to talk about some tweets.
117
118“This is your daily reminder that GG still exists an dstill is a cesspool of the most awful human beings.”
119“I don't care what your politics are, if you associate yourself with monsters, you are a monster.”
120“GGers are criminals, I wish them nothing but pain and misery. Our industry is better if they are driven out entirely. There isn't a single GGer I wouldn't laugh at if they were on fire. No regrets. They are all scum.”
121“GGers are monsters because they encourage people to suicide.”
122
123These are the tweets of a Riot employee most of you would recognize, I don't want to bring up his name (no particular reason, just don't feel like it). For some minor contest, and no, we are not going to talk about fucking GamerGate, it's a 'movement' that started with legitimate concerns about ethics in gaming journalism but was more or less hijacked by, fairly scummy people that seem to enjoy sending women death-threats (and men). Now one side is talking about ethics and calling themselves GamersGaters (of course these days no one would dare to do such a thing as it would label you a misogynst psycho), the other about how terrible GamerGaters are (but in reality they are referring to the abusive people, which is causing tremendous friction and hate). This summary doesn't do the topic any justice but just so you understand. So these tweets come up in a forum that is more or less dedicated to this topic and the mods are quite trustworthy. Why do I mention this, well a Riot employee appeared in the thread (extremely likely he actually was a Riot employee, he confirmed it with the mods, who I deem trustworthy, make up your own mind) and wrote this, by the way this all happened 5 days ago: 
124
125'Daniel is p. miserable ever since he met Becks. Every issue Becks has, he gets sucked into. It is an abusive relationship! Domestic violence is very real Daniel and you are being abused. When you read this thread and you easily dismiss all the anti-Riot comments - which you will, since certain plebs are making about cancer (grow up tryhard edgelords, Riot is not failing or anything) - I hope my comment sticks with you. Becks has poisoned your life. I've watched you decline to half the person you were. You used to love life. Now-a-days you hate it. You actively seek out enemies to fight, enemies they have constructed for you out of their own delusions and victim complex.
126It fuckin sucks to see. If you want to hate GG be my guest, have your opinion even if a lot of GGers seem to be great people to me. But youre not HAPPY hating them and my guess is you love games and gaming in general. Why the fuck are you spending all your time reading comment wars your fiance gets sucked into instead of doing what you love (designing champs and playing vidja?)?'
127
128This and knowing what I know behind the scenes (not a tremendous amount regarding the Riot office, but still a decent amount) as well as Lytes frankly delusional statements is worrying to me. This is a games company. Make some great games. Don't get dragged into political nonsense and if you do, for gods sake stay away from SJW ethics, if you follow them to their logical conclusions we are all racist misogynists that should be in prison. I don't want to see another great thing ruined (perhaps it is already too late) by bullies see themselves as moral arbitrator and attack and bully anyone that disagrees with them with fascist (tragically this isn't even an understatement anymore) methods. People play and watch games to get away from politics, always remember that.
129
130All of this leads me to the next topic, a topic I actually care about quite a bit, especially having seen a different world in CS:GO.
131
132Banter, Trash-talk, Casters
133
134https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSWTqAUBMyk
135https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnZPTfAhRys
136https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzKqbuCUXrc
137https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCN6fHaD8zY
138
139I want Monte to throw Kimchi into Quikshots face. And this isn't a euphemistic phrasing of a porn fantasy I have. I don't want to live in a world where Riot can fine players for not shaking hands. I want trash talk. I would even argue every relevant person and fan wants trash talk. I really doubt the people that are against ALL sorts of trash talk are that passionate about the game. OGN has a segment solely dedicated for trash talk, and they go in hard. They call each other fat, failures, you look like a monkey, you have never achieved anything and it's highly enjoyable for everyone. It makes the games more meaningful, more entertaining, people enjoy it and I really have to stress I'm confused as to why is this even a debate in some peoples minds. In most other sports, much more extreme trash talk is not only tolerated but encouraged. Sure there is a line, you could argue we shouldn't encourage the inherent tribalism of humanity as it could lead to violence, but god knows I don't want to go down the starcraft path of “holy shit he accidentally typed 'ggg' instead 'gg', burn him.”. These are two extremes. I don't like how close League is to the starcraft example I gave (a game I'm not familiar with by the way). 
140
141https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbh-F4M8UMU This is what I like. Trash-talk as part of the game. Used to gain psychological advantages. It's a risk you take. If you lose, you look like the biggest fool ever. We can all name multiple examples of when Doublelift (who used trash-talk to build up his fame) tried to shit talk, his team lost and he looked like a moron. His haters loved it. Had he won, his fans would have loved it. 
142
143Let me give you an example, I know people that don't even care about CS:GO but watch the analysis desk segments because on most broadcasts, people like Thorin and Fifflaren and Scoots are allowed to go fucking ham, make fun of everyone, mostly each other of course, you can fill downtime forever, the broadcasts are memorable. There's nothing wrong with trash talk, everyone intuitively understands (except highly sheltered people that are possibly on the spectrum, this is actually not a sarcastic remark) what a joke is, everyone understands that it's not serious. Even on the NBA desk Shaq will do all sorts of crazy shit, dive on the floor and do god knows what, most sponsors don't give a fuck they just want viewers and relevance. I agree however, that there has to be a spectrum. The spectrum currently exists in CS:GO. We have highly scripted, sanitized ESL broadcasts where Chobra pulls off an act for a few days and we have FaceIT/Dreamhacks where Thorin smashes baguettes and just openly trash talks the crowd. Now that being said, even the ESL end of the spectrum in CS:GO features a decent amount of trash talk. 
144
145To be fair to Riot, they have been trying to up their game in terms of trash talk, they've been doing some small features that they play before the games and they seem to encourage trash talk a little bit but the culture that Riot enforces, by banning elite, exceptional talents and minds like Forgiven for being “toxic” and publically humiliating them and ruining their teams career (imagine Lebron getting banned  from playing in the NBA for calling someone shit in a street-game, how insane would that be) instead of privately contacting them and offering them help or figuring out a different punishment, makes it so pros are afraid to even say their opinion. Take the Jatt fiasco for example, he literally tweeted “this is a worrying trend” in an entirely correct context by the way and felt the urge to publically apologize even though he had done nothing wrong. I don't believe he himself thought he had done something wrong, I believe he was pressured into it either directly or as a result of years of working in Riot. We all know by now the question they ask about Montecristo at job-interviews. They are trying to enforce an anti-trash talk, anti-honesty narrative that will not survive scrutiny in the long term. 
146
147I have a lot of issues with the way games are casted these days. Particularly LCS games. Horrific throws, terrible decisions that I know the casters recognize and understand (most of them) are not called out properly. Phrases like “slight misplay” are used, that's the most harsh they'll be.
148
149Meanwhile Monte is sitting in his chair and mastur straight up saying, at IEM “wow Prays positioning in that teamfight was utterly terrible” or “Lilac should really retire, his mechanics are horrible, he should consider becoming a coach”, or “wow, what a bad call from Jin-Air”. I hear these phrases every week from Monte. Why is that? If I knew nothing about the game and I would watch both regions I would be lead to believe that Korea is actually the worse region, since based on the comments of the casters, they seem to be the only ones making mistakes!
150
151What's wrong with being opinionated? Why did the entire scene have to fight to get Froskurin, who is a highly respected analyst with a great work-ethic (respected by people that matter, sorry if you are reading this and thought “wait a second, I don't respect her”) to get her hired? I'm against diversity just for diversities sake but you really have an opportunity here to hire a gay, tatooed, female analytical caster with weird hair who brings a great flavor, knowledge and technical skills to the cast (admittedly during a recent tournament, I don't remember which one, she seemed quite nervous and said so on twitter, but I don't think the average viewer actually noticed) and you don't do it because “she's too opinionated on twitter”? That's utter insanity. The point here isn't that Froskurin is a perfect caster, the question is who is in charge of these decisions, using these ridiculous justifications? Who is the person that apparently thinks women should just be quiet and leave opinions to men (what other conclusion could I draw from this ridiculous justification)? 
152
153The truth is, there is no real spectrum with Riot broadcasts. Since Riot controls almost all the broadcasts, we don't get to see a trash talking analysis desk (except at worlds where the last bastion of honesty, Montecristo, basically forces everyone to keep up). I recently watched a CS:GO event in Germany where the casters were drinking beer and saying whatever they wanted. There's nothing wrong with that. 
154
155This leads me to the next point:
156
157Open Circuit and more 
158
159I wrote some of this 4 months ago but it still stands. While Riot is finally moving away from bo1 in the LCS, the points about the open circuit remain vital. Sure, they say they will do more international tournaments, but it's not enough for me. 
160
161CS:GO is very fun to watch. CS:GO has an open circuit. CS:GO loves their open circuit.
162
163Lets just do a little, quick thought experiment.
164Think about (partially from a western perspective here, to address the majority of western fans as well in this), the most epic, exciting moments last year in League of Legends.
165Few moments come to mind:
166EDG vs SKT, EDG manages to beat them, the Leblanc trap, etc. Epic fucking series wasn't it.
167Fnatic takes SKT to game 5, Huni and Febiven have the best games of their lives (arguably), Febiven solo kills Faker, yet SKT wins in the end, a very exciting series especially for western fans.
168CLG beats TSM 3:0. CLG goes undefeated in playoffs, COMPLETELY turns their entire history around and the team of losers after years of misery makes their dreams come true.
169OG vs FNC LCS finals, Fnatic goes from going undefeated the whole split to dropping games and being extremely tested (admittedly they picked literal garbage, TP smite lee sin boys), and we see cracks in their armor and simultaneously we see the seeds of what was about to come at worlds, which is Soaz adapting MUCH better to new champions and Huni being unable to. (I'd argue Huni is still better but this isnt the time)
170KOO loses to WE, one of the most shocking upsets of all time, KOO gets cocky in game 2, completely and utterly chokes in game 3. tsm wins the tournament. And this isn't even a good format, half of it was bo1 and some of the teams invited weren't even good...
171Worlds. China collapses. EU establishes themselves as the 2nd best region at that point in time. 
172I could go on but what anyone can immediately notice is NO ONE and I mean no one really remembers any random meaningless bo1s from the LCS, and the most epic moments are produced in bo3s and bo5s and the really epic moments can be found at international tournaments.
173Forget that an open circuit with best of series would give us more entertainment. More quality games. No, think about the players. The players want this. When you ask old pros like Doublelift which part of their career they enjoyed the most, they inevitably and always answer “Season 2, because you got to travel to so many different places, play against many different teams from different regions.”
174Western teams in particular would benefit so much from getting international experience and seeing which of their teammates tilt, which don't, they'd gain tremendous experience when it comes to mid game adaption and realize quicker that coaches matter (Some teams still don't get this! It's 2016 and TSM still thinks they are losing because of mechanical errors!) and analysts as well... we all know the last worlds patch has been a complete joke and if there were more tournaments throughout the year, it would be so much easier to forgive a bad patch but last worlds is unfortunately going to be remembered forever with every pick ban being extremely limited (you cant ban out players like Huni as well when you have to ban Morde, GP, Reksai/Elise Every. Single. Game.).
175Why is it that we never got to see Doublelift vs Wx in their primes, except at Allstars 2013 (which doesn't really count for obvious reasons)? Why is it that we don't get to see Bjergsen vs Febiven vs Faker vs Uzi every 3 weeks? Can you even imagine the level the scene would be at if Riot had opened the circuit from the very beginning/never closed it? MLG, ESL, Dreamhack, these sorts of companies (who by the way in part helped Riot succeed) would be doing so much better now, they would get millions of views for huge tournaments, numbers that would have even exceeded the numbers that CS:GO gets right now, I firmly believe the scene would be so much better off had Riot not been selfish and too controlling. 
176Mid game adaption to me is one of the most, if not the most entertaining thing in League. It's a battle of the minds, it's the reorganization of the instruments and tools you have to solve the puzzle. Where are the opponents weaknesses, how can we exploit them? What tools do we have to do it? It's the one moment where you really have to be self-critical and reflective and think to yourself, can I actually do it? Can I actually carry this game? Maybe our approach the last month has been all wrong. Maybe I overestimated myself. Maybe I can't dominate lane vs Uzi. Maybe I was delusional. Maybe I need to play Sivir right now and play around our top laner, who can dominate theirs. 
177Sigh. I will never not be upset when I think about all the IPL5's we have missed. 
178We can have IPL 5 every fucking month if we wanted to. In fact it would be much better, the production value itself was actually terrible at the IPLs, we have so much possibilities in terms of production value now and so much experience with it, these are things that Riot can provide like almost no one in the whole industry. 
179The level of innovation would increase as well if we had an open circuit. No more 2 days of LCS which is essentially wasted time, you waste a whole day with travel and god knows what to play ONE best of 1, 1 day off, 2 days of practise aaaaand there we go again, LCS time. This is madness. Where is the time to practise off-meta shit, to break the meta? It's not there. Look how long it took for Zzrot to be picked up (and I'd even argue people still don't even comprehend the item to a significant degree). How could it be that it took so many months for people to figure it out? Teams simply don't have the time or balls to innovate and I don't blame them. LCS puts a lot of pressure on you to perform every single week and essentially peak every single week, an open circuit gives teams so much more freedom. Maybe we want to go to this event, because it's in a nice place/we don't have to travel far/we have a great grasp on the patch. Maybe we don't want to go to this one cause our player has an injury or we need a mental break. LCS is much more ruthless in that sense. You show up every week and play this one best of 1 or you can get the fuck out. 
180
181Wards and Soloq Incentives
182
183Holy shit people in soloqueue don't buy enough wards, what the actual fuck, Riot should start the good old propaganda machine but this time use it to make it so people buy wards. Even at high elo no one buys wards I hate it (literally 90% of the reason why I quit). Ignore this tangent. 
184
185We have to raise the level of soloq somehow in the west, introduce some prices that are necessary to hit rank 1, while going super hard on hackers and scripters (I really believe there can be more ingenuity at place here, it shouldn't be that hard to just bribe/bait scripters and people who write the scripters given how much resources and power Riot has).
186
187Visas
188
189I can believe that Riot hired a lawyer, or even multiple lawyers to fix the Visa issue but I can't believe they have really done everything they can. Get Shaq or Rick Fox or I don't know, some damn politician and bribe them for all I care to push for additions to the Visa regulations and to finally recognize gaming as a sport. It's 2016, what the hell. 
190
191Stats
192
193Last but not least, we need better stats. In fact, every esports game needs better stats, but this is about LoL. I don't know how you would do it, either hire a guy or script it, but introduce stats like “hook accuracy vs champions” or “Q accuracy on Ezreal vs champions in lane” or things like that. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a start. There really is no excuse anymore when you make billions and billions a year. I demand excellence. 
194Here's a weird idea for you by the way, only loosely related to stats. And you could do this in CS:GO and in League. If we really have custom game modes and sandbox-mode, create a sort of “course” or “challenge” where players (particularly curious about pro players) reaction time is tested, where their csing is tested, where their skillshots are tested and give them points out of 100 and create player cards/biographies in that sense. And hell, make them do it once every 2 months (maybe it takes 30 minutes over all), there is something similar in Fifa as far as I know and it would be quite interesting. Of course there are intangibles but in CS:GO in particular it would be cool to see the difference between KennyS' (a sniper) and Maikeleles (a worse sniper) hitrate with easy, medium and difficult flicks. Or to just test reaction time. Or in League test the Csing per 10. 
195
196If you made it this far you are a weird person, but I like you.