Game Balance and Riots decision making was always questionable/debatable at best depending on who you asked, but early league was pretty incredible because it focused more on strategy AND skill, but over time the game became more light on strategy and too entrenched with its archetypes while the overall design never really evolved based on player's understanding.. rather riot felt it best to railroad and dictate every little detail in the metagame while being hilariously out of touch with that metagame..

The quality of interactions between champs in gameplay was cleaner, while the champs had more elegant, simpler, less overloaded designs but still so much room for skill expression.. (this was around season 2 and 3.. things went downhill for my experience starting S6-8)

This is all just gameplay and I'm not even remotely willing to delve into player behaviour, toxicity, smurfing,, inting, dodging and technical quality of the game client, which ime has gone to hell despite the extensive work put into each of those areas to "create a better experience"

Despite all this, and despite my absolute lack of faith in Riot's LoL team, there's a small spark of something special in LoL that keeps me coming back from time to time.. it's 100% NOT the community, it's definitely NOT the eSports, NOT the balance, NOT the skins and no Riot it's not all the shiny currencies and bars that fill up after every match..

I guess the fundamentals/foundations of the gameplay are what I believe in, while the building built on top of it looks like a mountain of spaghetti on fire