It is hard to keep players coming back time and again to an online game, especially when it doesn’t have things like expansions or DLCs to keep interest peaked. It’s fair to say in League of Legends nine years, it has undergone some serious changes, but the question is whether or not the changes are enough, or if fans of what the game once was no longer enjoy what it has become.

The fact is, League of Legends is simply a slower game than it was before. Constant changes to champions and items have made the game much more defensive, and this is something that has been building for a long time. The Ardent Censer meta was only the most recent meta all about defense and survivability, not the first. 2015 saw the rise of Protect the Kog’Maw. Even then, the game was becoming far more focused on protection than on aggression, and Riot hasn’t helped much in making it less so.

The League of Stopwatches is perhaps the most egregious example. While Zhonya’s has always added interesting gameplay elements, that was when not every single player had one, and especially not before ten minutes, when it is perhaps easiest to gank. In Riot’s defense, even they did not expect the new runes to so drastically extend the time of games. This is part of the problem with trying to create content for casual gamers as well as professionals. Professionals will always find the fastest way to exploit a system, and in this case, that exploitation means more defense, more late game focus, and playing it safe.

When asked, many veterans of the game harken back to years earlier, Season 3 and 4 in particular, when the game felt like it was more about individual skill than just how well teams could defend and take objectives. The popular streamer Nightblue3, who has been Challenger every season since Season 3, has decried the current state of the game in particular. He spoke about it in a recent stream.

This is a fairly popular sentiment echoed by veterans of the game, and while Riot continues to make adjustments, the adjustments aren’t exactly what fans or players would like. For instance, Rengar’s recent changes – which Riot claims were an attempt to revert him to the way players like Nightblue3 liked – reverted and nerfed him at the same time. His win rate dropped by 4%  in days following the newest patch, and many players are furious.

The fact is, during Season 3 and 4 in particular, it was possible for a single player to dominate a game far more easily. The peak of Faker’s popularity came when he could crush entire teams on champions like LeBlanc and Zed, but both of these champions have fallen hard out of the meta ever since they lost the ability to one-shot.

When it is easier to gank, kills go up dramatically, gold is increased far quicker, and games finish faster. The newest metas have only served to change that, and teams like TSM have now become famous for a ‘wait-and-see’ approach to the game. By nerfing assassins, Riot has made the game safer for less skilled players, but they’ve also dramatically increased game time and lowered kills on the professional scene.

It’s a tenuous road to walk trying to make both groups happy, but if Riot keeps it up, they might see veteran players and streamers alike start looking elsewhere for excitement.