Thought: Neophobia

The League of Legends community is a complicated amalgamation of players, and any generalizations regarding it are typically of limited value. There are, however, some truths which can be firmly stated, one of which being the certainty of hostile resistance to that which is different.

Before I harp heavily on the problems that result, let me be clear that there are understandable reasons for this common attitude. League of Legends is a complicated game, and it's difficult enough as it is to play to the meta, let alone trying to play against it. When a player makes an unfamiliar choice for a role, build, or lane it's just as common for them to be trolling, selfish, or ill-prepared as to be carefully and methodically innovating. It's not simply fear of the unknown, but experience with abject failures that effects this viewpoint.

For the innovators, this means intense and unforgiving scrutiny. Every game where you jungle Akali, play Caitlyn mid, or test support Maokai is a game where the slightest failure, misstep, or questionable statement can bring a torrent of disparaging remarks and threats. Even in games where you have been effective and positive you remain a convenient target for blame. It's not enough to be as good as everyone else, you must be better.

As innocent and understandable as it may seem, this cultural hostility enforces and reinforces the rigid, unadaptable thinking which plagues many players. Players seek set build orders, the "best" champion picks, and "correct" strategies because they are conditioned to do so by the harsh, derisive judgement of their peers. Taught to mimic rather than to think, these players struggle to fill in the blanks whenever they encounter a unfamiliar problems and situations.

This often results in the common fixation on winning over learning. When you believe in an unambiguously right way to play there isn't much use in doing anything other than pursuing that one righteous path. From that perspective if you aren't playing to win, then you're trolling or messing around or otherwise being a burden on your team rather than an asset. While victory is obviously the objective of the game, this mindset is a quick ticket to getting stuck and looking at every patch as a punishment rather than an opportunity.

The slow-to-change meta also has its routes in communal neophobia. It takes tournaments, sweeping balance changes, or particularly intrepid players to alter the meta because the community is actively hostile to all but the most irrefutably potent ideas. Unless convincingly demonstrated, and even then, the community is content to sit on what worked historically even though the conditions in which those ideas prospered are long past.

Curing neophobia on a community level is likely impossible. While it's demonstrably better for everyone to experiment, learn, and improve, the convenience and mental effortlessness of sticking with the known is powerful. All that innovation nonsense is work; there are champions to be killed, creeps to be farmed, and towers to be pushed. The best we can do is work on the individual level, starting with ourselves.