imo it comes down to money.

there are various seemingly easy changes that riot can make regarding all these topics, but they haven't done them (note: i'm not asking them to fix these issues; obviously they are hard. but just do the easy changes; don't let good be the enemy of perfect).

riot employee silence on these issues (despite frequent participation on all other issues, such as skins and technical bugs) makes me think there's been some kind of executive decision to ban employees from addressing this stuff, bc they've decided they will never make these changes. and i think it's because it just comes down to money.

• smurfing: more alt accounts means more skins are bought.

• shorter unrated: would mean far less players playing spike. riot wants players playing spike, bc it gives more of a reason to buy skins for niche weapons + you can pick up opponent skins. actually im pretty sure this is why spike will ALWAYS be the main "weird" game mode, despite seemingly everyone preferring replication/escalation.

• deathmatch: a popular deathmatch mode would surely lead to a noticeable increase in server load. (tho otoh, i wonder how expensive it is to actually maintain dm servers). also, a better dm means less playtime in the other, more social modes, where skins are more present.