More skins and champions make money. Observer mode doesn't make money. Riot needs to pay the bills for the servers.

The more people play because of new champions, the more money, and Riot might think of adding things for the competitive community

Riot places more emphasis on surface content than on any real depth of content - hence why they keep making new heroes with new resource and combat systems (the 3 ninjas, renekton, karma) while leaving the old heroes on the vine for the most part. Sure they get hit with buffs and narfs form time to time but at some point they have to realize that they can't double the number of heroes and expect the old and new to mesh together magically out of the blue.

Hence, they make this game a more casual game. No new maps since launch, no new game modes, no lan support, horrible chat server stability....it makes me wonder why they place such a heavy emphasis on banning players when they really don't hurt the game more than it hurts itself.

street fighter 2 is not competative either
it's art direction is cartoony and brightly colored
it has no replays or spectator mode
and the characters have like 3 special moves each

Are we just supposed to agree or disagree with the OP statement?

Obviously everyone should agree.

I don't understand people; Riot is in its start-up phase they are catering to players based on revenue and cashflows. Dota had features like replays because they wearn't focusing on the bottom line (the money). Similarly SC2 has replays because its a sequel to a game that already has/had a large and very successful competitive scene in the past. Game companies especially fledgling ones like Riot are not going to cater to 1% of their player base when they are still worried about the overall success of the game and by extension their own companies' cashflows.

If you really want a competitive LOL scene complete with support from developers and new features then real tournaments need to happen with money involved. Competitive play in games doesn't usually have an issue because something like an oberserver mode wasn't added it usually has much more to do with overall balance which clearly needs some work.

Overall I'm pretty impressed by Riot. They've made a seemingly successful business model, seem to be developing champions quickly and at least trying to address balance with regular patches and changes to the game. Hopefully in the future we see things like replays, observer mode, and official riot tournaments but honestly I don't think people use their brains when they look at why those things aren't present. Its $$$ pure and simple.

+1 for the OP.

LoL is not balanced and will never be balanced. This is why it will never be a serious "competitive" game without major changes. Why?

Look at the original Starcraft. It's widely considered the most balanced multiplayer game ever made. It took Blizzard almost a decade to make it "balanced". And this was with THREE races. With Riot releasing new champions every week and new items every quarter; it's absolutely impossible to attain any kind of balance.

Ranked games will continue to be dominated by "flavor of the month" champions and replaced by new champions once the the former are nerfed.

If you are looking for a truly competitive game, play Starcraft (or SC 2). But LoL is for casual fun, nothing more.