You can look at Super Smash Bros Melee for a game that has a competitive scene that has lasted a long time. It's more popular than ever at the moment with no updates or patches.
Even there the meta game is constantly evolving, look at the rise in popularity of shield dropping, I haven't been in that scene in a while but I was around it long enough to realize that there was an ever evolving meta-game. There's that entire joke in the community about the post-apocalyptic universe of 20xx [0] where the game has devolved into a rock paper scissors meta game for port priority. Additionally new rules do emerge in the scene, is chain grabbing ICs okay? what about Onett? etc. These serve to keep the game fresh by introducing a variance of popular strategy. This is what the semi weekly patches do in LoL. They keep the meta ever changing and even if you get out of the game the meta game is nominally important for spectators because the casters will pretty much explain it to you as the game goes on.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/1qixpa/the_year_...