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To: @RiotOpeli and the Narrative Design / Lore Departments: What we want out of League Lore

TerraRising·8/8/2014, 7:05:29 AM·15 votes·563 views

I'm trying to be positive and not allow my disappointment in the Lore Department's past affect the message. That said, I can't fully guarantee it won't. Riot has done little in the past two years to show me, as a company, they care about their narrative and a few promises of TLC won't change that until I see proof.

That said, here is a bullet list of items I would ask the department in charge of Lore at Riot to consider for the near and distant future. I encourage other Lore fans to leave similar lists. Please keep it respectful and let's hope someone at Riot feels comfortable enough to respond:

  1. Fix your loopholes: When Soraka's VU was released, it came with changes to Warwick, the champion responsible for Soraka's emotional fall from grace. Unfortunately, Singed was also tied directly to both champs background but has of yet not received a ret-con to separate himself from the other two. This needs to be fixed, along with any apparent problems with champs like Cassiopeia. Don't wait for an update from ChampUp or a "major event" to fix these problems either. Do them quickly.

  2. Don't abandon the "walls of text": When IronStylus said he didn't want to see "walls of text" when it came to Lore, I cringed. Walls of text have been a staple for people who enjoy fiction of all types. They're called books. Don't abandon the efforts to add to the lore through promotional items, including the various cinematics, including "A New Dawn, the "Trials of the Poro" and "Get Jinxed" music videos and everything else. But continue telling these stories through alternatives to the long gone Journals of Justice. We don't just want more videos and cinematics. We want more stories about the world of Runeterra and the continent of Valoran from Riot.

  3. Never forget the lessons of Trundle: When the company revealed what they planned to change about Trundle during the Freljord event, there was a revolt. In addition to the complete destruction of the champ (which the update team celebrated with cigars and martinis, I'd imagine), the lore team turned a sympathetic cursed troll with a sad but complete story into a generic ice troll, similar to the Wampa from Star Wars. If a future lore update will do anything close to what happened to Trundle

  4. Communicate with the Lore fans more: Don't limit yourselves to specific champion AMAs. Take a moment to look and post in the Lore Discussion forums and ask questions about what we're looking for. Let us know what your intentions are if there are changes coming. Riot is always talking about "needing to communicate with our fans more," but they never seem capable of doing just that. Don't be like every other department at Riot and actually communicate with us!

Please tell me that I haven't wasted my time, Riot.

5 Comments

Keikomatsui 8/8/2014, 8:29:27 PM6 votes

Also, giving us a Lore board again would be nice.

Not all of us are Fanfiction writers, but by god we can fricken speculate and imagine if we want to.

Sneak Dog8/8/2014, 3:24:28 PM4 votes

  1. I think a wall of text can be done without, but it waters down the details. You might be able to fit the lore in a comic or a spoken text? Would appeal to more people (especially a comic, good catch Dawngate!).

  2. Trundle was really sad, even more so because Riot came close. They were so close of just keeping the good old Trundle but putting him in a new context, he too would have tried to seize control if given the chance, he'd done it to get the admiration of his tribe though and probably would become frustrated after he once more failed to attain this and got their fear instead, then perhaps even go on a frustrated rampage with his tribe, pillaging the Freljord, great character development possibilities and they got so close. Instead we have this generic brute/liar. I was really disappointed when they didn't even bother changing the background after the awful reception.

  3. This really makes me scratch my head why they didn't even catch the bad reception on the pbe. All balance changes go there too, solely to catch feedback and bugs, his background was there too, why not change it? Too expensive to do the voice-overs all anew to fit Trundle instead of this brute? Really I think other departments do take feedback quite nicely, especially skins, but the lore department seems to be just plain non-existant.

Then we get someone from another telling us we should be excited that they're working hard, but I'm scared of what they're working on. I feel it's just as likely they'll destroy the entire lore as we love it as that they'll make something amazing. Sure, I appreciate you telling us they're working on something, but it doesn't change my lack of faith in the fabled lore department. Every other department has past achievements speak for them, the lore's latest grand creation, the Freljord event, (ignore character backgrounds, they're not exactly as hard/epic) put quite a stain on them in my eyes (all build-up and retcons, no climax). And since they didn't immediately try to wash off this stain, it's engrained there and will take even more effort to remove now.

ploki1228/8/2014, 8:28:16 PM2 votes

I feel like we're quite extremely opposed me and you, so I'll voice what I want too.

  1. Finish reworking all lores : This one ties in with you, but go further. I actually like the new character-focused style of lores, and I really wish that all older champions got that treatement. One prime example for me is my favorite champion, Poppy. Go read her lore, and try to make a wordcloud of traits/qualities/aspects/feelings/themes/etc. that relates to Poppy... You may reach like 5 at most. She's a really interesting story built around a totally personnality-less character.

  2. More addendums : Having champions' lore is nice, but we want more. I wanna know what the Kumungu jungle is like. I wanna know what happened in those Rune Wars. I wanna know what kind of adventures Fagzreal went through, or how he discovered the Talisman. I hear what the world looks like from Kog'Maw's and Vel'Koz' point of view. We need more of these "behind the scenes" when possible, and htey don't even have to be walls of text... roughly 2-300 words once every week would make for some insane Vel'Koz exploration logs. A simple sound loop of like 5 minutes for a day in Lee Sin's skin would be really funny, and people would fight to try and determine what's happening when. There is so much ground for pleasure, and it seems to us like you're simply going for the gigantic projects right now. One thing tha gives me hope is that by seeing all those sneak peaks, you've understood that diversification serves leaps and bounds to raise the peoples' interest. "Novelty for the sake of novelty" in game design is terrible, however, when it comes to the form it's epic.

  3. More frequent interactions : This ties-in with the more addendums, but basically what I mean is that in term of Lore/Creative design, you're looking to tell stories and convey feelings/times. You can't be doing like champion designer, releasing a new bit every 1.5 months. It has to come over time, and leave with cliffhangers (like sneak peeks). Like I mentionned, books and thing like that are nice, but not if you have to release them every 1-2 years. By the time the next installement comes, we're gonna be totally frigid and unreceptive.

  4. Communicate with the fans more : Nothing to be said here. I do think that neither us nor them knows enough about the other to truly feel at ease. Creative design has a rough idea of what needs to be done, but never even remotely as much as art. Art has people going through every single possible forums on every releases, looking for every small bit of feedback, adjusting hair color for X/Y/Z reasons, removing a certain offensive detail, adjusting something that epople felt disappointed about. And they learn from it. Creative design feels like they'Re beign left out of the loop (or are staying out of the loop, I can't even say). We never hear from them, we never know what they want, what they want to do... we know nothing. We're Jon Snow!

CupcakeTrap8/8/2014, 9:37:17 PM2 votes

What really draws me into LoL's story is that it gives players, and the matches we play, an obvious place in the setting.

I think more player-driven lore would be a cool thing. I've been doing online roleplay and similar things for years now, and I think there's a real power in interactive storytelling that isn't just handed down from on high.

The Factions community has been working to demonstrate how a dynamic, surprising, player-driven story can be told through LoL. Here's an overview of the story told so far.

Impetual8/9/2014, 8:13:59 AM1 votes

  1. Fix your loopholes: When Soraka's VU was released, it came with changes to Warwick, the champion responsible for Soraka's emotional fall from grace. Unfortunately, Singed was also tied directly to both champs background but has of yet not received a ret-con to separate himself from the other two. This needs to be fixed, along with any apparent problems with champs like Cassiopeia. Don't wait for an update from ChampUp or a "major event" to fix these problems either. Do them quickly.

  2. Don't abandon the "walls of text": When IronStylus said he didn't want to see "walls of text" when it came to Lore, I cringed. Walls of text have been a staple for people who enjoy fiction of all types. They're called books. Don't abandon the efforts to add to the lore through promotional items, including the various cinematics, including "A New Dawn, the "Trials of the Poro" and "Get Jinxed" music videos and everything else. But continue telling these stories through alternatives to the long gone Journals of Justice. We don't just want more videos and cinematics. We want more stories about the world of Runeterra and the continent of Valoran from Riot.

  3. Never forget the lessons of Trundle: When the company revealed what they planned to change about Trundle during the Freljord event, there was a revolt. In addition to the complete destruction of the champ (which the update team celebrated with cigars and martinis, I'd imagine), the lore team turned a sympathetic cursed troll with a sad but complete story into a generic ice troll, similar to the Wampa from Star Wars. If a future lore update will do anything close to what happened to Trundle

  4. Communicate with the Lore fans more: Don't limit yourselves to specific champion AMAs. Take a moment to look and post in the Lore Discussion forums and ask questions about what we're looking for. Let us know what your intentions are if there are changes coming. Riot is always talking about "needing to communicate with our fans more," but they never seem capable of doing just that. Don't be like every other department at Riot and actually communicate with us!

Please tell me that I haven't wasted my time, Riot.

Couldn't agree more!