Lore: Enough is enough both sides STOP

Kobold·9/11/2014, 1:52:04 PM·3 votes·914 views

First and foremost Both Riot and the community have made terrible decisions when dealing with the lore changes. I am not for nor am I against the changes at this point.

Myself and others of the community, should apologize for our actions towards Riot Opeli,other Rioters, and other community members. I myself must apologize as I had taken my argument over to twitter with both Moobeat and Opeli, I said some terrible things to both of them regarding the lore changes and my opinions on the matter and I wish to sincerely apologize for them. The actions of other community members are also inexcusable as they border or overtake the line of harassing of others, It needs to stop. We should from here on out be more respectful of others opinions on matters. It's tough but we need to mature as a community.

Rioters, especially the lore department, you are not faultless in this either. First Riot should never have allowed a department to not communicate with the community about things for so long. Second, Lore team, the way the changes were revealed was (in my Opinion) very unprofessional in the sense that from your prolonged absence on communicating. Doing a developer blog the way it was done so suddenly and without prior communication was like dropping the Atomic bomb in a metropolis and hoping no one got hurt. A reveal this large should have been built up not though suspense (no posts) but through communication and feedback. By doing what you have done you now have a responsibility to have constant communication with your players regarding lore. As you are now on damage control regarding the situation (from what I believe). If not the same thing that is happening now will happen again.

Now what I believe should have been done to stop things getting to this point even before they started. The concept of the changes (as soon as the decision was made to go through with it) should have been posted on the forums as "We are thinking of removing the IoW and LoL from the lore in the future and want players feedback on this." This creates a neutral thread seeking information regarding the changes, which then can be used to alleviate stress and anger in the community. In this thread should have been constant communication with the community about the project such as moving Skarner to Shurima to place him in a Faction location so that their stories could better be intertwined with other champions. this thread would also allow you better feedback on why players like the current (now old) lore of certain champions and what they really want kept to keep the "character" of the champion the same. This also reduces the tension built up from the long silence the lore team has given the community.

What can be done in the future is constant communication and updates. Myself and some other members of the community feel as if the changes brought much less than what we lost in terms of quantity and quality. This is the problem I believe most people have with the changes.

If there is any typos or questions regarding what I have written please feel free to state them. I will be checking on this discussion later today to see what people think. I don't care if you flame me or agree with me I am just stating what I think went wrong and should be done from here on out.

6 Comments

Lumus Avatar9/11/2014, 3:51:34 PM2 votes

It is exactly my feeling that the lack of communication and the feeling of powerlessness in the face of these massive changes that has caused such vitriol to issue forth from the community.

Sunfield9/11/2014, 2:34:31 PM1 votes

Never underestimate an angry nerd

TerraRising9/11/2014, 4:02:19 PM1 votes

I do not apologize for my passion involving the lore team. Having been treated like garbage for three years (which is longer than I remembered at first), Riot needs to do most of the work in healing the wounds their silence and indifference created.

However, calling for Opeli to be fired and all the misogynistic and disgusting hate going towards her is not right in the least. Keep it at the entire team, keep it focused, but don't make it personal.

That said, can we really take Riot and the Narrative team at their word when they say "we want to communicate more" or that they're "sorry for the silence?" I don't think so. We've been down this road before and it wasn't worth the trip.

So, the real question is: What will the lore team do after Shurima? Will the team actually try to gather our input on where we'd like to see the story go? Will they go and fix some of the plot holes already created by the previous lore teams (Singed, Evelynn, etc.). Will they, as I believe, return to their ivory tower and rain contempt on us until the next time they have to sell a mega patch?

Like I said before, they have to do most of the hard work before they can re-earn my (and our) trust. Hard work is not something I've seen from the lore team, though. So, I have my doubts.

What would be nice, in addition to actual back-and-forth communication, is allowing us some input into the story and talking with us instead of to us (Dev Blogs)

Take, for instance, Bilgewater. You have Gangplank (the King of the Pirates), Miss Fortune (A Pirate Bounty Hunter) and... Brand (A Lokfar/Freljord pirate turned evil fire elemental being.) Add in a new mega character (a Demacian/Noxian Admiral intent on taking over Bilgewater), toss in a few established champions (Fizz, Nami, Nautilus and, for good measure, Fiddlesticks, Graves and Singed.)

The story could be that Gangplank, the new "Pirate King," meets his first challenge in the Admiral, who wants to attack the pirate fleets while things are in turmoil. Miss Fortune may have to side with the pirates in order to keep her personal freedom and we may start getting answers about Nautilus and Fizz.

It would come with GP and MF reworks, Singed's story FINALLY getting fixed and more story clarification. (Graves was born in Bilgewater but left with Twisted Fate).

But this all requires the lore team to not go back into silent mode again.

Kobold9/12/2014, 1:54:16 AM1 votes

I'm going to repost this in GD in the morning seeing as the boards are a dead zone with not much of anything in them. @Tamat I am makeing a thread in feedback about some issues on this.