@RiotOpeli and Tommy Gnox: Groupthink. A calm discussion

inDJ·Sep 6, 2014·18 votes·2,811 views

So maybe the post I made yesterday was a little bit angry and dismissive. In light of that, how about I raise what I think is the most, devilishly accurate explanation of what's happening with the lore.

What I ask is simply this, Riot: Don't dismiss this as not applicable to you. You are just as human as we are, and subject to the same human fallacies. I can't say with certainty that Groupthink is precisely the problem right now - I am fairly emotionally invested in this whole issue, after all. All I'm asking is to separate yourselves from your decisions as a department and think about this critically: is this what's happening? Does it at least bear resemblance? I think it does, and I don't think admitting to it or recognising its possibility cheapens your credibility as a writer.

Again, perhaps I'm wrong. I'm open to that possibility. All I ask is that you stop thinking as a group of people and individually evaluate the possibility that I am correct, instead. Even if I'm not, perhaps it would be an exercise in understanding our (those who oppose the removal of summoners as canon) point of view. I, personally, don't mind the retconning of most of the lore - as long as a compromise is made and we as players are still given importance. The word I'm using here is compromise. May we please compromise?

From Wikipedia:

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints, by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.

Loyalty to the group requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions, and there is loss of individual creativity, uniqueness and independent thinking. The dysfunctional group dynamics of the "ingroup" produces an "illusion of invulnerability" (an inflated certainty that the right decision has been made). Thus the "ingroup" significantly overrates its own abilities in decision-making, and significantly underrates the abilities of its opponents (the "outgroup"). Furthermore groupthink can produce dehumanizing actions against the "outgroup".

Antecedent factors such as group cohesiveness, faulty group structure, and situational context (e.g., community panic) play into the likelihood of whether or not groupthink will impact the decision-making process.

15 Comments

ZhuganSep 6, 20147 votes

While that is a possibility, it seems far more likely to me that they all knew (as individuals) what they were doing and just liked the idea better than the much larger amount of work necessary to put together lore related to a war between IoW and whatever of the nations of Runeterra that decided to oppose them.

inDJSep 6, 20145 votes

Well yeah, maybe, but I don't think we can be the judge of which would be more work. The way it is now, they do have to rework an awful lot of champion lore. I'm just afraid that they're not taking our criticism or suggestions seriously if they view us as some sort of "outgroup". They could be reading it all, sure, but they could just as easily be dismissing it as "haters gonna hate"

I'm not saying they are, but their reluctance to admit the merits of some of our suggestions and to explain to us why they're not doing it that way is unnerving. They just seem to be saying "Hopefully you'll like it when you see it," as far as I can tell, as if they already decided and we're not as important to their decisions as they'd like us to believe.

ZhuganSep 6, 20146 votes

I mean, the current big issue is twofold as I see it.

They have made a decision to retcon things when there was another path open that would both remove their constraints (Demacia/Noxus AT LEAST v IoW) while building on the lore instead of destroying it. Honestly, I think this part is the lion's share of the community's anger.
They brought down everything we know with the promise of future "better" lore. Regardless of its quality, they shouldn't have made this announcement until they actually had new, meaningful, world-building lore to show us. Even if it was worse, it would still be more forward progress with lore than we've gotten in roughly 2 years.

Not doing (1) was an obvious mistake, honestly motivated by laziness. It is easy to change a few lines of lore for each champion to make the IoW and Summoners vanish. It is much harder to write a compelling narrative about a war between incredibly powerful (some even think god-like) mages and nations that would have to rely on overwhelming numbers as much as they rely on their "champions".

Not doing (2) was a more subtle mistake. A lot of people might not have liked the new lore that they build, but it would've showed a commitment to building the world up more. That commitment, having so long been absent, would've done something to foster some good blood between the community and Riot (which the lore team needs). Waiting to release lore until some undetermined time... Given Riot's tendency to have everything done "Soon"... Its just a foolish decision.

inDJSep 6, 20146 votes

Well, yeah. Fair enough, maybe it would be more work to make the event. Still, like you said, I think retconning everything was taking the easy way out, and I'm not surprised that people feel betrayed by that. It just looks like they don't regard us or our opinions as very important to the decisions they make, which hurts - especially for long-time players who started playing because they found the lore very entertaining (like me).

ZhuganSep 6, 20147 votes

It is a betrayal. Its a betrayal because we made our feelings excessively clear after the whole deal with Freljord that we did not want retcons, and never would.

As for being a long time player and having that hurt even more, I've been playing since right after Xin Zhao was released way back in the beginning of Season 1. I knew the old lore from having read almost every single issue of the JoJ as it was coming out. I read all of the League Judgments. Believe me, I know.

I'm just saying I don't think it was groupthink. I think it was a willful choice to pursue the easier path. It is obvious that the IoW and Summoners are, in many ways, a binding aspect of the story. Especially the IoW. But there were other ways to get rid of that. They just would've been more difficult and Riot's lore team (or maybe just the head of the lore department) decided to take the easy path and retcon it out.

Which, honestly, I think is more malicious than groupthink would ever be. It wasn't that they became an echo chamber of bad ideas, its that they all willingly accepted it because it was easier than doing the work they should've done.

FaerKhanSep 7, 20143 votes

Precisely this.

PhailRaptorSep 7, 20146 votes

There is actually a 3rd group, that comes before your first.

There are those of us who are confused as to how the IoW and the Summoner concepts could possibly be a significant limiter on their ability to perform storytelling on their Champions and their world, given how much space they have to work with around it. With the IoW and the Summoner concepts in place as it stands today, there are only 2 major instances in which I can see their ability to "follow Champions toward their goals" being unduly restricted:

The inability for Champions to be killed (J4/Swain, Kass/Malz, Thresh/Lucian) because it would require deletion from the game, which would frankly be unacceptable.
"Prisoner Champions" would not be allowed to roam free for obvious reasons (Noct, Cho'Gath, Brand, Fiddle to an extent), and as such can only feature as supporting characters in other Champions development. although I suppose even that could be a story element -- what happens when one of them escapes, or earns their freedom?

There is nothing stopping Ahri from continuing to consume the souls of men, despite her growing guilt about it. There is nothing preventing stopping Vel'Koz from continuing to struggle with the question of whether or not to consume mechanical things, allowing him to inimately understand both their function and their beauty but disintegrating them, or leaving them alone to be appreciated, but not being able to instantly understand every detail about them as he is accustomed to doing. As long as she doesn't kill Leona, there is nothing stopping Diana from refounding the Lunari and exploring a belief system that may well fundamentally reshape the Rakkar Tribe to it's core.

Fundamentally, we do not understand how Riot can come to the conclusion that the IoW is too restrictive to write around, when the Fanfic people have been doing it for years, and the Factions people have been running extravagant story arcs for at least 1, maybe 2 years.

ZhuganSep 7, 20141 votes

It isn't a limiter champion to champion so long as their goals are only ever personal.

But Swain wants to rule a hell of a lot more than just Noxian land if the history of that city state means anything. And, as long as the IoW exists, Swain can never pursue that goal. (Not to mention people like Jarvan IV. Several of his main goals are the deaths of various Noxians.)

So, your first point is an obvious and significant restriction on development of the lore. The fact that you ignore how the IoW does a lot to remove any way for large scale conflict between nations is another.

Then you get into how, from Riot's perspective, Summoners are essentially a tier above the power of champions. Meaning that they invalidate the very struggles of champions by existing. (Anything a champion can do a summoner can do better...)

I could go on with how the IoW is restrictive in other regards, but I think I got my point across.

AkaiNeko4Sep 15, 20141 votes

Little late, but I'd feel weird if I didn't respond to this, so here we go.

Swain can still conquer things, whether through the League itself or open warfare. The Institute's main goal is preventing the apocalypse, not stopping war altogether. And besides, do you really believe that Riot is going to suddenly start killing off ~~Champions~~ characters now that they've removed these elements from canon? They've mostly just removed opportunities for storytelling, not opened them.

As to your second point, that's something that could be rectified pretty easily by simply explaining how the system works - like, that there's an enormous and complex apparatus behind how the Fields work, and it's not the Summoners individually handling much.

metriccyberneticDec 25, 20141 votes

I'm gonna say:

The problem is not that the League and Summoners exist.

It is that they are too powerful.

By significantly reducing the League's impact on the world and reducing them to little more than a cross between a 'Panic Button in event of Runic War' and the home of where the most famous spectator sport invented on Valoran takes place, as well as severely cutting back on how powerful Summoners are, would significantly reduce the choke-hold they currently have on the Lore staff's ability to make interesting things happen. Demacia and Noxus go to war over a certain location? Fine. Let them. Are they proving a threat to the existence of Valoran? No? Leave them alone. Yes? Intervene.

It's a lot simpler than trying to cut them out of the game altogether and weathering a storm of hate from the people who actually enjoyed the old lore.

AkaiNeko4Jan 5, 20151 votes

o_0

I agree. I mean, the ending (or lack thereof) certainly rubbed people the wrong way, but the Freljord event was pretty successful up till then; clearly wars can still happen in Valoran, and in such a fashion the the fans get to enjoy them. The League's there mostly to stop the apocalypse.

Earl EulrichSep 6, 20147 votes

If the Board would allow me to I´d upvote this...

Yea, it´s really unbelievable that there´s just no response to all the really great ideas how the IoW can be slightly altered to offer a lot of potential for more storytelling. I´m afraid they know the community is right and did a way better job on finding solutions than they did - and they don´t want to admit it. Just like a bunch of truculent kids.

PhailRaptorSep 7, 20146 votes

Not just that the community was right and they were wrong. But the fact that Riot claims they have been exploring this for what, 2 years, maybe 3? And they couldn't come up with anything. But within hours of the announcement of the retcon, there were half a dozen discussions hogging the top spots on the Boards, all giving very different but equally valid avenues, each of which is incredibly more valid than "we tried, we can't do it, starting over".

It's appalling.

MaganarSep 7, 20146 votes

What most horrifying of all is how low our expectations were at this point. No one expected the lore department to do anything impressive because they didn't seem capable of doing anything at all. Even doing a sort-of ok, kinda mediocre job would have been impressive to us, considering it was coming from them.

Instead we got something we found no way to describe other than, as you've quite succinctly put it: "appalling."

BoswickSep 7, 20145 votes

After 2+ years, you'd think the devblog would've been "Hey guys, were retconning the League/IoW/Summoners, so heres the now lore!" instead we get "Hey guys, we're retconning the entire underlying narrative of the game, and we have nothing to replace it with. Think of the possibilities! Lets talk again in another two years. Kbye."