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"What do you plan to do to improve Lore?"

mi ramfan·9/5/2014, 6:40:32 AM·4 votes·995 views

This has been the lore community's question for upwards of a year now.

#What do you plan to do to improve lore?

It was the question that put a lot of people who weren't that into the lore on the "better lore" train. Not because it was an interesting question, but because there were so few answers.

What do you plan to do to improve lore?

It was the question that, when asked time after time by poster after poster, made Riot's silence more telling then the two paragraphs worth of words per champion.

The lore dev blog recently posted is Riot's first ever real answer to that question. A separate universe where lore is paramount, stories begin, are told, and finish, and characters can grow and interact outside League matches. For lore aficionados, there will be a problem that's immediately clear: separate.

Riot's lore department wanted the freedom to tell stories in the lore without worrying about explaining the gameplay in the context of the lore. It seems that they got it, which could be good for the lore community because they can get the world they wanted without affecting the suspense of disbelief of regular League players who don't care. Of course, this comes at the cost of a permanent, enforced Gameplay and Story Segregation, and with it a permanent split in the community. Instead of taking the difficult route of respecting the intention of the original writers and integrating the gameplay and story universes, the developers took the easier way out and just threw away suspension of disbelief, knowing that 99% of the players will not care or notice. Riot's Lore team was already despised by lore fans and unknown to everyone else, so there's no way they could look any worse by taking the easy way out since Riot Lore had already hit rock bottom.

Riot did answer the question of the past 2 years. The question of the next 2 years will be:

#Is the Lore universe worth losing the pre-9/5/2014 lore for?

7 Comments

VardenSalad9/5/2014, 6:43:40 AM1 votes

This discussion boils down to this:

How does Riot fund their game? Money from players.

What does the absolute lowest common denominator player like more than anything? Winning.

What does the absolute lowest common denominator player dislike more than anything? Losing.

What happens when only a very, very small segment of your playerbase actually gives a shit about the direction of your game enough to make a way-too-fucking-long post in the comment section of a thread with no likes, upvotes, bumps, whatever? That group has no power. Because group size is power. And power is money.

So, to sum up, you have a very, very large fanbase you're currently pandering to that wasn't around in the beginning of your game to watch the current lore be put in place and integrate into the community. You want their money, but they don't like that they don't understand what's going on: why is X champ Y blah-League-blah-Darius-blah-Swain? They're confused and reactionary, fickle and quick to spurn novel ideas or concepts. But you need to keep them; they're already here, correct? What's the easiest way to not stop the hype-train? Do absolutely nothing different. Welcome to the past 3 years of League.

You also have an intensely rabid, but small segment that puts in the effort and cares about your game, why people do what they do in it, why the design looks a certain way; basically, why you built the game in the first place. This group has a voice out of proportion with its size. However, your game is large. These people were your lifeblood for the early times, but you no longer need them to sustain growth. "I will not be cowed by faithful since-beta lore nerds!" you cry triumphantly. "I can do whatever I wish; I have the money. I have the power. I can make it so that this group will never leave, because they never have before. These faithful beta-nerds will still be here."

You press go, and the machine prints money. You used to remember that there was a reason outside of just making money that the game existed, but you shrug and conclude that you must have made the product to make a buck, there can be no other reason to make a game, right?

Right?

Garlyle Wilds9/5/2014, 7:21:08 AM1 votes

By and large, the pre-existing lore hasn't actually been lost - just one clunk of it. It's a heavy, weighty clunk of lore, yes, and pulling it out means damaging a few other things in the process, but the entirety of Runeterra prior to this point has not been negated.

That aside, I'm taking a "wait and see". There's a lot they could do with the freedom this enables. It remains to be seen if they will. If they pulled out something weighing it down, then I hope it's because they mean to make it fly.

Pyrobob49/5/2014, 12:22:59 PM1 votes

What really gets me is why people are so riled up over the loss of this suspension of disbelief. Honestly, why does the game need it? As far as the game is concerned, the Institute of War was nothing more than an excuse plot. Honestly, if you ask me, not a very good one.

The problem was that the lore actually failed to provide sufficient suspension of disbelief for ITSELF. Are we really supposed to believe that something like Summoners and the Institute of War could work or even exist? It's as if everyone learned about the Institute and thought to themselves "well, that justifies the game, which is good enough for me" and didn't actually stop to think about such a concept as it relates to its own universe.

Plain and simple, the old lore sacrificed its own quality and potential to provide a meager excuse plot for the game. If the people who are complaining about the disconnect of lore and game actually cared about lore as much as they claim, they would understand how debilitating the framework provided by the Institute of War actually was to the story, and be excited about these new possibilities. The only reason people are so upset about the divorce is because the marriage ever existed in the first place.

You don't care about the lore as much as you want everyone to believe, your main concern is that, now, you can't wrap your head around why these characters are fighting each other, and for some reason that is going to completely cripple your ability to enjoy an otherwise perfectly fun game.

The game shouldn't need an excuse. Does basketball have an excuse? No, it's just fun. And so is League.