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Actually I think I'm okay with the lore retcon, here's why you should be too

EnvyDragon·9/5/2014, 5:49:50 AM·15 votes·1,369 views

So, a quick glance at the billions of other forum posts should tell you why removing the Institute of War is a terrible idea. And, well, yeah. It is. If you're planning to make League of Legends stories, that is. It's a great plot device that simultaneously bridges disparate themes and factions while providing a significant, concrete obstacle for characters to work around.

Here's the mental shift that needs to be made in order to see this as a good idea:

Runeterra is not full of League of Legends characters.

League of Legends is a game full of Runeterra characters.

On the players' side of things, all we've seen is the champions in a League of Legends context. It's like if you played Super Smash Bros without ever playing any other Nintendo games. We have all these great characters who work well in a gameplay sense, but who also have very clear and very visible narrative direction.

If you just play Smash Bros, you might pick up Link, see that he has all these neat gadgets, then read his trophy information which talks about how he fights Ganondorf and saves Zelda and all that. It doesn't tell you much about him, but it's all you've got. League of Legends champion lore is roughly on par with Smash Bros trophies in that sense - we know that Nasus and Renekton are brothers who hate each other, and they fight sometimes. Coolio.

But lately (ie. in the past year or two), there have been a few other lore offerings. There's the Freljord event, there are the cinematics, there's the push to make all the new characters have meaningful relationships... It gives us a bit more insight.

To stick with the Smash Bros analogy, imagine it like you played Smash Bros without having played any other Nintendo games, then went and read Brawl in the Family or something. The in-jokes are all character-specific, but there's enough context that you can kind of suss out what's going on.

Since the game's launch, people have been asking for more information. For Smash Bros, you can just pick up a Zelda game to learn Link's story; for League, canon character information is difficult to come by.

The ONLY REASON this retcon would be a good idea is if Riot is planning to broaden its horizons and expand Runeterra beyond League of Legends. That's what's coming. That's why it seems so hard for players and devs to see eye to eye on the lore issue - we're seeing it from fundamentally different perspectives. The devs know that the option is there to, say, make an adventure game about Jayce and Viktor, or to make a hero-based RTS/TBS about the Demacia/Noxus conflict. League of Legends is actually SECONDARY to the universe of Runeterra in the same way that Super Smash Bros is secondary to the Nintendo universe.

And sooner or later, we're gonna be able to see Runeterra the way it's meant to be seen.

(I just hope we don't have to wait too long, because then I'd look like an idiot.)

10 Comments

Decrit9/5/2014, 12:38:00 PM4 votes

No one says it? then i guess it' s my job...

Brace yourself Summoners, winter is coming.

VardenSalad9/5/2014, 6:42:38 AM3 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?

kiloechoesp9/5/2014, 7:21:40 AM3 votes

Honestly, the Fields of Justice never made sense to me from the beginning. The "lore" was fun and playful, but never touched me on an emotional level. If i were to watch a movie about League of Legends Champions with the old plot, not only would all my non-league friends make fun of me, they would also think it were completely cheesy, since technically the fields of justice have to "exist", and somehow have to be tied within the plot.

In other words, all the emotional side-bar conversations in such hypothetical movie would feel like bs because they're all going into the fields of justice, doing nothing, achieving nothing, and basically fighting just for the heck of it. For someone who watches anime and tv shows, that gives a sense that the characters don't progress, and anything that affects each champion personally is "dead in the water" because they just go back and fight in the fields of justice for absolutely no reason at all. Keeping the peace in Runeterra isn't even the intention of every champion, and fighting for that makes the champions seem like they ARE puppets controlled by a higher power(that wants peace above all else), which again doesn't make sense plot-wise.

I think people are more pissed that the post was totally unclear on what was going on, and had to go into the comments to find out that, well, most of the stories are no longer canon. Still there are very logical explanations for going in this direction.

I joined after the Freljord update, so I may be biased, however, even then, the story wasn't that good to begin with. The idea that all conflict was resolved in Runeterra because of the Fields of Justice does not make logical sense especially with champions with vendettas. Lucian would not fight alongside Thresh for any reason whatsoever, nor would he agree to play a "game" aka the fields of justice that has no affect on the lore whatsoever on getting his wife back. Fighting thresh when he'll just revive just doesn't make sense from a story plot point of view.

Now, with the removal of the Fields of Justice, the lores can be greatly expanded upon. Maybe there's going to be a story one day about Skarner that would make me cry. A story about Garen that would make me laugh out loud. Every champion would have a backstory that can be continually expanded upon, rather than the "old school" method of making every backstory lead to the fields of justice. Not only did the fields of justice make no logical sense, it also limited the amount of backstory you can create. It's a story where you literally know the ending, with every plot twist eventually leading to the end. MASSIVE SPOILERS: the stories somehow lead to the fields of justice.

Finally, as a player of MANY other F2P multiplayer games, from Runescape to Hearthstone to Puzzle Pirates, there's only a few ways to tie a lore into the game. For every game mentioned, it started out with inconsequential plotlines. Hearthstone is a card game, so its own lore doesn't make any sense with it anyways, so to today it still has an inconsequential, but humorous plotline. Puzzle Pirates is a puzzling game, and focuses on the aspect that "players make their own story". Players start wars on each other, destroy other ships and sail the seas in search of treasure while playing puzzles. Players basically compete against one another for greater treasure. It's not popular today, however, due to broken gameplay mechanics.

Runescape had an inconsequential plotline as well. However, unlike the other games, it was also a rpg. You can't play a game or take it seriously without lore. today, the plot that briefly describes the whole history of runescape and Gielinor is currently about 20,000 words.

I kid you not. See for yourself. Source: http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/History

League of Legends cannot expand as a game without taking lore seriously. A single-player mode, while seemingly crazy now, might actually be viable in the future. No one ever talks about the plot. Plus, no one ever actually played LoL for the story.

And no, it's not too long.

Garlyle Wilds9/5/2014, 6:59:19 AM2 votes

This is basically the stance I'm taking.

The reality is that at the end of the day, it'll be up to "do they actually deliver on this". Being willing to cut out the league in order to free the world of Runeterra to be way more vibrant, tell more stories within it, etc. - that's a very, very ballsy move. Potentially an amazing one. If Runeterra can be made to actually come alive and we start getting comics or books or movies or entire other games in Runeterra that massively expand upon the tales of these characters, then fantastc.

The question is, are we going to see them actually deliver on that potential? For this to actually be a good long-term decision, well, something has to be done with that freedom.

I'd really like to hope they will, but I also don't blame anyone right now for not believing in it. It's very possible the decision to cut out the League was made a couple years ago. In that time... well, to be honest, we've been kind of starved. There's always been this "just be patient we're up to something awesome" without even cookies in the meantime.

Cloud Potato9/5/2014, 12:52:01 PM1 votes

In all this time that Riot hasn't been doing much with the lore, I thought it was because they were trying to integrate the game and the story. Trying to mix the two together has been a struggle for games everywhere since the main way of delivering story is to halt the gameplay, and I understood why Riot was taking so long. I was expecting some new way of delivering story that was integrated with gameplay, but instead we got this.

I'm not unhappy with what's happening. While I would prefer we get our story by actually playing the game it's a challenge and it seems Riot couldn't figure out how to crack this nut. But I still wonder why it took so long for Riot to decide to separate the two. And even more confusing is that so many people are complaining about it when the main thing everyone wanted was more lore outside of the game, and now that Riot can more easily deliver that everyone's in a funk. Retcons suck. But the end result is more lore. Seems like a fair tradeoff.