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Leave the VO alone. If we're "still Summoners in the game", then let us be Summoners in the game.

CupcakeTrap··93 votes·8,555 views

http://i.imgur.com/65hgUYh.jpg

The Narrative team has expressly stated that it is severing the link between lore and gameplay. It is now preparing to replace LoL's lore with new lore that does not involve the League of Legends or Summoners, but does use some of the characters from the game. When asked why there were still Summoner Spells and a Summoner's Cup, and why the map was still called Summoner's Rift, Narrative answered (somewhat dismissively) that "you're still Summoners in the game."

I propose we hold them to that.

The Narrative team felt "constrained" by the League of Legends, and says it needs complete freedom in creating its new fiction. That's a subject for another day. Here, I'd like to make a more limited request:

If we're "still Summoners in the game", then stop stripping Summoner references from the voicework.

Narrative has given up on explaining Summoner's Rift or the matches fought on the Fields of Justice within its lore. It has no plans for providing a story context for the matches we play. That being the case, I propose that the League and Summoners continue to be used within the game itself.

Much of the most entertaining Champion voicework relies upon the idea that the Champion is telepathically linked with a Summoner (the player) who is assisting and advising them on the Fields. This increases immersion by connecting players with their Champions, and offers an opportunity to flesh out the Champions' personalities without having them mumble to themselves like lunatics.

Chogath Cho'gath sees stains upon your soul. Perfect. MissFortune Miss Fortune thinks you have dangerous eyes. She likes that. Veigar Veigar accuses you of telling a short joke. Lux Lux urges you to stay positive. Nocturne Nocturne is in your mind and wants to know how that feels. Does he scare you, Summoner? Swain Swain is already five steps ahead of you.

Summoner's Rift doesn't exist in the new lore, at least not yet, but it's allowed to stay in the game. I don't see why Summoners need to be singled out for erasure, especially when doing so is detrimental to immersion, and cuts out valuable opportunities for interesting or entertaining dialogue.

93 Comments

Merxamers59 votes

Mordekaiser reminds you that you only need to click once, fool!

Tecness018 votes

Don't forget Sona Only you can hear her, summoner.

JustBoneBrook9 votes

That Mordekaiser quote is the best

JustBoneBrook18 votes

And Akali ask riot why there only noob in match making and there no balance :D

Hyrum Graff27 votes

I think that it makes the most sense to remake the fields of justice to inlude summoners as cannon, like so:

Write a single story that involves us as summoners. We don't live in Runeterra, at least not at the same time as the champs. For example, maybe we're humans, on earth, in the future, and Esports has evolved into the way that nations settle disagreements (instead of wars). When we do battle on the rift, we're actually summoning the essence of the strongest heroes of legend. That's why it's called the league of legends: the champions are literally from legends. Now it makes sense, how champions can "die" yet return to the battlefield. Once this is established as cannon, Riot never needs to tell a story set outside of Runeterra again, if they don't want to, because all that's needed to establish a champ in the league is them being worthy of legend (although I think there's a lot of potential if they wanted to tell a story set in the future here).

Note that the earth example is just one - you could take a similar situation, but set in the future of Runeterra, so we're summoning our own historical figures to do battle for us.

Thivus5 votes

this is actually a really cool idea

Willahelm Fulber6 votes

Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Julius Caesar, and Stalin vs. Winston Churchill, George Washington, King George III, Xerxes (persian king from 300), and Osama Bin Laden. I could totally see this being a moba.

TheRainInSpain6 votes

I would really like to see that as a MOBA. A nice **** you to the Riot Lore Team.

AdderTude4 votes

Not the 300 version of Xerxes, dude. That guy didn't look remotely Persian (being Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro in heavy makeup). A better choice would be the version of Xerxes from One Night with the King (same Xerxes that attacked Greece and the Spartans at Thermopylae). That guy looked more Middle Eastern.

Kohesive4 votes

Such a good idea doesn't "restrict" Riot from writing lore and still connects the game to the lore.

Digitality20 votes

I dislike the excuse that they're feeling restricted in the first place. It's the hallmark of every bad fanfic writer that cannot work within the terms of an existing setting to tell their story. The art of contrivance is a fundamental core skill that any good writer should have developed early in their career. A lot of old lore did need to be updated, and I wholly understand that part. Such editing could have been done in a way that didn't destroy the existing framework though. Quite easily given how relatively loose the setting was to begin with. There were already numerous untapped plot hooks that had yet to be explored which could've achieved the goal.

Knight Devout5 votes

Fun fact: Tolkien didn't use any help for writing the lore of the Lord of the Rings(such as a script-reference), and still managed to write the whole story with only a single mistake in a elf name.

Talk about skills ^^

Gunpoint14 votes

Woah woah woah, where are the six wizards... The six wizards who channel the energy from the moon into the Nexus. Uh, Riot, this game doesn't make any sense anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTuN7ZJ0g50

CupcakeTrap6 votes

Dunkey understands me.

LeeDark13 votes

I'd honestly prefer they try to introduce the lore into the actual game. The disconnect between the lore and the game is the major problem I had with the retcon. To just give up and admit there is NO connection whatsoever is to declare that immersion is completely unimportant. Personally, for me, it would eliminate any reason to care about the new lore at all.

Legacy of Xion11 votes

Mfw people keep assuming Summoners were gods.

Meh. People dont even know the lore.

Riften10 votes

I agree, I actually fell in love with League for the current lore and the idea that these champions were being advised on the Summoner's Rift. I was so sad to hear it was going away.

Beardyface868 votes

I honestly think they can maintain at least the summoner aspect of the lore to add that immersion. Otherwise, almost all of the terminology becomes meaningless. (League Of Legends) So there's no league(Game Name)? Ok, that's not an optimal choice because some champs(JaxLeeSin ) actually draw their interesting story from the league(Game Name). If Valve can somehow maintain the immersion of the same 9 people on 2 different teams(TF2) killing each other for nearly 7 years, I think this lore can provide even basic immersion for its players. Summoners are US, summoners are how we connect to the game. Riot might as well just write fanfic about its characters because the actual games going on are nonsensical. At least the League gave us players a reason to feel like there was some sense to the team compositions. AND KUDOS TO RIOT FOR DECIDING WANTING TO TAKE OUT THE VERY NAMESAKE OF THEIR GAME.

Its like if Skyrim had nothing to do with the actual land of Skyrim.

CupcakeTrap5 votes

The dragons were constraining them. Also Khajit are now retconned to be elves with shapechanging abilities.

Dotintheparadox3 votes

I was going to propose every time one of the lore team reds actually gets on the forums, but refuses to talk to us about this we should just spam this at them.

http://imgur.com/sp2cxgD

And I'm not even listening to the current team anymore, the way they write stories is just annoying, Sion's was good, but it was still really ambiguous, and don't even get me started on Shurima. So, now I'm actually writing a story to take place after the Kalamanda incident.

weihe1236 votes

how will it work with Ahri ? she needs the league to sustain her human form... other wise she'll just be a fox...

Centuros8 votes

Wait for the new two sentence lore.

missinggrave5 votes

"Ahri was a fox. Then she wasn't because soul eating."

'kay thanks on the brief history of Kitsune and not telling us about their personality, interactions, reasons to exist, etc. Thanks Riot. Thanks.

GenoXx2 votes

Well, for some reason, people are still bitching about the summoners thing. Even after they were told of upcoming lore.....meh

missinggrave6 votes

UPCOMING LORE? OH DEAR FRIEND YOU ARE MISTAKEN! TAKE A LOOK AT THE NEW LORE AFTER SHURIMA UPDATE!

EDIT: Oh my god I've caused war please stop, he's just defending himself. ;w; < My reaction is justified but a bit extreme also omg guys stahp

GenoXx1 votes

I am never mistaken.....lol ok ok but ive seen it dude...nothing is wrong with it

missinggrave11 votes

Friend, you are blind then. To each their own taste in story, but the Shurima update got rid of a TON of lore.

NeoJusteBelmont3 votes

And some are okay with that and just going with 'move along and we'll see how it goes from there'.

There are some who are okay with the changes to short lore. If those guys think it's okay, it'll be fine, to each their own taste in story.

They are not blind, they are just incredibly more patient.

GenoXx2 votes

I thought the wave died out...apparently the old lore extremist still lingers

missinggrave8 votes

I'll admit my first reaction was a bit extreme, but there's a difference between patience and letting riot all of a sudden have an ENTIRE REBOOT of lore from essentially nowhere. Of course it would make sense to edit the lore - after all, they have to tie things together so that things like Garen versus Vel'koz makes sense - but to remove the two things that hold the entirety of the original lore is something that nobody even wants in the first place. I'd be completely willing to have new lore introduced if it wasn't an entire removal of it, but instead an update such as, "After the league was destroyed..." or "Then they ventured off and..." which would tie together the champions while keeping summoners intact with removal of the league.

GenoXx2 votes

Dude, no one wants to have to always make something new and have the IoW being the base of things. It was restrictive like they said. Everytime something happened in the world of Runeterra, The Iow was involved. They were the ones to handle things all the time. It gets boring. A base full of super mages that can do anything, like gods. The reason why they were took out was for that very reason. With out the IoW, people can actually do things now. Demacia and Noxus can go to War like they have long been waiting for. Everytime someone did something they had to ask the league, like they were the government. They were like gods, spellbinding people against their will, Summoning people and creatures alike against their will, and every time someone wanted actually do something they had to consult them first. No one wanted to keep making champions and have the league in their story all the time. I wouldn't like that. Now that it's gone Stories can start happening. Lucian's crusade against the undead can be made into a series, like Carnival Knights said. Varus can start getting Revenge on Noxians. Syndra can attempt to kill karma. These things are far more interesting than having to focus on the Leagues all the time. I was upset at first, but it made more sense to do that if people didn't want see the same dilemma all the time; involving the base of super mages. Who can practically do anything. How is it that people can't see that?

Narsicus8 votes

Then just lower the power of the IoW, make it so they are powerful mages or whatnot but certainly not strong enough to take on a major faction by themselves. All the were was a neutral party that saw the trouble that was happening to the world and had the means to offer a solution.

Once the IoW is brought more to the level of the UN like an intermediary or peacekeeper we move on with the lore.

Was this really that hard?

Narsicus9 votes

Then just lower the power of the IoW, make it so they are powerful mages or whatnot but certainly not strong enough to take on a major faction by themselves. All they were was a neutral party that saw the trouble that was happening to the world and had the means to offer a solution.

Once the IoW is brought more to the level of the UN like an intermediary or peacekeeper we move on with the lore.

Was this really that hard?

GenoXx2 votes

No, it's existence needs to be gone period. No one can truly mediate war. Theres no real reason for it to be there.

LelouchtheGreat6 votes

I can understand your point, but I think you are missing the fact that without any of these things, the summoner's rift and the battles fought there (the game itself), no longer have any reason to exist and should also be gone. period.

Forlorn Didact1 votes

I can understand your point, but I think you are missing the fact that without any of these things, the summoner's rift and the battles fought there (the game itself), no longer have any reason to exist and should also be gone. period.

That's not true at all. Look at Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm. Every Hero in that game has huge lore and story behind it. All the game does is take those heroes out of their setting and pit them against each other in an arena. The fact of the matter is, there's no way to tell a story through the gameplay of a MOBA, it's not an RPG. The lore and the game we play should not be connected, since as we've already seen, having them connected restricts both or they naturally start to diverge anyways because certain elements will cease to make sense. Like honestly, has Vel'Koz's appearance in the Institute of War ever made sense?

Sneak Dog5 votes

The old lore explained the gameplay. Of course, rivals fighting with eachother is a bit silly, but you could create a full demacian team vs a full noxus team and it could have happened in the lore exactly as you played that match. That is what Ionia vs. Noxus was. It was a canon game of LoL.

I'd like to point out that Vel'Koz was released after they decided to remove the IoW, so they didn't even bother writing his lore with the IoW in mind. Not all stories make sense with the Iow, just as not all stories make sense without.

All stories have a premise, good writers use restrictions and use them to make a story better rather than worse, knowing full well that they can't just tell any story with these restrictions. Pick up a book and try to find the restrictions the writer had and how he wrote around them to make the story even better.

Sneak Dog11 votes

The League restricted certain stories but allowed for others and made the game immersive.

Now independent champions all need to be retconned into relevance, because else no lore will be written about them. This failed catastrophically with Trundle in my eyes, whom they replaced with a power-hungry brute because champions now need political power or have a relation to it.

The world is now generic. They're all generic factions, the only things making them interesting are their champions. Wars aren't interesting, what champions do within them are. They'll just become a backdrop for champions.

The immersion is gone. No longer does it make sense for the champions to speak to us because we summoned them, they now just like to monologue. Cho'Gath no longer tries to corrupt his summoner. Nocturne no longer questions his summoner. The game the lore was made for became less immersive and therefore for me less interesting.

I agree, the IoW was too powerfull. But the idea of a political nexus tying the whole world together and that also tries to mediate in wars is relatively unique. This is unlike faction of unfetterred science, good ordered science, spiritual balance, blind justice, pirates, strength, desert with long history, undead land. The most interesting faction left is Bandle city, by the mothership, how could this happen!? The IoW bound them all together, allowed them to interact in interesting ways, not just with another war. They shouldn't be powerful enough to just plainly halt a war, but they could be powerful enough to make factions think twice before starting one.

GenoXx2 votes

Explain generic. In my eyes, every faction is unique. Although some are based on real life countries or areas. Like Demacia and Noxus being a combination of countries from Europe. Demacia has englsihmen and French people. Noxus has Italian or(I forgot he other country) Either way they aren't generic. None of the champions that had strong ties to the Iow could do anything with their story thanks to the league. But now we can see more(as in more Lore) Without being restricted. I understand that theres vet players and lore lovers, but at some point you have to accept change. Narrative doesn't want other mobas out doing them in lore( although I believe some have cough Dawngate) That's a better way of expanding their world. Try to understand what I am saying instead of disagreeing because we aren't on the same vote.

Doctor Ivellius9 votes

Narrative doesn't want other mobas out doing them in lore( although I believe some have cough Dawngate) That's a better way of expanding their world. Try to understand what I am saying instead of disagreeing because we aren't on the same vote.

Narrative hasn't done much with lore for a few years, so I'm not sure why they would care about it now.

It seems like what happened is that the Narrative team forgot that their job is to tell a story through a video game rather than some other medium. Sure, stories are great, and removing the League of Legends allows some possibilities for storytelling. I can't think of any new possibilities, mind, but it makes the Narrative team feel better about telling certain kinds of stories.

The problem is that Narrative decided people cared drastically more about the characters than their immersion in the game. And from the Narrative team's perspective, this makes a lot of sense: they create the characters, they want to tell stories about them, they can't do that if they're letting players have any input into the stories. But that's not how players relate to the game. We're participants; we're involved with the characters while still maintaining separate identities. And when that was the case, League had probably the most immersive lore of any game because they were telling a story using the medium.

Even Riot has acknowledged "Noxus v. Ionia" was pretty awesome. It baffles me that their analysis of that situation is "Let's make sure players never get to do fun stuff like that again!" How much cooler might Shurima have been if Summoners had been the ones to unlock Xerath's tomb? What if there'd been an event that offered either an ascended Azir or some other champion in his place depending on what players did (Riot can always release the other one later)? What if Riot had a "Queen Lissandra" skin waiting to go after Freljord, or used featured game modes to make factional matches that would advance the story?

But no, instead of a game that lets players get involved and tell stories and feel like a part of the world, we get "Here are our stories, and you'd better like them!"

GenoXx1 votes

I More than anything I want narrative to expand the world and not the champs just for marketing. . But I believe that the world or Runeterra can expand w/o the IoW. With it, only thing you're going to hear is X at X by the IoW. And they only focus ON the champs. This is why they decided to remove it. So there is a better board to create stories

Sneak Dog7 votes

Funny. After removing the IoW, I don't care about expanding the world at all. I am now only interesting in hearing stories about champions. The world is just a backdrop for them to do their thing. It lost its one interesting faction. I've heard about factions that are based on raw strength, 'perfect' technology, unfettered technology etc. countless times. As far as I'm concerned don't expand the world unless you need to to tell me about the champions.

Now I do need to correct myself. After Trundle I'm not interested in hearing stories about champions either because I know they can be retconned in favor of a different one a year down the line, but hadn't that been the case...

Sneak Dog5 votes

I described just about every faction with one to three words. They are basic tropes. These tropes have been done countless times in fantasy stories as far as I know.

I think the champions that had strong ties could do countless things. All these would involve the IoW to some extent, but that is because the IoW was the main premise of the lore. Champions could interact in the halls of the institute, fight outside of them and plot against the institute itself with its own resources (void, anyone?). I simply think the IoW was too powerful. Personally I'd also change it to stop runewars, not just any wars. Then you'd be able to write stories without the IoW always just stopping it if it gets too dangerous.

The institute meant that independent champions without political power or a relation to it would automatically gain it upon joining the League. Trundle was relevant. Now he had to be retconned. Now he isn't Trundle anymore. Runeterra without IoW still restricts stories. Just with different restrictions.

League had an established lore that could immerse players greatly. They didn't have an interesting medium, a newspaper always felt distant from the real stories to me, and the IoW was killing off plotlines (Kalamanda). They should have nerfed it Imo, not broken their entire premise and removed all immersion there was with the game. If you want more compelling stories, try more immersive stories?

I'm neutral towards removing the IoW. I'm not fine with calling it a complete improvement nor replacing characters during the retcon, removing it feels like Riot admits they can't write stories well enough to write them with the IoW in their premise. I have lost faith in Riots lore department after Trundles retcon. Only reason I'm still here is because I like the game, I'd like to like the lore and I expect better from Riot.

I feel like we're not on the same side. I liked the IoW as a faction that hasn't been done a lot in fantasy settings and as a way to immerse the player into the setting and make the game make sense. When I started playing, I liked how the currency was called influence points. How I'd gain influence in matches to convince more champions to let me summon them. I liked how a whole faction wars system was set up in the JoJ and was eagerly awaiting its release. I'm ok with removing it, but it disappoints me immensely.

GenoXx1 votes

Tons of lore....do u mean the IoW and Summoners? Yeah, tons.....no dude....that's only 2 things

Elphrihaim13 votes

Tons of lore....do u mean the IoW and Summoners? Yeah, tons.....no dude....that's only 2 things

And every single champion that was connected to the game because of them...

And every single plot point in the JoJ is gone without the IoW...

Two things, yes. But two things that the world was built on.

AntiSkillshot2 votes

UPCOMING LORE? OH DEAR FRIEND YOU ARE MISTAKEN! TAKE A LOOK AT THE NEW LORE AFTER SHURIMA UPDATE!

That's not lore. That's story telling from the point of view of one person. The teaser stuff for Sion's relaunch, on the other hand...

THAT'S lore. It's not told from the point of view of one single person, but multiple points of views of multiple people, newpapers, posters, etc.

YouLostMe2 votes

What VOs did they remove references to summoners from?

CupcakeTrap26 votes

The most dramatic was Sejuani. During her development on the PBE, one of her lines was changed to clip off the "Summoner" at the end. Similarly, the new Nasus VO removed the line that mentioned a Summoner. They also, e.g., changed Garen's selection quote from "To the Fields of Justice!" for presumably the same reason.

This had been going on for a long time. Many in the lore community suspected that Riot was planning some massive retcon of the League, and we tried to get Riot to speak up on the matter for over a year. (It has since been confirmed that they had an express policy of avoiding all such discussions. One Rioter did Tweet that the League did exist, and they were simply focusing on other parts of the story, but it was only half-believed. Rightly so.)

Onegarion16 votes

I wish Riot was more transparent with things like this. Even something as simple as the in-client notifications are rather vague. They don't ever seem to say what exactly is going on, but a generic X champ is disabled due to reasons. I think a more transparent Riot would be a better Riot. I'm not so much tied to summoners since I only joined near the beginning of last season, but it makes everything feel like they are trying to hide things and just pull the rug out from under our feet with not letting the community know what is going on until its already going to happen.

AntiSkillshot5 votes

What VOs did they remove references to summoners from?

Sejuani. She said "Prove your worth, Summoner" before her remodel. It can still be heard in her traditional skin. Nasus. His old voice said "Yes... Summoner." When he got a remodel and a new voice, there was nothing about summoners. Sion. His old voice said "Who is your summoner, and what does he dooo?" This no longer exists in his new lines. Sion's old joke (Which is one of two, the other being Akali's joke) makes a reference to "noobs", which is something related to new summoners. There's probably a few more, but those are the ones I can only think of, atm.

(Also, listening to Ashe's old voice is bringing strong feelings of nostalgia. I so miss the old days...)

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