Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Why are people so upset with Lore?

Konidias·3/4/2015, 8:12:50 PM·5 votes·2,994 views

Why do people complain about the lore so much? Honestly... this isn't a series of novels, it's a PvP online game. I would imagine Riot has better things to do than to cater to people wanting to read and learn about irrelevant champion background information.

I don't care where Graves comes from or who he has beef with or who his baby mama is or the tragic event in his childhood. None of it translates to gameplay. It doesn't matter.

To me it would be like eating a bowl of cereal and then complaining about how there isn't a detailed back story on Cap'n Crunch. That's what I imagine every time someone complains about LoL lore. This game isn't an online RPG, it's a battle arena.

Don't get me wrong... having lore is a nice touch. Gives you something extra... helps you get into the "world", etc. But to me it's like a bonus, not mandatory. I feel like they originally added it just for fun, and maybe they had more spare time for that stuff earlier in the game's development.

But now I'd prefer they don't waste any time or money on lore. The game needs to evolve, and lore needs to go by the wayside. Trim the fat, so to speak.

I love a good story, I love complex characters... but I don't need that stuff in my MOBA. I can go read a book or watch a tv series if I want story and character development. I can play hundreds of other games that are more story driven. I don't need to come here and literally STOMP MY FEET and complain about how Riot is "ruining" the game because of how they are butchering the lore and trimming it down to 2-3 sentences per character.

So bring on the downvotes... I know I probably won't get any upvotes in the Story & Art section when I'm basically saying I don't care about story in LoL... but I honestly just want someone to try and rationally explain this extreme anger toward Riot for their lack of lore.

23 Comments

DrCyanide3/4/2015, 8:51:33 PM7 votes

I think everyone here can say that the lore was the last thing on their mind when they started playing. They were just trying to figure out what moves did what, why people were telling them to last hit, what to buy etc.

At a certain point though, we got our first main. We started to get good with them, loved their cheesy lines that they spouted, and wanted to know more about them. That's when some of us started to get into the lore. We wanted a deeper connection with the character we were playing.

The lore is fairly expansive, bleeding over into maps like the Howling Abyss and being contained in certain champion taunts and interactions. In some cases, the Lore actually effects gameplay, such as the Hunt quest between Rengar and Kha'Zix, which lets them get another evolution. From a balance perspective, the quest is horrible, but from a lore side it's rich and rewarding.

At any rate, the reason people are upset about the lore is that it's being removed. Stories that were "canon" are now being ret-conned out of existence, and in their place are 2 sentence blurbs that describe the splash art of a champion. The reaction is the exact same as you'd expect if Riot deleted a character.

If Riot said "You know what, we're not really going to expand on the lore. You'll get your paragraph for new champions and that's it", then I think people would be a little sad, but they'd be OK with it. You can't miss something you never had, and you still have all the good stuff that you've come to love. It's when someone takes something you love away, promises to make it better, then gives you nothing in return that you feel slighted.

IS1d51f7fd0f8e2764617b03/4/2015, 8:39:43 PM5 votes

Your entire post reads "This doesnt matter to me! It should not matter to you!

Unfortunately people have different opinions, for me , it is IMPOSSIBLE to get invested in agame unless i care for the characters.

Thats is why i for example hold Bioshock Infinite and Spec ops The line in high regard, yet despise the COD franchise.

Fore me lore is the most IMPORTANT part, i had WAY more fun back in the s1 s2 days where sunfire stacking Garen's slaughtered everything in the most imbalanced meta ever created, then i am now!

All of it, because i cared about the world, a world that no longer exists!

Narsicus3/5/2015, 12:40:22 AM2 votes

As someone who had played Dota extensively on Bnet before going to LoL the lore was one of the main things that attracted me. In Dota just enough backstory exists to have the characters exist and no more. Where is Avernus? Its where the Lord of Avernus comes from, its all shadowy or something and hes from there. That is about as much as you get.

League had an extensive world, with an interesting political struggle that was seemingly always one precarious step away from tumbling into international chaos. It made the world matter. I can't tell you what Avernus is like, but I can certainly tell you what Demacia is like, or Noxus, or Zaun, or Ionia, or several others.

And the champions felt like they belonged in that world, it gave them character and substance where the Dota heroes felt like a bunch of mismatched random characters arbitrarily thrown on one of two sides in some nameless conflict. Garen and Axe are similar heroes to play, but of the two Garen has far more personality and much of that stems from his connection to Demacia and what it stands for.

These factors matter to me, the majority of games I play are story driven and I would take character development over flashy graphics any day. If they don't matter to you that is fine, but just understand that for a lot of people this is by no means the case.

paulolol3/5/2015, 9:03:21 AM2 votes

People care because Riot has created these awesome character that we know nothing about because their writing team is too lazy to tie a few loose ends together.

ChroniclerC3/5/2015, 10:58:15 PM2 votes

Let me put it this way. There was the old lore. It was functional. People liked it.

Then one day Riot came along and said "Hey, you know that lore that you guys like so much? Yeah, we think it's shit, so we're throwing it away."

Regardless of the quality and functionality of the new and old lores, the problem is that they did away the old thing that people liked. And not just stopped pursuing the current version of it, but completely erased it.

DG Ashabel3/4/2015, 11:36:30 PM1 votes

So what you're saying is that because League is primarily a multiplayer arena, they should "trim the fat" IE stop evolving aspects that aren't related to the competitive gameplay.

In that case, let's not stop at lore. Let us also request that Riot removes all of the advanced artwork and sounds, replacing it geometrical figures and basic beep/boops that inform us of what is going on in the arena.

In fact, why are we even playing League of Legends? It adds so much fat to the idea of a multiplayer arena, with all of its stats and map orientation and jungling and all other things that detract from the experience of facing off against other players. We should abandon this dumb game with all of its unnecessary feature bloat and go back to playing Pong.