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Why is League beginning to feel more and more like a children's argument?

Leverette··15 votes·4,534 views

I'm not even gonna talk about how Riot has adopted the mindset of "DAMAGE IS COOL!" and now everyone is oneshotting everyone. We all know that already. But lets talk about the lore for a second here. Like, what are you doing, Riot?

League of Legends is very quickly starting to feel like what was once an interesting, complex adult world with lots of political intrigue and mystery (What ever happened to General du'Couteau? Who assassinated the Noxian High Commander? Was Swain's surprise testimony regarding rights to the mines a fabrication he had set up, or was he telling the truth?) is now just becoming some five-year-old's fantasy setting where everyone is a GOD and they fight GODS and they have GODS who enslave GODS and use them to fight GODS and then we have GOD SLAYERS who SLAY GODS and AAAAAH POWER FANTASY POWER FANTASY POWER FANTASYYYYYYY!!! Like, dudes, chill out. Not everyone has to be a god. In fact, really, no one should be. How am I supposed to look at Lucian, some dude with a couple pistols, and say "Now there's a man I can trust to fight on par with a battlefield of gods, godslayers, world enders and universe creators"? Did you know Anivia is a god now? Pantheon too. Taric as well. Same with Nasus/Renekton/Morgana/Kayle. Pretty sure Volibear is one too. They're all gods now. Why? Was a world with magical five-year-olds who enslave phantom bears, sentient golems, powerful undead monsters, manifestations of nature, void bugs of doom and ultimate-mega-super-wizards still not fantasy enough for you? Come on Riot... we're quickly losing our dignity here. Our game has literally devolved into constant one-ups like children trying to compete against each other in an imaginary battle.

Rioter 1: "I'm a strong man with an unbreakable shield that can block anything!" ( Braum ) <-- Much love, Braum. You're a good man and a good character. Rioter 2: "Oh yeah? Well I'm a GOD who can PASS THROUGH anything, even your shield!" ( Bard ) Rioter 1: "Oh yeah? Well I'm a SUPERGOD who can make ANYTHING, even an UNBREAKABLER shield that you can't pass through! And I'll summon some goat god to bash your head good, and I do it by being even stronger than him and forcing him to do it with just my head because I'm really strong! ( Ornn ) Rioter 2: "Oh yeah? Well I'm a SUPERGOD HUNTER who HUNTS SUPERGODS and can break your goat god thing with my bare hands!" (New Aatrox )
Rioter 1: "Oh yeah!? Well I'm The One True God who created all things, and I can just uncreate you!" ( AurelionSol ) Rioter 2: "Oh YEAH!? Well I just put this necklace on you that enslaves you and forces you to do what I say and now you have to go and kill all the other gods because I said so and that's how awesome I am!" (Targonians) Rioter 1: "OH YEAH!? WELL I'M A ZERO TRUEST GOD OF ALL TIME PLUS INFINITY who LAUGHS at The One True God and treats him like a CUTE LITTLE DOGGY because THAT'S how much BETTER I am than even HIM! And also I imprisoned all of your supergod hunters so YOU LOSE! And also also I did all of this when I was just a little girl because I'm just... just, so... terribly phenomenally awesome, man. You gotta believe me." ( Zoe )

Please Riot. My dignity can't handle much more of this. Can we have our old writers back? I think the new ones are angry. And maybe young enough to be my kids.

26 Comments

Warlord Rhinark11 votes

Don't forget:

"I'm a 10 year old girl with no combat experience nor any magical abilities and I still managed to beat an alien creature stronger than me and bind it to be my body armor and now it helps me fight against it's own kind" Kaisa

Whyte Lyon6 votes

This is an unfair criticism to put onto developers, and an unfair argument to express. There is nothing wrong with any of those champions, character-wise or lore-wise ...

Actually never mind.

At least I'm content with the enjoyment that comes from these champions. If you're over there in a puddle of cynicism having a fuss, then that's a depression of your own making.

King Braum3 votes

nothing about his argument is unfair to make, its simply his opinion towards most of the current lore.

Whyte Lyon6 votes

The argument expressed is unfair.

The mocking of other people's mentality and expressing this to such length that its not really satire so much as just spiteful. Towards those who actually do their jobs effectively and cant exactly defend themselves (Jesus Christ I sound like a white knight now).

I'd also say these type of threads are made taking advantage of when a section of the board's community is currently in an aggravated attitude and looking for more frivolous crap to pin up developers like imbeciles. You can talk like that at Gameplay with what ever the current balancing issues are, but story devs are fine with what they've done.

Jerry SeinfeId6 votes

Did you know Anivia is a god now? Pantheon too. Taric as well. Same with Nasus/Renekton/Morgana/Kayle

aside from anivia being a demi-god. none of these are gods... Panth/Taric are aspects, Nasus/renekton are ascended and kayle/morg don't exist in the current lore (for now), tho they seem to be related to darkin (god i hope they ain't darkin, or at least kayle isn't, couldn't care less about morg tbh).

But there's a reason the best lore comes from Zaun/piltover.

GreenLore6 votes

Pyke spooky guy who stabs people with a harpoon/dagger

Definitely op and escalates the power levels!

On serious note: Riot simply decided to expand the range of powerlevels,champs range from really "skilled humans" to "Could blow up the planet if they wanted to" and its only natural that if this the case,then there'd be lots of powerlevels in between and that riot would give us champs that cover the whole range. Heck I don't even see how Aatrox escalates the power levels if he is still beneath Aurelion Sol.(Also Zoe has Sol bound to her control,because he wears this crown,she is not necessarily more powerful than him) And we don't know how strong Bard really is compared to anyone on this list anyway.

Chembaron Yamada3 votes

I am amazed how much people overestimate Aurelion Sol. He is neither the "one true god", nor did he create everything.

He is just on demigod level, like Ornn or Volibear. And he just created some of the stars in the night sky, not all of them and especially didn't he create everything in existence.

Jaspers1 votes

Sol isn't God, he was there at the formation of the universe and has a job (one Targonian's took from him). He creates stars and is keeping that side of things 'moving'. He's far above Ornn and Voli though. He's ageless and creates the stars. Ornn lives on a planet around a star Sol created.

Ornn would be Thor as Sol is to the Celetials.

Chembaron Yamada1 votes

Riot themselves stated that he is on demigod level. Since Ornn and Volibear are on demigod level, too, I think they are not that far apart.

Demigods just seem to be supernatural beings related to a natural phenomenon. For Ornn, this seems to be volcanos. Volibear is storm. And Aurelion Sol is related to the stars.

His destructive power might be higher than them, but they still are all around the same power level as being demigods.

About ageless: as stated by Riot, even Aurelion Sol and Bard will die at some point. They live long, but they are not eternal, celestial beings like them will die some day too.

Wrathof3003 votes

You are complaining about characters from regions based on real life mythos of gods and demi-gods. Targon: Greco-Roman mythology, Shurima: Egytian mythology, Freljord: Norse mythology.

The fact is there is a faction of the player base interested in playing as a god, demigod or other folklore creatures from cultures around the world. I am not stating this is all these regions have to be about, Shurima and Freljord have an array of characters not godlike in origin or character, and there is opportunity to explore other concepts that do not have to scale up in power to match other champs from the region.

I personally would like to see the day Riot implements more 'heroes' from Mount Targon than just demigods and celestials, but until that day comes we would have a foundation for Targon and doing it this way (gods then average heroes) would not feel like the power creep competition you are describing.

Cetri2 votes

Because Camille every Ekko single Swain new Gangplank champ Illaoi or Irelia rework Jhin in Kaisa recent Kayn years Taliyah is Urgot a Warwick god Rakan or Xayah spirit Yorick.

Warlord Dienekes3 votes

PNow I agree with you. But Swain is high demon tier, Illaoi is the vessel of a god, Kayn is same tier as Aatrox apparently. So your post is three more than it should be.

In any case I think the problem a few folk have is less that all heroes are demigods, more that demigods have now overtaken just about every setting.

Freljord used to be about a civil war between three queens. A neat human political narrative. Now there are gods causing a ruckus and the Watchers are now the creators of the Void and the largest evil in the setting.

So what does it matter which queen wins? The war between Ashe and Sejuani is now insignificant next to the threat of Volibear and the Watchers. And I don’t care about Volibear and the Watchers.

And this is happening everywhere.

Cetri2 votes

Eh, fair enough, I'll give you those.

I will disagree that the more human-focused conflicts are less important, though. Taking the Freljordian civil war as an example again, let's say that it has settled in Ashe or Sej's favor when the larger danger (be it the Ursine or the Watchers) arrives. Which warrior ends up on the Freljord's throne will determine how the Freljord responds to the disaster, as I'm willing to bet that Ashe and Sej would have very different reactions. Ashe might, for example, send for aid from Demacia or another country, whereas Sej might try to take them on with only her own army behind her. Not to mention that one or the other may well be killed or otherwise incapacitated at the war's resolution.

And if the war is still ongoing when the larger danger arrives, then that would also change things, as both armies are likely to be taken by surprise and already have been weakened by their own conflict.

Warlord Dienekes1 votes

See this is the problem with your own reasoning. The only way to rationalize the importance of the Freljord Queen is to tie it to the gods, void, and Watchers.

That is still saying they are not important to the setting. Only that the writers are trying to force their relevance through plot contrivances. When the original story that I was interested in was just about the politics of the Freljord. But now it is irrelevant.

GripaAviara1 votes

Illaoi is the vessel of a god

Def a Japanese one

Wrathof3003 votes

Illaoi is a vessel in the sense she can channel Nagakaborous' power, but that aside she is human. Similarly to Vi who can break down walls with a single punch, because of her hextech gauntlets, Illaoi can call upon Nagakaborous because she carries around the eye of god.

Leverette3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Warlord Dienekes,realm=NA,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=EHyLaMs6,comment-id=00060000,timestamp=2018-06-14T15:40:29.590+0000)

In any case I think the problem a few folk have is less that all heroes are demigods, more that demigods have now overtaken just about every setting.

Freljord used to be about a civil war between three queens. A neat human political narrative. Now there are gods causing a ruckus and the Watchers are now the creators of the Void and the largest evil in the setting.

So what does it matter which queen wins? The war between Ashe and Sejuani is now insignificant next to the threat of Volibear and the Watchers. And I don’t care about Volibear and the Watchers.

And this is happening everywhere.

This is very much my point, yes. Gods have oversaturated a game that used to contain no gods at all. They've repeatedly retconned the lore so that it can be bigger and more over the top. They ignore creativity and cleverness (seriously, that political intrigue going down for the first few years of this game was some genuinely clever, subtle powerplays constantly outmaneuvering each other like a game of chess, all in a believable and understandable way) in favor of just making something really big and powerful. They abandoned storytelling in favor of Power Fantasy.

Back then, the threat to our world was twofold: The Void, and ourselves.

The Void was an entire realm of doombugs that are trying to get in, and if they manage to open up free travel between here and there, it would spell apocalypse. But we keep this huge threat actually quite subtle by only allowing a few of them through and having this great lore about Shurima and how they are the ones who caused it, but as long as we don't go meddling in Shurima then we're more or less safe. It was an apocalypse-level issue, but handled with subtlety so that it could still feel ominous and big without truly being an active threat to the world. This is good storytelling.

The Rune Wars were believable. We have magic and we wanna use it against our enemies. I think we can all agree that's how things would probably go down. Well now the overuse of magic is splitting our world at its seems and we can't keep doing this or we all perish. Again, an apocalypse threat, but again, there is a solution to the threat that keeps it in check and not really an overbearing issue. We tried telling people to stop being at war but that went about as well as anyone would expect. We tried telling them not to use their best weapon (magic) and that too was understandably laughed off. So the solution is very interesting: Three broken OP superwizards band together to create a pocket dimension where the use of magic on the inside won't affect the outside, then they lobby for all of the city-states at war to utilize this extradimensional space to harmlessly continue their war at their leisure. The summoners founded the organization and named it the League of Legends, which would forevermore be known as the Institute of War. Clever use of storytelling there guys. I like it.

Back then, the wars were important. The factions meant something. The ideologies between the factions represented meaningful change. Everyone felt like big players who were significantly impacting the worldly state of affairs.

Fast forward to today. What is the story now? Does anything matter anymore? What are the gods trying to accomplish? What are the Targonians trying to accomplish? Why are they fighting it out in this arena? What ever happened to the void? Why are humans even relevant anymore (no seriously, why? Gods like ASol and Zoe seem to insist pretty heavily that we are completely insignificant. Is that somehow supposed to make us feel... important?) Why is some dude with two pistols able to kill He Who Created All Things?

Oh and by the way lets not pretend that AurelionSol isn't the creator of all things. The universe is nothing but a bunch of stars or the result of stars going supernova (IE: Stardust), and he is canonically stated to have created "every one of them", so how is he not the creator of all things? Even he himself acknowledges that all non-star related things are just a result of stars existing.

So then lets identify him a bit. How does he behave? Is he proud of the people he created through the stars? Does he love them at all? Does he regret them? What does he feel towards the results of his work? I'll tell you what he feels: "Lulz it was all just for funsies bro, this is just playtime for me. All you lesser creatures suck lololol I'm so powerful" Really? He's a condescending manchild who feels nothing toward the entire universe? You know what that means right? Riot isn't interested in cause and effect anymore, they aren't interested in rhyme or reason, they aren't interested in telling a story because every time they get a chance they just shut it down with "Eeeeh it's no big deal bro it doesn't mean anything it's just that I'm suuuuuper powerful". They actively neglect storytelling in favor of just making super powerful dudes who revel in their own power. This is just Power Fantasy now. And the fact that they say "Oh man, but he's only on DEMIGOD level!" is just a way of saying "There's more power to come, kids! Revel in ALL THIS POWER!!!" They aren't bothering to make a coherent story; just look at how many retcons and plotholes there are! They're just making superpowered beings who constantly pat themselves on the back so we can all associate with them and feel powerful ourselves, then pretending like "Oh and some of them are trying to kill each other" makes for a story.

I'm not saying all of this just to pointlessly complain. I'm pointing out a real problem that needs fixing, and going into great detail to explain why it is in fact a problem. If we all just want Power Fantasy then that's fine, I'll leave and go find something else that can keep a coherent story without getting carried away in how powerful it makes them feel. But if we can actually agree that this is a bit nonsensical, I'm here to make a point and give a voice to our frustrations.

GreenLore1 votes

Well Volibear supports Sejuani and Anivia supports Ashe,so that kinda evens it out.

Warlord Dienekes1 votes

That just even further warps the Queen storyline to instead being about the demigods and their shenanigans.

Oelyk2 votes

What do you expect? Steve from state farm hurling staplers at people?

Crow Nebula2 votes

I've been saying this for ages. The lore team have the mentality of kids, with no concept of restraint. It's the main reason I can't take the lore seriously; it's just so batshit hyperbolic.

Riot: "Aurelion Sol is a cosmic dragon..." Me: "Wow, cool." Riot: "He forges stars..." Me: "Okay, I can dig that." Riot: "His power and knowledge are unfathomable..." Me: "Hmm... wasn't he tricked into becoming Zoe's bitch?" Riot: "He was present at the very birth of the universe, and will be present at its end... Me: "But, I saw him die to Teemo blowdarts." Riot: "His form is so huge it fills the entire sky..." Me: Checks in-game form, sees he's the size of a dog next to Garen. Riot: "In fact, he may even be bigger than GALAXIES." Me: Squints. Riot: "He created ALL the stars. Every one of them. Just for fun..." Me: "Okay, this is too much. Gonna stop reading now." Red Post on boards: "Wait! He only told Zoe he made all the stars. He might not be telling the truth! Also, his favourite flavor of ice cream is strawberry." Me: "Umm... okay." Riot: "Now check out this other champion, the literal embodiment of death."

Emperor of Fate2 votes

Oh boy there is much distortion of facts and one sided opinions in this thread that iam bleeding internaly..now now lets set some things straight..ok?

1)Riot didnt used to have proffesional writters so they can not "come back".

2)The old "lore" was not meant to be taken seriously.It was just there as pseudo-immersion supporter , as an excuse for events and champion releases.It wasnt meant to go anywhere or be appreciated..

3)old champions had no depth or uniqueness at all...and no this is not my opinion this is a fact..you can not possibly characterize someone properly through a mini bio !( yea i know about the judgements but lets not open that can of worms).As far as unique designs are concerned ..well they were almost none..champions used to be (just) archtypes! "The angel and the demon " , " the werewolf " e.t.c Now we have races unique to league that are based on popular races but feel organic to the world!

4)Strategic machinations are more prevelant than ever in league..Swains story is a prime example !

Edit 1 : as far as the gods are concerned i agree with greenlore!

DerMangoJoghurt1 votes

Braum isn't human either, his color story mentions that he's been alive for at least 5 generations, probably a lot longer.

Mhihnj1 votes

{quoted}

Braum isn't human either, his color story mentions that he's been alive for at least 5 generations, probably a lot longer.

No, that's the power of pure goat's milk and a glorious mustache.

SithesisLord2 votes

Also exercising the strongest muscle.

SithesisLord1 votes

Elise She used to be Vilemaw's servant, who seduced and sacrificed people to him in order to maintain her beauty.

Now she's LeBlanc's pet tomb raider who happened to get bit by Vilemaw and got spider powers. Major downgrade.

And let´s not even get to the shitfest that was the Targon lore "update".

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