Riot, Please Don't Sweep Lore Criticism Under The Rug

Impetual··41 votes·2,106 views

I might make about two or three threads per week - total (but probably less). Those threads are almost always about lore.

For some reason I've started getting warnings about spamming (once again, I make less than 2 threads per week). And when you take into consideration that I don't make a new thread at all unless I've thought of some new angle in which to spin my opinion, this seems kinda weird.

Riot, while I really don't like your new lore direction, I believe that I have always tried to be respectful towards you, as you have created one of the most fun games I have ever played.

For your future reference, if I criticize your game, it is only in the hope that you will improve it based on consumer feedback, and use that to prosper.

I am not against you RIot, I am with you. Any critical posts I make are an attempt to help inform you on what a small part of you player-base may be thinking.

I want you to succed Riot, but please, pay a bit more attention to Summoner's opinion of your lore (assuming you consider that they still exist).

It really feels like you are continuing to ignore the story/art boards. Heck, the fact that those boards exist as a combined board show that you don't think that story deserves its own board.

Please Riot, accept constructive criticism.

It isn't impossible to make cohesive lore that encompasses in game mechanics.

Get your writers to think about things, rather than just take the easy way out and use retcons.

And most importantly, give us some solid community interaction on Lore that isn't just some random Rioter telling us that they can't tell us anything, because that gives us the impression that you don't know what the heck you are doing.

21 Comments

CupcakeTrap18 votes

I am shocked that you would be given a "spamming" warning. Riot, either retract those warnings or show up here and defend them.

Pendragon himself noted that, since there is no "bump" mechanic, threads may need to be reposted periodically, or posted in updated form. Otherwise, Narrative could just say, "welp, you're allowed to make one thread criticizing us, but once that times out 48 hours after posting, that's it!" It effectively endorses the "la la la we can't hear you" strategy. This borders on the farcical, especially when the primary critique of Narrative is that they refuse to talk to us.

Impetual, you've done nothing wrong, and whoever issued that warning should apologize immediately and set things right. Shame on Riot for trying to use brute force and its control of the forum to silence the community they claim to want to engage more deeply with.

Diahane6 votes

I am shocked that you would be given a "spamming" warning. Riot, either retract those warnings or show up here and defend them.

Pendragon himself noted that, since there is no "bump" mechanic, threads may need to be reposted periodically, or posted in updated form. Otherwise, Narrative could just say, "welp, you're allowed to make one thread criticizing us, but once that times out 48 hours after posting, that's it!" It effectively endorses the "la la la we can't hear you" strategy. This borders on the farcical, especially when the primary critique of Narrative is that they refuse to talk to us.

Impetual, you've done nothing wrong, and whoever issued that warning should apologize immediately and set things right. Shame on Riot for trying to use brute force and its control of the forum to silence the community they claim to want to engage more deeply with.

Maybe it's just an automatic warning though, I wouldn't be this overly dramatic so soon.

CupcakeTrap7 votes

I hope so. But I think people should also be ready for this. Narrative's not stupid. They want us "dealt with" one way or the other, and I wouldn't put it past them to resort to this sort of tactic.

Motajo7 votes

They want us "dealt with" one way or the other, and I wouldn't put it past them to resort to this sort of tactic.

I really don't want to believe this, but two years ago, I didn't want to believe that Riot would remove the premise of the game. It feels much like an inane conspiracy theory, but I can't deny the possibility.

CupcakeTrap10 votes

I really don't want to believe this, but two years ago, I didn't want to believe that Riot would remove the premise of the game. It feels much like an inane conspiracy theory, but I can't deny the possibility.

I think they see us as an obstacle and a nuisance. I think the new Summoner rewrite is partially meant to hamstring community lore by overloading the word "Summoner" so that new people will get confused by community stories about Summoners. That's not their main objective, but I wouldn't be surprised if it came up in that meeting as a bonus. Right now, they're mostly trying to placate us with soothing sounds and hoping that we'll just "go away".

When that doesn't work, I imagine they'll get more aggressive. Censoring the Story and Art forum is a likely first step. As I was about to post before a website error deleted the draft I'd spent two hours on, we need to start getting ready. We need to shore up the foundations of community lore (and established League lore generally) and make it strong enough to survive their next wave of shock rewrites. Because, jokes about Narrative taking forever to do anything aside, I believe they are getting ready to slam down a lot of drastic rewrites. If we don't get our house in order, that'll finish us off.

MEMEME6704 votes

You appear to be going crazy.

Earl Eulrich7 votes

Nah, it´s the Lore-departement that went crazy, unfortunatelly.

MEMEME6704 votes

I disagree with this, but from what I have seen on the boards, it is unlikely you are interested in rational conversation.

Earl Eulrich8 votes

There are 50++ Threads that seek rational conversation with the lore departement. Not a single one got a decent answer. They never gave any reason beyond "it´s what we do, live with it (suckers)" for their retcon. And unfortunatelly they seem to hope that criticism will just die out if they repeat themselves often enough. THe bad thing is....this tactic has led the German Kanzlerin to already 10Years of being head of the state, so it obviously works on the larger part of the public...or in other words, it fits in Chomskys scheme of grand-scale Manipulation all to well (http://noam-chomsky.tumblr.com/post/13867896307/noam-chomsky-10-strategies-of-manipulation-by).

MEMEME6703 votes

Speculation, nothing more. The lore boards haven't gotten an answer yet. That much is true.

But you can't honestly say you have any clue as to why or how this came to be.

Also, how does the German Kanzlerin have anything at all to do with this, exactly? Regardless of how little you say is based in evidence...

Pyro5 votes

You've just posted two threads in the same category in an hour. And overall five threads in two days. That seems close to "spamming".

Remlap12233 votes

Sod off. It's not your damn job to police the forums. Idiots like you who try to police the forums by downvoting them are part of the reason why people hate the forums.

BetaDude405 votes

cough hypocrite cough

Remlap12233 votes

How am I a hypocrite? Because I said he shouldn't try to censor criticism because of some bullshit forum rules that the mods only enforce lacklusterly? Unless you're a moderator, you don't get to whine about forum rules. It's not your job. You can criticize forum rules, but you can't enforce them.

BetaDude406 votes

That's... um, that's policing the forums. You're telling someone to sod off because they simply noted that he posted a lot of topics in a matter of two days. It's not your damn job to tell people to sod off when that person didn't do anything wrong. If you're gonna call him an idiot, and blame him for pseudomoderation, realize what you're doing first. It's not really censorship, OP has the option to condense his ideas into 1-2 topics. Even if there is nothing wrong with that, moderators, as you said, are lackluster and they probably slapped spam on there anyway. It could just be possible that Pyro was giving an explanation as to why the OP got a spam notification.

I came here to read about the lore and what is being discussed here that's relevant. Whatever you have to say otherwise is probably going to be ignored, as arguing over trivial stuff is pointless. What I said above is all I am saying on this topic.

Big Yikes Chief2 votes

It's not your damn job to tell people to sod off when that person didn't do anything wrong.

It's not yours, either.

BLU Medic2 votes

If that's your definition of spamming, well, uh, I'd be banned from the Steam User Forums by now and would have been banned the other day for posting my three fan fictions in the Community Creations forum one after the other.

Fried Noob4 votes

Riot has already talked about the new Lore direction and responded to questions about in multiple mega-threads. They have even responded to smaller threads. The reason why they stopped is because the same questions and critiques are raised and quite frankly, the majority of the people left stating these are the ones who have no interest in a rational discussion that isn't "Your right, we're wrong. Scrap everything and bring back the old stuff." As far as I can tell, nothing is getting swept under the rug and your spamming warnings are probably automated and not part of a conspiracy to kill are threads that dare question the lore direction.

Damorion2154 votes

Don't count on Riot to listen to the community. Somehow, in their warped, corporate minds, that by listening to the fans will somehow ruin their company. Simply put, Riot doesn't care about us.

LordHippoman1 votes

I think you might want to spread your threads out a bit more. It might be an automated warning for doing 3 threads in an hour with similar titles or something (Don't you usually start them with "Riot" or "@Riot"?) I can see why they'd put a system like that in place on the boards, because I'm sure you've all seen that every other day somebody spams links to their stream on every single board.

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