Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Compared to Other Companies, Is RIot Doing a Good Job?

Impetual·9/22/2015, 8:37:27 AM·7 votes·909 views

While Riot is currently has one of the most popular games on the planet under its belt, there doesn't seem to be much (if any) of that success translating into them producing a better player experience.

Lore wise, Riot is pretty much at rock bottom. They've retconned the lore of League of Legends, except they haven't actually bothered to finish it.

Half of the character's in the game don't make sense and lore is a mess because they can't seem to be able to hire someone to write it.

11 Comments

FloRaider429/22/2015, 10:38:31 AM8 votes

At least LoL had a lore, but it became to complicated to continue it and needed a revamp (which admitedly takes a tad too long) ** But what about other "Moba's" ?**

Smite: The God's of the world's pantheon have come together to fight each other... Because the humans stopped worshipping them, because they think they don't exist... Yet most battles seem to be held on earth... Were everyone could see that the gods exist... Which makes the entire conflict moot.

Dota: At least makes some sense (if you can call it that) The Nexuses are two opposing "Gods" that brainwash the minions and heroes into fighting each other and the "Champions" have backstories that vary in quality (some better and some worse that the current lore [in my opinion]) mainly because a lot is kept open for interpretation.

Heroes of the Storm:

"Legends speak of a place where worlds collide and mighty heroes battle for dominance..."

There is a timy wimy space storm in which heroes from different universes come together and fight... The different characters have lore from their main games, but they vary greatly in quality and require you to know the main game the character comes from.

Strife: The "Heroes" fight in an arena because they train for a coming battle from an old prohecy... Why they don't use the minions or the magical respawn ability in that battle is up to interpretation :P The characters have different reasons to join this organisation. Some good and some badly written.

So yeah, "Moba's" and Lore seem to be hard to combine and the only reason why LoL gets called out for it, altough other games of the genre have similiar or worse Lore, is that LOL used to have a good Lore that sadly ended up having too many plotholes and getting retconned.

Only time will tell, how good the retconned Lore will be, but don't badmouth Riot because they have gone through the effort of making a Lore work in this setting, when no other game in the genre seems to be able to.

######All mentioned opinions are mine and mine only

Digielf9/22/2015, 11:22:33 AM4 votes

its not ''one of the most popular games'' its THE most popular game, there has never been a game more populated than lol

Shénzhì9/22/2015, 11:53:33 AM2 votes

Popularity does not mean it's interesting. Popularity is keeping a hold on a playerbase and I see how they do that, and that will not last as long as it has.

There are other embedded flaws that I know will just unmake this game, and competitors will show something where players may identify good quality, compare with perceived bad quality and criticize it heavily. An example: [read this]. What's funny is Riot Game's LoL impedes itself that competitors don't even have to compete. They just have to make a quality product. Easy for them and looks like they're already getting ahead (I assume). Intolerable old kits compared to acceptable new kits: Which one is infuriating? Which one fuels community toxicity?

{quoted}

Half of the character's in the game don't make sense and lore is a mess because they can't seem to be able to hire someone to write it.

It's all part of the joke. Regarding stories and character backgrounds, I've questioned whether they're going to pull through or not.

There is so much negativity about this game that I think most it's throttling positive things too much. Curing symptoms and not the source. I won't be surprised if all its conditions exacerbate 'toxic community' episodes as symptoms of incoherent design that this game is. However, if they can saturate a comprehensive fictional world and its character's backgrounds from which champions adhere to (new and old) may greatly support player experience though I think it's so out of proportion that I doubt Riot can pull it off. Then there's the hysterical outbursts from this community when something changes. This new Kindred champion doesn't really make sense, either. This whole fictional world doesn't make sense - it's a fkin Petaminx.

Extreme logic: competitors will be competitive and they don't have to try so hard against LoL.

Valaran Nara9/24/2015, 8:01:16 AM1 votes

Well, if it makes a difference "A Good Death" which involves Kindred mentions that there was a war going on during the time of the story. There was also the mention of 2 cities, neither oneo f them being said to be in either city faction which means they're attempting world building and not just saying "Oh, this is Demacia and this is Noxus. Oh, and all these people right here get Shurima skins, cause the Emperor of Mashed Potatoes and Gravy commands it.

Decrit9/24/2015, 8:38:02 AM1 votes

I have mostly 2 other multiplayer references: World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2. Mandatory disclaimer "this is just my opinion on it"

Let' s start with guild wars 2: a well reviewed game from a somehow tiny company that never managed to get a lot of popularity ( Aion is more popular in comparison, for good or bad reasons ) but is faring more than well. Compared to lol they bugfix a lot less, have a lot smaller betatesting, some issues are left open for months or years ( both of bugs, exploits or balance) and communicate with ups and downs on the forums ( with some general topics replied almost daily, while others might be untouched for months or years necromancer cough cough) and sweeps of game content every month or so. Still, as i said, the company is somehow tiny, the game is still polished and of quality and those issues are not so satisfaction-breaking as they seem so i am not mad at them at all. Compared to LoL they manage to not do as much, but they do the best they can given their situation.

Then let' s pick World of Warcraft, that i have played mostly in Burning Crusade/Wrath of the Lich King/Cataclysm era. I have foggy memories about that exactly, but i remember balancing rotating around "the flavor of the season", waiting the end of a season to do real sweeping changes ( that however are way minor in comparison to the ones of lol for obvious reasons ), the game content getting fleshed out without too much care of keeping it up with a consumistic fashion ( that can be seen while traveling between zones of different expansion: in one continent the warchief of the Horde might be Vol'Jin, then in the same continent is Garrosh instead wich came before him and in some others Thrall, the one even before him! ) and that creates ambiental discrepances; community collaboration and communication got a great step up since WotlK and the efforts of people like Ghostcrawler that opened it up more, but Blizzard still keeps itself "high and mighty" while sends community carers in its own, or at least mostly as i have seen for now. Probably i should not compare those 2 games that are so far different from each other in therms of mechanics, but even comparing LoL to the golden era of WoW we can see that LoL keeps more than well the comparison, without sacrificing all the older content as WoW did.