Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

Now, let's all calm down and think rationally... How could "Tech Issues" hinder lore?

SaltyToplaneGoat·4/9/2015, 8:47:12 PM·52 votes·4,626 views

It has been MONTHS and the mysterious tech issues keep on while they are "being worked on".

But now that I really think about it... what kind of issue could really block out lore? Especially one that is so fat that it takes the efforts of multiple departments, teams and this much time to solve? Typewriter broken? Nah, not very likely. Problems with animation and stuff? No, after all Bard's video came along nicely. There's nothing that would keep people from actually producing stuff...

So where else could the problem be? In the presentation. But for some reason it isn't enough to put it all one a nice webpage - after all you should be able to show everything from an ingame client in a web browser.

Where do they want to put the content? Into the client. What doesn't seem to work right now? Putting the lore into the client. Why? Becasue Adobe Air is an abonimation and not designed for a massive game like league. What would be the most logical approach to the problem...?

So, now let's keep thinking: What would consume the most of Riot's time and resources for months? Actually making a goddamn client of their own - at least I hope they do that, because after all this waiting they better show something worth for it...

I just don't know why they don't just say what the issues are... I mean, comeon, even if it's a new client it's no reason to make it a "secret project" like that. All they do is frustrate those waiting. People would be totally chill if they knew WHY they have to wait...

59 Comments

DrCyanide4/9/2015, 9:20:08 PM31 votes

Every day that passes is another day where I think "Technical Issues" was a code word for "Management Issues".

If Management had held off on the lore retcon until there was something to put in it's place, then less people would be upset. Sure, people would still miss Summoners, but they'd have something to munch on to see if the new stuff was to their liking. If there really was a technical issue (or an unrealistic technical deadline), it was Management that decided to go ahead and post the announcement anyway.

As it is, several in-client lore entries were shortened to as little as two sentences seven months ago. The closest thing we've heard to an estimate (from a Rioter that admitted he wasn't involved in the Lore team's problem) was that it might take another 12 months before the "Technical Issues" were fixed.

Can you imagine if Riot disabled a champion for a patch, said "We're updating them, don't worry!" and then had them out of the game for 19 months? Yet that's basically what's happening with champion lore. That's handling a situation incorrectly, and that falls on Management's shoulders.

Omnipherious4/10/2015, 6:50:16 AM13 votes

I have a theory. I will share it below but I just want to make it absolutely clear: This is just a theory that is based on a) Red posts, b) History, c) What Riot has made known about their processes and d) Some general observations.

Theory Riot Games is currently preparing:

  1. An updated interactive timeline and map which links to champion bios, story arcs and previous promo events.
  2. Some sort of custom web client/software? This thing, whatever the hell it is, will be their custom dev kit for all future lore events, champions, etc. More on this later.
  3. A real, stable team or department that understands the lore and convey the lore + direction to both employees and us.

Timeline, map, web & client links If I had to guess, both timeline and map are currently ~50% complete at worst or ~70% complete at best. Why those numbers? Because from what I've observed, the Narrative Team has been changing as much as LoL has been changing with patch notes.

If I had to make another guess, there are probably less than 5 people that ACTUALLY know what the direction is and these people aren't really getting work done because:

a) There is shitloads of lore to catch-up on b) They spend a lot of time getting/helping new additions to the team up to speed and lose equal if not more traction whenever somebody leaves c) There is some shitty system in place, where they have to liaise A LOT with other departments (art, sound, etc) and more time is lost/wasted doing it

So even if they have stuff ready that we don't know about, they are staying mum cause there are systems and or processes in the Riot Games workplace environment that aren't helping their situation. They are FORCED into silence until the time is right i.e. champion release, tech is ready, etc.

Custom Riot thingy I'm just going out on a limb and assuming there is a custom thing being developed because:

a) We need a new client b) Thunderdome is a thing c) This is the ONLY legitimately acceptable 'tech issue'

"Wait a sec Omniwhatever... how is this related to lore?" I would guess it originally wasn't. Presumably, the original goal was to post more text lore/bios in the client and have tabs of side-stories like the ones we see in the Champion Ability previews. I assume this much because we've had longer text lore hosted here on the boards before.

"So why aren't they just doing that?" You know how Riot loves their big reveals. They are probably trying to match this whole new client thingy with the replays, updated lore + websites and whatnot.

My final guess is, we won't hear diddly-squat until 2016 or when pre-season starts near the end of 2015. This is the first year all pro-leagues have been somewhat standardized and there's the whole mid-season tourney thing, so focus is most likely still on #esports.

Narrative Team Honestly, I don't know what's going on.

I feel like the actual Narrative team is >10 peeps with only 4-7 constant members. The extras that boost it up to 10-ish are the reps from art, sound, etc, that are involved with whatever the current discussion is. This super low number is likely the reason why they don't want to tell us who is or isn't on the team. It's also probably how they are controlling the new direction, keep those in the know down to the absolute minimum so there aren't leaks, false promises, etc.

Assuming there are only 5 constant members, Azir's lore dev probably would have been the 5 Members of Narrative Team and DanielZKlein at the start, with 2-3 from Art + 2-3 Sound + 1-2 Miscellaneous once they decided on the whole Shurima direction.

That might seem like pretty reasonable way to go about things until you remember that multiple things are always happening at the same time. So they gotta get the new lore in ship shape, make sure the upcoming/reworked champion ties-into it, wait till assets are ready before teasing or releasing anything, talking to everybody involved constantly to make sure they are on the same page and shit is up-to-standards, then they gotta pray nothing goes wrong.

Seems like a pretty shit situation for them and us to be in.

Krigjer4/9/2015, 9:02:27 PM11 votes

A lot of companies withhold information because of how quickly people get upset over any little detail.

Some people get angry even when you give them an exact ETA and reasons behind EVERYTHING they're doing. God forbid a problem come up and something be postponed.

NorthernDruid4/10/2015, 6:55:21 AM9 votes

"Tech Issues" Can't be the real hinder to lore, because of all the delivery methods they've used for new content (new summoner's rift, champion release/re-release pages, etc.) Have been working fine.

What they needed to give us three weeks or less after announcing the retcon, was new core concepts now that the world shouldn't even exist (because presumably the next runewar rolled around and everything blew up when all the doomsday monsters started rampaging in the middle of it) because they took out the core setting concepts.

The retcon is a failure, because 7 months later we don't know what kind of setting we're even dealing with anymore.

Jungle Lux God4/10/2015, 3:09:29 AM7 votes

The technology that Riot needs is a random word generator that generates thousands of combinations of words in a matter of minutes. Riot's "Lore" team takes these combinations of words together until they find an appropriate lore that they think is appropriate for the given champion.

However, the algorithm that Riot's random word generator runs is very inefficient and poorly tuned so that 80% of the words outputted are either gibberish, vulgar, incomprehensible by a large portion of the playerbase (including Riot themselves) or "Shurima", and therefore the random word generator needs to be ran for hours each day in order to get anything that even remotely resembles lore, not to mention someone needs to search through the outputted words in order to extract possible lines of lore from the output.

Terff4/9/2015, 8:54:23 PM6 votes

You have a good point, how could you be having technical problems if all you have to do to make lore is take out a pen and paper and write something, sure it doesn't happen instantly but it doesn't really take this long, even if the problem is computer related I highly doubt they can't at least update the website lore.

Jeddy0174/10/2015, 4:32:54 AM6 votes

After reading a number of Red comments about the lore,I'm inclined to believe that the tech issues are only a piece of the puzzle

[{quoted}](name=Sneak Dog,realm=EUW,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=JETr30Az,comment-id=0003,timestamp=2015-04-09T23:02:40.392+0000)

The technical issues are just one part. I believe I've read at between the lines the main things holding up the lore are redoing the entire world, reorganizing their people and approaches, and make sure everything is consistent.

^ What he said. If it was just tech issues,I'm sure Riot would have looked for another way to do it while the tech issues were being looked at.

Now,this doesn't excuse Riot for allowing the lore to be in such a state of disarray while going through all these changes or vice versa.It's like selling your house,THEN you start making your new home & I don't mean the construction phase,I mean going out to look for a good spot to make the house phase.All while living in a box on the side of the road waiting for the work to be done.Now lore fans are stuck in the box too.

1st HanarSpectre4/10/2015, 5:16:12 PM6 votes

The tech issues are as follows. The lore department was gutted several years ago in order to make room for the solid gold executive money baths. The lore team was forced to leech wifi off local starbucks to do their job, but due to them being discovered and kicked out of all the local coffee shop, they are having a hard time finding a spot to steal wifi and work from.

Source: I saw this guy and talked with him for a bit.

Sneak Dog4/9/2015, 11:02:40 PM5 votes

The technical issues are just one part. I believe I've read at between the lines the main things holding up the lore are redoing the entire world, reorganizing their people and approaches, and make sure everything is consistent.

Tesla Effect4/10/2015, 1:04:15 AM4 votes

The Retcon happened somewhere before Darius release. The mentioning of the League between Varus and Darius lore has been completely removed and any further lore mentioning of the league has also been removed. If we had knowledge of hindsight the retcon announcement would not have come as such a shock as it was.

[{quoted}](name=Sneak Dog,realm=EUW,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=JETr30Az,comment-id=0003,timestamp=2015-04-09T23:02:40.392+0000)

The technical issues are just one part. I believe I've read at between the lines the main things holding up the lore are redoing the entire world, reorganizing their people and approaches, and make sure everything is consistent.

I find a very similar problem on the lol wiki page where you have a lot of people focusing on one area of the site, and yet completely ignoring some of its main articles. They dont have the necessary man power for specific tasks .The company itself, not just the lore, is going through a massive "Update/Change" so to speak.

B3ER4/10/2015, 12:18:57 PM4 votes

What it comes down to is that the lore team is out of creativity at this point. Inside sources tell me that Kitae has been talking to Stephanie Meyers for ideas and collaboration.

junglerboy164/10/2015, 1:31:42 PM4 votes

The only way I see it, the "tech issues" must be related to how they present the lore (i.e. how it is displayed in client, is it semi interactive? is it animated like a login screen? etc.) Tech issues should have no hindrance on the actual writing of the lore (unless they are so inept as writers that they can't use a pen and paper).

Gingivits4/10/2015, 2:43:06 AM3 votes

Since the day they said they are working on new lore I have written 2 short stories and 48 pages of a book for my own amusement.

MrRado4/10/2015, 7:19:24 PM2 votes

I could think of more than a handful of reasons that this would and could be a viable issue.

Here's the most logical:

Perhaps, due to a certain communities lust of incredible lore (hint: that's you!), they want to bring the re-implementation of lore information in the client to the highest possible level. Looking at this, obviously I would want to add more animations (especially login animations to any champ splashes in game) as well as including the videos and perhaps even the interactive teasers you saw for things such as Bard, Gnar, Braum and so on.

Easy? Maybe. One and done? Not so much. Now we have to consider the requirements of these changes and needs of client changes. Whoa now, hold on, isn't the client being rebuilt as well? So now we'd like to deliver, but we may have to run into choices on what we can implement now, or what would be better by designing for a future client. (Yes, I know it feels like you should be able to do both but that's not always an option).

Now also consider the reach and expanse that League of Legends reaches. You have to not only make extensive (bigger-than-a-patch changes) to the client, then distribute that through multiple languages and even put it on a mac (eww!)

So if I worked at Riot, I think my train of thought would be this, post retcon decision.

  • Decide on lore points to develop and explore
  • Decide on how to present this lore/content
  • Decide on how to implement this lore/content
  • DEVELOP the implementation strategy, systems, and back-end design to a level of quality and perfection that allows for all future lore/content updates of the same type to be delivered easily and without worry.

I can't even begin to emphasize the kind of work that would have to go into a project like this. And especially when you look at the level of quality Riot puts into their work (SR update, Texture updates, special game modes, etc...)

And yes, by only giving us "technical difficulties" it feels like we're being brushed off, but I can guarantee you two things.

  • No explanation of difficulties would be sufficient for many of you until the content actually deployed
  • That Riot wants to reach the pinnacle of quality and never risk such an upheaval to any portion of their playerbase ever again.
Impetual4/11/2015, 7:19:05 AM2 votes

I've made the same point before, albeit much less eloquently.

It does seem pretty weird that a "tech issue" would prevent Riot from putting text where they want it to be for several months.

Unless their technical team is completely incompetent, there's most likely something else going on.

Considering the perceived turn over that the lore department has gone through in the last year, it wouldn't be surprising if Riot was just trying to stall for time while its new team got its shit together.

Don't know why Riot isn't just being honest with us though. Their current explanations seem pretty fishy.

Varnoc4/24/2015, 11:30:25 AM1 votes

With the launch of the Shurima event, all of the champions involved got horrendously short bio's. You mentioned that there aren't really any tech issues with it comes to simply writing a story. It can be complicated, sure but there's not much complication behind it.

I agree that the building of a new client would delay this process, but for months? It's not difficult to simply update the champion bio sheets in the meantime, unless they wanted to release ALL of them at once, which wouldn't make much sense, the way the community is getting fed up with the lack of lore.

I'm of the opinion that they are doing something of a campaign for League. Each champion you come across has a stupidly short bio, what you currently know about them. The campaign would allow you to play scenarios as specific champions, such as Ashe, and develop the story behind the character in the process. Each scenario adds a little bit more to the champion's Bio for you in your personal client.

I'd personally love to see an fully fleshed out, interactive map of Valoran. Clicking on a faction's territory, such as Freljord, Demacia, Noxus, Ionia, or Shurima, zooms the map in on that location, and specific areas of that map can be interacted with further, allowing you to start the scenario. Some events in history could involve more than one champion, but have required scenarios be completed before that one can be initiated.

If in charge of such a project, I would do one of two things concerning champion restrictions for this style of play:

  • Let players have access to the champion involved in that campaign
  • Unlocked champions grant access to the campaign, free week champions included. Maybe make it easier to acquire champions as well.

Both directions have their merits, but if this is the direction RIOT decides to go with lore, I would say it's worth the wait.

Nsane4/24/2015, 4:47:27 PM1 votes

Let's see. The store is simply a webpage (or series of) that gets embedded in the client: why not do the same for lore pages if there's a limitation with adding the lore directly to the client?