Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

@Riot, I Understand Champion's Can't Be Produced Bi-weekly Anymore, But Why Can't Lore Be?

Impetual·1/5/2016, 8:34:12 AM·7 votes·940 views

@Riot, let's go back to season 1.

Riot got really popular really quickly because it was doing something cool that no other Moba did!

It released a new champion and a lore update for it's world every two weeks. We had the Journal of Justice. LoL was awesome.

There was a constant and predictable flow of content for the game's lore which kept players interested.

While I'll agree that the degree of effort needed is to create a champion now is higher than it used to be (due to understandable quality differences), I don't see why the lore updates of the game needs to be rare as it is.

Why_ can't_ Riot release lore about what's going on in Runeterra every two weeks again? It doesn't take any graphics work at all, just someone with an overarching story in mind to write some text! It would be awesome to Riot go back to having a cohesive narrative for Runeterra.

I'm getting kinda tired of the random lore events that don't fit together with Runeterra as a whole.

I'm getting tired how of each and every major lore release is about a newly released champion.

It makes LoL feel cheap, like it's just about the money and not about creating a great game...and maybe that's how it's always been, but at least it didn't feel like that before.

Heck, Rioters don't even seem to care about lore anymore. For the last year it feels like they've just been sending scapegoats to "handle" lore fans in hopes that they'd go away.

Anyone remember RIot Opeli? She was given a pretty raw deal. She was basically the only Rioter Riot put forward to defend the lore retcon, and she was slaughtered on the forums (in some cases in inexcusable obscene ways).

I'm sorry if I'm getting a bit cynical here, but Riot pretty much founded it's game on the concept of player interaction and player input, and their decision to retcon the game went against everything they pretended to stand for.

Although I still love this game I must say that I'm pretty disappointed, but not surprised, at the direction that Riot has taken this game.

Riot doesn't seem to care about the players anymore, it's about the money.

I guess I can understand that, but I thought you were better Riot.

Sorry for being negative, I'm just kinda tired of Riot cheaping out on its lore production. They used to produce a lot more lore on a regular basis. Why the decline?

8 Comments

GreenLore1/5/2016, 6:45:27 PM3 votes

The reason for that? Quality above quantity.

Riot made a lot more lore back then,but they also thought about it a lot less than before,which is part of why they retcon it now,because they feel like they've written themselves into a corner with certain characters. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants

And while the JoJ was rather fun and had some nice story events,it was also pretty basic and had a lot of stuff that never really mattered,like the shaco interview that revealed nothing(also some people complain about the teasers for new champs being seen as lore,but the JoJ itself was sometimes used as a teaser for the new champion)

Also I'd say that the lore for new champs and the lore retcon should take priority above everything else for now. I'd rather want the lore to make sense again before getting smaller details.

The reason why lore related talk doesn't happen so often on the forums should also be rather obvious,as they simply can't talk that much about upcoming lore. Its like you expect the champion development team to leak their next champion long before the champ comes out. So what do you expect them to say here? Not to mention that rioters coming to the forums is pretty much optional for them.Its not like the lore team sent riot opeli to the forums,she came to the boards on her own free will in her freetime.

And its funny how you say that every lore release nowadays is about a new champion,when the bilgewater and harrowing lore pieces didn't come with a new champ.

Awkward Couch1/5/2016, 6:05:02 PM2 votes

I kind of agree, it seems like the lore is on the back end of Riot's mind. I don't think it makes the game feel cheap, but I can also see why they did what they did. Riot is working on the new champ select and then the Tribunal. The new champ select would hopefully remove some toxisity so people don't get the roles that they do not want. The Tribunal has been down for almost 2 years now, it's about time they bring it back. In that case I can see why the lore has been put on the back burner. In the end gameplay is more important than lore, and fixing toxisity is a bigger issue than Hecarim's 2 sentence lore.

If we look at the lore problem from a logistical standpoint, totally redoing the lore is a monstrous task. I would imagine that they would want to keep certain things in place, for example the love/hate relationship between Garen Katarina . So how do you make it so that you can tell the entire story with over 120 characters? It's really hard to do, and it will take some time to figure out everything and make sure that all the stories fit together.

I also think that the lore team did a really good job during the Black Market Brawler's event. I think the lore that they put out then was really good. And I actually like the random lore events. I don't know how else they would advertise that the lore has been updated. If they just changed the lore on the website, who would read it? I wouldn't, but that's just me.