@Riot, what kind of balance do you strive for between the Story of Runeterra and the balance of Runeterra when creating champions?
What is more important to you? Story, or Gameplay?
Or is a balance of both ideal? Does good lore go hand in hand with good gameplay?
Champion Skin3 votesWell actually there really doesn't matter as the lore has pretty much been disconnected from the gameplay so well they can pretty much have the story and gameplay however they like How much they focus on those things... well yeah that's up to riot (though from the look of things they definitely don't focus on lore... well it doesn't seem like it at least)
Sharjo3 votesWhile a balanced approach would be ideal imo, gameplay should always come first in a game. You can forgive a shitty story if the gameplay is good, but a bad game can just prevent you from ever even getting invested in the story to begin with. Story in a game is often driven by its gameplay afterall.
Nybx4life3 votesWell, kinda. Some games, RPGs in general, are story driven. If the story's crap, the game's crap. Example: there's no rpg games I can think of with a weak story yet amazing gameplay that kept me interested.
If a game isn't focused on story, it's more forgiving for it to have a lack of such if the gameplay is good.
Sharjo1 votesI think that for RPGs though, their genre allows them to get away with it. The whole point of the game is to be immersed in the story with the gameplay being the tool to experience it, with the story being far more important.
You're absoluetly right about them, and it falls in to the part of gaming where gameplay isn't as important, almost the exception to the rule. Still helps though, but yeah.
Nybx4life1 votesOf course. You could have one without the other. Hell, irl examples of this would be sports and literature.
For video games, at least the ones that are developed past the point of being Newgrounds-level flash games, have some degree of story to it. Some stories to those games are paper-thin, while others are actually pretty hefty considering the type of game it is.
For a game as big as League of Legends, and for champions to have introductory cinematics (Bard and Kalista, I'm looking at you), I expect a level of story to justify those things.
I guess I can look at other games that can technically say they're in the same page: Fighting games. Gameplay-wise, there's little exposition given to characters like Ryu and Ken when they fight in Street Fighter. Yet, I can't think of a gameplay trailer that focused on Ryu and his journey to improve as a fighter and control his inner rage that makes me care more about him as a character. There's movies, yes, there's the cinematics in arcade mode, yes, but it doesn't stop the game to focus on that character's story to do so (at least, i think so).
Of course, given that lore isn't integrated into actual gameplay, but rather provided "in the background" so to speak, it works for those games. Same can be said here, except the background stuff is lacking.
Tesla Effect1 votesMortal Kombat has a descent story in comparison to other fighting games, wish there were more snowflakes like MK series.
Nybx4life3 votesMortal Kombat is solid. Like a cheesy action movie...although I believe Mortal Kombat X has gotten better. There's also Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and Persona 4 Arena on the solid story list.
Sneak Dog3 votesIdeally, they represent eachother. Your gameplay is intuitive and your story meshing with the gameplay. It might seem harder in a moba, but you do control a hero on a battlefield battling with and against other heroes. I don't see why they have to be segregated.
Best stories I've played were those which blatantly prioritised story over gameplay (yet not denying the gameplay regardless) and those that embraced their mechanics and used them to tell their story, rather than denying them. League just blatantly prioritizes gameplay over story post-retcon, ignoring the gameplay entirely. I don't see this going well (combined with the disregard for characters during the retcon as well...).
Nybx4life4 votesPersonally, and this is something I've seen off an Extra Credits video; Theoretically, the better stories are woven into the gameplay. Of course, given what League is, part of that story has to be told through character interaction quotes, and the map itself for it to weave into gameplay.
Outside of that, add some lore with releases. A new champ came out? Give them quality text. New event? Quality text. Lee Sin got buffed? Quality text. I think that's all it needs, in a nutshell.
NorthernDruid2 votesIdeally, they should be the same thing.
If you have the mindset of, "I have this game, now what story am i going to tell alongside it", you're doing it wrong.
When you're making games, whether it's the gameplay or the story which is your foundation, they need to tie into each other for it to be more than a game and an accompanying story or vice versa, a story with some accompanying gameplay.
Playing a game should be synonymous with experiencing a story. No matter what the story, no matter what the game. The best games are the ones who make the story integral to the gameplay, and make the experience of the gameplay integral to the story.
It doesn't need to be anything difficult, and even those moments when suddenly every input is bound to the same action carry the experience a lot. If you make it so that one of the two overshadow the other, then you've done something wrong.
Note that not every game needs to tell a story, but the ones that do benefit more from treating gameplay and story as one intertwined entity than two seperate subjects to be managed.
Nybx4life1 votesI think, in my opinion, is that if a game cares enough about a story to start one, it needs to have something complete to flesh out the characters and world. Especially if the world of the game is fluid, the story needs to build up as well.
warwiller1 votesI vote gameplau coz its what we are exposed to most
tho lore should b much more prominent
Adalore1 votesOkay so...While I like the concepts present for stories available to riot...I wouldn't play the game if the game itself sucked.
Narasimha1 votesIn a game like this? Gameplay. At the end of the day, we're playing a game, not reading a novel. The best game will fall apart if the game itself isn't very good, no matter how epic its tale is.
GreenLore1 votesOverall when designing the skills a balanced approach is the most healthy,the lore can be an inspiration for some skills and the skills can be an inspiration for the lore.
However if there are points where these 2 clash(like in the case of aatrox,aatrox lore makes it clear that he basically lives to fight and that he throws himself into battle,so making him a fighter/leech-tank is good approach,but a support ability doesn't really fit into that gameplay-style),then I'd say that gameplay should be taken over lore.
Tesla Effect1 votesIt overall depends on what type of game we are dealing with. Some need more story attention than gameplay, some the balanced approach and some the gameplay. MOBAs are mostly gameplay oriented types of games, they are not there tell a narrative story when you play it, doing that would take a lot of resources and time which at this time is impossible and not advisable. This is why all MOBAs tend to lack in the story departement because it is very hard to put the story into these games and they fail in making a narrative that is continues if not planned from the start (which most MOBAs dont).
Nybx4life2 votesI understand that MOBAs don't put story first, but it's not that it should be tossed aside from gameplay. You want a game that has no story and does perfectly fine? Look at Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Great shooter, no story of any kind to give context to the multiplayer. What helps for that game is that each character is the same, regardless of the team: Standard soldier #45. No unique personality, no unique clothing to identify a particular soldier. No names, none of that.
It's fine for a game to focus on gameplay, but if they're going to make a point of making a character unique, they need to go the distance with it. Infinite Crisis has less work to do as each character was already identified in the DC Universe. League of Legends doesn't have that standing. No game with unique characters and a large roster can get away with having little backstory about each character.
insaiyanbacca1 votesa balanced approoach is best, but if you cant achieve that gameplay prioritizes in almost every genre of game, this is because "oh look your story is amazing but your gameplay is absolute crap and no one ever wants to play again"
The Soulforged1 votesYou have to remember that there are separate teams to work on these two things, so it doesn't matter what mix of each we want. We simply ask the team for a required amount of whatever pump out.
Edit: Nvmd I think I misread
I would really like a balance of the two. I would like champ design to create interesting character kits and such, with a goal on personality and such, while the story would be fitting in this character with x personality into a certain faction and creating a backstory to explain such.
