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@Riot, @Fans, What do YOU think is the Problem with Lore?

DMC75001·4/20/2015, 12:27:17 AM·20 votes·5,755 views

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110702095715/leagueoflegends/images/5/57/Joj_26_final.jpg

This may sound like a vague question to some, but, I'm just wondering how everybody sees the current lore after the retcon.

There's a lot of things that people can complain about. The most problem I hear about is Inconsistency. Most people have been complaining that Riot's going back on their word and making up complete bull about their current position in the Lore Production. However, Riot themselves claim that through various technical problems they have with communicating with Storyboard Artists and other Lore-Related Content, these inconsistencies are a result of the already continuing "plan" to fix the lore entirely. Both sides have arguments to counter each others claim, but there are some times where people go a bridge too far and start demanding Lore through death threats.

http://joj.5pots.com/img/JoJFixedDemacia.jpg

Sometimes, Lack of Content is also established through Inconsistency, as there are loopholes withing certain plotlines in the League of Legends lore that people are having a hard time trying to fill in content. For example, Bard's Lore raises the concerning question as to what his Sentient Race is: are they merely just there to steer unstable events from shifting calamity, or do they have a greater connection towards the whole of Runeterra itself?

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101222024103/leagueoflegends/images/7/7f/JoJ_IoniaNoxus.jpg

What do you guys think? Explain, discuss, and comment on what is the most nagging problem you think that Lore has!

58 Comments

Starlighte4/20/2015, 4:22:58 AM28 votes

Literally all of those voting options apply. It isn't just one of them, it is all of them.

Capman4/20/2015, 2:55:02 AM15 votes

No body in the community knows what is and isn't cannon anymore on top of having a lack of context of what's happening in game with the removal of the Institute of War

Baron Von Bangin4/20/2015, 3:47:42 AM12 votes

I hate Riot's attitude of "nothing is sacred." They've shown that they're willing to change, take apart, and demolish any story or character on a whim. They seemingly to it just for the sake of change. There's no reason to get invested in anything they come up with since it's bound to be destroyed later down the road while Riot mutters apologies and swears they'll "learn" from that mistake.

Jeddy0174/20/2015, 2:42:45 AM10 votes

Well,I can't speak for everyone,so I will just state my own problems with the lore.Before I state my problems with the lore though,I feel I must point out what I want from the lore.That way,readers can see how the lore is fulfilling my wants

What I want from the Lore of League of Legends

The same thing I want from any action-adventure stories I read,watch or play.

World Building - Whether it be a region,country,planet,galaxy,etc,I want to see the world my favorite characters live in & how they interact with said world.I want to see a diversity of cultures,regions & species in said world.I want to see magnificent landscape & scenery.I want more of those landscape art from that Exploring Runeterra Dev blog such as..... http://news.cdn.leagueoflegends.com/public/images/nc/media/Freljord_Wallpaper.jpg Examples of various stories that fulfilled my world building desire: One Piece (anime/manga), Star Wars (franchise), Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker (video game)
Enjoyable Stories - I want good stories filled with memorable moments,can fill me with emotions (positive & negative) & smooth progression of plot.I'm not asking for writing perfection,I'm not asking for every moment to be perfect,I'm not asking for well-thought & smart writing. Examples of various stories that fulfilled my enjoyable stories desire: Valkyria Chronicles (video game), Guardian of the Galaxy (movie), Puella Magi Madoka Magica (anime)
Diverse & Good Cast of Characters - I want a good cast of characters that can add memorability to the story.Characters with different personalities,designs & backgrounds.I want some to bring the fun & others to bring the seriousness.Often the characters are what make or break a story.Now,I'm aware some stories are better with a smaller cast & others work with a larger cast.I want the main characters to be well developed & fun to watch. Example of various stories that fulfilled my diverse & good cast: Fate/Zero (anime), Uncharted series (video game), Avatar the last Airbender & The legend of Korra (tv show)

These are the big 3 things I want from an action-adventure story,meaning these are the big 3 things I want from the lore of LOL.Yeah there are other things I want,but these are the main things. Now to look at my problems with the lore & see how it fails to fulfill my main wants.

Problem with the Lore from League of Legends

World Building 6.75/10 - I give this to Riot & the lore team,this is the one thing that they constantly added to........that is all.Now if we look back at the old lore days thanks to the JOJ & League judgements,there was a decent amount of regular world-building.But if we look at the current lore,the amount of constant world building shrinks down to champ releases or Sion level reworks.I don't not like this,not one bit.Because champ releases aren't on a constant,regular schedule.And what is release with champs most the time doesn't satisfy me.Only the Sion Reborn & Rek'sai Journals satisfied me,not Bard grabbing some rock or Kalista stabbing a guy.I want to learn about & see Runeterra on a regular basis,not get commercials for champs I'm not even interested in playing. Of course the only time we get some MAJOR world building happening through an event,such as Shurima or Freljord.Now,I wasn't around for Freljord,but that is the type of world building I want on a REGULAR basis. Random Joe - "What about Shurima?" Me - ........"That ties into my next point."
Enjoyable Stories 0/10 - Nope.Nope.No.Yea-no.I really don't need to explain myself.If you want me to & actually care enough,you can ask.But the answer is pretty god damn obvious.
Diverse & Good Cast of Characters 5/10 - Obviously,with a game like LOL,this one has the likelihood of being satisfied.While you do somewhat fulfill HAVING a diverse cast of character,there are still issues that aren't fulfilled here.

No character Development - This is a result of the above point.Your characters are static beings never changing.We can never see a range of emotions from them.Now,not every champ needs protagonist level development.Some champs fit better as supporting characters rather than main characters like Bard,Kalista or Rek'sai.But the characters that CAN be the main characters,I want development from.
A lack of non-champ characters - Just like how we need regular people in stories with superheroes,we need regular people in stories with the champs.

Conclusion Okay,this is pretty long.I want hurry up & end this. These are my problems with lore,a lack of development & progression due to a lack of content & consistency.May do a part 2 if I think up more,but I'm done for now.

TerraRising4/20/2015, 4:46:13 PM10 votes

It's not one singular problem, but the biggest one is the largely intentional disconnect between the Narrative team and their fans.

Let's face facts: These boards are the most unfriendly ones towards Rioters. However, it's a situation that Narrative and Riot created through their history of non-communication, removal of content, lack of new content, numerous broken promises and outright lies.

While most of Riot are at least willing to discuss issues pertaining to their departments, communication from Narrative is, at best, sporadic and, at worst, non-existent. While there are many reasons (legal, technical or other) for this, they all hide a fundamental issue: Narrative doesn't want to communicate with their fans.

Jaredan and his team (Loping Cinder, Ant in Oz and other unnamed members) don't want fans to submit story ideas or offer their help in any meaningful way. All they want from fans are "core concepts" of champions, the "I like Ahri because <singular reason>" sort of thing.

As a result, while we shout at them about how meaningless this level of dialogue is, they sit and laugh around their D&D table at the poor schmucks who still want to talk. Why? Because Narrative is under the misguided impression that all their PR problems with lore fans will be fully repaired once content starts coming out.

All the while, content is not being released. And the only response non-Narrative Riot employees can give us is "You are frustrated and mad and you have every right to be. We have not delivered on new content and you should remain skeptical until we do."

Ultimate point being: If Narrative wanted a friendly and communicative relationship between themselves and their fans, they would spend their time communicating with us and not spending hours tweeting about their weekly role-playing game sessions or painting miniatures that will get used once.

KING OF MASKS4/20/2015, 4:05:51 AM9 votes

Lack of (quality) content is probably the biggest issue. But I would also cite how the focus of what lore has been released has remained squarely on the champions themselves, rather than the world. What the lore needs now more than anything else is straight worldbuilding. Runeterra was already fairly poorly defined even before the retcon; removing the League just made things even more ambiguous. In an alternate universe where the narrative team was actually competent and prepared, they would've immediately redefined the setting following the removal of such an integral institution.

I would kill for some maps, or even better, city-state lore pieces (hint hint, rito).

The Soulforged4/20/2015, 1:00:30 AM8 votes

The lore team has been really lazy, and we have close to no content to fill in what was old lore. The lore team seems to pump out as much lore as post JoJ...

The Red Warden4/20/2015, 1:52:18 AM7 votes

This stretches to many of the other subjects, but I believe the main problem facing league's lore is mismanagement in the department.

Whose idea was it to announce a retcon before you have anything able to prove that it will be better? Now yes, they probably wanted to stop people from having to go through a third year without any lore, but actually adding content with the announcement would garner a much more positive response. The reason it is taking them so long to recreate Runeterra is most likely because they allowed it to stagnate for over two years. I believe the reason for all of that is a lack of management in the department.

It seems like to me that there wasn't ever anyone pushing them to follow things through with what they released. This is probably due to them discussing about what and how to things so much that they never actually got done. If there was better management, they would have had to actually make conclusions and finish the things they started instead of leaving everything open without a definite answer. Without those confirmations no content can be produced because no one is sure of the lore's foundations.

In my opinion, the main problem the lore faces was (possibly still is) a lack of management.

sealust4/20/2015, 10:08:32 AM6 votes

They reconned the IoW and created all these holes, but filled them with... nothing. :/

Right now the lore is so choppy; you have lore that refers to the Institute and Summoners and then you have two liners like Amumu and Cass and then you have full pages like Gnar.

Darrosh Jewfist4/20/2015, 4:19:04 AM6 votes

The biggest gripe for me is that League has very little lore, mangled and wrecked what little it has, then proceeds to DO NOTHING about the extremely dearth of lore.

And whatever pieces of new lore we do get (aka the Kalista/Shurima short stories or the Bard/Shurima vids) are either written so badly (like Nasus Narration), or focuses on stuff I care absolutely nothing about. Azir's story is basically 1000 words of setting the scene, a scene I don't care about, because I just want... something beyond him and walking to HAPPEN.

Nothing's happening. If nothing's happening - there's not much of a story going on.

And the videos... are so generic and bland in terms of artistic design.

Tl:dr - League Lore, are you even trying?

TauNoob14/20/2015, 4:30:14 AM6 votes

Might want to add another option to that poll: Poor communication. The community's been told several times that there would be more open discussion and communication with the Devs and we've gotten diddly squat.

Shíny4/20/2015, 2:03:11 AM6 votes

The two major faults in the lore right now are the inconsistent flow of content and a lack of regard for characters fans have love for.

Loken Stoneheart4/20/2015, 8:56:46 AM5 votes

They should not have removed the old lore if they were not immediately ready to replace it. They should not have removed the lore and replaced some of it with terrible 1-2 line summaries like "Amumu is a mummy and Amumu is sad."

These two things are not okay. There is a serious lack of any type of lore right now, and it makes me honestly question if Riot is even working on it. It's been forever now, how is it possible that they've actually done nothing?

UPfreely4/20/2015, 9:16:14 PM5 votes

2 reasons

No idea what is or isnt lore anymore
summoners were removed from lore so i feel like i was banished from lore. so a big F U to lore too rito.

NorthernDruid4/20/2015, 12:00:25 PM5 votes

They took some really cool video game Lore, with really really thorough Gameplay/story integration. With a somewhat rich setting with a kinda unique premise revolving around a de/reconstruction of high-power magic in war.

The old Lore was tied extremely close to the game, and strove towards keeping everything consistent with each other.

As far as storytelling in gaming goes it was fairly innovative, at least in that specific area of it. Greater consistency between game and story is something gaming needs more of if the medium is to grow as a storytelling medium, not less.

By contrast, the new lore isn't actually lore, because it doesn't tie into the game at all. The game might tie into the new setting, but the setting doesn't expand on the story told by the game.

The setting by all means is probably blown to bits by the next rune war now anyway.

Now it's fine to tell a story about characters appearing in a storyless game.

It's not particularily interesting by way of the storytelling itself though, and the stories themselves need to offer something which you can't find better variants of in other works (another problem with the new "lore" is that they dumped the only parts of the setting which made it stand out from other fantasy worlds in any meaningful capacity).

But it's fine to do so.

What is never fine, is to take an ongoing work and then decide to tell a completely different kind of story than the one you have been telling up until now.

Doubly so when you're working with a dynamic medium (such as an allways evolving game) rather than a static one (such as a book, movie, comic, or even a traditional game which doesn't change on a monthly basis).

What really is wrong with the lore after the retcon, is that it's a completely different type of story in terms of it's design and purpose.

Because a story completely unconnected to the game is the complete opposite of the story they used to be telling.

The fact that they managed to make factual errors about their own lore and then failed to give us a new setting for moe than half a year doesn't help.

Still, I take solace in the fact that they haven't actually gone through with the retcon yet (haven't produced any material which actually presents the world without the IoW&LoL, nor removed the references to setting elements which no longer exist throughout their own webpages and games). They can still come to their senses and keep telling the story that belongs to the game, instead of something completely different and unrelated.

Sneak Dog4/20/2015, 9:29:01 PM5 votes

As noted before me, it is the willingness of Riot to change and/or remove characters.

It already happened to me with Trundle. One day, instead of receiving more lore about this character I loved, even though he seemed to be getting a new backstory/setting, he was gone. My favorite character was just blatantly removed from the lore. This hurt. Riot proved they continue down this path with Xerath, I've seen people argue the same for other characters.

Why would I trust Riot with my investment, time and emotions, when they already have tossed it away carelessly once?

Axests4/20/2015, 4:54:12 PM4 votes

lack of lore mixed with inconsistency with the lore they do put out and a disregard for previous = not good times

Trylobyte4/20/2015, 12:04:27 PM4 votes

A brief summary, since it's early and I'm too sleepy to explain everything in excessive detail as I usually do.

Our expectations are higher than they used to be.
Their staffing, relative to Riot, is smaller and less organized than it used to be.
The Great Retcon has effectively doubled their workload.
They don't really have time to communicate with us, and when they do people vent.
They're fairly dependent on other teams within Riot.

Occams Raiser4/20/2015, 12:53:31 PM4 votes

Why does anyone care? Beyond what was on the character bio of my favorite champ I never read any of it. TF2 is the metric I use for character depth. THOSE mofos care about the world they built. I know they don't have as many characters, but all of the characters in LOL don't really need to be main characters in the lore anyway. This LOL lore is no more than a promo comicbook that comes with a child's toy. None of it seems to add to any gameplay. They don't really seem to even build that many themes or game modes around it from my perspective.

junglerboy164/20/2015, 3:23:59 PM4 votes

I'd say pretty much all of those things are true, but the things that irk me most is the new lore is limited to "here is evil mage buddy. He ascended when he wasn't supposed to, and he's sad he made a mistake." or "here is vengeful spirit war maiden, she got betrayed and now she hunts people down for vengeance."

Lore transformed from a rich, involved and interconnecting experience (champions with real friendships, interesting plots, constantly evolving world) into a completely 1 dimensional "here is this champion" info plaque on their page.

In order from least to greatest, these are the things that bug me most about the new lore:

Lore? What Lore?
Lack of Content
Weak Plotline (horrendous new writing style, yet they claim they take pride in their work. Narrative team is lying to themselves if they think what they are writing is of a higher quality than most of the old lore)
Inconsistency
Too Many Plot Holes!!! (a symptom of the total lack of content)

The other thing I would add is this: They have yet to confirm in a complete way what lore is actually canonical at this point. Does it start with the new Freljord lores? is it further back than that? are parts of the old lore that don't involve IoW technically canon or is it all gone? Just give us some concrete "this is lore, this is not lore" so that we at least no what we have and don't have at the moment.

James Stone4/20/2015, 1:26:19 PM3 votes

My problems with lore are two-fold

First, the lore team is extremely arrogant, and doesn't seem to realize they're writing for the audience, not for themselves. They don't take anything the fans try to give them, and they straight up ignore the community and then wonder why their events constantly flop.

Second, there's almost no content, and the content there is, is shallow and uninteresting, if not flat out poorly written (Looking at you, Shurima Event).

I honestly can't take the Narrative seriously as professionals, because they've proven to be anything but.

Ironclad Dragon4/26/2015, 8:08:45 PM3 votes

My gripe with the old lore: it couldn't really go anywhere. The League forbade any serious actions on the champions' parts. If some characters harbored a vengeance, they couldn't pursue it since the League would stop them from going at it. Who controlled the cosmic abominations such as Cho'Gath and Nocturne; why let them participate at all in a trial-by-combat meant for settling national disputes?

Look at games where you collect a game universe's characters (across that game's history and space), put them into squads and fight them. Do you see people complaining about the lore in those games, of why those characters are fighting together? I haven't. . Yes, I thought the angle of the old lore was cool, but it was becoming an artifact. As the roster grew larger, it became harder to justify each champion's reasons for being in the League without sounding repetitive.

In post-retcon Valoran, I think Summoner's Rift as a sandbox for us. Whatever happens in the story happens, but we get to play around with examples of that story's characters. Without its old boundaries, the story of Valoran can go further and run deeper. It has greater potential now.

And now before you find it necessary to reply "HOW IS A SENTENCE BETTER THAN A WHOLE PIECE OF PROSE FOR CHAMP LORE?", allow me to say it isn't. Now calm down. Just because something has great potential doesn't make it great. There's greater fish to catch now, but Riot hasn't finished unpacking its fishing rod.

TheI3igDaddy4/20/2015, 4:17:53 AM3 votes

The problem with the lore is that there is none, and there's no intention of ever making it a priority.

The post I saw earlier about Riot's lore designers always rejecting the community lore ideas because it wasn't THEIR idea was dumb. Like, monumentally dumb. What the fuck are they doing over at Riot, if we're barely seeing any lore aside from the Shurima fling?

This, along with the whole 'We want League to be like Smash Bros' gimmick, and there's no reason for champs to join the fight anymore. They're just...there. On top of a mountain, duking it out because why the fuck not?

I wouldn't be surprised at all if nobody's attempting to work on lore right now. It's either that, or total lack of communication.

MAZZ1M04/20/2015, 5:49:49 PM3 votes

Their lore plan is terrible. I don't even know where find anything about it. They can't monetize it, spread it, get people interested in it, or even invest in it -they haven't. It doesn't matter what they do with it if they keep plastering LCS on the homepage and never mention lore. Most players don't even know this game has a lore. They need a complete overhaul of their lore plan before they even think about what's canon and what's not. The lore team is just wasting its time otherwise. Magic: the Gathering has a good plan. They sell books. Once I graduate (and actually have time to read) I'll picking up a few. A book about Sorin Markov and/or Zendikar sounds like instant win. Where're the League books and comics? I'd read up on Veigar. I'd read up on Shyvana. I'd follow Caitlyn mysteries. Nope there's none o' that. :P

tldr: They don't care about lore. That's their problem.

Cerbearus4/20/2015, 9:31:59 PM3 votes

I am pretty sure they have removed more lore in the last couple years than they have added...

Boswick4/27/2015, 7:01:03 PM2 votes

Look at all these constructive, well thought out comments that will go completely ignored.

Chef Shaef4/20/2015, 1:36:37 AM2 votes

Can someone give me a link to the infamous retcon post? I thought when they were redoing the lore it was just gonna be shurima but now i'm finding out it's all of valoran including the institute of war? Is there even any canon left and are we ever going to get good champion lore pages back or will they just be those boring paragraph long fillers?

Quintastic4/20/2015, 4:20:28 AM2 votes

The biggest thing that bugs me about the Lore right now is that they can't seem to make up their minds whether or not they want short lore pages (like what they did for Skarner and Amumu) or whether they want long lore pages (as they are updating guys like Azir/Kalista to have more).

If they want the short lore pages, I could rewrite every single champions lore page in about a 6 hour day. As a matter of fact I think this is what SHOULD be done short term so that everybody is on the same page in terms of the reset. The build the lore from there.

If they want the long lore pages, they need to update those who they gutted first and foremost and immediately as a priority. Because saying you want longer lore while having Skarners page be what it is is quite frankly unprofessional and ridiculous.

Sinlaire4/20/2015, 5:12:18 AM2 votes

its about as prevalent as my sex life.

Stars Shaper4/20/2015, 11:54:35 AM2 votes

The content potential is huge and could be linked in so many and such epic ways that even I could write lots of things that could be used, rewritten to be made good in terms of narrative, and put in place to make of Runeterra one badass of a set for the LoL universe.

The problem is that the Narrative team is reclused and the last thing that has said is that they won't use others' ideas because this makes writers feel bad... well so anything good that could come from us is being thrown away so we better not writing fanfic or w/e.

Add to this that they might have found the excuse for "Seasonal Lore" to dilute the Lore even more (Summer Shurima, Winter Freljord, Halloween=Harrowing, etc).

Plus, the constant Lore holes in the champion's Lore (See most of the Shurima related champions, Shadow Islands). Basically we'll never get a complete story of a champion and this is bad because ending his background doesn't mean that there can't be future evolution.

We'll be bound to unfinished lores because the hope of getting more sells a lot.

Onegarion4/26/2015, 11:14:26 PM2 votes

Wait we have Lore? I thought everything I learned for my first season and a half is a lie. I'd like to actually have lore in the first place before we can have this discussion.

I wish Riot hadn't removed the lore completely and left a giant void where "You can still look at the old lore, but its not canon."

GreenLore4/20/2015, 3:03:47 PM1 votes

I think lack of content is the biggest problem. From what we've seen Riot is definetly planning a lot in terms of lore,as they are teasing a ton of storylines that haven't been touched upon.(For example we know Hecarim betrayed someone,but we don't know who it was)

The problem is that they simply don't deliver enough. The Retcon of the IoW creates quite the problem with a lot of the old lore,where many stories become completely noncanon(and in some cases they become only partially non-canon,which is even more confusing).New Lore could fill those gaps again,but it simply doesn't come and we get less and less new lore(Bard didn't even got anything aside from the video...)

Though I am not sure if you mean this with "plot holes",because honestly there aren't any plot holes in the story,if 2 pieces of lore contradict each other,then the older one simply got retconned.