Still No Tying Story

its ridiculous enough that riot got rid of the entire purpose of the game from a lore perspective without immediately replacing it, but its been years now and not only is there still nothing but the way they removed it is still incredibly patchy. lots of references to "summoners" which, correct me if im wrong (ive been gone a while), dont exist anymore. champions who's lore was strongly tied to the League of Legends had their lore BRUTALLY gutted and left to rot ( and to name a few). as a writer, a big reader and a gamer its honestly mind boggling that riot just stopped caring much about lore. i will say that they have released some very interesting lore events (bilgewater is one of my favorites, very well done imo) but as great as those were they were just some champion lore/gameplay updates with a nice short story to go along with it.

like i said, im a writer, so lore and story in games is very important to me. im not saying every game has to have intricate lore, but i think most people can agree that there's a palpable difference between a game that has bad or little to no lore or story and a game that has well done, well thought out story, especially if it ties into the gameplay. its not difficult either, in fact its incredibly simple to establish a decent enough story to satisfy the biggest "who what when where why how" questions your typical player has. heck if you want to you could potentially answer one or two by essentially saying "the magic is in the mystery" and people will love it.

usually when i post this (this is the 3rd or 4th time) most comments are "but Universe is a thing". yeah, universe is a thing. so are fanfics, but if Rowling decided she didnt need any plot or purpose in the Harry Potter series because there are some entirely separate stories and bits of lore about some aspects of the story im pretty sure her publishers (along with about a billion readers and movie-lovers) would show up at her door with pitchforks and torches. im not gonna lie, i havent looked all that much at the universe page, but from what i have seen its not only not a replacement for the entire identity of the game, its more just interesting additions for people who really want to get more into the lore of the game, aka giving us frosting when we ask for cake.

anyways, here's my idea, more or less the same one ive pitched 3 or 4 times and the same one ill keep pitching until it either happens or someone gives me a valid and solid reason why it wouldnt work. Runeterra is at war. The nations, the Shadow Isles, even nature itself seems to be locked in battle to decide the future of the world. Away from the major battlefields, the legends of runeterra wage battle for themselves and for their people. The regular soldiers know to fight elsewhere if they dont wish to have useless and horrible deaths, so these champions are left to fight alone. alternatively (and possibly better) there are powerful summoners who are aligned to each nation who summon these legends of runeterra in order to gain power over their enemies and secure victory for their people.

In the game, when a player hits level 30, they can choose a nation or whatever it may be to fight for. their victories or losses and letter scores either gain or lose Advantage for their people. if you win, your letter score determines the Advantage multiplier (perhaps something like 0.5x for the lowest and 4x for S+), and if you lose, your letter score determines how much Advantage you lose (reversed from victory so lowest has the highest multiplier and S+ has the lowest). ranked games give 1.5x Advantage, bot games give none. ill note that its possible that having you lose points for losing games may not be the best approach but its just an idea so bear with me. once each season a player can choose to Defect and switch nations but once they do they're stuck until the next season comes and they can Defect again. at the end of every season, the nation with the greatest Advantage "rules the world" for the off-season, riot goes to town with lore and skin stuff, and all the players in that nation get some kind of reward/bonus. the extent of your reward depends on how long youve been in that nation (if you just joined at the tail end because you knew they would win, you just get like a little bit of ip, but if you were there from day one you get a bunch of rewards).

if i havent already say it ill say it now, this is just an idea, its not supposed to be complete or flawless. if you have questions comments or notes please give them to me and if i can i'll address them, but know that if you're toxic im going to ignore you.

tl;dr make League of Legends great again