@Riot, The Lore Retcon Is Painful, And It's Taking Too Long, Finish it Already!

Impetual·Aug 24, 2015·25 votes·8,773 views

Have you ever heard the phrase regarding the ripping off of a bandaid?

It should be done quickly and completely in one quick shot.

The lore retcon, assuming it needed to happen in the first place, should have been done the same way.

It's been almost a year, and many champion's lore still exist in a pre-retconned world. Jax for example.

@Riot I enjoy and love your game, but your managers must have some serious issues setting deadlines for lore or something because they don't seem to be doing their job.

We've seen RIot develop lore at a much faster rate than it has in the past year, and while we've had the odd really cool event (Bilgewater) it hasn't seemed like we've gotten any consistent lore releases happening like we used too.

Lore releases happen at a snails pace these days, and never actually seem to have any global significance to Runeterra.

Heck Riot, you guys haven't even finished the retcon, which I would think would have been your number 1 priority for the last year!

What's taking so long Riot?!

40 Comments

KrinuAug 24, 201511 votes

Speaking as a writer... doing this stuff well takes time.

Quite a bit of it, actually. It's also not something that you can just "throw more people at" in order to make it go faster, because everybody needs to be... aheh... on the same page. The more people you have writing on a group project, the less each person adds due to the increased communication overhead between writers.

I'd rather have a well-designed, cohesive world than a bunch of one-off tales that don't seem to relate to each other in any meaningful way. Plotting something like that out takes a lot of work and a lot of time, especially if it's done right.

Dextix LTAug 29, 20159 votes

But then we have another problem. Narrative retconed the old lore while KNOWING that they are not capable of replacing it soon. Any good writter or anything that is concerned with it plans ahead, even if its not accurate he still plans.

Narrative retconed the old lore but had no plans how to replace it, no ground to stand on.

While a cohesive world is hard to achieve, it isnt THAT hard. If you know the direction your world will take and you already have your world base, then its quite easy.

Andd right now i have a bad opinion on narrative, because there is either 2 possibilities here.

They are incompetent and dont know the basics of writing or planing that every begginer knows.
They arent doing anything on purpose and just get paid while doing minimal job.

I may be wrong, but for me it looks like this, and i dont know which one of these possibilities is worse.

DreamspitterAug 29, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Dextix LT,realm=EUNE,application-id=6kFXY1kR,discussion-id=Y2y8GAIQ,comment-id=00040000,timestamp=2015-08-29T18:42:18.005+0000)

But then we have another problem. Narrative retconed the old lore while KNOWING that they are not capable of replacing it soon. Any good writter or anything that is concerned with it plans ahead, even if its not accurate he still plans.

Narrative retconed the old lore but had no plans how to replace it, no ground to stand on.

While a cohesive world is hard to achieve, it isnt THAT hard. If you know the direction your world will take and you already have your world base, then its quite easy.

Andd right now i have a bad opinion on narrative, because there is either 2 possibilities here.

They are incompetent and dont know the basics of writing or planing that every begginer knows.

They arent doing anything on purpose and just get paid while doing minimal job.

I may be wrong, but for me it looks like this, and i dont know which one of these possibilities is worse.

#Here's my reaction to the situation.

http://i.imgur.com/05RjIkv.jpg

I'd say it's pretty obvious. True, in an ideal world they would have worked out the background reworks for every character that wasn't getting a major kit/visual change, plus all the world details, and we would have gotten an endless stream of monthly events in Bilgewater sized fashion back to back lore updates on a lore-de-force. But......

I think with the fall of the journal of justice, and backgrounds not even mentioning the League for 2 years it was pretty obvious they were always intending to remove it. It's just they hadn't come up with "how" to do it, or what would replace it and they opted to simply "announce" it and then get to the actual doing of it "later". I don't know if that was the lore teams original idea, or of people higher up in the company than them.

It's my hope at least, when the retcon is finally done, all champions are updated, and all that is behind us...we can actually go into long "story arcs" and we can get a little bit at a time on a regular basis.

ImpetualSep 15, 20154 votes

{quoted}

Speaking as a writer... doing this stuff well takes time.

Quite a bit of it, actually. It's also not something that you can just "throw more people at" in order to make it go faster, because everybody needs to be... aheh... on the same page. The more people you have writing on a group project, the less each person adds due to the increased communication overhead between writers.

I'd rather have a well-designed, cohesive world than a bunch of one-off tales that don't seem to relate to each other in any meaningful way. Plotting something like that out takes a lot of work and a lot of time, especially if it's done right.

You say "speaking as a writer"... Could you elaborate on your work?

I'm not saying you aren't legit, but it's pretty easy for any random person to claim to be a writer here.

Heck, someone could be writing D&D campaigns and consider themselves a writer.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your post, but if you're going to pose as a writer, you should back it up with credentials.

It would be awesome if you could list those so that we could gain a better understanding of your opinion,

What kind of stuff do you write?

KrinuSep 15, 20152 votes

Mmm, that's fair. I've got about 170k words of fanfic published and I'm about a third of the way done with a fantasy novel. I also run a tabletop gaming session (Shadowrun campaign, about 3 years long now), but that doesn't really involve that much writing. Planning, yes, writing, no. I've done one short collaborative writing project (a short story chronicling a particularly memorable tabletop campaign, maybe twenty thousand words?)

The communication overhead isn't (just) my personal experience, since I've only done the one collaborative writing project. It's also from Ghostcrawler back when he worked on WoW and talked about the difficulties with coordinating quest and world design. I can probably go dig up the quote if you really want, but it's ancient (~5 years now, I think).

SEKAIAug 24, 20157 votes

Let's just pretend the recton never happened?

It's not like it's gonna make any difference considering we have barely got anything since the reset anyway. Even the main map is still to this day, called Summoner's Rift.

Legacy of XionAug 24, 20156 votes

{quoted}

Let's just pretend the recton never happened?

It's not like it's gonna make any difference considering we have barely got anything since the reset anyway. Even the main map is still to this day, called Summoner's Rift.

Runaan even tried to explain that the retcon was messy in the fact everything's names are kept the same, but the League never existed and everything in lore actuslly hppened just without the league.

That's why it's still called Summoners Rift.

But I ignore the retcon. It doesn't have any damn effect anyways. Not like Burning Tides was stopped by the League. Meh.

Dio ßrandoAug 26, 20154 votes

{quoted}

Let's just pretend the recton never happened?

It's not like it's gonna make any difference considering we have barely got anything since the reset anyway. Even the main map is still to this day, called Summoner's Rift.

retcon the retcon

GenoXxAug 24, 20155 votes

Well impetual, it looks like they're hiding again til next champ teaser or release in October

DecritAug 24, 20153 votes

Have you ever heard of ripping off of an arm

GP heard it a while ago...

DreamspitterAug 24, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Have you ever heard the phrase regarding the ripping off of a bandaid?

It should be done quickly and completely in one quick shot.

I never do it that way. I always peel it off SLOOOWLY.

Anyway, he have like 22-25 champions that need visual updates, and then more that even if visually ok -they still mention the League in the lore so they will have to get updates just to the writing.

SharjoAug 24, 20152 votes

I never do it that way. I always peel it off SLOOOWLY.

Same. I give blood often and every time I take the plaster off slowly so as not to rip off my arm hair.

TurquoiseYoshiAug 24, 20152 votes

Look at Lee Sin's lore. Almost as weird as Jax's. I actually hope they keep the original lore somewhere, just so we can see what used to be canon. I had a fun time a few weeks ago reading up on a ton of lore and finding things that shouldn't exist anymore, but are just so charmingly unreal that I kinda hope they stay.

KadavikAug 24, 20152 votes

A while ago I asked Jaredan about weather we could get to see the Champion short stories (stories narrative wrote for the champion design team to get the devs grounded on the champs personality) any time soon. He responded:

{quoted}

I was speaking with Loping Cinder about this today, I'll get back to you on it.

That was more than a week ago and I haven't heard from him since. I know he's a busy guy so I don't blame him. What do you guy think is the hold up?

SharjoAug 25, 20152 votes

I would say it's coordinating the release across regions. Kinda sucks when stuff's only available in one region. Course that doesn't take weeks so I dunno. Localizing stuff still takes a while but I dunno.

RiotRiotJaredanAug 29, 20159 votes

It's still something we're talking about. I should have news after PAX.

Rabid HuskyAug 29, 20153 votes

yo jaredan, thanks for being awsome and patient with the community, even tho there are alot of people who cant just sit back and enjoy what you guys give us when you give it to us. whether its balance or lore thanks for reading and trying to keep us posted as well as being thicked skin to toxic posts all you guys at riot rock even if you guys don't get as much praise as you should.

Dextix LTAug 29, 20157 votes

Talking about what exactly? This i do not understand. Why did you retcon the lore without being prepared to replace it? Its time for action not talks. You had a whole year for talks.

MythicTwisterSep 14, 20153 votes

{quoted}

It's still something we're talking about. I should have news after PAX.

Sir, Pax is over now. Might we have a tidbit of news?

CaythelesSep 15, 20154 votes

Why would the name of the game be called League of Legends, if the league is Retconned? doesnt make sense though.

and why do any of these champions. (Tahm kench, Bard, Kindred) have any relation to want to fight for a nexus? many flaws in the Retcon

XonraSep 15, 20153 votes

{quoted}

Why would the name of the game be called League of Legends, if the league is Retconned? doesnt make sense though.

and why do any of these champions. (Tahm kench, Bard, Kindred) have any relation to want to fight for a nexus? many flaws in the Retcon

Because the fighting has nothing to do with the lore anymore. The game we are playing is completely disjointed (supposedly) from the world of Runeterra....except when it is convenient for them and they add "lore" voice lines in the game....because they can't make up their mind.

Either way, the game of League of Legends we play no longer has any basis in the story based world apparently (this seems to change every other time I see someone talking about it so I don't even know anymore), but that is supposed to be the idea. They aren't fighting, it is just us playing the game, and them...doing nothing most of the time in the story since half the roster is in Story Stasis with nothing happening since the Retcon (Lee Sin is an ex-summoner in training, except Summoners don't and suddenly never existed so...Lee Sin doesn't currently exist in the League of Legends world).

Sneak DogSep 15, 20154 votes

It's not completely disjointed, it's one-way. The game takes from the lore, but the lore completely ignores the game. So the game takes things like characters and objects from the lore and uses them in the game.

It's an awkward system with awful immersion value, but it's what Riot is currently going with.

CaythelesSep 15, 20151 votes

Still makes absolutely no sense, i can understand if they Removed the League so they can make amazing champions like Bard and Tahm. (champions that wouldnt fit in the LEague because of their personalities or standing in that world)

But they werent ready.

Doctor IvelliusSep 24, 20151 votes

Except Riot has suggested we're supposed to make lore inferences from champion interactions, so it's not entirely one-way.

DecritSep 24, 20151 votes

ehm yes, is one way: the game that picks from the lore.

What he mean is that there won' t be lore issues because Garen confronted Lux in the Summoner' s Rift

XonraSep 15, 20153 votes

{quoted}

It's still something we're talking about. I should have news after PAX.

So is "after Pax" meaning any time from the end of August until 2025? This was the last message you wrote on the boards, so you aren't talking about anything anywhere else.

This something else you guys are hoping if you keep quiet long enough we will forget about?

Also, if you guys are talking, why not talk to us? We keep getting promises and "soon" and "after x", and nothing happens. Bilgewater was talked about like it was the saviour of lore, and really it was an isolated event with no impact on the entire lore world, and now that it is done, nothing is different aside from in that specific small, isolated area.

Nothing was accomplished, nothing was changed, lore is in the same shape it was in before the event, and I just can't understand why. I'm sort of to the point of giving up on asking, because all that is ever said is "we will get back to you" or "will find out soon" etc. Nothing ever is told aside from "stuff is coming!" and so on.

Maybe work on getting one thing done at a time, even if it is just a single champion Bio, and go from there one at a time. I'd much rather have small releases more often (with this specific content area) than one thing once a year with no meaning.

Tesla EffectSep 15, 20152 votes

{quoted}

So is "after Pax" meaning any time from the end of August until 2025? This was the last message you wrote on the boards, so you aren't talking about anything anywhere else.

This something else you guys are hoping if you keep quiet long enough we will forget about?

Also, if you guys are talking, why not talk to us? We keep getting promises and "soon" and "after x", and nothing happens. Bilgewater was talked about like it was the saviour of lore, and really it was an isolated event with no impact on the entire lore world, and now that it is done, nothing is different aside from in that specific small, isolated area.

Nothing was accomplished, nothing was changed, lore is in the same shape it was in before the event, and I just can't understand why. I'm sort of to the point of giving up on asking, because all that is ever said is "we will get back to you" or "will find out soon" etc. Nothing ever is told aside from "stuff is coming!" and so on.

Maybe work on getting one thing done at a time, even if it is just a single champion Bio, and go from there one at a time. I'd much rather have small releases more often (with this specific content area) than one thing once a year with no meaning.

They Are Coming... Soon™

RiotRiotJaredanSep 23, 20158 votes

Sorry about the late response. We're not putting them out at the moment, we're deciding on the best time and way to share them so it helps inform and we can give some good context to how they work and our thinking behind the pieces (and how they affected our thoughts on the character).

That and there's some things to look forward to already in the next month or so...

SharjoSep 23, 20153 votes

Hey better late than never is what I say!

Also -

That and there's some things to look forward to already in the next month or so...

I'm so prepared to see Bilgewater sunk by the Eleventh Harrowing. The Shadow Isles are coming!

I hope I'm right in thinking it'll be the eleventh.

Dextix LTSep 24, 20152 votes

At this rate we will get lore replacement in 2020. Its not always better late than never.

HellioningSep 23, 20153 votes

I don't particularly care about the context, honestly. I understand that this is weird, considering how much people have screamed about you lacking in communication, but I'd rather have something then nothing. I'm tired of waiting.

You're speeding up, though. This is, what, two lore releases this year? That's much better than your old standard, good job!

Chromatic EagleSep 23, 20152 votes

I really don't think there needs to a best time, considering the lore drought. Especially since these are long overdue. Since you guys have been upping the standard on these stories though, I'm willing to wait.

CuixSep 23, 20151 votes

{quoted}

We're not putting them out at the moment, we're deciding on the best time and way to share them so it helps inform and we can give some good context to how they work and our thinking behind the pieces (and how they affected our thoughts on the character).

This kiiiinda makes my hackles rise a bit, the usual "oh no they're just delaying until we forget about it we're gonna be waiting for years now noooooo" response, but on the other hand things have been kinda nice recently. Is there anything more specific or informative you can throw out so that the wait isn't as worrying?

FiloscuroSep 24, 20151 votes

We need MAPS. Pretty please with sugar on top, it would help A LOT to know where are the champions and secondary characters being located. And I know you guys have a map, you cannot (or shouldn't at least) create new villages/cities/places without having a map as reference because you'll end clashing with your teammates trying to locate characters because someone used that point to place something else.

RhòmbusSep 24, 20152 votes

lollipoppy

Dextix LTSep 24, 20152 votes

For fck sakes, do you not understand english or do this on purpose?

SOON(tm) DOESNT CUT IT!

What best time do you need? The best time was 1 YEAR ago! When you destroyed the lore! Your best time is late for 1 YEAR!

While i am exited for the new story that will come out, your tempo makes me shudder. 2 stories in 1 year? So you will replace the rest of the lore you destroyed in 2020? These stories arent even THAT wonderful that it would require 1 year of fcking working!

There are so many things you can choose to do to bring us lore that you destroyed. You can make newspapers from different states, showing what is happening in them (something simmilar to our old and favorite newspaper). You can make 1 off stories, short stories that characterise a place or another characters.

There are so many possibilities, how can you "Proffesionals" dont see any of them?

TerraRisingSep 24, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Sorry about the late response. We're not putting them out at the moment, we're deciding on the best time and way to share them so it helps inform and we can give some good context to how they work and our thinking behind the pieces (and how they affected our thoughts on the character).

So... instead of releasing these preliminary Champion Bios and answering questions about them on the boards... You're going to wait until the "right time" in the "right way" in order to give the "right context" and show your "right thinking" about the champions in question?

Would I be "right" in assuming that this might take a "right good deal of time," considering your team's production rate?

That and there's some things to look forward to already in the next month or so...

Great... Should we expect the same number of new bios (4) and stories (1) during the Harrowing as we saw during Bilgewater?

BeldrSep 24, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Sorry about the late response. We're not putting them out at the moment, we're deciding on the best time and way to share them so it helps inform and we can give some good context to how they work and our thinking behind the pieces (and how they affected our thoughts on the character).

That and there's some things to look forward to already in the next month or so...

And the usual vague and intangible response. I just don't see why this ret-con was ever deemed a necessity, especially when it was never in a stage of near-completion. Amumu

Tesla EffectSep 15, 20152 votes

New champion is coming out after PAX, thats your lore discussion right there. Anything else you have to wait, like seriously can we talk with the devs about lore at the time between lore releases. Can we not treat lore release as an event, rather a natural update that happens frequently to not even call it an event anymore?

DesideriumAug 29, 20151 votes

The whole point of the retcon is so lore can evolve over time and be combined with story-related events. They're not going to "fix" everyone's lore immediately, because you don't have to fix what isn't broken. Everyone will get their spotlight in time.