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Questions about...well, Narrative

Lapison·11/3/2014, 4:25:54 AM·2 votes·1,670 views

I keep hearing people saying how Narrative isn't doing the things they should be doing, and that the old Narrative team was really bad at communication. As a relative newcomer to the League community (I started playing at the start of S4), I'm not sure I fully understand the frustration that other people have towards Narrative.

I was around for the retcon, and that was really disappointing; however, I'm sort of in the dark about how Narrative even got to this place where people are just super frustrated and annoyed.

Does someone want to just give me a rundown about how Narrative's screwed up, and how they could fix it? I'm not trying to place blame on anyone, but I'm just seeing a lot of frustration, and I really want to see where all this started.

Specific examples would also be nice; apparently, Karma and Trundle reworks really hurt, as well as the Freljord changes. Where did those come from? What were they even? Why were they so controversial?

I'm just really ignorant of what's behind all this; anyone want to enlighten a poor soul?

10 Comments

Dunderflump11/3/2014, 8:00:50 AM9 votes

Basically, the Lore team needs to take lessons in communication from people like IronStylus, Xelnath, etc. They say virtually nothing over the course of years, then they think they make sweeping changes (and by changes, I mean outright story removal without any indication of compensation) with zero backlash. And when the downvotes come, they disappear to go complain on twitter.

With the Lore team there's never any discourse. There's "We're doing this because we're geniuses and if you don't like it you can suck it up". One of the few times they've responded to huge backlash was to rewrite Jayce's lore so Viktor's character wasn't completely ruined.

TerraRising11/3/2014, 7:07:09 AM9 votes

Now for some of the specific examples:

• Karma's rework in mid-2012 had two omissions: Her fans (which more people cried about at the time) and the "League of Legends" from her story. It also altered her character from a woman of meditation and peace who negotiated the safe passage of survivors of a Noxian attack into an Ionian freedom fighter who uses her "peaceful" powers to kill a Noxian commander to save her village. (A better story, I think, but one that was not the Karma people knew).

• Soraka's reworked lore changed her from an celestial being who sought cosmic revenge against Warwick for his chemical weapons during the Ionia-Noxus war into a creature from an "enchanted grove" who was betrayed by Warwick, the bounty hunter. Soraka's lore change, through the altering of Warwick's story, also ruined Singed's bio. Singed's story has not been canon since then, and Narrative has shown any desire to fix that plot hole in the lore (another reason they've given us to doubt their abilities and intentions).

• The Freljord patch changed nearly a dozen champions, but I'll focus on Trundle.

Visually, Trundle went from being an ugly, diseased troll with a poop tower into a generic ice troll (much like the Wampa from Star Wars.) His story also changed from a sympathetic, underdog type character, into a generic ice-based brute. All this, despite promises by members of that team that Trundle would remain the same (hence why they were compelled to deliver a "traditional" skin since so much about Trundle was changed.)

I feel like I'm downplaying much of the anger and resentment against Trundle's change. Time will do that. However, after a year and a half, mentioning what Narrative and the ChampUp team did to Trundle will still bring out feelings of anger and bitterness among fans of the original Plague Troll.

Of course, the year and a half of silence from Narrative and the insistence that marketing tools like the Jinx music video, the Braum poro cartoon, the "Twist of Fate" and "New Dawn" cinematics, the Spirit Guard Udyr comic that introduced us to the (as of yet undelivered) Ao Shin dragon champion all count as "lore" have not helped matters at all.

TerraRising11/3/2014, 6:15:26 AM9 votes

Prepare yourself. This is a long one.

Note: What I'm about to write full of hyperbole. It isn't necessarily positive or polite, but it's a reflection of how being a fan of League Lore has felt over the past three years. Whether or not this was the intent of the various Narrative/Lore teams is not relevant to the feelings surrounding it.

Riot's Narrative team has this sort of historical cycle: • Narrative has a big period of silence, where it feels like they're sitting in an ivory tower showering their fans with pure contempt. • They make an announcement or a change in policy. • Said announcement or change is met by the community with the enthusiasm of a dentist appointment with Jason Voorhees, DDS. • Narrative team apologizes for their previous silence, promises to communicate more and produce more content. • When questions pop up about Narrative's plans, they make claims that "it's for the best" and "we really care about our fans." • When called out on this, Narrative goes back into silent mode to contemplate their next method of making their fans angry

Again, whether or not this was the intent of the Narrative team is not the question. It's how it felt being a fan of the League lore.

It started with the end of the Journal of Justice and the League Judgments, continued on through the Freljord event and, after a year and a half of silence, culminated in the Dev Blog on September 5, 2014. Later comments, including a really inappropriate and flippant movie quote, did not help matters at all.

That's the general history. It's unfortunate that the current Narrative team has a lot of damage done by previous teams to repair, but that's their cross.

I'll put the specific examples in another post.

Terra Booma11/3/2014, 6:11:50 PM7 votes

Welcome to the lore forums, here's what you need to know

Riot is working on new and more advanced ways to do story telling.

And they just need us to have faith in them for a bit.

Insert above two lines into just about every red post that comes here every now and a blue moon.

I'm a s3 lore fan and I've gotten frustrated at this point.

And the real problem is that the with the exception of Carnival knights (thanks for at least trying to talk to us, sorry if we scared you off. D:) The only interaction we've had is Riot removing the lore.

Not that they have anything ready to replace it with ready to go.

But don't worry. We just need to trust them! They're working on new and advanced ways of story teling.

See the vicious circle?

In all honesty we're not blameless, we tend to release all of our anger at whichever red shows up for a little while, thus scaring them off and starting another vicious circle

TerraRising11/3/2014, 7:50:31 AM7 votes

Now, how can Narrative fix these rifts:

Communicate more.

One of the problems with proposed changes from Narrative has been how they've historically sprung these changes out of nowhere, then act exasperated when they're not instantly accepted by the lore community. It's especially infuriating when Narrative keeps asking for more time and faith that they're doing something that we'll like when they've historically delivered silence, broken promises and incomplete storytelling.

Frankly, there should be an immediate halt to all possible stories to find out, from us, where the easiest path to take with their tales. Also, they should find that out by asking us our opinions and thoughts on certain things. To be blunt, this current Narrative team should be talking to us until we're sick of it.

Deliver content.

Except for the Sion: Reborn story, there's not been much coming out of Narrative that resembles "lore." Sure, the Shurima event had those cinematics and we've seen Azir and Xerath's rewritten stories, but what of the other fifteen Champion bio changes proposed through the PBE (the other 7 Shurima champs and the 8 from the Shadow Isles). This stuff shouldn't take this long to finish and release, website issues or not.

There are plenty of stories that can be told without having to build the entire world or wait for the animation teams to have free time. Walls of text, comics and other methods are perfectly okay as means of telling stories. Narrative should just start telling them and stop making excuses.

  1. Stop asking for blind faith and give us something to prove your intentions.

One of the most frustrating things about being a lore fan is that every time Narrative needs to sell something, they pop up with promises they eventually break, apologies for silence they wind up not being sincere about, and repeated requests for faith and patience when they've not deserved. Speaking only for myself, if they want me to trust them to deliver on their promises, then they need to show me that they're going to deliver and not just hide when they're done selling what they need to sell. Frankly, I've not seen anything to justify them asking for my blind faith, so they're not getting it. I've been burned too many times to put my trust in them, much less the entire company.

Narrative doing all that would be a start, and would help the majority of lore fans accept what's coming from the team.

Shokah11/3/2014, 7:11:38 PM3 votes

I got a mighty laugh when I saw Xelnath come into the Xerath thread and highlight exactly why the old lore fans are unhappy with his current story. Leave it to the non-lore team to get to the heart of the matter apparently.

Yeah some reds have eating some major flack but it's not like they shouldn't know it's coming by now.

GenoXx11/3/2014, 2:50:19 PM3 votes

Well, you can also take a good look at the number of red posts this section of "Boards" have atm...... http://darwinisms.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/silence-speaks-79426-500-550.jpg