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Is it just me or is the lore getting harder and harder to get into?

Rivini·3/25/2017, 4:11:16 AM·50 votes·3,153 views

With all the frequent changes to the lore, it's becoming increasingly more and more difficult to keep track of everything. It's even worse for older players like myself who have been here since season 1, since we were used to what the lore originally was, including the Institute of War and summoners. It makes me wonder why I should even bother reading the latest bios and stories for champions/places when they could change yet again at any time.

To state for the record, I find the writing itself to be very well-written. The writers working at Riot are amazing. As an amateur writer, I wish I could write on their level.

That's what upsets me about the constant lore changes the most. I want to continue enjoying the writing, but I can't find myself doing so because everything I read doesn't ever feel concrete. Anything can change at the drop of a hat and that brings a glaring lack of consistency. I really don't want to label it as unprofessional, so I'll go with my instinct that the writers are simply bored.

How do I know that Lux and Ezreal will remain separate relationship-wise when they had previously been implied as being a couple for years? In a month or two, will Riot suddenly decide to wed them when Urgot's rework launches because reasons? Will Katarina become Swain's chained up, subdued, golden bikini slave? Will Lulu be changed into a genius librarian who reads all day and is loved by all of Bandle City? Will Twitch start taking baths?

WHO KNOWS!

This is why I can't be bothered to spend the time to read the new lore. If what I read isn't going to stick, I won't stick with it.

FeelsBadMan

66 Comments

ModCaptainMårvelous3/25/2017, 9:34:01 AM30 votes

Here's my opinion: You're used to the status quo.

Riot, up until the last year/year and half, has done fuckall with lore. Its sat there. We'd get 1-2 color stories, sure, but after that it was useless. The retcon was handled poorly and overall it was just laid out to pasture.

Suddenly, in the last year, Riot shifts into turbo and we're getting massive stories, large-scale lore reworks and more. Five-to-ten champs per city are getting bio updates and short stories. Cities and nations get massive reworks. You see where I'm going with this. For a community that had to make-do with a drip-feed of information, someone broke the handle and now we're drowning in lore.

The other problem is that despite the retcon, things that have existed for years have sat and people have grown attached to them like mold. Yes, Lux-Ezreal was outdated. Yes, plot-hooks were cut off or new ones added. The problem was that with nothing to grab on, you grabbed the old rock. Now that you can grab something else, you've held onto the old rock for so long that (even if it is better-written), you miss the old stuff. We've spent so long filling in the blanks and wanting to know the resolution to ancient stuff that having it dropped hurts.

I'm assuming things aren't going to get retconned. Riot's hired a massive lore team and a super star sentai squadron that is going to keep working on everything. The real question you should be asking is how long we have to be reminded that there is old lore in some of the drywall before everything is replaced and we have modern, updated league lore.

LordHippoman3/25/2017, 4:25:47 AM18 votes

I think it's only hard to get into if you're used to the old Lore. I get tripped up often with what's canon and noncanon (kalamanda, please) and have to check fairly frequently.

For someone who's just coming in, it's so much easier to say "Read Universe" than to say "Issues 1, 2, and 12 of the JoJ, 3 Judgements, both Bios, and the Forum RP event".

Axle the Beast3/25/2017, 6:28:38 AM13 votes

You've effectively touched on the essential, glaring problem with Riot's entire policy on the game right now.

It seems like there's a deep-seated lack of respect for established content in the game coming from Riot that just feels strange, what with drastic reworks (where we used to get conservative ones that went across a lot better), and of course the big lore rewrite. It's very weird to have Riot looking at this product they've made which has achieved basically stupendous success in its existing form, and just to look at so many different kits or stories or whatever and say "Yeah, we need to completely scrap that." Doing that is essentially utterly backwards thinking.

The best evidence of how out of touch they are with their own game is when they justified it (when the big lore reset happened), and tried to reassure everyone, by referencing DC Comics' New 52... which was DC's lore rewrite. The fact that they actually said "don't worry guys it'll be like the New 52" shows how little they actually understand, because the New 52 was super widely criticized and has now been reverted (DC's gone back to their old stories).

It might have been okay if the new lore was objectively BETTER, but it's not; Poppy and Galio have less interesting stories, and they effectively took away Thresh's unknown, scary intrigue and gave him a backstory that amounts to a weird fantasy analogue of torturing animals as a child. Not to mention utterly scrapping Skarner's (AWESOME) lore entirely. Some characters have been improved, but lots have been made worse and less interesting as a result of all this.

It's amateur writing, plain and simple. On a basic, character construction level, or maybe with their sentence by sentence word structure, Riot is good at writing, but their skill at handling a world or even basically respecting the fans of that world is effectively nonexistent. The only way their lore rewrite would have been even slightly justifiable is if they had done a ton of it ALL AT ONCE, because as you said it's almost impossible to even follow it at this point.

If at any point in the future I do become a successful game designer and put out a multiplayer game like League, and you play it and recognize my name, but I happen to be making these same mistakes, please punch me in the face. summoner 7

Mira Arya Enthe3/25/2017, 3:39:12 PM9 votes

Retcon Retcon Retcon Retcon Retcon

I think they forget that the Institute and Summoners is what made LoL unique. Otherwise it is every other light vs dark castle empire with a steam punk city, mini asia, frozen north and egypt below.

As a roleplayer and RP host LoL is becoming a bad investment for stories.

GreenLore3/25/2017, 9:49:59 AM9 votes

In general they have so far not retconned anything that was introduced after the retcon was announced,so pretty much everything that is in the current lore format(full bio+color story) seems to be safe from retcons,wheras everything else is up to change.

And honestly you need to keep in mind that we also used to fill out the blanks. Lux and Ezreal was implied,but never confirmed,so it not being a thing isn't even a real retcon(and in the end it is always possible that this will be something that'll be explored later on)

Mogarl3/25/2017, 4:51:32 AM5 votes

I don't think there's going to be any major retconning of the newer stuff. Riot seems to be pretty cautious about updating champion's bios so far, avoiding champions with major involvement in unexplored regions. Examples are Sona Demacia - Ionia XinZhao Demacia - Noxus - (where ever he came from before that?) Singed Zaun - Noxus - Ionia Heimerdinger Piltover - Bandle Ziggs Piltover - Bandle All of these champions would have had major risk involved with updating their lore before, and Riot is carefully navigating around them, I would assume, so that they're lore doesn't get altered a needless amount.

Also I would bet that Twitch takes baths a lot. He's probably really confused by all the people complaining that "You don't smell right" and "You need to take a bath". Doesn't everyone smell like raw sewage after bathing in it?

Wyrmblade3/25/2017, 6:00:53 PM3 votes

Will Katarina become Swain's chained up, subdued, golden bikini slave?

No. Urgot's.

crzymdscntst3/26/2017, 6:13:52 AM3 votes

There are some character changes that make sense and are WAAAY BETTER!

And then you get a crappy character/lore revamp that trashes any faith you had in Riot.

Trundle was a big one for me. I think they could've done so much better, riding on his original design. He wasn't some frost troll cliche. He was a cursebearer, he endured a curse so his people wouldn't suffer. THAT could have played much more intelligently into the current lore reworks.

Janna 's retcon was another crapshoot. Oh look, now she makes less sense. Before: Orphan on the streets of Zaun who's choking on the fumes of the city awakened an innate power of air. She wasn't some lost deification. She was a mage who's source put her smack in the center of Zaun lore about the smog.

The lore needs less open-ended stories. Characters die, we don't need "And this person disappeared" in literally every story. Caitlyn's was a notable segue into a stealthy thief character introduction, but was never really followed up. It stagnates the lore way too much. Every character is bound to have loose ends, but some of these loose ends need to be re-looped back into modern lore. A villain of one character introduced later. That's heavily reliant on character design too I realize, but it's just too much information if we don't see the inserted party for 5+ years.

It's very healthy of them to have removed the Institute of War. This shouldn't read like Twisted Metal's "kill everyone else and get your wish granted". It's really not that at all.

a jovial pug3/25/2017, 5:14:03 AM3 votes

I know what you mean, you get attached to the original lores. & when it's retconned to a certain extent, it's difficult to process. Personally I'm extremely enjoying the lore updates recently, every day I'm always waiting, eager for the next updates. But yes, the changes of what was & what's now can be hard to get into.

Just really want to know so much more about Runeterra & the champs, see their lores updated in continuation of what has been written, & not retconned to the point of changing them/a lot. Just have to adapt to what's new I guess, & so far, what's new & updated- I like them. The writing is just wonderful!

Hollow Miracles3/26/2017, 2:45:57 AM2 votes

Will Katarina become Swain's chained up, subdued, golden bikini slave?

I need fanart.

I need it

WinTheWarOnPants3/25/2017, 9:10:53 PM2 votes

I'm not a fan either. Not only is the new lore poorly written(tons of cliches, awkward sentence structure, hard to follow/vague scene description etc), but they keep making changes with no respect for the characters they are writing about. They make changes to champion motives and personalities for no reason other than "because they can". It's like comic book writers that take over writing a character and completely change them so they can separate them selves from the original creator. Do they care that tons of people care for the character? No. They just want to make "their own story", but their job is work with an already existing character, so they cannibalize the character. Sometimes it's ignorance of the character, sometimes it's just lazy/poor writing skills, and sometimes it's legit malice for the original creator or the character they were "forced" to work on. either way it's the fans that lose. Changes have to be made to the lore because it needs to make sense and room needs to be made for new champs, but this can be done very easily without changing the characters. Not to mention the disconnect that is created when a champion you play and understand does something completely out of character in the lore. It just leaves you thinking "that's not how (insert champion here) behaves..." which is the exact opposite of what "lore" in a game is supposed to do.

Euthenaasia3/25/2017, 11:17:52 PM2 votes

I feel the same way. Although the lore now is very well written it's completely redefining the champions. Janna went from being a sorceress to a shapeshifting goddess which isn't represented in her kit whatsoever (nor do I want it to).

TyrekGoldenspear3/25/2017, 4:14:47 PM2 votes

They only retconned once.

Besides, it's simple to seperate lore into two universes. The one with the Institute of War and one without.

That's what I do when I write fanfictions anyway. I like having the option to make a more contained story or write a larger one.

Tormentula3/25/2017, 5:43:05 AM1 votes

I feel ya, I get used to new lore changing only because new lore often expands what little lore the old ones had. For example, I didn't mind the kalista lore change because it expanded on her character, or elise's, which kept the theme going but expanded on her past, why she's doing what she's doing, and how she relates to the black rose rather than just saying she does it.

The only issue I have with keeping up with lore, is whenever riot adds or separates a relationship (friend or foe) with new lore updates (like WW and soraka having no knowledge of each other anymore, and kinda forgetting to fix raka's lore in the process.)

{quoted}

Will Katarina become Swain's chained up, subdued, golden bikini slave?

....I can't draw but somebody out there can... what have you done.

ModAcademy Kayn3/25/2017, 8:33:46 AM1 votes

Real quick, when was it implied that Ez and Lux had a relationship? I know there was the picture, but that could easily be Ezreal simply having a Crush on Lux.

grug3/25/2017, 4:27:09 AM1 votes

ohai

is this rivini from SFV?

ANELE

Swaid3/25/2017, 3:52:49 PM1 votes

Warwick will always be Singed's former mentor in my heart.

UnboundCreator3/25/2017, 5:19:31 PM1 votes

Boohoo.. Don't read the lore then?

Lordk0z3/26/2017, 1:39:16 AM1 votes

Once the dust settles and the new lore is set in place, it'll be easier.