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@Narrative - Why do you think story in LoL should be different than other games of its kind?

Doctor Ivellius·6/1/2015, 5:54:05 PM·10 votes·1,892 views

With the release of Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm coming up tomorrow, I thought it would be cathartic to talk about Riot's (promised but unfulfilled) approach to story compared with other games with either similar gameplay or to which they've likened League of Legends. I think the comparison shows that Riot is trying to do something deliberately avoided by other games, which leaves me to wonder: why take that approach?

So let's start with the obvious: other MOBAs (games with similar gameplay). I can't say that I've played a ton of them, but we can compare a few briefly. League of Legends grew out of what we might think of as the MOBA codifier, Defense of the Ancients. Given that this game was a custom map--essentially a sanctioned mod--of Blizzard's Warcraft III, there's no real need for storytelling in that game. It's really just a bunch of heroes from that game and ripped from other pop culture sources fighting each other. Nevertheless, there was, a bit: you had the two factions of the Sentinel and the Scourge, with the heroes affiliated with one side or the other, and at the heart of each base sat the titular "Ancient" the opposing team was trying to destroy. The gameplay represented you as a hero of one of these two sides with the gameplay represented your attempts to achieve this goal. By contrast, Riot's current approach to storytelling in League of Legends instead casts you as...well, you're controlling a hero, but the matches aren't really happening and so the gameplay has no narrative weight. It doesn't represent anything at all. Additionally, when Valve released DOTA 2, they tried to expand this story a bit while renaming things due to intellectual property laws instead of removing what was already there.

Note that Heroes of Newerth seems similar. You have the Legion and Hellbourne opposing factions, and they recently included a "War Effort" system for players to complete quests and earn points.

Perhaps the best instance of MOBA storytelling would be traced to Electronic Arts's Dawngate. This is probably a decent overview (and note how League is mentioned unfavorably in the opening--who knows why they're fighting, indeed). The short version is that characters had a story (that players could influence) and that skins were generally intended to reflect lore developments. Did you know League of Legends did that once upon a time? There was an Ionia v. Noxus match way, way back in the old days, and even the Freljord event arguably encouraged players to participate through the use of Summoner icons (that Riot never followed the story of Lissandra's "victory" is a different issue). Though never universal, a number of skins in League came as the result of plot developments: Dragonslayer Jarvan IV, Blood Moon Akali and Shen, Queen Ashe and King Tryndamere... I could keep going, but it used to be reasonably common. Let me be clear that I'm not saying all skins should be based on lore: it's fine to have many that are not, but given Riot's current approach to storytelling it's basically impossible as-is.

But let's say League of Legends doesn't need to be focused on storytelling like any of these other MOBAs that find it important. Can it work as just a collection of characters thrown together in a battle situation? Aren't there successful games that do just that?

Super Smash Bros. is one of Nintendo's popular franchises, pitting their characters in a free-for-all fighting game that's basically just an excuse to see Mario go up against Link, for instance. But--does that mean the matches' gameplay doesn't represent anything from a narrative perspective? Certainly not! In fact, the games are essentially the story of a boy playing with his toys, as the opening sequences and final bosses generally indicate. (If you want a really in-depth look, MattPat of Game Theory talked about the series in detail.) Why would Nintendo bother giving it a story at all? Does it matter why Samus and Pikachu are going after each other? Who cares about story?

So let's look at the soon-to-be elephant in the room: Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm. Again, we have a game that pits characters from a publishers' catalog against each other in a battle situation. (And yes, I know it's a MOBA, but I think their narrative approach is more important here.) But if you've played through the tutorials, you might have noticed that Blizzard wanted to give some justification to the game: the battles take place in an interdimensional vortex known as the Nexus, which apparently links all Blizzard universes and can pull characters at-will from their own. Now the _why _ of fighting is lampshaded, but the game itself represents these heroes battling each other in some otherworldly, connected realm, justifying the gameplay. It's also worth noting that based on the brief backgrounds given to each skin, they represent potential alternate universes as well--say, if Malfurion betrayed the kaldorei instead of Illidan. But who really cares about the story of Heroes of the Storm? Why would Blizzard bother trying to justify these characters connecting as they do?

One final point based on this narrative approach is that it seems to make much less sense for Riot compared with other companies. Nintendo has decades worth of backstory and character development for its franchise characters, as does Blizzard. The characters of League of Legends aren't known / don't even exist outside of the game, so why would we care about throwing them together in a battle royale with no justifying plot? It makes far more sense for Jim Raynor and Diablo to go at it, because if I care about those characters' story, I can go play their games. I can't do the same thing for Caitlyn and Jinx, and Riot's current approach to narrative means that their interactions within the game don't even exist and don't represent anything. Instead, it's a "If these characters were battling against one another on Summoner's Rift, and if these in-game representations accurately match the real characters' personalities, this is how they'd interact in this one particular setting." It would be better if we were getting stories outside the game that show how different characters interact, but we haven't seen much of that to this point.

Geek note: it probably has a lot to do with identification, a psychological process by which people get invested in a character's story over the course of time and care about what happens to him or her. One of the awesome things about video games is that they can take a next step and provide immersion--the experience of being in that world and seeing things through a particular character's eyes. However, there aren't currently stories in League with which to identify, so the process as a whole doesn't work. (Yes, this paragraph is taking shortcuts. So is the whole post.)

So that's the question I'm wondering: why is the narrative approach for League of Legends so different than similar games? I don't really expect this to get feedback from Riot, but maybe it will give voice to some of the other forum-goers who used to care about the stories Riot once put out.

TL; DR: Games with similar gameplay to League of Legends find storytelling more important than Riot does. Games with a similar narrative approach to League of Legends (let's throw a bunch of characters into a free-for-all battle) find storytelling more important than Riot does. Why is Riot's approach to narrative so different?

35 Comments

Legacy of Xion6/1/2015, 6:23:14 PM9 votes

Now this is a well thought out and executed thread that Riot will ignore because Narrative can't refute it.

Why is it different? As someone told me, a woman named Kitae arrived and went "Let's take the League of Legends out of League of Legends!" And thus began the long road of bullshit that culminated in the Great Retcon of 2014. The "reason" for this was to tell "meaningful stories" without being "burdened" by the presence of the League, the Institute of War, and the Summoners. FUN FACT - Every time they talk about Summoners, they call them all powerful gods or some shit that is easily and completely refuted in old lore (and an in-depth explanation of it is even done in an issue of the Journal of Justice about the Summoner/Champion relationship on the Fields of Justice.)

Now, that's it. They want to tell more "meaningful" stories based on "champions" and so far we've gotten like 5 champions with shitty gutted lore, Azir with okay Lore, Xerath with changed lore most dislike (he's not a freedom-ascension wanting slave, not an overly ambitious magician) and then Shadow Isles got gutted (We still dont know what Evelyn is) and now we're all sitting here with Ekko, who has shitty lore which has no depth beyond his comic and Narrative telling us to look at his Ingame Voice Over when, like, they said lore and gameplay were divorced.

So, the answer to your question?

it's because Narrative has no fucking clue what their doing beyond removing the Institute of War and everything related to it.

Sneak Dog6/1/2015, 6:32:34 PM6 votes

Dawngate did it properly. They made shapers feel like people rather than generic one- or two-dimensional characters. They made in-game interactions feel natural, regularly updated their comic, had a vision for their lore, helped the community feel like they mattered with the branching choices, voice-acted all their backgrounds.

It felt like Dawngate cared about its lore.

Then there's Riot happily retconning the core premise, the map, the characters, the immersion, as if they are all meaningless. As if nobody cares about the old anyway, so tossing it out for the new is perfectly acceptable. The two things Riot seems to care about are promoting new champions and sporadically bringing us an interesting story. Everything else, like older champions, just has to make way.

firevalkyrie6/3/2015, 2:48:29 PM5 votes

Another thing to consider in this mess is that story takes an unfortunate backseat to gameplay (MattPat touches on it briefly in his latest theory).

In my opinion, games like MOBA's need story to make the game meaningful. It doesn't mean much to have a female ranger and an eagle go around tag-teaming to kill people. However, there's something compelling about a ranger who lost her twin brother, and, in a heart-warming twist, when she goes to remember him, she finds a young eagle and they become partners in their quest to become warriors for their home. Sure, I love Quinn's gameplay, but the main reason I play her is to listen to Quinn make comments about Valor. "That bird is always showing off," makes me smile. It gives them personality, and it gives me a reason to favor them in Champ Select beyond "I'm only good with champ x".

Games need story. Even in the original Mario, they gave you a story: "Save the princess!" Is it weak? Yes. Does it get you to play? Yes. Without a reason to have a bunch of different people going at it in a battle royale, you might as well be playing chess against yourself. There's no reason. There's no heart. There's no fun.

In short: Riot, focus on story! Gameplay can take the backseat just this once!

The Soulforged6/4/2015, 12:42:22 AM5 votes

Yeah. Riot isn't even trying to have cohesion between story and gameplay. The gameplay is just something that randomly pits the characters together. The story is the actual story of the characters. Dawngate was one MOBA that did a really good job at story gameplay cohesion, as did LoL before the retcon. Dawngate sounded like a game far superior even to old league lore, and I wish it stayed around for me to enjoy.

Thanotos Omega6/4/2015, 1:21:57 AM2 votes

Because Riot is making all their stuff from scratch, All the guys in heroes of the storm have their own franchises with their own stories,

Narasimha6/1/2015, 7:22:31 PM1 votes

One final point based on this narrative approach is tha**t it seems to make much less sense **for Riot compared with other companies. Nintendo has decades worth of backstory and character development for its franchise characters, as does Blizzard. The characters of League of Legends aren't known / don't even exist outside of the game, so why would we care about throwing them together in a battle royale with no justifying plot? It makes far more sense for Jim Raynor and Diablo to go at it, because if I care about those characters' story, I can go play their games. I can't do the same thing for Caitlyn and Jinx, and Riot's current approach to narrative means that their interactions within the game don't even exist and don't represent anything. Instead, it's a "If these characters were battling against one another on Summoner's Rift, and if these in-game representations accurately match the real characters' personalities, this is how they'd interact in this one particular setting." It would be better if we were getting stories outside the game that show how different characters interact, but we haven't seen much of that to this point.

Actually, it makes MORE sense for the reasons you gave. Each character doesnt have a standalone media. They only exist in LoL. This means that no matter what, their personalities are going to be very limited. Just look at any hero from DoTA. Sure, they have a few fun lines, but most of them are pretty damn generic and simple. And that's the crux of it all. They have no incentive to push further, to make champions more memorable or interesting. Because they only exist as character we play for 30 minutes at a time, not people we can delve into or truly hope to understand. Even the JoJ failed in that regard, because only a few champions could be shown.

Motajo6/3/2015, 10:39:55 PM1 votes

{quoted}I think the comparison shows that Riot is trying to do something deliberately avoided by other games, which leaves me to wonder: why take that approach?

It's deliberately avoided by just about every game. I wonder if Riot's going for that "uniqueness", in addition to their other reasons.

OuttaControl566/17/2015, 7:37:51 PM1 votes

{quoted} TL; DR: Games with similar gameplay to League of Legends find storytelling more important than Riot does. Games with a similar narrative approach to League of Legends (let's throw a bunch of characters into a free-for-all battle) find storytelling more important than Riot does. Why is Riot's approach to narrative so different?

This is a bit overboard.

Riot does have lore, and a very unique one, it is just not canonized and confirmed like a bunch of other lore. We had the IoW and a very clear geopolitical dynamic that doesn't get too lost in stupid "dimensional vortex" or "magical powers that be" mumbo jumbo. There was a concrete reason why the IoW was formed and all that Jazz.

Now we have a retcon, and while much of Runeterra has remained unchanged (as hinted by the Freljord civil war and Sion's reveal), despite the disappearance of the IoW. We can extrapolate and envision a Valoran before the IoW, and that setting has tons of lore that just haven't been revealed.

So Riot doesn't find storytelling unimportant, they've just stopped for the moment and they ought to start again. Its not like Riot has crafted a great setting for some really awesome stories. Heroes of the Storm will tell jack squat, on the other hand.

Xano5016/2/2015, 12:44:54 AM1 votes

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