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New Removal of Summoners Makes LoL Feel Far Less Immersive

Impetual·10/16/2014, 9:04:30 AM·24 votes·2,217 views

The removal of Summoners removes the reason why each game should feel important. There isn't really any reason (lore wise) why you should want your favorite champions to win.

Riot seems to want to make their game into some kind of arena simulator, where we see how each battle plays out in a "what if" situation. No emotional investment needed outside of "I wanna win this one".

Before, one could imagine that you (and 4 other summoners) were calling on your favorite champions in order to prevent some kind of global catastrophe.

For those of us that like role playing games, that role playing aspect to League of Legends was a huge source of immersion that set it apart from other Mobas. We weren't the champions in the game, but we were the Summoners working with those champions. That was far more interesting.

Being a Summoner used to mean something. It meant that you were a part of the League of Legends, but with Riot's recent lore changes. Summoner = Generic Gamer.

How lame.

20 Comments

LordHippoman10/16/2014, 1:35:35 PM8 votes

I'll be honest, I never felt the individual summoners had a huge impact on the game. The concept of summoners, enormous. The Institute of War, huge. But individual summoners? I never thought of myself as a character in the story, because the individual summoners were pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things, it felt.

There are exceptions, I remember them playing up "Summoner Guardsman Bob" when he completely demolished in his Udyr play during the Ionia/Noxus match, but that sort of event was long gone.

I think the strength of the summoner concept was more in the collective of them and how they represented different factions. There was never an event that was like "Well, Renekton is taking summoner XxXSMOKEBIGXxX out to dinner for getting so many wins with him!". "BoobieLUVR just helped Ionia gain new traffic laws by winning with Ahri 10 times in a row!"

There's a lot that could have been done with that "players are characters" concept, but really calling the currency "influence" and tacking a "summoner" before your name on most of their e-mails never really had a huge influence on me.

There's still definitely a reason to root for your favorite champs though. You like the characters. Works well enough in books, movies, and other non-interactive media. I didn't need to be Mrs. Weasly to (Harry Potter 7 spoilers if you somehow haven't already heard them) enjoy the hell out of "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH". And related to Lore, as disappointing as it was, there was really no way winning with your character really effected the story outside of that one Ionia/Noxus match. Otherwise whoever was currently broken would suddenly have the entire plot turn towards how great they were. And presumably those Yorick bugs would just mean he was laying on the ground getting run over by like 100 cars in a row. Alas, poor Yorick

Jamaree10/16/2014, 10:25:17 AM5 votes

Before, there was no reason for half of the champions who were there to be there, hence why they retconned.

12tales10/16/2014, 10:40:06 AM3 votes

I'm still weirded out by how many people apparently cared about the lore. I mean, I love me some cRPGs or tabletops, but I never saw the lore in League as anything more than an amusing distraction. Most of the character lore was crap (who knows where Rammus comes from? We sure don't, but I guess he fights in the League of Legends now!), and other than the JoJ (which I loved), there wasn't really any quality content being produced outside of the one pagers in-client.

And altho I am kinda sad that the IoW is going away, since I thought it was a really cool premise, this isn't something that gnaws at my soul like it seems to for other posters here. I'm pretty sure I've literally never thought of Summoners or the IoW while actually playing - LoL was never billed as a cRPG, and I've never felt moved to enjoy it as I would a cRPG. It's a MOBA that I play because I like the gameplay of MOBAs.

Honestly, I find it strange that someone who requires an emotional investment to enjoy a game was even capable of scraping together some sort of appreciation for LoL in the first place. The lore was sparse and low quality out of game, and had literally nothing to do with the game itself beyond trivialities like emotes. Seems like trying to take a bath in an inch of water. Where yeah, you're immersed less if someone drains the tub, but really...

Cookiehime10/17/2014, 1:44:33 AM2 votes

I'll miss lines like Skarner saying "We think alike, Summoner" or "I see the wisdom in that" or Veigar telling me "Your commands tire me!"

But it does not matter now. There may be other games out there that could possibly have that kind of immersion. For the moment, LoL, and I mean the game itself, does not have a premise. But I'll just check in to see if the game comes up with a new premise.

Solidair310/16/2014, 12:11:26 PM1 votes

I had a tough time feeling immersed when I knew that as soon as I was done with one I'm just going to queue up for another.

Really hard to make each game have the same weight of importance when I'm playing a bunch of matches in a row.

Legendari10/16/2014, 7:01:21 PM1 votes

IMO, they have bigger fish to fry than anything lore-related. I certainly don't play LoL for the lore or role-playing, I play for the competitiveness. I'd be much happier if they fixed issues with connectivity, East Coast ping, trolling, etc. so that I can actually enjoy playing the game.

Let's face it, the immersion is pretty much broken immediately anyway the moment some 12-year-old in his parent's basement starts spamming "yolo swag 420" and tells you to get cancer and die right before he afks and throws the game.