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New Removal of Summoners Makes LoL Feel Far Less Immersive

Impetual··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

LordHippoman8 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

Sneak Dog10 votes

I do agree, individual summoners never felt important. But the concept of being a summoner in this world did create a good immersion Imo. You weren't just a viewer, you were connected to the institute, a summoner there. When you played a match, the champions talked to you, a summoner. They tried to force ideas on you (Cho'Gath), asked you questions (Nocturne) and shared their thoughts with you. I think this was a very good medium. Now hearing the champion talk has so much less meaning. It's basically the champions monologueing because they feel like it.

Also, the JoJ did set up faction battles and I was honestly expecting a grand factions system to come up at any point where you pick a faction to ally yourself with and you fight with faction-specific champions in pvp to determine the result of a war. Then I realised they were slowly phasing out the IoW and I just stopped expecting or even hoping for this. What meaning has a war if the only things in Runeterra to care about are the champions, not the factions?

TheRainInSpain2 votes

Individual Summoners never felt important I think because Riot never wanted them to be important. They had a shot at differentiating their game from other MOBA's by making their players, ahem, Summoners integral to the storyline and game. But they squandered that on Esports and milking their cash shop. I mean, it's a fun game, but what makes it any different from other MOBA's?

Jamaree5 votes

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

Junkο3 votes

Actually before, half the champion had the last 2-3 lines of their bio say why they joined the league. Now some champions like Gnar literally have no reason to be fighting others, even if we still keep the summoners lore.

Motajo3 votes

There was a thread somewhere made by CupcakeTrap that pondered possible reasons for numerous champs to join. I guess it's moot now, but it's there.

12tales3 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...

AkaiNeko44 votes

All I can really say is that most people around here seem to disagree with you. Clearly there are a lot of people really liked/cared about the Lore.

Part of it may be the indication of laziness and incompetence on Riot's part - after three-ish years of decent Lore and two years of crap and silence, the big thing is, not a big new addition to the Lore or some crazy new event or throwback to the Noxus/Ionian conflict, but the announcement that most of the preexisting Lore now doesn't exist and we're not replacing it anytime soon. So where before we had a really good base to work from, a fairly even split between good, meh and bad material from that and and a lot of fairly reasonable hope, we now do not have that base, the material is in a very uncertain place and we've got very little reasonable hope.

My two cents, anyway.

12tales1 votes

All I can really say is that most people around here seem to disagree with you. Clearly there are a lot of people really liked/cared about the Lore.

Yeah. I just have a hard time not thinking of it as some weird form of stockholm syndrome.

Part of it may be the indication of laziness and incompetence on Riot's part - after three-ish years of decent Lore and two years of crap and silence, the big thing is, not a big new addition to the Lore or some crazy new event or throwback to the Noxus/Ionian conflict, but the announcement that most of the preexisting Lore now doesn't exist and we're not replacing it anytime soon. So where before we had a really good base to work from, a fairly even split between good, meh and bad material from that and and a lot of fairly reasonable hope, we now do not have that base, the material is in a very uncertain place and we've got very little reasonable hope.

Pretty sure the Shurima event was the highest quality addition to the lore that's been made in years.

Cookiehime9 votes

Pretty sure the Shurima event was the highest quality addition to the lore that's been made in years.

Production values were far greater. I liked the art and music but I thought the script, narration and sequencing of events were not that good. Some stories in the JoJ had better quality writing imo. For example, the sacrificial ritual in Zaun, which will always be my fave article. There was a lot of showing and almost no telling. Though, I think people who did not follow Void lore would not be able to comprehend what was going on too well.

You could learn a lot about the characters in just that article. For example, I knew that Malz does not truly see the future anymore but rather "makes it happen" by doing what the Void orders him to do. That whole event was orchestrated and was not really the outcome of "fate's will." This is best illustrated when the journalists interrogated one of the witnesses present at the scene who believed that Malz predicted Kassadin's arrival. But the thing is, Malz abducted Kass's daughter to sacrifice her in Zaun, a place where live breaking news can be displayed on giant TV screens, and noone truly knew the girl's identity. Of course, Kass would come to the rescue. It was only logical. But people were fooled into believing Malzahar's "prediction." Personally, I thought the writing in the article was pretty good and rather clever. Great setting with subtle information. Lots of showing and not much telling. I really, really liked that story and it was, imo, quite praiseworthy.

AkaiNeko45 votes

Perhaps in the sense that it doesn't really have much competition....?

But no:

(1) It's all pretty stupid, IMO. Sivir doesn't act much like a hardened mercenary, the giant snake trap gives Cass magic powers rather than killing her, how did they survive Renekton and Xerath escaping, the random super convenient fountain of life or whatever that Azir uses to save Sivir, Azir coming back to life in the first place because REASONS and then somehow ascending because he saved Sivir, which somehow causes Shurima to come back....? It was ridiculous and poorly thought out....

(2) ....and it was poorly done within that, between the shitty script/narration and the bunch of Champion character bios replaced with <100 word summaries, including people who aren't even freaking mentioned in the Shurima-event materials. Though I will certainly grant that the videos looked alright.

(3) And of course (and this is the big one, believe it or not) this story being told in no way necessitated that the League not exist. All of it could have happened in the pre-retcon world. People could still do things outside the League, and in fact it was important that they often did.

For the record, that's why I spoke up there as if the Shurima event wasn't even part of The Big Thing: It in no way served to demonstrate the possibilities of a League-free League of Legends; it was just the yearly event. There wasn't some political wrangling or threat of apocalypse that somehow couldn't have happened with the IoW around.

And we still haven't gotten anything like that, natch. Because apparently Riot's current Lore department sucks or they have zero respect/concern for us. Or both.

12tales2 votes

I rather liked it, personally.

Chacun à son goût, I guess.

(3) And of course (and this is the big one, believe it or not) this story being told in no way necessitated that the League not exist. All of it could have happened in the pre-retcon world. People could still do things outside the League, and in fact it was important that they often did.

Judging a work on the merits of the absence of other content seems a bit odd to me. I don't think anyone said "We're retconning the IoW because we want to do this Shurima Event thingy."

AkaiNeko41 votes

It's extremely important, actually. See, Riot did this huge, controversial thing with the justification that it would allow them to do some awesome shit with the Lore. The Shurima event happened alongside this announcement. Surely it's not unreasonable, especially given the time frame involved coughtwoyearscough, to expect that it might be used as a demonstration, a proof-of-concept to help boost confidence in this bold new direction the Lore is being taken? Instead, not only was shit most emphatically not awesome, it also had jack to do with the announcement, making the Lore team look even less put-together than usual.

12tales1 votes

Surely it's not unreasonable, especially given the time frame involved coughtwoyearscough, to expect that it might be used as a demonstration, a proof-of-concept to help boost confidence in this bold new direction the Lore is being taken?

Well,

it... had jack to do with the announcement

I think you answered your own question.

Riot had been working on the Shurima event for at least four months prior to the announcement that the lore was being retconned. I see no reason to suspect that the decisions had anything to do with one another.

AkaiNeko42 votes

See, that's exactly the problem. Four months? Four fucking months? Lore's been frozen for two years. What in God's were they doing? What in God's name were they thinking? Did they get halfway through the Shurima event and throw their hands up with a cry of "FUCK this League of Legends business, we can do so much more without it" and then decide that that didn't necessitate any particular effort to bring the current event into line with this vision? Because they've been removing mentions of the League from VOs for a lot longer than four months, so I'm pretty sure that's bunk.

Again, it really feels as if they don't a clue what they're doing more than anything, like no one thought that maybe, just maybe, people might need some convincing of the soundness of their plan. Given that the guy in charge of it all apparently got fired, I doubt I'm alone in my assessment.

12tales1 votes

Well, all I can say is that I have no idea why Riot hasn't hired you.

Cookiehime2 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.

Solidair31 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.

Legendari1 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.

Motajo4 votes

Neglecting lore won't--didn't--make any of those things better.

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