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@Riot, Why Announce A Retcon Months/Years Before You Are Ready To Deliver It?

Impetual··21 votes·1,200 views

This decision never really made any sense to me.

Although I don't like the idea of Runeterra getting retconned (loved that fantasy world as it was), but if it had to be done, it should have been done quick! (like ripping of a band-aid)

For some reason, it seems like the retcon was announced and started months/years before it was complete, which has caused Runeterra to not make any sense.

Runeterra is in a state of flux, in which it doesn't make sense anymore, it's been that way for awhile, with no signs of changing.

Lore can't exist in a world that contradicts itself.

@Riot, I assume you guys are a professional gaming company that knows how to plan things and has timelines/goals for its projects, reworks, retcons, etc...

So here's my question: Will these ridiculous lore debacles be resolved sometime in 2015?

Will the retcon ever actually be over (or if possible, reverted)?

Is there a timeline in place for its completion?(even if you can't tell us what it is, it would be nice to know if there at least** is** one.)

18 Comments

Melancholy Exile10 votes

The best I've been able to piece together from Red posts and the like is that they didn't really consider the importance of releasing new content alongside their announcement and thought that it would take them far less time than it has to act on their plans and introduce material that would demonstrate and sell us on their new direction. Part of me wonders if between the tech issues and general community response they found reason enough to take a step back and reconsider their plans, subsequently delaying things even further and earning them more ill will for appearing to have nothing to show?

It's a thought.

Shíny8 votes

Riot's decisions are so strange to me,they decided to announce the retcon at the worst possible time: After the retcon was set in stone and so no productive conversations could be made but before they had the content to reassure players.

disregardable7 votes

I'd assume it was to explain/excuse the giant decrease in the lore quality+quantity since that point. I wouldn't assume it'll ever be fixed.

Impetual5 votes

You may be right. Maybe I'm just in denial about Riot not even caring about it's lore anymore.

KING OF MASKS5 votes

Zero foresight, sloppy/nonexistent content, and truly awful communication.

These are the only constants when it comes to rito's narrative team.

GreenLore3 votes

Yeah I think that was kinda weird too.

I thought that when they announced that,they'd already have something to back up their stuff.

And while they had the shurima event,they messed up with that because they released short lores for shurima champs without long lores,which just made matters worse than before....

NorthernDruid3 votes

One can hope that they've been spending the time freshing up on all the facts about the lore that they got wrong, and that they're now coming to the point where they've gotta go back on the retcon. That they're taking so long because they wanna do a kickstart to the old lore properly.

LastWildWonder2 votes

I remember seeing some one on the boards remark that when DC comics did their retcon they at least had a whole new story line lined up.

Nybx4life6 votes

New 52 you mean? Yeah, it didn't take too long after their announcement for the comics to start rolling out.

The thing is, for a comic retcon, you start fresh once the first issue comes out. An online game like League has no cycle like that.

For Riot, once that retcon has been announced, they better have been ready to produce, which they haven't. If Riot were DC, it probably would've sunk them. But then again, they got that cushy pillow of LCS to fall back on.

NorthernDruid3 votes

A retcon of this scope deserves it's own game. imposing it over league is spitting on both the people who created runeterra and the fans who loved the de/reconstruction of magic in war.

Nybx4life1 votes

Ah, maybe?

See, my knowledge of games can't find an example of a game that threw out a retcon like how Riot is doing. I mentioned this in another thread, but I felt the retcon could be done canonically, which would allow the merging of lores, and minimizing the adjustment of champion lores/identities.

But, to make a separate game? An identical MOBA with just the old lore? I'm sorry bro, but that seems dumb. Maybe an RPG, but not another MOBA.

NorthernDruid1 votes

The closest retcon in scope is when disney threw out the Star Wars expanded universe, at least as far as I know.

And no, not an identical moba with the old lore, a non-identical moba (or othe type of game) with the new lore. The new lore is the one imposing on existing stories here.

As for the retcon being done canonically, that's still not a good thing since taking out the stuff they want to retcon away is really the only interesting thing about the setting.

Nybx4life2 votes

Kinda. The removal of the League/IOW takes away a core concept, which unfortunately a lot of the champs are attached to. The champs themselves can make interesting characters if you can provide non-League storylines for them, and provide more to the lore.

NorthernDruid5 votes

The champs themselves might make interesting characters. They already did.

The setting fails at being interesting though, because it no longer has a core premise, and that premise was the only real thing to be interested in as far as the setting goes.

Ultimately, when writing Lore for a game, it's not enough with interesting character stories because the game itself isn't about the characters, but the players. You have to weave a powerful enough setting, and right now Runeterra doesn't even have a map, much less a direction. It used to have the premise of de/re-constructing (not quite sure which) powerful magic used in war, which was really cool and kinda unique, but it no longer has that because it was too constraining and because the narrative team had gotten facts about the setting wrong.

Nybx4life5 votes

Think we're on the same road here.

It is true that the world itself is lacking, both in the past (not as much, but it could've used more love), and the present. The concept is what held things together, brought the champs together, gave interactions between champs. Same with the JoJ.

Now, some of the lore events help set things up in terms of setting, but I think it's slacking still.

Major Sparkles1 votes

The IoW and summoners were a dumb idea to begin with. Seriously didn't make a lick of sense. I just hope this retcon turns out to be an improvement.

Nybx4life9 votes

This, I disagree with.

I have the mindset that any and every idea ever made, with proper planning and development, can be made into something good. The thing with the past lore was that while it was a bit silly, it showed promise and had developed characters, and a fairly developed world (which was still growing).

This can only be an improvement if they manage to reach that same level of development and surpass it, which one can only hope it does for this game's sake.

Major Sparkles1 votes

To each their own. Having a group of champions that worked with these creepy guys in black ropes and in a never ending battlefield really didn't jive with me. The whole idea of some sort of Geneva Convention of champions was really strange.

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