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@Riot, can we have a constructive conversation about the decision to disconnect story from gameplay?

Impetual·2/7/2015, 7:34:51 AM·20 votes·828 views

I'm gonna try to keep this thread as constructive as possible in hopes a Red response. Fellow Summoners, please, try to do the same.

For me as a player, I used to find game-play much more engaging when the games I played could be considered part of Runeterra's story. The idea that I was a summoner working in concert with my chosen champion really helped me get into the game, and explained the reasoning for summoner spells existing. It didn't feel like I was dominating a champion, it felt like I was working with a champion, and directing them towards victory.

Now it just feels like another game - which it is, but it used to feel like more.

I get that many players don't care about the role-playing aspect that League of Legends used to have going for it, but I'm sure that many did. I sure as hell did.

Also, I want to be clear on this: even if you guys at Riot felt it was getting kind of tiring trying to write champions into joining the League of Legends, it never really felt that way to me. The Institute of War felt like a unique place where people from many different backgrounds would come together (many of which would have conflicting goals) in order to try to gain some kind of knowledge or strategic advantage, or just plain get revenge. It was a cool place and I'm pretty disappointed that it's only going to exist as fan-fiction from now on.

And let's be real here, nothing in the old lore made Summoners out to be some kind of all powerful beings. There was still fighting between nations when they were around, it just had to be done more cleverly.

For such an awesome premise, it's pretty lame that it was just written out of existence, especially considering that Riot currently seems to want to preserve the term summoner, while pretty much deleting the meaning of the word "summoner"...

It pains me that Summoner just means "person who plays League of Legends" now. It felt more immersive when summoners were part of the lore.

** I think both players and developers alike can agree, that the term "summoner" means less now than it ever did within the context of the story of the League of Legends. As a player, that feels pretty horrible. **

Anyways, are any of you Rioters able to shed some more light on why th**e decision to separate lore from game-play was made, and what the particular reasons for that decision were?

What kind of things are you hoping to gain from the retcon?

It just feels like it's been a long time since the retcon decision was made, and there still hasn't been any kind of payoff from it (from a lore fan's perspective), just loss.

I mean really, is there any good content that we've gained from the retcon that we couldn't have gained if it never happened? In my opinion, no. So Riot, what was the point?

If I'm missing how the new content is better and couldn't exist pre retcon, **Please, help me understand. I understand if you think this sounds sarcastic, but please, realize that it is not. I am asking candidly: **

What positive story benefits have players actually experienced so far that would not have been possible without the retcon?

4 Comments

Sneak Dog2/7/2015, 11:31:37 AM12 votes

What positive story benefits have players actually experienced so far that would not have been possible without the retcon?

None. Narrative is probably buried in things to do. Changing their structure, rewriting the old world into the new one, rewriting champions, writing new events, writing larger plots, figuring out how the Noxian-Ionian war works in the new lore et cetera.

They've lots to do and are unwilling to pause and discuss why they are doing this with the players. Apparently internal discussions and a dev blog sufficed to just retcon the very base of the lore. My apologies if I sound negative here, it's just frustrating.

I miss the immersion. I think games have the potential to be one of the strongest mediums for storytelling due to the interactivity, but Riot seems content with tossing this out. I can live with that, but I am disappointed.

What I can't live with is that they haven't really given a lot of reasons for doing so. From the dev blog, read it if you haven't yet to get the full context of the quotes, I got some awful and some good arguments for the retcon, but do they warrant such drastic action? Hadn't nerfing the IoW sufficed?

very new champion needed a reason to join and remain in the League, and as their number grew, the net result was that over time the world started to feel, well, small, and eventually less interesting.

So it feels small, why does that lead to less interesting? Why did champions have to remain in the League? Every champion needed a reason to join. Now every champion needs to be associated with a major faction, in a friendly or hostile way, to be relevant. I can see how the second is less limiting though.

The institutions we’d designed fostered creative stagnation, limiting the ways that champions, factions and Runeterra itself could grow and change.

Any major force will change the way things grow. The institution didn't stop growth, it affected it. Noxus limits the ways Demacia could grow and change, right? On the other side, the IoW prevents full-out war. If you want to go nice and simple with wars raging everywhere, you can't have the IoW.

Furthermore, the very idea of all-powerful Summoners made Champions little more than puppets manipulated by godlike powers.

False. (Edit, issue 7 is better as pointed out)

we’re committed to both pushing narrative development further and doing a better job of providing insight into what’s going on under the hood with story.

My apologies if I sound aggressive. I just think that the dev blog is not telling the whole story. I think there's more going on, the arguments provided here can't possibly have been the grounds for such a major retcon. Narrative must've refused to tell us the whole story.

we’ll be back with future Dev Blogs discussing both our latest narrative efforts and our general principles when it comes to developing story in League

I would've hoped to see their general principles by now.

More than anything, we want to rekindle the conversation with you. What stories do you want us to tell? What parts of Runeterra would you like to see?

I wanted you to tell me the story of Trundle, the once naïve troll, turned cynical after realising his tribes true nature. I wouldn't have cared much that he was retconned to the Freljord leading his tribe, but that frost troll that stole his place in the game is not Trundle. That's just a new champion that replaced an old one.

Impetual2/10/2015, 9:26:40 AM1 votes

Rioters, attention please!