Riot's plot problem pt.1

grundlebot·Oct 20, 2014·4 votes·1,549 views

Happy to hear anyone share their thoughts on this:

http://www.junkiesnation.com/2014/10/20/league-of-legends-plot-overrated-revisited/

11 Comments

catravenOct 20, 20147 votes

Look at this:

The most compelling evidence that Abernathy and Rouse offer in their presentation are the abysmal completion rates of games: statistically, players often never make it to the end.

Using bad design/narrative/gameplay/writing -a lot of the reasons ppl don't finish games- as an excuse, to condemn plot/story.....just wow. That's like ...saying football is a bad, uninteresting game, because of bad teams/players/rules.

just wow, man. the nerve to say something like that...smh

grundlebotOct 20, 20141 votes

The problem though, as they express it in their presentation, which is actually available to read on the internet is that even in supposedly "good" narrative games, people don't make it to the end. For example, Mass Effect 2 had a 56% completion rate. Portal (short as it was) had a 47% completion rate. :(

It just seems like when it comes to games, plot is not enough to keep players interested.

DotintheparadoxOct 20, 20141 votes

Mass Effect 2 is a little iffy though, I mean I completed it, but I haven't played through all of the DLC yet, do those count?

As for Portal's completion rate... they do remember it was on the Orange Box, which most people probably lost or forgot about because they just got Halo 3 for their Xbox 360, I'm not going to bash console users, but still, what do you normally play on an Xbox? Also, you can just tell, they only looked at console demographics, since Abernathy WROTE FOR CONSOLE TITLES, that's all he ever had to look at. It just doesn't translate well.

DG AshabelOct 20, 20144 votes

A major problem is that the completion rate has nothing to do with the story and everything with game length vs. player time. The average age of a video game player these days is 30, which would indicate a working adult with at least a part-time job. Most of these people don't have the time to invest into a single 30-hour story because it would involve doing nothing but that story for the next two weeks. This is why people these days have an increased interest in short games such as Braid, Limbo or Shank (you can take in the full experience quickly), or in sandbox games like Minecraft, DayZ and Salt (a lack of story means you cannot lose investment in it).

Certain games do attempt to tackle the issue of long playtime. Alan Wake deliberately paces itself as a TV-series with "Previously on..." scenes before every chapter, while The Evil Within delivers itself in bite-sized chunks. Other games turn to a more sandbox approach, such as Assassin's Creed and Far Cry. But the bottom line is that it has nothing to do with plot. The issue is that an average video game player these days is a working adult who has very limited time to invest in games, which means they will either invest it in things they really like or things that don't have a heavy narrative pressure.

Example: I really loved Batman: Arkham City, but completely failed to finish it last time I started. It was simply too massive for me, I loved the story but ultimately couldn't justify the enormous investment of time and emotional energy that it demanded from me. I certainly will one day, but not on an average working week. Not when I can unwind with Aquaria or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

The modern AAA-list developers lost track of their audience. That's much more of a hurdle than plot is.

grundlebotOct 21, 20142 votes

I agree that the comparison of LoL to these other narrative driven games doesn't really seem to make sense. Why not compare League's take on storytelling to games within the same or similar genres?

Also in regard to time: do we really play games less or do we just have shorter attention spans for plot? Playing League is one of the most time consuming things I've ever done. It can take hours to get through just two games sometimes. What I come back to is the issue that the average gamer "has very limited time to invest in games" and yet when it comes to time commitment League is goddamn near the top in my book.

catravenOct 21, 20141 votes

The problem though, as they express it in their presentation, which is actually available to read on the internet is that even in supposedly "good" narrative games, people don't make it to the end. For example, Mass Effect 2 had a 56% completion rate. Portal (short as it was) had a 47% completion rate. :(

there is something else wrong with those games. stop blaming narrative. i doubt portal had a good narrative by a mile.

Sneak DogOct 20, 20141 votes

How many players play the game for the plot and how many play it for the gameplay? What is the completion rate among plot-lovers?

SolekaOct 20, 20143 votes

The league was a problematic storytelling element. The league was literally an omnipotent place that kept the peace. That has issues, you can't even destroy it without people going "wait a minute the they would have seen it coming." It was better just to cut it out completely. NOW we have some deep soil to till some fantastic stories. Shurima had a compelling glimpse of a story. Ancient city rises from the sand, at the helm was a freed ancient ruler who only just recently got his ascension. How does Demacia react? How does Noxus react? These are story elements that can shake out in the coming months. Leading to new events to play in. Already the "overrated" lore lends itself to new ideas for game play. I actually really liked the Shurima event.

In the coming months I would like to see more game play elements brought in using the story as a driving force. Zaun invades Bandle city to steal the mothership. It would become a king of the hill style map with a giant spaceship in the center. The mothership is just an example, but everything is completely open when you let the story push the game play, rather than the game play being separate from the story.

DG AshabelOct 20, 20145 votes