@Riot, How Do You Guys Analyze the Negative Criticism, and Does It Even Matter?

Impetual·Mar 1, 2015·10 votes·472 views

Check out this DevBlog here: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/creative-spotlight/dev-blog-exploring-runeterra

Despite the overwhelming downvotes, the lore retcon still happened.

So Riot, here's some questions:

@Riot, how do you interpret these downvotes? What do they mean to you? How do they affect your current narrative direction, if at all? Can player opinion actually have an effect on your decisions anymore?

How much does player opinion matter to you, and how much influence do players have on the lore direction?

If there is overwhelming player support for it, can the Retcon be reversed?

RIot Please! Give us an idea about how much player input influences your decisions!

2 Comments

HelmightMar 4, 20152 votes

Unfortunately, Riot doesn't really reverse decisions that they've made. You see it with balance changes all the time - once they go live, Riot will VERY infrequently just flat-out return the champion to the way they were before. They'll just buff other aspects of their post-nerf kit to make up for it.

Same deal with the lore. Riot's already removed the Institute of War - that much is certain from the blog post. At this point, there's nothing we can do or say to change that. All we can do is hope that the new lore is worth the change.

To answer your question: Riot cares about player feedback when it comes to gameplay balance, but doesn't care about lore changes since it's all subjective anyways. They just tell us that they're GOING to make changes, not that they're thinking about changes and want our opinions. Remember the Freljord incident?

ImpetualMar 4, 20152 votes

I do remember the Freljord "incident"... and yeah, it was pretty disappointing...But I still have faith in Riot.

They start from such a good place (in terms of player-staff interactions) that I still believe that they are the kind of company that will adjust their methods in order to preserve the "health" of League of Legends. This doesn't seem to be a game where they want it to do well, run its course, and then die off. Riot really seems like they want League of Legends to be long-term title that stays at the forefront of the MOBA genre.

I think Riot has made some pretty bad decisions regarding its lore, which is why I post! I want this game to succeed, but the Lore department at RIot doesn't seem to know what it's doing!

Riot Please, listen to your fans when it comes to lore. It may not seem like it will make much of an impact at first, but good lore will eventually draw players in slowly and help keep your game alive.

Undo this retcon, and start making good lore again.

A little egg on your face won't hurt things...lore wise at least, things are pretty much as bad as they can get for you anyways.

Undo the retcon to save the League of Legends and the Institute of War.

I'm sure that would at least satisfy fans of the old lore without pissing off new lore fans, because, well, the new lore hasn't established anything significant that players actually care about yet!