League of Legends Retconns its own Name, Players out of Game

Alexnader

$20 For Steve
May 18, 2009
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BabySinclair said:
And this could have been neatly wrapped up with a single "Major catastrophe occurs, the League itself is shattered" story at which point the summoner's college is dissolved, new characters no longer have to join the League, and maintain the established lore.
One of the devs, 'Riot Runaan' addressed this as a potential solution. Basically they didn't want to have to deal with the memory of the league overshadowing everything. Some simple questions that would arise from such a catastrophe would be, "What caused it and how did it go down?", "What happened to the numerous powerful summoners?" and "Why are champions still fighting on summoner's rift if the league is gone?".

I reckon they could've written their way through all that but apparently they didn't think so.
 

Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
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honestly... Who cares? League of Legends is hardly known for its lore... It's the gameplay that matters. As a big fan of Dota I wouldn't give two shits if they changed the bio of a character or even the silly reason why they're fighting... It makes no difference to the gameplay which is what the genre is known for... Who the fuck cares about what silly story they came up with to justify it?
 

Not G. Ivingname

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Nov 18, 2009
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BabySinclair said:
And this could have been neatly wrapped up with a single "Major catastrophe occurs, the League itself is shattered" story at which point the summoner's college is dissolved, new characters no longer have to join the League, and maintain the established lore.
Well to keep the game fresh, and to keep the revenue streaming in, they NEED to add champions, else the game will eventually stagnate.

OT: I didn't really play for the lore. It was a novel concept, but I can see how having to crow bar these characters to join the League is a bit odd at times. I do wonder what the hell they are going to replace it with, and how much of the champion's diolgue they will have to change.
 

CaptainCoxwaggle

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Aug 24, 2014
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League of Legends was shit ever since they started the cycle.

Buff currently underplayed champion ridiculously, when it is already balanced
Wait until formerly underplayed champion becomes flavour of the month
Nerf underplayed champion to be weaker then it was prior to the buff
Release another champion with a dash, percentage health damage, and a better version of an ult of an existing champion.

Also their all their revamps have been utterly terrible since the revamps of Garen and Xin Zhao.
 

Rayce Archer

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Jun 26, 2014
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Paragon Fury said:
The Summoner Spells (Flash, Ignite, Teleport etc.)? No champion can use those - thats why they're called Summoner Spells; we, the Summoners were using them ON the champion we were controlling, not the champion using them by themselves.
Fiddlesticks can teleport on his own, Crowstorm instantly moves him about 3 yards.
 

LarsInCharge

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Sep 9, 2014
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I stopped caring about lore around the time they reworked Katarina from a badass Noxus assassin to a mopey girl with a crush on Garen. Or the lore-fail when Jayce was released that had to retconned and removed IN THE SAME WEEK.
 

IBlackKiteI

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Mar 12, 2010
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I play League a fair bit and though I don't much care for the...lore such as it is, this seems like an exceptionally bad handling of...whatever it is they're trying to do. You know how when a dev decides to make a big change to their long running game or series they often post a blog or video that clearly illustrates their intent and how they're going to make it happen within a few nicely summed up paragraphs? This is not one of those.
Their recent posts about how the lore is going to 'evolve' really do not explain much at all, pretty much just saying they are going to move things forward and make them better without definitively explaining or outlining how they are going to do so, and not really acknowledging that they're essentially doing a massive retcon in what looks to be an attempt to keep the old fans happy. They also haven't explained what the direct substitute for the League itself will be and how summoner spells and the like will now work. On top of that they aren't even solid about what they thought was wrong in the first place, 'The institutions we'd designed fostered creative stagnation, limiting the ways that champions, factions and Runeterra itself could grow and change', ok, what exactly does that mean for what you want to do and how will your upcoming alternative avoid this and be better? All this kind of lack of real information does is piss even more people off and invite a shitload of speculation.

When it comes down to it it seems like they're still trying to keep to the real status-quo at the core of LoL, that of badass characters smashing the crap out of each other in an arena over and over again, whilst pushing the narrative beyond that in a meaningful way. But why even make a real attempt at that when you must conform to the original confines anyway? How will you instill changes and give a feeling of progression beyond new champs, visual updates and changes to the meta in a game fundamentally about doing the same thing over and over? It's extremely unlikely that say, a character will ever be killed off or noticeably change in a way that can be reflected in game as not only would it piss a hell of a lot of fans off that they've tampered with their precious ''name of champion here'', but it wouldn't be feasible to record a bunch more lines and touch up the appearance of a champ every time something happens to them in the setting. In short, fleshing out and developing 100+ characters and having those changes represented in any kind of meaningful way in game is just not going to happen.

I honestly don't see why they couldn't have just kept everything as it is, throw out a special event with a mode or map like Howling Abyss every now and then, gradually retcon some of the crappier lore, work towards less crappy lore with new champs and the like and start up something like a weekly comic series focusing on a different champ or group of champs each time. That'd give the lore junkies something to keep 'em happy without interfering with the game itself, can cover all sorts of characters and events and can be made relatively quickly and easily with little risk, rather than announcing some kind of big grand plan to apparently totally revamp the setting for the better.

Maybe there's some part of this big project I'm not just not getting, but hell, with how vague Riot are being with all this and the general suckiness of the lore they've already established (for every interesting idea there's 10 Mary Sues, extreme inconsistencies, nonsensical designs or boring cliches) I wouldn't count on them to do any part of it very well, and if they're going to try to commit to this it sounds like they've assigned themselves a mammoth task.
 

Reiper

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Mar 26, 2009
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Yes, the final nail for me was back in March. I had been playing since mid 2009, and I remember league used to be great. I actually really liked the league lore, and some of the journal of justice story lines were getting really interesting (jarvan/leblanc conspiracy)

Off the top of my head, here are some of the straws that broke my back
-gutting and dumbing down the lore
-abundant AD ratios on spells / not supporting off builds
-Enforcing the meta, and nerfing things that deviate from it or change the gameplay
-unacceptable champion reworks that completely changed some of my favourite characters
-Removal of twisted treeline, the thing that took its place is unworthy of the name

I used to think Riot was a really good company. I used to talk to the devs on the forums, and I felt the game was a consistently great experience. Perhaps this degeneration was caused by Tencent, I honestly don't know, needless to say, I regret spending a penny on the game.
 

Revnak_v1legacy

Fixed by "Monday"
Mar 28, 2010
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I honestly don't think the whole league worked anyway. It was an overly convenient excuse plot really. It also made it hard for them to make anything happen without just giving up on the whole idea anyway. And it was based on the idea that summoners exist, who would still be ridiculously powerful even in comparison to the already godlike champions. I think that getting rid of all of that stuff is for the best. Lee Sin can just be a failed mage instead of a failed summoner, all the locked up horrible things can just not be locked up anymore, and conflicts can just be resolved by wars rather than gladiator fights.
 

Maximum Bert

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Feb 3, 2013
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While I would see the lore as mostly fluff retcons of any kind are not generally a good thing it just shows the concept was poorly thought out at the start or they changed their minds half way through and now find stuffs broken either way they were not happy with their original stuff and so should have thought it through better in the first place.

Lore may not be the focus in league but it grounds the entire game changing it can be a big deal to some people. I dont have any parallels to draw with this but I know in Tekken when they took out Michelle and replaced her with her daughter Julia that annoyed the hell out of me even though they arent really that different in styles or looks really she and Michelle could be the same character if they messed around with the lore a bit. Same think with Roger in Tekken 2 he did not appear in any other game it was Roger Jr who I cant stand despite being for all intents and purposes the same character Kuma is another one.

Suppose the point is even small changes can make big differences to peoples perceptions.
 

go-10

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Feb 3, 2010
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who cares about story? Just improve the graphics Riot, the game looks dated!

also the only cjhampion I care about "story" wise is Ahri... and that's only because I think she looks cute
 

Techno Squidgy

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Nov 23, 2010
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The closest I came to caring about the lore of League was idly reading the lore pages for champions in champion select. It was trash, it added very little to the game, and with no actual connection between the lore and the actual games you played, it seemed pretty damn pointless.

Mind you I'm heavily biased because I don't actually like League. I find the gameplay boring, I don't care enough to keep up with the meta, and the only time I actually have fun when I'm playing it is when I'm on skype with friends. Even then it's just the banter that's fun, the game itself is still boring.