Final Thoughts on the Bilgewater Event (Wall of Text Warning)

So I debated whether to put this in gameplay or story, but since I plan on talking about both, I figured miscellaneous was the right spot. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I was waiting for the end of the event before making any comments on it, and now that I think we've seen everything we're gonna see from it, seems as good a time as any.

First off, I'd like to congratulate Riot on what I feel is the first LoL 'event' that I would actually deem a success. Compared to past ones like Freljord, Harrowing, and especially Shurima, I feel this is vastly superior. That said, it wasn't perfect, and there are still some issues I feel need to be improved for next time. Forewarning, this is probably gonna be a long post.

Regarding gameplay aspects of the event, primarily the Bilgewater Brawlers mode. I have mixed feelings about this game mode. Honestly, I feel it was kind of weaker than past gametypes, which is a shame because it's clear that a lot more work than usual went into it, making all the models for all the minions and such. In the end though, I just don't feel that the brawler minions actually made enough of an impact on the game over regular minions. Early on there wasn't much difference between them and regular minions, and by time they get strong enough to have an impact late game, all the players are so well stocked on items and levels that they can still clear them out without difficulty. Only when teams were extremely coordinated, moreso than you'd get in most games, did the new minions really have much impact.

That said, the new items on the other hand were incredibly fun. Most of them felt like worthy additions to the game, if maybe a little bit overtuned at times. While the gameplay mode as a whole wasn't the greatest in my eyes, I'd really like to see some of the items it brought with it work their way into being permanent additions at some point. Especially because there were so many of them added, it would almost be more difficult to believe that the game mode wasn't just an elaborate test for possible new future items. It'd be a waste if they all disappear forever.

Also, regarding the icons, and the things you need to do to get them, some of the tasks are just poor design. Getting 200 CS in an ARAM game, for example, was stupid. A goal like that warps the game. Because then you've got 5 people on the same team fighting over one another to get every minion kill, meanwhile it's ARAM, which is supposed to be more teamfight oriented, so you'll have an entire team just trying to snipe minion kills from one another while the enemy team is just murdering them. Instead of 200 CS in ARAM and 3 wins in anything, it should've been 200 CS in anything and 3 wins in ARAM. At least you can get CS in normal games, where you can expect to have your own lane so you're not fighting your own team when you're supposed to be fighting the enemy team.

I feel it was also a mistake to make it so you can see the second goal you need to accomplish to get the icon while you're still working towards the first one. It just makes it more frustrating that you can't get both at once when you can see both. Example, I needed 25k gold in ARAM and 50 assists. In 2 games I got both of those accomplished, but only the first one counted. That was just frustrating, plus a little bit confusing. It would've been better had the 50 assists needed just not even been visible until after I got the gold. It would've been less confusing for one, but it also would've been less irritating. A goal I can't see is a goal I know I can't work towards, so it's less frustrating to accomplish those tasks and have them not count than it is when I can see it.

Concerning the aesthetics of the event. I really enjoyed the new bilgewater music, more than I expected to. I actually like it more than the default music on the rift. The announcer though I have mixed feelings on. While it's nice to have a new announcer, some of the lines on it were not as clear as the regular announcer, and I feel it had clarity issues for making you aware of what's going on. If this announcer was a purchaseable extra or something, something you had control over whether or not it replaced the regular one, it'd be fine, but for having it be the default for everyone was a bit problematic. I think the mistake was in making it possible to toggle the music back and forth between default and bilgewater, when it should've been the announcer that was a toggle instead. I feel that would've been much better.

Then there's Butcher's Bridge. I've heard mixed reports about what's actually being done with it. Before the event launched, I'd heard it was going to be a permanent replacement for Howling Abyss, and since the event launched I hear it's going away at the end. Frankly, I feel like both of these options are a mistake. One of the things people have been asking for for the longest time is map skins, and here you've pretty much created exactly that. Howling Abyss and Butcher's Bridge are identical in all but appearance, so I don't see why we can't have both. Make it so that when you queue up for an ARAM, when the game starts it randomly loads either one map or the other for the game to be played on. Would give the mode some nice aesthetic variety.

This last point about the art is more just a point of confusion rather than criticism. I thought it was stated Riot didn't want to do traditional skins anymore? But that's exactly what we're getting with Captain Gangplank. What's the reasoning behind that? I can understand if it's because Captain Gangplank is the past and the new skin is his present, and you'd like to keep the base skin be whatever his current state is, but then why didn't you do the same thing with Miss Fortune? Or is Captain Fortune a what-if and not actually canon? Because from the way everyone's been talking, Rioters included, I was lead to believe Captain Fortune was her new canonical present state.

Regardless, I really dig the concept of canon skins, both for the new TF and Graves skins showing their past, and the new MF and Gangplank skins. It really helps to put forth a sense of progress in the story, and I'd love to see more. Speaking of story...

Lastly, there's the real meat of the event, the story. Excuse me if I launch into a bit of a tirade but finally, finally, for the first time in far too long, I feel like I can actually give the lore team the thumbs up. This, to me, is what actually made the event a success, and it's also what completely crippled every event that came before. Stuff actually happens! There's actual progress made! This is huge, and yet, the sad thing is that it shouldn't be. This is really the base amount of what we should be able to expect from an event like this, and it's sad that none of the previous ones ever lived up to that.

In the Freljord event, what happened? Quinn went for a nice little stroll through the Freljord, then went home. That's it. Also a lot of stuff was retconned, which is negative progress. A retcon doesn't move the story forward, it moves it backwards because it undoes things that've already happened and necessitates redoing them. For the Harrowing (I'm thinking the big one that brought the new Twisted Treeline), even less happened than that. And Shurima was entirely retcons through and through, some of which STILL don't even make any sense (there is absolutely NOTHING that makes sense about any part of Cassiopeia's new backstory).

For Bilgewater though, stuff happened. Twisted Fate and Graves got back together. Gangplank was dethroned. All of Bilgewater descended into anarchy. Frankly, I don't really feel like a lot happened, but a lot doesn't necessarily need to happen so long as SOMETHING happens, and it definitely did. That said, though I would give the overall story a thumbs up, there are still issues.

There was yet another retcon, and while Twisted Fate's backstory getting redone is one of the least offensive retcons done thus far, it does still bring up an issue I want to discuss. The big retcon that wrote the League out of existence was still unnecessary. With Gangplank's 'death', it looked like the lore department was finally doing something to genuinely justify no longer having the Institute of War around, since a character death couldn't be done in the old framework, but then they went ahead and had him survive anyways, thus invalidating that point. I STILL maintain that writing the Institute out by having it dismantled via a story would have been better than simply retconning it out of existence entirely, and this event still has done nothing to change that.

On the subject of Gangplank's death, I also don't think it was handled very well. When the big retcon happened, one of the intended goals of the retcon was to intentionally put more distance between the lore of the game and the actual gameplay part. As a result, you kinda lose the justification needed to disable Gangplank for the event. If you'd done it a year ago, before the retcon actually happened, when it was simply a suspicion people had instead of a thing that was confirmed, I would've thought that temporarily disabling Gangplank was a fantastic move. As it is though, the retcon has happened, the game and the lore are now (supposed to be) distinct entities, and so disabling him feels like more of a dick move than a smart one. Not only that, but I don't like the sort of precedent it sets. Characters NEED to be able to legitimately die. It adds weight to things going on if lives can genuinely be ended. The freedom to kill off a character is one of the legitimate arguments in favour of the big retcon in the first place. If a character is going to be disabled just because we think that they're dead though, then if a character dies for real, we have to expect them to be removed from the game entirely. And since we know that's never going to happen, it makes it so that we have to expect death will never happen, which cheapens the stakes in life and death scenarios. And this is something that doesn't need to be the case. Fighting games, for example, have a history of having playable characters (usually as unlockables, but in LoL every character is an unlockable) that are canonically deceased but still there in-game to be playable, and there's no reason LoL shouldn't follow a similar format.

None of that is to say that I feel like Gangplank really should have died, only that disabling him for that reason sets a bad example, because eventually, at some point, someone IS going to have to die.

For all of my criticisms though, I would still rate the Bilgewater event highly. Definitely a marked improvement over past efforts. It's given me back something I had pretty much lost regarding LoL's story, which is hope. More of this please.