Want to know why Riot cancelled achievements? Look no further than Black Market Brawlers.

iainB85·8/3/2015, 5:12:00 PM·86 votes·5,346 views

This mode + event proves why achievements cannot work in League of Legends.

Anyone who has played the game mode more than a few times has already probably suffered through prolonged games where at least one person refuses to group in a won game because, "they need more Krakens for the event".

This pretty much justifies all the fears that adding any kind of personal achievement besides "win the game" would overall decrease the player experience. Luckily it's only for a limited time event meant for fun. If these kind of personal achievements went live to all match making modes, it would really suck.

55 Comments

BastionKross8/4/2015, 1:09:16 AM19 votes

Oh god, the stories I have.

I cheered on the enemy team once because I had just gotten through two previous games where the enemy team surrendered so quickly that I was unable to purchase a level 3 upgrade. So I actually had to coax them to stay in the losing game long enough to farm up.

Another time, I started the game by telling my allies "Listen guys, if we start to lose big time, please don't surrender until we get a level 3 upgrade". The best (or worst, depending on your view) thing was that two of my allies were immediately right on board with the idea.

One game I spent practically the entire game in the enemy jungle, stealing his large monsters, simply to farm krakens. I didn't care about winning. I didn't care about getting caught. I didn't care about all my deaths. I didn't care about teamfights. I just got fed up with the high benchmarks for the rewards and wanted to farm that icon so that I'd never have to play the game mode again.

Now that I have my icon, I feel dirty. I did some pretty immoral things for something that probably wasn't worth the cost.

Guys, I think this might be how a prostitute feels.

SKOBODO8/3/2015, 5:23:16 PM18 votes

What's even worse is when people finish when you have 19 Krakens and are about to get the 20th. It's so annoying, it feels like the game was wasted.

9Q1IMGTQP38/3/2015, 7:36:56 PM9 votes

Luckily it's only for a limited time event

There you go, I think this really is a key part and also the reason why I disagree.

I would assume that if Riot were to release a batch of achievements next patch, achievements that are not time limited, it wouldnt really matter and people would try to get them on the fly. The amount of people exclusively focusing on getting the achievements would likely still increase for the first days after the release but after that numbers should normalize.

Apart from that, I yet have to see someone in my games actually prolong games because he needs more Krakens.

TurquoiseYoshi8/3/2015, 11:25:57 PM3 votes

The thing is, if the achievements were on a GOOD game mode, I would enjoy them. But Black Market Brawlers isn't fun.

S H A Y C 08/3/2015, 5:36:07 PM3 votes

I think i understand. I would still like your personal performance in a ranked match to have some effect on your mmr or at the very least lp gain or loss. There really just is no reason why anybody who go 20-5-15, has amazing cs, pushed towers, rotated properly and on time, and warded like they were going out of style should lose or gain the same lp as the raging feeder, or the nerd that paid to get boosted thinking he was amazing and turns out hes totally bronze4life. Just my opinion.

Noctius288/4/2015, 8:17:16 AM3 votes

the first 2 acts were fine and none evasive achievements, the act 3 was the bad one, to get the rewards you had to play outside the norm for the krakens and upgrades

but getting X assists/kills or X gold in Aram or destroying X towers in aram?

Those were fine and I experienced no abuse for those rewards, those encouraged playing you best, not stalling the game

Achievements are fine as long as they play to the general strengths of the game and not out of place extras

Shosuko8/4/2015, 12:20:24 AM2 votes

Definitely true - My last game to finally achieve my 3rd tier upgrade and kraken 2 people on our team, and 3 people on the opposing team co-operated to prevent the game from ending while we finished our event goals. I was jinx in base with 3 inhibs down and they withdrew while we played about 20 more minutes to help people on both sides get what they needed.

Achievements are BAD m'kay? At least for this type of game yeah.

I think for an event it's okay - like in this one - as long as it's not going to effect normal games then we're good. This was isolated to the event mode, and half the people were in agreement (one of them spammed /ff since 20 mins tho)

Janamana8/3/2015, 9:20:56 PM2 votes

I think the champion mastery stuff is kind of like an achievement. I mean it feels good when you get a champion to level 5 mastery. They should make the icons/rewards achievable outside of the game so people will be more focused in the actual game mode.

DeusVult8/3/2015, 11:17:04 PM2 votes

Just spitballing here

What if they made it so that you earned points towards acheivements, such as kills, CS, Assists, etc, but only if you won the game. Keeps people from trying to just max that stat because if they lose they don't get anything towards it. It might make certain people more toxic because "WTF noob, im 19/2 and we're still losing, this is gonna fuck my score" but those people already exist so w/e

ModKnightsKemplar8/3/2015, 11:43:32 PM2 votes

I successfully avoided the urge, despite wanting to delay several games. It definitely diminished the experience, and made me loathe the game mode that was otherwise pretty fun.

RoyaiChaos8/4/2015, 11:04:06 PM2 votes

Time to bookmark for future reference~

Anidan8/3/2015, 8:19:10 PM1 votes

Yeah, you're right. Similar happens during specific times in World of Warcraft battlegrounds, most notably during the Children's Week event for the infamous "School of Hard Knocks" achievement that's required for a meta achievement which rewards a mount and a higher tier of flying if you don't yet have it (may have been changed now). First you have achievement hunters that don't like PvP in the first place, making it a miserable slough for them to go through with it, since you had to have the child present during various milestone achievements in a battleground, and the achievement made it miserable for players that prefer PvP because they have to deal with people who don't enjoy PvP even more than usual.

Sometimes, achievements just aren't a good route to go. Mixing gameplay styles like WoW did with that infamous achievement was a bad implementation of the achievement system. If Riot was to implement an achievement system you'd have many, many people going out of their way to try obtain those achievements, ruining other peoples' fun for their own ambitions that may or may not even have an actual reward system in place. Even if it was to normalize later, the damage it did in the first place would very likely be a scar on the idea of their implementation for a very, very long time. I'd say it's honestly too late to implement an achievement system, and it's not advisable to begin doing it anymore. Even DotA2 tried implementing achievements, and then removed them.

BLU Medic8/6/2015, 11:32:10 AM1 votes

It took me 20 games to get the 5 win icon for Ascension, because people kept on throwing matches because of the Perfect Ascension icon.

Magister Ragun8/3/2015, 8:13:42 PM1 votes

Achievements are ususally just a way for bad or linear games to pretend they have replayablity. League doesn't need them.

GundayMonday8/3/2015, 7:56:56 PM1 votes

THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE NOW.

I was so mad at our ADC last night because he kept going off into the enemy jungle to farm camps when we had the game won if we rushed the open enemy nexus. Completely understand if he had to farm more rewards.

And yeah, you're completely right OP, this is annoying as hell.

Infiny Mage8/4/2015, 2:49:36 AM1 votes

Barely any time in matches to actually get something meaningful accomplished towards your quota for the icons. I gave up, I'm all for event icons and game mode specific things but the grind seems too much. We get people who go on one extreme and don't want to do anything but get their kraken. And often times it's just another 20 minute wasted because of a surrender due to the snowballing lol

Mandaari8/4/2015, 2:57:07 AM1 votes

The same thing has happened in lots of other games. I remember a few years back WoW had a holiday achievement for Alterac Valley to cap towers. Horde and Alliance just traded off capping and saving towers. Anyone that tried to actually play the game got berated.

Solaxo8/4/2015, 6:37:30 AM1 votes

Maybe achievements should be hidden then. Like you're getting an achievement but you don't exactly know why

AMYS GRAVE8/4/2015, 7:36:58 AM1 votes

haha yeah, when one goal was farming aram i went into the game and no one would attack enemy champions or towers. no one wanted to win the game they just wanted to fight over farm.

Annapii8/3/2015, 7:22:44 PM1 votes

sigh. This is why we can't have nice things.

Fuckin' people.

Kitsy8/4/2015, 2:22:10 PM1 votes

I agree and i am one of those players who would exstend the game a little if i was close to upgrading a unit to max. Its not my fault Riot made an achivement that requiered long games. I wanted the icon and i went for it. Lucky for me those few times i exstended the games we still won. But i dont agree that this is how games should be.

rootcypher12038/4/2015, 5:16:57 PM1 votes

I asked my team to extend a few games if I was close to the achievement as well. The key word being, I asked. If the majority of the team wanted to quit or push to end the game I helped them , and moved on to the next game. The third challenge was too much. They asked for 750 spent kragens, and 15 3rd tiered upgrades. Usually I would only get one 3rd tiered upgrade per game.

Ballsiest LissNA8/4/2015, 7:15:34 PM1 votes

I didn't suffer through it until I couldn't spend any more for 15 minutes. Karthus game on my main acct, I went 25/5/27 or something and had every upgrade, replaced boots with luden's, and literally everyone else just kept dying alone.

KoKoboto8/3/2015, 8:46:51 PM1 votes

Totally agree with OP

Dr Easter8/4/2015, 8:55:06 PM1 votes

I disagree. The event won't be there forever so this puts pressure on people to get it quickly. Personal archievements would be available all the time

Ztoka8/3/2015, 10:37:22 PM1 votes

I have had many people cry/rage/beg to keep the game going so they can get their 20 kills, 150 cs, more coins etc. I just say, play another game. No point turtling.. Really, if you want to be fair, and get everyone their 20 kills/cs etc, the game would never end...

Valderis Vandala8/6/2015, 9:54:21 PM1 votes

Achievements are a gaming cancer anyway so who really gives a fuck?