New Feature: Achievements

It has come to my attention that some people are doing things besides constantly playing Basketball GM. The game just isn't addictive enough. Maybe part of the problem is that the game has always been self-paced. There's no way to "win", and there aren't any real objectives other than ones you define yourself.

Well, now that's changed. Today I added an "Achievements" system. This provides some challenges you aim to accomplish, like sweeping all 16 wins in the playoffs, winning a title with a low payroll, and winning multiple consecutive titles. See them all here.

For posterity, here is a list of all the available achievements in this initial release:

• Participation: You get an achievement just for creating an account, you special snowflake!
• Fo Fo Fo: Go 16-0 in the playoffs.
• Septuawinarian: Win 70+ games in the regular season.
• 98 Degrees: Go 98-0 in the playoffs and regular season.
• Dynasty: Win 6 championships in 8 years.
• Dynasty 2: Win 8 championships in 8 years.
• Dynasty 3: Win 11 championships in 13 years.
• Moneyball: Win a title with a payroll under $40 million.
• Moneyball 2: Win a title with a payroll under $30 million.
• Hardware Store: Sweep MVP, DPOY, SMOY, ROY, and Finals MVP in the same season.
• Small Market: Win a title in a city with under 2 million people.
• Sleeper Pick: Use a non-lottery pick to draft the ROY.
• Hacker: Privately report a security issue in the account system or some other part of the site.

I'm planning to eventually add more achievements, and your suggestions are appreciated (as always). I know many of the current ones are more towards the "really fucking difficult" side of the spectrum, so maybe I should add some more easier ones.

Another thing I should note: there are no retroactive achievements. It's not going to scan back through all your old leagues looking for them. It would be too much work for not enough benefit, and also people with really old leagues might get some of these achievements too easily since there used to be more exploits in the game.

Accounts

You also might notice that there is now an account system. Since all the game data is stored on your computer, there was never a reason to make anyone sign up for an account. However, I think there are a few good reasons for adding them now:

1. Achievements will persist across multiple computers, browsers, and data loss.
2. I'll be able to see what achievements people complete, which will help me figure out which are too easy and too hard.
3. The account infrastructure could be used for other things in the future. For instance, saving to the cloud so you can play the same league on multiple devices. Or some kind of multi-player mode. Or a mode designed for low-power mobile devices that does the simulation in the cloud. This stuff is barely in the planning stages now, so don't get your hopes up too much, but the presence of a pre-existing account system will make it all more feasible.

Basically, accounts don't do that much now, but they might in the future. If you don't want an account, then you don't have to sign up for one. All features will still work without logging in, just like they always have. Even achievements will work, they just will be local to one device until you sign up for an account.