Bovine_Avenger

Ahhh, in entirely the wrong forum I see... very confusing to navigate, these forums! But Thanks for pointing me to the thread, and I've submitted an email, so we'll see what happens!

Quick question; I'm not playing CoH much these days, so I've lost track of where everything is with regards to the changes... I notice on the boards I've got _EU after my name, and the splash screen at loading indicates this will be addressed in the future. Have I missed an announcement on this though? Because I suspect that the NA Bovine is me as well, as I started there, and moved home when the option became available, so I should be able to become a normal moo name. Anyone know anything? Cheers!

632 here on my blasting moo moo... was well over 700 when there were MA badges, I feel quite inadequate now in comparison!

The comical behaviour will be repeated hopefully tomorrow (Sunday 12th) at about the same time, assuming there's no mothership raid on, for anyone who needs the badges. I'm thinking hero side again, but we'll see who needs what (I still need most of the weight classes, and one or two of the team ones I think, but I'll fill for everyone else as before)

A Small Guide To How To Badge The Arena

The following is based upon what we learned from tonight's attempts to run tournaments as fast as possible; thanks to all who came out, and who were exceptionally honest... not a credit stealer amongst you!

* Firstly, you don't HAVE to complete the matches you are in. What we did was give one side an advantage, and then the other dropped after a minute, to be sure it counted.

* This goes for any arena type, we spent the night running Swiss Draw matches, and even though it needed to pick people, as long as the chosen winner for the badge had the most KOs, it didn't matter that others dropped.

* Badge awards don't seem to show in the arena, but you'll get them, don't worry.

* You can combine them all with the Weight restrictions for those badges too.

* The only badges you need more than 2 people for are SWISS and PENTAD.

* SWISS will take about 8 minutes with 8 players; Assuming everyone drops at 1 minute of course. Time breaks down like this;

1st round of 1 minute

2 minute wait

2nd round of 1 minute

2 minute wait

Knockout round, with 8 players you only seem to get the top 4... the Wiki says it's the top 8, so maybe with 10 and up it's 8 in this round. These 4 players become 2 after 1 minute, so

2 minute wait,

and final of 1 minute again.


If you choose to fight, you are looking at 46 minutes or so for an entire Swiss (10 minute standard round time)... it pays for everyone to drop then!
The event will show as "Cancelled" once done, don't worry about that, the winner gets the badges no matter what!

If you choose more players, you get more rounds of course; and you need even numbers of players to start.

MY SUGGESTED OPTIONAL RULES:

Who ever is set to win that round should ALSO choose the weight restriction... so they can also claim the badge for winning that weight too, if they don't have one.

After being knocked out of the Swiss Draw, quit the tournament, and host duels with those who need the 1v1 badges waiting for the next Swiss to start... save even more time!

* Pentad only has to be run twice, but you need to recruit the right team builds first. Once done, it's just another team game, so play two games, and one gets the kills for a minute, the other drops at 1 minute, and reverse sides.

* HOWEVER! Beware with Team Duels. We all manually set our teams, so the Red team had no win badge, and we blue were supposed to die to them. However upon entering the match, we were all randomly shuffled anyway. I'm not sure if that's a bug, or there's an option somewhere I've missed, but beware of that... it may be much easier to just duo the other badges.

Back again... Ok, if I provisionally pencil in a time of 7pm GMT, I'll try and stay on for the evening and keep it rolling for everyone.

Ideally, if we are all in one spot it'll make communication easier... as I'll need to set up smaller groups for some badges (duel) and then get everyone together for 8 team runs through. So I'm think Talos arena hero side (which I'll start first) and hmmm, where villain side?

Also bear in mind to be fair you'll need to give up to 7 willing loses for every badge win you get, so everyone who sacrifices their time for your badge gets a crack at theirs too.

And finally, can someone confirm this; I tried it quickly with a friend, and changing the victory conditions (to 1 life/respawn) didn't seem to award badges. So does anyone know if/what limitations are on the Arena awards?

I'm thinking we'll need to organize some fights, in order to get most of the new Arena badges; I've been queuing up for matches all weekend and not getting one started

So I was thinking, if we have 8 people at least tomorrow (and maybe as many Sundays as we can organize), would people like to come along, and generously allow themselves to lose fights in order for everyone to eventually get a win?

Of course, we can also just have some fun fights too, and winner gets badge first...!

So would people be up for this, and what sort of time? Bear in mind for the Pentad we'll need badgers of every class alas, so even if we get the interest it may be tricky to get all the badges (and the accolade).

I'm thinking, not setting mid afternoon to Sunday evenings?

Since the patch, I've edited Apocalypse Cow as, thanks to file size compression behind the scenes I think, and being able to remove battles I no longer need to spawn certain levels of mobs, I saved about 5% of arc size.

As a consequence, I have almost DOUBLED the cow puns involved, so it's even more embarrassingly cheesy than previously thought imaginable... and I've rebalanced the spawn as well, so it's rather different than originally recommended. Might need a replay if it's been reviewed already.

As for my own recommendations; Xem really needs his to remain up, as I enjoyed them immensely.

Hard to tell, as I tend to save even the most minor changes, just to be certain I've not lost "inspiration" (ahem) Sooo many perfect first draft puns lost! However I'll swap to waiting 5 minutes before returning to the document as you suggest to see if that helps...

Odd one this, as I can't replicate it exactly; but I'm working on a published mission arc, Apocalypse Cow (ID 27552), in part due to size savings from the ability to set your own levels. But this led to me noticing the bug originally; I edited the arc a little, added some more text, and removed the battles forcing the spawn level originally. I republished, then reopened it after "Apocalypse Cow Has Been Republished" appeared in the chat screen to keep editing. Carry on a bit, save again, and come back... and then notice the battles are back. I didn't put them back. There's only one version online, so it's put them back in itself some how.

Odd, but I delete and carry on. And then over the evening I notice it's randomly removing new edits, randomly reverting old versions of text boxes (sometimes back to something I changed hours ago), and sometimes it would even insert changes doing nothing more than opening it; saving the file to local instead; and then going to check the local... only to see it now differs from the published version.

I'm not sure what or why it's doing this; It could be that there's a version lag server side, so what I think I'm working on is a much older version, which doesn't show until I get to see what the server thinks I have...? Please look into this though, because I've had to repeat some not-quite-as-polished new cow puns about 10 times in places now!

Next Week: "Mother's Love then said she'd show me how she'd decorated her Supergroup base, including her own *private* room... but I woke up in a bath tub, and my kidney's were missing! What's worse, there was writing on the wall, and it said 'You owe the Registrar 10,000 prestige in rent for this room overnight' "

On the positive side, this at least means much more Dev notice for some of the extremely talented EU Mission Architects, as the boards for discussing them will be combined too.

On the other hand... I'm pretty certain I've got an old US account too (I started there when the game went live), indeed I can even remember the original "Go. Hunt. Kil Skulz" thread... and it's going to feel odd to go back into that community so many year (both game and real) down the line.

So overall... I feel a little odd about this. Especially as my last 6 month payment ends in a few weeks, and I'm not sure I want to renew either.

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Bah...you people and your Commadore 64's....

My Commadore was the Commadore plus/4, the business version of the Commadore 16.

Back then my dad use to get any old computers the local Council were throwing out for free (since they would just dump them in the skip out back).

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Bah... you people and your Plus 4s! We had the C=16, and could only DREAM of that exciting business software, and oodles of RAM!

Back to the topic, someone mentioned Ultima Online; that's a good illustration of the wider problems with cheating... although the original post is framed in terms that would only effect your own character and no others, UO was almost ruined by the general mindset that "Anything is game". Not only was the in game economy almost irreversibly destroyed by said duping, but it spawned a griefer culture which didn't care about the experience of others, only whether you got enjoyment from it. As a consequence, most MMOs since UO have harshly limited player freedom, and included ways to permanently drain out currency from the economy... If people could be trusted with powerful tools, there'd be no problem, but in general they clearly can't. Inventions for instance in CoX play the role of economic-brakes today, costing inf which vanishes from game, and locking them into your character (except perhaps during a Respec).

No to all of them; although you get the short term accomplishment, you forever remove from yourself the experience of the journey to, and final arrival at 50. Which I feel I'd miss even on a second, third or fiftieth character too. Ultimately I'd feel I was cheating myself.

And it's not hypothetical to me as such; if anyone has played HAWX on the PC, you'll know there are a number of cheats/hacks out there, including one that pushes everyone in the same game as the cheater to the highest rank when the game ends... and I've backed up my save files, and then rolled them back about 8 levels to where I actually was once when I got hit by it. And HAWX is pretty grindtastic and doesn't really reward you for doing it either... but my progress is MINE, and I'd rather see where I really was.

Thinking about it, you might also be able to have them appear as Random if you set the spawn location to all being the same (either all on "All", or all events being "Front" etc)... Although the event (and associated triggers) wouldn't be random, the placement of the model would be. The second mission on my arc involves something similar (random map, random ally placement on map, but fixed events) but as Miss C said, it takes a fair amount more space, especially as they are all custom mobs.

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Apart from that I think it's the veteran's, general high badge count, the rikti stuff accolade, some of the event badges (gold medal ski races takes some skill and a bunch of kins), but really...

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Actually, the main ski slope only requires creative use of your second build

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Fixed for you

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You know, I've never actually taken a second build... it was introduced whilst I was on a break, so I've no real idea how to even make one. But now I think about it, it would help with certain badges; time for a healing build maybe! I've got the second healing badge just from rezzing people over the years, but maybe I can make some more progress!

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Apart from that I think it's the veteran's, general high badge count, the rikti stuff accolade, some of the event badges (gold medal ski races takes some skill and a bunch of kins), but really...

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Actually, the main ski slope only requires certain travel powers... Here's a quick video of me showing a friend how to do it with Superjump, and even though I screw up two gates I still get gold

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e...db6fb9a8902bda

I think my fastest time was about 17 seconds unbuffed... The second ski slope I couldn't get gold on though without buffs (miss it by about a second as I recall)

Regarding Celebrant, I have that on Bov, but alas not the 2nd and 4th event badges, as I keep taking long breaks from the game. The ones that impress me then are the PvP and Epic badges (never had the patience to farm for them) and the Bughunter/Cathedral of Pain badges, as you need to have been insanely lucky to have had a chance at them.

I've just gone and had a quick look, and it seems that Civilians are not available for custom groups; you can select a "Random" as the target from them when used as the standard group for a hostage (drop down box, amongst all the individual names), but then you'd get any civilian, not just the scientists. You can try and use custom Crey etc with scientist models, and add "Random Boss" "Random Minion" into the Custom Faction list, and save as a custom group, but then it wouldn't open it up in the editor... I may have messed something up, as my attention on the game is very, very short at the moment, but that's probably the only way (if at all) you can do it. Sorry.

I'm not too worried about people playing my arc in particular, although I'd like it to be as polished as possible for personal reasons (hence why I've not released a second one, I can't get close enough to any of my new ideas with the tools as they are)... I'm thinking more in terms of the wider community; I'm just not seeing any interest in either playing or building arcs these days... the MA boards and in game channel are largely dead, at least it seems to me. And whilst I understand the reasons for a 3 published arc limitation, that's stopped the talented creators like Leese et all going any further with it as they've run out of arcs they CAN publish. Whilst the public mostly seem to want farms or have exhausted the concept (most review threads have stopped) and the badgers have Badgenarok ahoy...

I personally have, on the few times I've logged an alt in to occasionally play, been running the normal content instead, as at least you know that scales exactly to your level, and will have a wider variety of events (even if no new plot surprises). But maybe it's just me, and my own sense of personal ennui at the moment.

You could create them as a custom group, containing the scientist models from the Civilian group, and then select that group for the hostages, but the individual hostage as random...

So Badgenarok is indeed coming; I notice though that the MA has included the level setting, which will allow me to remove the battles which were previously forcing the level and thus squeeze in EVEN MORE COW PUNS into my arc... hopefully before they award the next round of Dev Choice. What can I say? I'm hopelessly optimistic for some sense of personal progress... not so much about the MA in general though. With the hundreds of thousands of arcs published now, and very little bar the writing to separate them all out, I can't see them being played in general except for farming/cheap salvage now. Oh well, it'll be with us soon enough, so we'll see how it all shakes out...

Do we know if Issue 15 will include the badge changes? And are their any bug fixes included, especially with regards to the placement of mobs under (and so often hidden by) defendable objects in the Editor? To be honest, if there's not much more than listed, I'll probably play the two Taskforces once or twice through, and that'll be it for me once my 6 month pre-paid comes to an end; I'm not really getting any sense of re-invigoration from anything coming down the pipe sadly. Not even Going Rogue, as I've already seen all the content that side on my main villain too.

Whilst I agree with you to some extent JD, the actual effort required to collect the specific badges from the MA will be exactly the same on both servers; It's not as if they get any harder to collect US side. So it doesn't effect my main point, which is that it's really not obviously aberrant, certainly not compared to the amount of game fiddling mechanics that still exist (PvP badges, sitting on event missions like Snaptooth). American or European, it's hard to see how we were supposed to feel dirty for badges that you could haul in within a week... not whilst they expect us to keep keys cellotaped down over night after night for epic badges... It's only the ratings one within the MA that actually needed a long term investment, and which distorted the intent of the MA to any great degree; every other badge could be collected within a week of focused play.

The public relations nightmare continues, I see... And although all the arguments have been rehashed to death, let me just add one more perspective to the pile; The thing about the MA and badges was not that it was particularly farmable as a process, but that from the past experience of badgers, it wasn't all that NOTICEABLY bad in comparative terms from within the game world to what we've done before.

Here's some context; here's the current Union list of badgers;

http://www.badge-hunter.com/players....r=11&sort=

Notice how high my main character is? But now click on his profile, and look at the badges I don't have;

I don't have any of the usual epics. Virtually none of the healing badges. Quite a lot of the anniversay badges missing... and only half of the possible played time taken, only 24 of 60 month awards. And yet 108 of 116 of architect badges, despite not logging Bovine in for weeks now.

Why am I mentioning this? The point is two fold; firstly, there aren't actually all that many truly dedicated badgers around; the numbers who actually sit down and farm on the Epic scales required are relatively very, very small. Think about it; I'm ranked 9th, and I've never bothered to sit down and leave myself damage farming overnight, let alone using the Medicine pool to heal and heal and heal. So is it really that much of a problem that there's perhaps 2 or 3 people in total (who aren't Sal) who actually have?

And secondly, those MA badges. The only ones I'm missing are the truly grindtastic ones; Test Kills and Hall of Fame. And the virtual tickets, but that's because they were bugged in large teams until recently. And of those, only Test Kills was in any way one that required a noticeable grind... but even that, with the right missions, can be done in about 50 runs through. EVERYTHING ELSE I had within a few days of largely casual play. I've just not been all that bothered to do it. And I'd likewise have done more of the HoF too if the only (so far) HoF wasn't being griefed so it wasn't up often, and wasn't so colossally boring and over-hyped on repeated play throughs; Thus compared to the Influence etc badges, how on earth were we supposed to realize that what we were doing was aberrant? Compared to normal high end badging (which as mentioned, isn't even that common) the MA badges were like free candy falling from the sky; 100+ badges in a week or two just didn't seem all that onerous a trial at the time compared to what's been in game for years.

I'm not saying that the whole MA circus hasn't worked out quite shabbily, but this constant confusion about the role of badgers is quite depressing to be honest. How can the developers be so ignorant of both the size of, and nature of a community they've been developing for so many years? I'm truly sorry for all of those expecting better of the community and it's content. And again I speak with experience; since I took the tag "BHMA" off my arc two weeks ago, it's not been played ONCE... so I'm sure it's impossible for people who don't have my connections in game, or my backlog of BHMA ratings noticed at all. I'm sure there are some gems languishing amongst a sea of dross, of course I am. But that's not going to change without a serious overhaul of the entire system... A MA wide ratings reset? Or even complete ratings removal? There's going to be no easy answer... and the more I hear of their thoughts, the more I'm convinced the Dev Team don't yet have a consistent understanding of their player base, let alone a plan they'd be able to realistically apply to sort it all out.

I don't disagree with taking hard decisions for the wider good of the game; but still, I can't help but be saddened by the colossal blindness that led to them including yet another series of badges along the same design ethos of badges that have been in the game right from back in 2004 (and some of which I STILL don't have from normal play after 28 months of active account) and then not realizing that badge hunters would do what badge hunters do for for badges like they've always had.

I suppose on the plus side, I'll now have all the available MA badges. On the negative side, the MA itself is still too limited and buggy to actually tell the stories I'd like to tell (My second arc is stalled due to the fact that mobs spawn under defendable objects, so they are often nearly impossible to spot if you use fitting map selections), so unless I15 really has something new to offer, my interest in the game is largely gone again for now. Pity.