Icecomet

Hello. I have been working on the Ouroboros badges a little at a time with a friend of mine and twice in the last week now, we've gone to work on continuing the badge work and both times we completed our arcs and NO badges were awarded to either of us. I did verify that they are badges I do not already have (and he did the same as well).

Is there currently a bug with badge awards on the live servers?

Appreciate any information you can provide.

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One of the more common complaints from people on the forums is that simply choosing new powersets is not enough to justify playing through the game. New things to do are needed. The way I see it is that (In my opinion) two important things need to be done:

1) It needs to be impossible to get every single badge on one character.

2) It needs to be impossible to do every single mission with one character. (Or be unable to experience the full scope of the mission if exemplered down/sidekicked up)

What *I* ultimately want to see are branching story arcs, with badges that can't be obtained if you have a different badge.

For example, lets say you have a Contact named... John Jacob Jinglehymer Smith, who asks you to find out what the freaks are up to. The Story arc at some point could branch with a choice. Say, either going to "interrogate" a Freakshow for information, or instead taking a coded message you located to a cryptogropher to decode it.

Your choice would lead to one of two completly different endings, different temp powers, and ultimately a different badge depending on which ending you recieved. Once you got one, you would be unable to get the other for that character.

In the end, I think that would help *improve* the game.

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You want me to tell you why that would be meaningless? That's fundamentally no different than beautiful or handsome badge.

Oh, you chose Contact X, so you have Badge X. I took Contact Y, so I have Badge Y.

And, if you can't see the storm brewing for a later date when they go back and attach some power or accolade or something to those badges and Badge X is something really useful, like, let's say a 10% damage increase, while Badge Y increases your running speed by 10%. Yep, look out, the boards would explode with ticked off people that they didn't know about the powers when they chose their path and subsequently, now feel "penalized" because they were one of the first to do the missions and choose path X.

My whole isolator argument is right in line with people like Puretone and a few others that I can't recall right now, but, simply put, nobody stayed in Outbreak when the game went live, NOBODY (or, there might have been a handful game wide), but there simply was no point, the mobs there do NOT give xp and back in those days you did NOT have the option to "skip the tutorial zone"

I personally wouldn't want to see them datamine this and I only say that because the time and effort to find 10 people that actually killed 50 thugs that really didn't give them any xp or anything, just wouldn't be worth it for them. It should be something like a one-time mission for any toon with a CREATION date BEFORE I2 (which for me is like most of my toons). I'd put absolute faith that if they did any datamining whatsoever, they'd find that 99.9% of all toons in their databases that have the isolator badge were created after I2 went live. Gee, now I wonder why that would be?

Having it the way it is now is like a big F-You to people that participated in beta, paid for the preorder cd, paid for the CD and subsequently have had faithfully paid subscriptions for the last 2 years. So, because I was one of the first to pave the way (and, ultimately one of the few faithful from those days that have stuck around), I have to be penalized for not farming something that didn't exist at a time when skipping the tutorial wasn't an option. Umm, k.

Hi Cuppajo.

My idea for Isolator is based on the following idea because of a rather simple logic. This is a copy and paste from an idea I posted to Positron, which to no surprise, went unanswered.

I see this as a rather easily rectified. I am pretty certain that the character database knows the creation date of all toons, so, that being said we can either (A) Automatically award it to any toon that was created BEFORE badges were introduced to the game. This is a fair choice because since badges didn't exist, noone stayed in Outbreak longer than the requirement since none of those mobs there give xp, plain and simple, and arguing anything else has no real merit. Or (B) (and this is the preferred method) setup some special instanced mission where ONLY toons that were created BEFORE badges were introduced can go and just earn the kills, I don't even care if it exemplars me to level 1 like I would have been in Outbreak (in fact, I'd prefer to be Level 1 again and earn it the right way). It all boils down to a simple unfair choice made by the Dev teams. So, basically, because I was in closed beta, open beta and bought and played the game from day 1 to present, I have to suffer a penalty of NOT having the ability to get that badge.

I just cannot, for the life of me, understand how the devs cannot see the simple logic that I have applied here. It's straight forward, and my preferred method in option (B) gives those that played the game from day 1 a chance to earn something that didn't exist when we were the paying customers at game launch.

Thanks for your time.

Hey Positron. Let me preface by saying, I didn't read all 5 pages of posts, I read all your replies, but didn't see any of these issues addressed, so here they are.

First, I will add the obligatory Isolator badge complaint, but will apply a simple logic to the situation. I see this as a rather easily rectified. (A) Automatically award it to any toon that was created BEFORE badges were introduced to the game. This is fair because since badges didn't exist, noone stayed in Outbreak longer than the requirement since none of those mobs there give xp, plain and simple, and arguing anything else has no real merit. Or (B) setup some special instanced mission where ONLY toons that were created BEFORE badges were introduced can go and just earn the kills, I don't even care if it exemplars me to level 1 like I would have been in Outbreak (in fact, I'd prefer to be Level 1 again and earn it the right way). It all boils down to a simple unfair choice made by the Dev teams. So, basically, because I was in closed beta, open beta and bought and played the game from day 1, I have to suffer a penalty of NOT having the ability to get that badge. Does that sound like a good customer service call for someone who pays their fees every month? (that's a rhetorical question as it really only has one answer, NO).

Also, the Bug Hunter Accolade that exists. Let me quote the support team from the email:

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Thank you for contacting the PlayNC Support team regarding the Bug Hunter badge. There are no in-game mechanisms for players to earn the Bug Hunter badge. This badge is only awarded to players in the game under extraordinary circumstances determined by the development team. The PlayNC Support and QA teams are not awarding this badge for bug reports received.

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So, what do they consider extraordinary? 1700 play hours on my main isn't extraordinary? Having 295 badges collected? 38 of a possible 43 souvenirs? Ship you all a case of scotch for our CoH 2nd Anniversary in May? Again, just a hazy thing that can number any amount of "extraordinary" events, would like more info about what qualifies.

Another idea, how about either adding a tab in the player info window to (A) List collected souvenirs or (B) eliminate souvenirs and turn them into badges and just add a section for them?

Another thing, are they fixing the PvP Rep from deteriorating back to 0 and my maps resetting to all black when I zone out of a PvP zone?

There are a few more things, but I'll stop there for now, this is already a long response.

Appreciate some insights into those ideas though.

Thanks!

You know, of course, ideally speaking, from a power name like "Defiance", I would be happy to see them change the power to be more like as my health gets lower, my defense gets better. You know, to show defiance that I am not running and hanging in the fight, I get harder to hit, sort of like the "Vengeance" power. To me, that makes more sense.

Because, for the most part, I think Blaster damage is good enough, though I think its base could stand to be wratched up about 10% more than what it is now, but other than that, I think defiance should just increase blaster defense...

Well, I for one thing find the "skill" useless MOST of the time because about the time I start getting it to where it's giving me some useful output, I am already dead.

Personally, I always thought it should scale exactly proportional to the HP bar, as the hp bar goes down, the defiance bar should go up. (i.e. each one pass the other exactly at 50%, etc)

I have never lived long enough for it to actually really help a group because I am SO squishy, I just get dropped or stunned and then dropped before I can get a cast off to notice any dmg output increase.

My perspective has always been increased damage as my health fades so I can "increase my output" and try to save a dying group, but alas, this just isn't the case, I just die along with them and if I am really lucky, I might get a shot off that has useful damage. I am better off just dying and letting a rad person use me for fallout.

Speaking of quirks that never get looked at, how come when I fight something that does the "earthquake" power thing, I kill the NPC but the earthquake continues to grief me for 15 seconds, but yet I cast blizzard and as soon as I die blizzard stops. In case the devs missed it, Blizzard is NOT a toggle, it's a cast and as soon as I die, it's already snowing, so it should run its cycle, regardless.

Just put that as a note in your hip pocket of things that'll never get fixed...

This is without a doubt, the worst change I have seen made to this game. It's affecting everything in the game so you have to stay up your teammates butts the whole time if you want credit for kills and xp from the group.

Come on guys, how about focusing on stuff that's important like content for 50 characters and making missions better by not sending me to Perez Park at level 50 from Peregrine Island.

If you guys are trying to eliminate every last fun thing about CoH, then by all means keep moving the way you are moving. I just hope you all can say POP and get your heads out before it's too late and you've taken a game that was fun to play and turn it into just another MMO game that really isn't any different. You make these changes and it's still a dog with fleas, remember that.

Please put the xp range and kill credit ranges and such back to zone wide so teams can split up and be effective on Kill X missions and such.

Statesman, for the love of all that is good and holy, will you guys quit changing everything that makes CoH different (in a good way) and fun as opposed to every other MMORPG out there?

I think if you guys are striving to alienate everyone by molding this game to something it never was at the onset, you're doing a bang-up job.

Sad to see the golden goose of fun games being slain by every retarded change like this one.

Sad indeed...

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How about players just accept that the game is about to get a little more challenging? Strap in.

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Hehe well said. I don't understand why players aren't more excited about these changes.

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Yeah, I agree. Oh by the way, that Ferrari that you've been driving for a year is due for maintenance. We're going to put in a Yugo engine. Just look at it as more of a challenge to get it up to 100MPH...

I agree. I think every beneficial buff in this game (clear mind, density, speed boost, etc) should last as long as the Deflection Shield buff that the defenders get.

I know, because when I get in a group of 5-8 people, I spent 80% (or more) of my time casting density because it simply wears off too quickly. I mean, how fun is buffing density for 2 hours straight? Wow, exciting, I really feel like a crime fighter.

At least in EQ a buff would be at least 30 minutes and some, varying on what they were lasted up to 4 hours. It's just realistic because getting people to do things together isn't always a 'right now' effect. People have to AFK a lot for varying reasons and then you sit around waiting.

Someone should really look at durations of these buffs and really match thier durations to Deflection Shield's duration so that kinetics defenders can do something a little more than cast density and speed boost the whole time I am grouped.