Lothic

As I've always said having the OPINION that 50 was too high is a perfectly valid one.
But just as valid is the OPINION that 50 is going to be challenging but not too high.

My opinion doesn't make it "good" and your opinion doesn't make it "bad".
I'm willing to just agree to disagree on this one.

I suppose this just goes to show different people have different definitions of what "grinding" means to them. For instance I don't have a real problem with what the WST system calls for to get a badge I'll have done in a few months. For me once the badge is done it's done so there's a well defined goal to focus on. On the other hand you'll never catch me ever INF/Merit/Purple drop "farming" because I consider those unbounded activities to be an unacceptable absolutely miserable grind. Ironically there are other people out there who live for that stuff, go figure.

So I'm sorry the reality of the WSTs don't fit in with your version of "fun", but then again as we all know the Devs are never going to be able to satisify everyone with everything. Better luck next time. *shrugs*

I'm not the one flip-flopping between trying to claim a distinction between badges that are "harder to get now than they were when they were new" and badges that don't have that quality. The fundamental flaw in your argument is that you're trying to push your OPINION that this new 50 count TF badge will A) become one of those "future harder" badges and B) that that's something to be considered "bad" thing as established facts.

You may have enough experience with this game and badges to make valid assumptions those things "might" happen to this new badge. I just happen think this badge is NOT repeating the same mistakes epic badges have made in the past. "Bless your heart" for being an alarmist about it in this case.

'Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain'...

I think some people would be amazed to learn how often that kind of thing happens in software development/maintenance situations.
Still, it's nice no matter what the reason.

I'll also have to /sign the standard "no" to this. But I will give you points for coming up with the vaguely novel idea of asking for only a "half powerset" respec instead of the usual full primary/secondary suggestion.

The reason this compromise won't fly either is that if the Devs ever gave us a "secondary powerset" respec the people who've always wanted the full respec would start screaming extra bloody murder for them. At that point the Devs couldn't really continue to justify their desire to avoid this altogether and it would be a fairly messy situation for everyone involved.

Better luck next time with your powerset choices.

The funny thing about this is whether you recall it or not I was actually one of the few members of the "vocal minority" here on the forums who argued continuously for the idea that the 1 billion HP Empath badge (in particular) was set way too high back during the days when Positron was adamantly claiming that value was "working as intended". This was years before Posi backtracked and tried to sell the idea that the 1 billion value was caused by the now infamous "decimal point" error.

So we fought for several years to convince the Devs to have Empath reduced to its current reasonable value. Do you think a person like me, a long-time advocate for reasonable badge requirements, would support the 50 TF count badge if I didn't think it was also within a reasonable range of difficulty? I don't think so.

I can totally accept the idea that you and others feel the 50 TF count badge is set too high. But I also have to accept the reality that, based on the "lessons learned" history of epic badges in this game, the 50 count value is not likely going to be reduced any time soon at the very least. It was set based on the experience of realizing badges like Empath started out way too high. If this count badge was set say at 500 instead of 50 I would be on your side with this. But as it is I just can't support your point of view here. *shrugs*

There's a world of difference between a player using metagame tactics to figure out better ways to achieve goals and the Devs of a game forcing styles of play that they frankly don't exactly favor. The Devs' mindset has always clearly been geared toward favoring teaming and only merely tolerating soloers.

I'm against "solo defeat" badges mostly because the Devs themselves have said they are against badges that too heavily favor and/or discriminate for or against various ATs/powersets. The case has been closed on this for years now.

As for worrying about earning such badges personally I currently have almost 1200 badges on my Fire/Rad Controller badging character. I really have no doubt that I could ultimately overcome ANY badge challenge the Devs throw at me. But thankfully none of those challenges will ever hinge directly on what's within the realm of capabilities of the Fire/Rad Controller AT/powerset.

Besides I'm not even positive if the game could actually track whether a given single player delivered 100% of the damage to defeat something anyway. We know the game can track whether a TEAM has done enough damage to say a GM to know if the TEAM should get credit for it or not. But a single character doing the total damage? That I don't know. Do I even have to mention the griefing potential of this? Imagine if you're trying to defeat a Pylon solo and someone keeps sneaking in to hit it with a brawl to mess with you.

There's just way to many reasons weighing against this idea than for it. *shrugs*

Although I've always loved Benny HILL I've known about Benny HINN for years.

He got his televangelist start in Orlando, Florida back in the early 80s when I was growing up there.

36 badges represents less than 3% of the known badges in this game.
You'll have to better than this to convince me.

Well anyone has the right to any opinion. But when you weigh in factors like the game's history and the general evolution of the badge system it's pretty easy to see that some "opinions" are better supported by reality than others.

Snow Globe provided an excellent list earlier in this thread that shows that a new 1, 10, 50 count badge is not really out of line with what currently exists in this game for other count badges and I still argue that the time/effort involved is not that dissimilar to other current epic series badges that exist today.

If those people who are against this new 50 count badge can actually provide some data to show that it's extremely out-of-whack compared to the rest of the system I'd be happy to entertain it. Otherwise saying it's a bad badge just because you don't like it really isn't good enough. *shrugs*

The fact that you came up with a couple of examples (out of hundreds of badges) to try to bolster your case is commendable but they were pretty much the "exceptions that proved the rule" in this discussion.

Let's not get hung up on an fringe example and lose sight of the main idea of this thread.

Once again my -main- point is that there's no overt reason to put "you must be on a team" in the badge requirements of pretty much any badge even if it's a badge (like Paingiver) where being on a team is a de facto requirement. By that very same token there's no real call to make a class of badges that arbitrarily says "you must be solo" either. The state of being solo or teamed enters into the realm of the metagame and basing badge requirements on metagame concepts is hardly a desireable way to work these things.

As I said before a "must be solo defeat" badge would likely be very discriminatory against certain types of AT and the Devs have specifically told us in the past that they try to avoid any badges which are that much more (or less) possible depending on your AT/powersets. This alone is probably the key reason why "must be solo to defeat X" badges have never been introduced into this game so far.

As I said there are plenty of badges out there that for all intents and purposes require teams to get. But even in the case of Paingiver there's nothing in the specific requirements of that badge that says "you must be on a team to earn this badge". Teaming is a typical means to the end, not a specific strict requirement. For all we know once the entire Incarnate system is available it may well somehow become possible for one person to solo those Obelisks.

So you just made the counter argument that ultimately there really isn't -that- much of a problem getting the majority of badges at any time you want. If that's the case then your concern about people having trouble finishing badges doesn't seem that pressing.

In the wide range of different kinds of badges available I don't see it as major problem if we get an occasional badge (like this new 50 count TF badge) that's closer to the "might be hard to finish later on" end of the spectrum, especially if we can assume your take on it that there aren't really that many badges like that to worry about to begin with.

We'll pay $9.99 for the solid black versions you see in that facebook picture.
We'll have to pay an extra $9.99 to get those versions filled in with colorful pixels.

Waiting 32 years for a new show can manage to lower a person's standards pretty low...
Although you have to admit that Betty as Wonder Woman would be funny for at least a quick YouTube video or SNL sketch.

I can actually sympathize with this line of thought. For instance I made the "mistake" back when Issue 18 went live of not quickly switching my main hero badger to the redside and collecting all of the RV Signature Hero AV badges ASAP. Because everyone else did those within the first few days of I18 going live I had to wait around 3 months before I had the opportunity to scare up a big enough team of people who collectively wanted to try to work on those badges. Sure as a badge collector it was a crummy situation to be in, but on the other hand I never outright gave up on them either. I knew it would just be a matter of time.

Obviously not getting badges "when the iron is hot" makes them harder to obtain. But I still don't think that's a significant enough reason to dissuade the Devs from giving us new "long term" badges like these new TF count ones.

For years the badge system in this game has institutionalized the idea that "it's easier to work new badges when they first come out than 6 months later". And yes on some level that is an unfortunate situation.

But I'll counter your valid concern by asking if you think we could ever get any new badges in this game that would not have that problem to some degree? Basically for years now the latest badges have always been easier to get when they first came out. I don't see that quality as a particular unique failure of these new TF count badges - that's pretty much going to be the case anytime new badges (which require serious teaming) arrive on our doorstep.

Ultimately it would be cool if badges didn't suffer this problem in general. But I think if you're going to be against a specific set of new badges just because they are going to be harder to earn in the future then I think you're going to end up (at least indirectly) being against pretty much -any- new badge from now on.

The reason why those new Praetorian "solo" badges are fine is that they are a part of the way the overall story unfolds for characters who play through the Praetorian storyline. They also account for how the Loyalist/Resistance alignment changes are handled by the game system.

On the other hand making arbitrary "solo" badges that are set to be earned solo just for "soloing's" sake just seems to be forcing a distinction where you don't really need one. There are already plenty of badges you can earn while playing solo in this game without such a distinction. And even though many badges in this game effectively require a team to get I don't believe there are ANY badges that specifically say "must be teamed" as part of the wording of the badge itself. Why go out of your way to create random non-mission badges that specifically require "must be solo" in their requirements?

Another point to consider is that most of your solo badge examples tend to favor strong Tank/Brute/Scrapper type ATs which are known to be able to solo AVs, GMs, pylons, etc. How exactly are Empathy Defenders supposed to be able to easily get those kinds of badges?

You can't really tell anything about how much code was changed just by going by how large the Hotfix patch was. They could have theoretically changed only one line of code, recompiled the baseline, and generated a 100mb "patch" just because that one line of code was buried in that larger 100mb library/pigg file.

My guess, based on how quickly they were able to crank out this Hotfix, is that whatever the problem was didn't actually require that many code changes. It certainly required the expertise of the experienced Devs to know WHAT needed to be changed, but ultimately the AMOUNT of code that was fixed probably wasn't very much at all.

Either way it ran pretty well for me and the people I teamed with last night so I'd say they managed to do what needed to be done.

I have no problem with the Devs adding more badges that CAN be earned solo if you want.
But the idea of random badges that require you to be unteamed as part of their arbitrary requirements just seems needlessly picky and/or metagamey.

Ultimately they'll figure it out when they have a spare minute. Again I agree it should have been handled already. But when our proverbial "Titanic" sprung a leak yesterday the last few hours since then weren't exactly the right time for the Devs to be polishing the brass, so to speak.

I'm not saying it shouldn't have been accounted for already.
I'm just saying that since it apparently wasn't -now- is not really the time for the Devs to be focusing on that.