Lothic

I don't have a problem with these badges from just a pure "something to do to get a badge" point of view.
But I heavily disfavor the general idea of account-based badges in any way, shape or form.

I think badges should only apply to the actions of specific characters and that "player based" badges should be kept to an absolute minimum. Why should any of my characters (especially the ones not even involved in this "Alt-fest") get a badge because I, the player, can log into a real world MMO a bunch of times? Might as well give Superman a badge because I can hold my breath for a minute. *shrugs*

I have nothing against people who are Alt-aholics, but I don't think the Devs should be giving us badges for RL player activities any more than they already have to.

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It's a number. They had to set it once, and they chose 53 instead of 50. Not exactly a ton of work.

Besides, resetting 51-53 HOs would literally be a nerf for no good reason.

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My point was that the game "setting" HOs to be level 51-53 in the first place was a bug. The software should not have allowed them to happen at all. If it wasn't a "bad thing" the game would still be allowing us to make more right? And I would suggest the Devs have spent (wasted?) a lot more time and effort 'supporting' their existence over the years than they would have if they had just nerfed them ASAP.

As far as being a "nerf for no good reason" as was pointed out earlier the benefit difference between a level 50 and 53 HO is negligible. It's like 2%, maybe. And also with the advent of IOs if this had been taken care of a couple of years ago it would have been a mere footnote in CoX history by now.

Again I realize this is just an academic discussion at this point. The few that are left around are not going to be nerfed regardless. But it does show us that what the Devs ultimately consider to be an "exploit" is definitely subjective. Think about it: They bother to stop the exploit but -don't- remove the benefits of that exploit? Seems a bit silly to me.

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If they've got such a unique (and now unobtainable) origin, it's weird that they cost about the same as a lv50 then.

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Actually I always thought it was more weird that once they finally fixed the "glitch" that allowed for the creation of 51-53 level HOs in the first place that the Devs didn't just nerf all of the existing ones back to level 50. I mean they weren't even supposed to exist and people went a bit crazy dare I say "exploiting" that bug at the time.

Instead of doing the simple logical thing of nerfing them back to level 50 the Devs made extra work for themselves by supporting their existence in the markets and even wasted time working on the whole "selling combined HOs" issue just so that would work as well.

Now just to be clear I don't really care about this issue -that- much. It's not like I'm mad they're still around. I'm just suggesting it was kind of funny that instead of cleaning up the mess the 51-53 level HO bug made the Devs decided to cater to them like they were intended all along.

P.S. I knew someone who had gotten something like 60 of those 51-53 level HOs on her main character before the bug was fixed. Before the era of IOs that character was an absolute goddess.

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...sheesh. I would be dead 2 minutes after I turned SS on.

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Well I have to think it'd make more sense from a "realism" point of view.
Smacking a wall at 80mph is likely going to hurt most people who aren't like stone tanks or some-such.

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yes that is understandable but then the same can be said that if i use superspeed and then run into a wall i should take damge for hitting a wall at 80 mph or the same with fly and run into a building but we dont in the game. Im not sure though if you are getting my point

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Based on this and what the others have said it sounds like taking damage when falling from a high height with SJ on is -not- the problem here. The real problem sounds like people -not- taking damage from running into walls with SS on. The Devs should be adding taking damage from SS impacts ASAP.

Yeah I'd say the "Day Job badge progress bar not updating when I log in" bug happens to me roughly once in every 10 logins. It's vaguely annoying but it's not too big of a deal once you understand what's going on.

What's funny is that when I first read your "I got home today and my 5 year old had logged into mine and my wifes accounts" sentence I assumed I was going to read that he had managed to delete your characters or some-such.

I suppose the fact that he actually was effectively playing and "boting" your characters only shows that kids today are going to be more tech-savvy than us old people ever dreamt we could be.

I usually make binds for that kind of thing as well but back years ago when I toyed around with the battlecry field in the ID screen it seemed like it did have a fairly small amount of space available. Having only 19 usable characters sounds just about what I remember for it. Now that I think about it that's probably one reason why I got into the habit of making my own binds.

As far as your empty bio saying '3/1024' it's probably counting some ending CR/EOF type control characters against our total. I've spent many bio writings bumping up against the max limit and we've never really had exactly 1024 characters available. There have always been a few characters lost to that kind of thing and now that we have the counter those lost characters are probably just showing up that way.

[ QUOTE ][*]The basic /emote juggle now works while flying.

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Life seems to be full of funny little ironies...

Of the four juggle emotes (balls, fire, magic and lightning) the only one I -never- use is the balls one which is the only one of the four now working when you Hover. The 3 of the 4 emotes that I'd actually want to work while Hovering still don't.

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Badges arent a status sybmol because you can use work arounds and cheats to get em. If I meet 2 people with similar badges and person A got them through cheating and person B obtained them the hard way and I am looking for an 8th person for a TF or team I pick person B simply because it says a lot about someone's drive to achive as opposed to his eagerness to cheat

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Quick question: How can a person prove "how" they earn badges in this game?

Answer that one and I might accept that your argument about the "proper" way to earn little collections of pixels on the screen of a computer game has any bearing on anyone whatsoever.

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For God's sake already...
em facepalm

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I want this Booster Pack for real ASAP just like everyone else. But I'm willing to wait a bit longer for it if it'll reduce the chance I end up having any buggy problems with it.

Body type changes will be cool but I've been waiting for the height adjustment feature in particular for one of my alts for over 5 years now - what's a few more days or weeks more going to matter to me now? *shrugs*

Clearly Southern_Comfort has a point. He might have made a silly mistake putting down badgers in the badging forum while making it, but he has a point.

That point is that there's really no good way to tell for sure if a person earned their PvP badges via "legitimate" PvP or if they earned them through farming. I have the feeling that he's bitter because he probably earned most of these badges through a lot of hard PvPing and doesn't like the idea that his precious badges are "cheapened" by other people who got them much more easily than he did. He's entitled that opinion, for what it's worth.

But it's hard to feel sorry for a person who's apparently upset about how -other- people play this game. If he can't be satisfied on his moral highground in taking pride in his own accomplishments for earning badges the way HE thinks we are ALL suppose to then that's his problem, not ours. Being mad that someone -else- is playing this game in a way that I don't like is a concept I probably wouldn't waste time on even if you paid me to. *shrugs*

After the Devs can slash-n-burn 80+ badges out of the game on barely a knee-jerking whim regardless if the people who earned them got them the "right" way or the "wrong" way having Southern_Comfort worried about the so-called purity of PvP badging doesn't really seem all that important anymore does it?

I agree with your idea that having one common EULA cover all of their games is probably easier from a legal standpoint for NCsoft, assuming that's the case. But we must also accept the fact that having it mention NCcoin in -our- EULA does make it one step easier for them to introduce NCcoins into -our- game if they wanted to.

I'm not necessarily trying to imply that's a good or bad thing. I'm just stating that if they wanted to formalize the concept of microtransactions in this game that this would be a step towards that.

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I don't recall any type of open testing for the other booster packs.

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True, but it's good to hammer out bugs first. After the whole "cape with wings" thing that happened with the Magic pack. With all the upset people who lost their costume combinations (and people like me who now have "legacy costumes" they can't change), I could see why they'd want to test a little to make sure that sort of stuff doesn't hit live.

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I definitely agree with the idea of testing the booster packs for bugs first. I was asking that because another poster, or as I read it, implied that there were previous booster tests.

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All three Booster Packs have had a stealth "micro-beta" on the Test server. Each time they have only been on the Test server for a few days or less. Each time it has taken several weeks between the time the micro-beta happened and when the Booster Pack was officially offered for purchase. Obviously one could argue just how effective these micro-betas were because they still had bugs when they went live, but the fact remains that the Devs did toss them out for a bit of testing regardless.

Based on the fact that the Science Booster Pack got tested like this a couple weeks ago I'd expect to see it for purchase before the beginning of August give or take.

1. Yes.

2. Yes.

Your lack of use of the system does not imply no one else uses it for legitimate purposes.

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I was thinking toga

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That or maybe you were thinking about the loincloth type outfit Candy Lebeaux was wearing. I've personally wanted pretty much every costume item she's wearing for my characters for years now.

Well for what it's worth we are getting the Going Rogue expansion which is going to be giving us a third "city" to play in. It's quite likely that they will be trying to implement the "Spy" AT they hinted at back in the infamous Market Survey of August 2008 and for all we know it'll be more flexible in terms of how its powers work. It will not be 100% free-form no matter what it is, but it could be something closer to what you are suggesting.

So while I highly doubt any changes are going to be made in how the CoH or CoV ATs work we may still have hope for something that will compete with what the new games are doing in the Going Rogue expansion.

I think it is -possible- to have a game with CO's version of power selection or DCUO's version of power selection in the world because, low and behold, they are actually developing those games to be that way as we speak. But I think it's another matter entirely to take an established class-based game like CoX and try to redesign it to be more like those games on any fundamental level like that.

Besides KitsuneKnight reminded us of the very important point that this game's epic ATs are already effectively superset ATs that have a wide range of power choices normally found spread across multiple other ATs. That's really what makes them "epic" to begin with. I believe the epic ATs are just about as close as this game is ever going to get to your "free-form" power selection concept.

I understand that some people play games to min/max and other people play for concepts. The concern is that free-form power selection not only enables better concept characters but it -also- enables more extreme min/maxing. It's a double-edged sword that games like this are always going to have to strike a balance for.

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You can check at City Info Tracker.

One problem with keeping up a list of them is that every now and then the numbers change.


missed it by *that* much

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Actually as someone who's messed around with using /settitle binds for years I'd put out the warning that many badge numbers tend to change EVERY time the Devs add badges to the game.

It's not impossible to account for, but it is an annoyance that people don't expect when they first start looking into to using the /settitle command.

Yes I think I understand the basic desire you have to be able to play a game that would let you choose any power you want so that you can develop any concept imaginable. That's an obvious "Holy Grail" for any player of a game like this. But I think we have far too much evidence to support the conclusion that free-form games don't really work in the "real world" and possibly never will:

A) To begin with your WoW Death Knight example seems to be far from perfect. At the very least it appears to be very debatable whether the concept behind that class actually "works" as well as you are claiming it does. The DK is probably only tolerated in WoW because it's a single broken class among others that are better balanced. I suspect if all the classes in WoW worked like the DK does then you'd have the chaos you were questioning. As IanTheM1 implied the fact that the DK hasn't destroyed WoW yet doesn't mean it's a -good- thing for that game.

B) Then there's the point that the Devs of Champions Online are already imposing certain amounts of control on their system to provide game balance. My guess is that they would not be putting those controls in place if they weren't required.

C) Ironically Cryptic (the folks working on CO now) originally tried to make CoH be a free-form game during its Alpha stages and the outcome of that was so disastrous from a game balance perspective they had to impose ATs and powersets on this game as damage control to finally make it work.

D) Then you have the fact that even pen-n-paper RPGs that are widely known for having free-form systems really only work because you have human GMs there to impose the flexible arbitration required to make those systems work. Until we have MMOs run by HAL 9000 type computers they won't have the AI horsepower necessary to control things as well as a human could.

Bottomline while it's probably safe to say players will ALWAYS want to have free-form games it's probably also safe to say games will ALWAYS have to have safeguards in place to make sure players don't run amuck with that desire.

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Champions Online is currently trying a more free-form system, but the restrictions seem to be creeping in.

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I find this somewhat amusing, because back when I was hanging around with people who played the pen-and-paper Champions game.....

....they were constantly talking about all the restrictions GMs would put on character creation in an attempt to prevent the powergamers from making completely broken monster characters.

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I think you hit on a key point concerning just how free-form a game's power choices can be and still work.

The main reason why the pen-and-paper Champions game works as well as it does is because you have a human GM there to flexibly regulate the game to make sure people don't end up creating characters that are too tankmagey or too gimpy.

Because computer-based MMOs don't have the advantage of having a live human there to control things they have to rely on pre-programmed systems which require a degree of control that almost by definition has to be more restrictive and static than any human GM would be. This is the main reason why pure 100% free-form MMOs will likely never happen, or at least are many years off at any rate.

I think you kind-of, sort-of have a point with this. *shrugs*

But as far as the Devs spending any time or effort to "fix" this? Well I might put it on the "big list of things for our Devs to do" but it'd probably be pegged behind roughly 3,781 more important things to do first.

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This idea has been posted many times before. To put it simply, I don't think this is anything close to a good idea. The fact that you use WoW as a feasibility model is kinda funny.

Also, the above posters mentioned that the game used to do this; however, the developers created the AT system for a reason... the open power selection model was unworkable.

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I wouldn't say "unworkable", more that the Devs found the game (and the players) easier to control with the more structured AT system.

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Not so much 'unworkable' as 'irredeemably broken'. As said, it'd be incredibly easy to make a completely useless gimp or a gamebreaking tankmage.

Champions Online is currently trying a more free-form system, but the restrictions seem to be creeping in.

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Yeah despite the WoW Death Knight example I pretty much figured this "Can CoX support a character without AT restrictions?" question was inspired by what Champions Online is trying to do.

As you point out even the Champions Online system is not completely free-form because I think they realize that having a system without restrictions of some kind is simply unworkable. The computerized AI of current MMOs basically need to have -some- kind of system of control and character class structures represents a degree of control proven to work.

I tend to see this kind of power selection thing for games on a spectrum running all the way from 100% free-form to 100% hardwired. I think the point is that a superhero MMO will likely never be pegged at one end of the spectrum or the other. They'll never make a game set at 100% hardwired because players would hate not having any choice over power selection and they'll never have a game set at 100% free-form because the game could never be balanced.

Many people think having complete power selection control is something players -should- have in a game like this. But those people don't seem the realize that games need to impose some restrictions or as you point out there would be nothing to stop us from making broken tankmages or unplayable gimps.

I realize you are still concerned about the idea behind motivating our Devs to want to provide this service by making it something that they could potentially earn money for. I'm not against the Devs having a new way to earn money per se. But I still highly doubt that most people will want to do any design "work" for the Devs AND pay -them- for the privilege of being able to submit it. The "business model" if you will for this scheme simply doesn't make any sense.

Bottomline I think the idea of having money involved in this or worrying about a convoluted system of partial refunds or whatever isn't really going to be the answer. I doubt the Devs would be confident enough that they'd make enough money off of this to make it worth the effort to charge for it in the first place. Remember it'd cost money for them to support the infrastructure to handle all these new microtransactions and whatnot. The idea that they could actually make a profit on any of this would be questionable at best.

Basically the only way this thing is going to happen is for the Devs to be willing to offer a content submission service for free as a community involvement/appreciation effort. I understand that it would represent extra time and effort they'd have to account for on their own. And for that critical reason I also realize this will not likely ever happen either. *shrugs*

Once again I'd love for there to be a system in place to be able to submit player created content for review. I just think the Devs are going to have to see the value of supporting the idea without making it a new kind of microtransaction.

If it were limited to say only one player submission a week or even one a month then I think the Devs would not get overwhelmed with submissions and allow them to organize some kind of periodic "player submission contest" that people could vote on and be involved with.

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I understand your intent behind level gating the MA to "force" people to realize that it's not the entire game. But at this point I think all that would do is slow down the MA farmers, not stop them.

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If I'm reading the OP's post correctly, he isn't mentioning farming, rather there are new players who think that the AE building and Atlas Park are the entire game and do not know of any other zones or content.

I personally get all sorts of questions like "how did you get that cape" or "how do I change my costume" ... from level 40+ players with only AE badges in Atlas Park.

Sure, some of them are farmers, but every now and again I run across someone who truly doesn't know there is more to the game. For this reason, I could get behind the AE contact showing up after level 15. If it were me, I'd make the AE contact level 30+.

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Well I suppose I am using the term "MA farmers" a bit loosely.

But honestly to my mind people who are only "playing" this game by leveling up characters in AP via the MA are effectively farming whether they realize it or not. Let's just say the difference between a person doing it "on purpose" or "by accident" is relatively insignificant in this case. Either way it's questionable for people to go from 1 to 50 in AP regardless of intent.