Some notes and some questions:
- Force of Nature is awarding, even though the Prima Guide says it needs Bow Breaker which does not exist. Can anyone determine if there really is a 7th requirement for this accolade? Is it Villain?
- Now that we have meters for healing badges, this will let us test the recurring questions, such as Howling Twilight, Elixer of Life and other powers. I'm going to assume these *do* work fine until someone sets up a reproducable test and shows them to be definitely bugged. (as was done for the TV Reactor.) I'm also going to assume that HP Accolades have no negative impact on healing badges unless someone has a reproducable test that proves otherwise. This is in the interest of focusing on known bugs. There are enough issues we need to see addressed that I don't want to clutter them with requests for Devs to go chasing possibilities we can chase ourselves.
- Likewise, I've removed the issues with Shady disappearing from some villains. I'll assume those who lost the badge have /petitioned it by now. It's easy enough to reacquire, especially since a 45+ mission gives it. (Multidimensional is still an issue.)
- I've added a list of Prima Guide updates/corrections in the FAQ section, since most people would be using that as their only badge info source.
- 3rd Heavy badge has been fixed even though I don't recall a patch note on it.
- Gave Accolade issues their own section.
- Added more info on team-unfriendly badges (QOL section), anyone have more to say there?
- Added issues with the magnitude of the tasks to unlock some contacts. (Short version: after 100 Toxic Tarantulas, what does another 100 prove?)
Comments, questions, rants are all welcome. Just check the "not an issue" list first, please, so as to not rehash the same problems that Devs have been kind enough to address.
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Bugs preventing badge earning
<ul type="square">[*]Mu Guardians over level 19 do not give villains credit for the gladiator. (It is unknown if this bug exists for Heroes, too, now that they have a Mu Guardian gladiator. It is possible this bug was fixed when the Hero-side gladiator was fixed. A comment from a Dev would be useful here.)
[*]High-level Legacy Chain are not counting for the Ember of Flame and Lucent of Light gladiators. This could be similar to the recently fixed Ancestor Spirit bug.
[*]High level Banished Pantheon Masks do not count for Banisher. (Some people will claim it's because these are in a Portal mission, but other mobs in Portal missions count for badges, such as Fake Nemesis. This is more likely a level glitch like Ancestor Spirits.)
[*]Visionary is not counting kills of Rularuu Overseers under level 45 for Villains. (Counts all OK for Heroes.)
[*]Grand Lanista sometimes requires more than 10 rated matches to award.
[*]"Missing" Gladiators: (For some of these it's not clear if they were intentionally removed after CoV Beta, or if their absense is a bug. Perhaps a Dev could simply confirm if they're not supposed to exist?)
- Crab Spider Longfang
- Tarantula Queen
[*]Dimensional Warder sometimes does not track kills of Anti-Matter when he teleports away (self-defeats) instead of being defeated by an attack. Problems have also been reported with tracking kills of Bobcat and Marauder if they're defeated while Moment of Glory / Unstoppable are running.
[*]Healing the Terra Volta Reactor does not give credit for the healing badges. (This *may* be because the reactor is neither a player character nor a pet, so not an "ally", but since it completely looks like a heal it's odd that it doesn't count.)
[*]Some people report they are not getting credit on the Mentor badges. It would help analyze this bug if we knew exactly what conditions defined "mentoring".
[*]"Missing" SG badges. For some, the Prima Guide lists requirements, and yet no one has been able to earn these. Are we sure they're working correctly?
- Advanced Holodisplay is supposedly for winning 10 Raids. (Perhaps this is only for scheduled raids?)
- Fusion Generator is supposedly for 50 hours in PvP Zones. (Perhaps this was - or is - affected by the bug that reset the personal badges when you left the zone?)
- Improved Energy Turret is supposedly 20 attempts of the Cathedral of Pain. (Just says "attempts", not "successful attempts".) (and yeah, this one could indeed be working correctly, but I'll keep it here just in case. Or perhaps someone on Test can try it?)
- Elite Sapper (requirement unknown, not in Prima Guide, but it's on the worktables on Test.)
- Elite Energy Cannon (same as the Sapper.)[/list]-----------------------------------
Bugs with unearned badge placeholders
<ul type="square">[*]Many meters move so slowly that you can't tell if you've made any progress on a badge. Can we get multi-line meters for large achievements? (eg, Healing, any Epic badges, anything over 500 kills.)
[*]Villains have a large number of "???" placeholders at the bottom of the Accomplishments tab. What are those?
[*]Text bugs
- Webmaster placeholder has odd text for a Hero.
- Goon Squad placeholder is very misleading. ("Put down the strikes in Sharkhead to earn this badge" is not correct when you're killing Cage, who aren't striking.)
- Spectral meter has no text.
- Hammerhead meter has no text.
- Pathfinder meter has no text.
- Mez badges have no meters.
- Mez badge placeholders refer to time Held or Immobilized, awarded badges refer to Held or Slept. which is it?
- Vandal has no placeholder. (not sure how a meter could be achieved for this one. Can you put 4 meters on one placeholder? Perhaps 4 placeholders "Wreck Mailboxes", "Wreck Phones", etc; each awarding an invisible badge when finished?)
[*]All kill-count Gladiators have no placeholders eg, Bladegrass, Ancestor Spirits, Fortunata. (Positron stated this was a conscious design decision but would look into why that decision was made - if we get an explanation I'll move it to the not-an-issue list. It would help relieve certain problems if we had meters.)
[*]There is no way to track the progress for Dimensional Warder. This is compounded by the fact that sometimes a kill will not register for this badge.[/list]-----------------------------------
Bugs with awarded badges
<ul type="square">[*]Text bugs
- "SG Mission Computer" has the wrong title. The badge actually unlocks the Supercomputer, as described in its text. The Mission Computer is always available on the worktable.
- Agent Provocateur has incorrect text, and odd text for a Hero (Positron has confirmed this badge is awarding correctly, the "50 missions" in the text is wrong)
- Role Model has odd text for a villain.
- Demon Slayer has odd text for a villain.
- Master of Olympus has odd text for a villain.
- Safe <BLEEP!> uses a word the language filters don't like. Suggestions: Safe Buster, Safe Wrecker, Dynamite, (my personal favorite) Unsafe, or Safecracker as one word.
- Time Bandit is an explore badge and a Pillbox badge.
[*]Villain Respec badges have Explore badge artwork.
[*]Why are villains now unable to obtain Multidimensional? The mission is clearly in the Hydra Dimension. What's the harm?
[*]Players report earning Lanista and Grand Lanista at odd times (such as long after winning matches) and in some cases without meeting the requirements.
[*]A bug gave many people Disruptor (and Longbow Warden 2) even though they lack the 400 PvP Reputation, and even lack the Forward Observer badge for 100 Reputation.[/list]-----------------------------------
General badge Quality-of-Life issues
<ul type="square">[*]Fire Bug is not team friendly. It gives credit only to the person clicking the last bomb, not to anyone who clicked the first 3, and not to anyone helping complete the side mission by killing mobs in the lobby. Considering you need 10 arsons for this badge, and factoring in the number of Mayhems you run in your career and the chance of not having an arson mission on some of them, these are a source of great contention among teams. These should really count for everyone. Reducing the number of them you need would be an imperfect solution. (and don't get me started on Raid side missions and teammates.)
[*]Giving credit for *taking* a Heavy is quite odd. It takes a long time to spawn one, so the badges will take a large amount of work. The badges then encourage dropping the Heavy to gain a new one, instead of actually *using* it in the zone. One possible solution, change it to time based, similar to mentoring. For comparison, consider if Time Traveler was for logging into the zone 200 times, instead of for spending 5 hours there.
[*]Pillboxes are causing a fuss. It's annoying to have a badge that a teammate can not give you credit for. People are griefing pillbox teams, since the badge credit has very little to do with the "work" involved. Heroes and Villains are also working together trading pillboxes back and forth. Possible solution: make the badge for taking down Pillbox guns (either individual, or a count by box evaluated when it's taken over by your side). Or, like the Heavies suggestion, have it be time based. This way you can take 1 box, hold it for the badge, and not be encouraged to steal the next box from another team. (Just convert current progress bars to an equivalent percent of progress on the time scale.) At the very least, the third pillbox badge requirement is far too high for a badge you have to solo and have to compete with other players for.
[*]When will arena tournament badges be implemented?
[*]Triggered Zone Events - Back in Issue 3, we were told that no zone events were triggered. Recently, we were told Caleb was triggered. Is Caleb a lone exception? Or was there a change in Zone Event philosophy along the way and many zone events are triggered now? If there was a change, was it done for Issue 5, or for issue 6/CoV? Basically, we need a Developer to tell us what's triggered and what's not - so we know to go out and look for trigger events. We don't need the actual trigger information handed to us.
[*]Spawn rates are very low for some Zone Events. This is compounded by the fact that monsters in low-population zones will despawn quickly, making them harder to catch. Other events seem far too frequent, and can spawn multiple copies of some giant monsters. Perhaps all zone event spawn times need to be examined? Could all zone events be reworked now to be triggered?
[*]Epic heal badges are almost impossible in light of Enhancement Diminishing Returns. Can the requirements be lowered?
[*]Epic Influence/Infamy badges are almost impossible if you are contributing to a Supergroup. Can the requirements be lowered? Can we get credit towards these when in SG Mode? (eg, max out the SG Tax at 90% instead of 100%, or count Influence pre-tax, or count Prestige towards these badges.)
[*]Can total badge count be easily readable somewhere? Preferably in Personal Info and on Kiosks.
[*]Lanista requires 1 match, rated or unrated. Grand Lanista requires rated matches. Why the inconsistency? Should Grand Lanista force players to have an Arena record just to earn a badge?
[*]Some groups provide no badge content, making them less interesting to fight. Including: Void Hunters, Luddites, Mooks, Spetsnaz, Wyvern, Axis America, and all the Rogues in Warburg. Any plans for badges for those?
[*]Awards from a Task Force (which include badges) are keyed to the last mission, not to the TF as a whole. This causes numerous problems.[/list]-----------------------------------
Accolade issues
<ul type="square">[*]Why are villains forced into PvP zones to earn accolades? This seems inconsistent with heroes, who can be exclusively PvE. This is also an unusual design considering the anti-PvP sentiment that created out-of-zone contacts for PvP delivery missions.
[*]Some accolades are earned so late in a character's career as to be useless. Powers are supposed to be *used*, not just collected. An accolade you have to grind out at level 50 is only available for a small time out of your whole career - this is compounded by the inability to use the when Malefactored, which many level 50s do quite often. +5 End would be very noticable at low levels, but by the time you run a 45 Strikeforce you have many slots for End Reducers, and many builds have +End powers. A 45+ mission for an Immobilizer is odd when most character have been using an Immobilize/Hold from their Patron powers since level 41 or 44.
[*]As a whole, villains earn accolades later than heroes do. This inequality is compounded by the fact that people "need" to earn certain accolades quickly to have balance in PvP zones.
[*]Many players oppose the use of Deathless as an accolade requirement. It seems odd to reward death. If you don't die often, then going out of your way to earn this badge will only delay your leveling. It seems unfun. Like this Infamy badges, this is another badge that's difficult to work on directly and is mearly a side-effect.
[*]Crystal Keeper is a problematic accolade requirement because casual players can't commit to a whole Strikeforce. Annihilator is a similar problem, though the time commitment could be less if people set out just for that badge and not for the whole SF.
[*]Nigh Indestructable is nigh unobtainable. This makes the accolade almost impossible.
[*]Players frequently try to earn the Siren's Call badge while AFK - especially now that it's part of an accolade. This messes up the Bounty system. What can be done about this?[/list]-----------------------------------
City of Villains Badge Contacts Quality-of-Life issues
<ul type="square">[*]Can badge contacts be hinted at in-game? Since all other contacts in the game are referred, many players have no idea they can pick up contacts that they see around the zone. (They do not have to be directy referred by a contact, there is a delivery mission to Tarixus. Or somehow communicate to player that they should talk to anyone they see with a yellow circle under their feet.)
[*]The Pirate badge is unique in that you have to kill mobs in a particular place. It would help if Veluta could explain "Trapping" ghosts. (You can't refer to it on the badge meter since you won't get a meter until you figure it out.)
[*]We were told a while back that Pirate would have its requirement reduced, as the ghost levels (particulary the ones spawned by a trap) make it difficult to aquire the badge in time to do the contact's missions. Is that still going to happen?
[*]Doc Buzzsaw only really offers missions during 1 level, given the level 30 maximum and the usual level you acquire the Bling badge. This seems limiting, and is almost impossible to overcome since you can't really work at getting infamy the way you can work for kill badges, and that's assuming you even know the Infamy badge exists since its placeholder just says "???". Bottom line: Can the requirement be changed, or the level range shifted to 30-35? (Is it fun to unlock a contact with a badge that's an inevitable by-product of leveling instead of a badge that's an actual achievement?)
[*]Slot Machine is unlocked by Marcone Family. Prior to level 35 (the Machine's maximum level) Family missions have non-Marcone bosses, which count for Untouchable and not Gangbuster. You are left with 2 options for Marcone: Hunt grey-cons in Oakes or purple-cons in Martial. Greys are not a challenge, and not fun considering how many you need. Purples can't be done solo, it's almost impossible to find a hunting team at that level - if they need the badge they probably got it in Oakes before outleveling this contact - and the XP from that hunt may push you over level 35. Bottom line: Can the requirement be changed, or can the level range be shifted to 35-40? Or change the availability of Marcone thru the levels, but that might be too much effort for a few missions.
[*]200 Toxic Tarantulas are a bit much for unlocking 6 missions. Because they spawn around level 44, and you have to unlock the contact by level 45, you have 2 options. 1, a very difficult hunt in a dangerous city zone against Orange-cons or above. In which case, would 100 be enough work for this contact? Option 2 is to get a level 50 to kill them for you, in which case the number doesn't matter, and the higher number may just increase the desire for high level assistance.
[*]200 Paragon Protectors are too much to unlock a contact. They spawn very sparsely in the higest level area, so they're almost impossible to hunt. To find them in missions requires farming, since you can't get 200 from normal mission spawns. Either reduce the number so there is a chance to get them without farming, or change Veridian's requirement to Crey Tanks, which spawn in more reasonable locations outside and are abundant in missions at level 45+. In fairness, on the other side of things, I don't see how you can reach level 45 without killing 200 Council. 200 Crey may also be irrelevant. Those could stand to be increased.[/list]-----------------------------------
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The Not-a-Current-Issue list
This includes items that are not bugs, and issues that will not be discussed in this thread because the Devs have addressed them and we will not continue to debate them here unless new information arrises. Please take discussions about them to their specific threads. Currently unaddressed QoL issues are listed elsewhere in this document.
(Most of these are paraphased from the original Dev response for clarity.)
<ul type="square">
[*]The badge window, while out of order, has a method to its madness based on a number of internal coding issues. Changes to this window will not be made at this time. (Positron)
[*]Low-level badge missions can be obtained by Exemplaring to a lower character. There are no current plans for a system to go back and do your own low-level missions. (Positron)
[*]Some people still think Isolator is too tough to get, especially for characters older than Issue 2, but at least there's an option out there now. Statesman has stated that that badges with only 1 opportunity to acquire them will never be included in Accolade power requirements, one can only hope this still applies to Isolator since its new condition does not make it as widely available as other badges.
[*]Some kill badge targets are almost impossible to find, but there are no specific* plans to make them more available. (Postiron) ( * Considering there are always plans for more missions with every expansion, one hopes these will turn up eventually in new content.) This affects...
- Villainous kill badges requiring farming of specific missions. (Unveiler, Weatherman, Infiltrator, Zookeeper, Illusionist.)
- Badges only avaible thru the Valentines Event missions (Hero: Coldhearted, Weed Whacker, Hellfrost, Hordeling Lasher. Villain: Cap Buster)
- PvE Kill badges only available by hunting in PvP zones. (Hero: Spider Slayer, Fotunata Seer, Mu Guardian, Man in Black, Serpent Red Inkman. Villain: Monkeywrencher, Legionnaire.)
[*]Unlike Temp Powers, Accolade Powers are not always available when you exemplar. They are availble back to the level at which they were awarded. There are no plans to change this. (Positron)
[*]Grand Lanista can not have a placeholder because of the way the badge is awarded. (Positron)
[*]Kronos Titan will no longer spawn in PvP zones, but Villains now have a shot to earn this badge as part of the Recluse Strike Force.[/list]-----------------------------------
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
<ul type="square">[*]Bug-Hunter is awarded by the Devs for finding major, serious, gamebreaking bugs. There have been discussion about this badge being for Beta testers, that may still happen, or it may not. (Positron)
[*]Epic Debt Badges award for Debt, not for number of deaths. (CuppaJo)
[*]Passport is not obtainable yet. Though originally designed for server transfer, that design has been abandoned and there should be no expectations for how this badge will come to be used, if at all. (Positron) The Prima Guide now says that this badge was for characters transferred to the European servers from the USA servers.
[*]Time badges for PvP zones do not reset if you leave the zone - that was a bug at one time, but was fixed long ago. (Statesman) (This may not be true for the SG badge.)
[*]Wandering Giant Monsters award badges to anyone on a team that does 10% of the total damage. (thus, HP Regeneration may cause difficulties for earning badges.) (Note: it is uncertain how this accounts for people leaving a team, or joining a team late in the fight.) The Devs are satisfied with this system for now, and it is consistent with awarding kill credit for any other mob in the game. (Positron)
[*]Monsters inside missions (such as Adamastor in the Portal Corp mission) do not award badges like their zone-event counterparts. This is by design. (Positron) (These are called Monster, not Giant Monster.)
[*]The Holiday event from 2005 will likely repeat in 2006, for those who did not get Toy Collector. (Positron) (Note: There has been no comment one way or another on repeating the Halloween event, or about making Frozen Fury available again.)
[*]Some badge guides have out of date information, these myths can be dispelled.
- Mob Specialist is for killing Boss Prisoners, it is not tied to Warden.
- Coralax Blue Hybrid is for Coralax LT's and Bosses, not any old Coralx and not just Blues. (ref. Prima Guide.)
- Fire Bug is for 10 Arson side-missions, not 5.
- Hero Slayer is for 100 of any signature hero (Paragon Heroes, Freedom Phallanx, Vindicators, WISDOM), not 25 and not just inside Mayhem missions.
- Bow Breaker does not exist. (Force of Nature *probably* requries Villain, this is to be confirmed.)
- Headline Stealer requires Couch Potato, which is the new name for Media Junkie, it's still awarded from the same mission the Prima Guide lists. Media Junky, with the different spelling, is still an explore badge and not related to the accolade.
- The Television contact is unlocked with Master of the Airwaves, not Midas Touch. This was a design change during Issue 7 testing.[/list]-----------------------------------
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