Wen_Ho

Has anyone argued that Empath is achievable in a way that you (and many others) think it should be? Most opposed to lowering the requirements I have been reading feel that lowering the number without fixing the various farming activities would cheapen the badge. Yes its cheap now but lowering the number would make it worse. Close the major exploits (I don't think they can get rid of all of them) and the number should go way down.


Edited for clarity

joke

Unless Posi was considering that people would farm it... In which case the requirements are much much too low!!

/em ducks

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Again, you need to take farming completely out of the question. Farming will occur, no matter what. Farming at the level needed for a few weeks is a sign of "I need to get it now", farming for most of a year for one badge is counterproductive.

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I don't think you can take farming out of the question. As has been stated, if you lower the requirement more people will farm the badge and it will be just as meaningless as it is now. If they fix arena and lava spa farming people will take two accounts and heal a toon that's basically farming damage. Farming will always be there. As much as people want the empath badge to mean something I doubt that that will ever be possible.

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I remember when one of the top badge idiots bragged about his Leader badge, and someone raised an issue, he INSISTED that he has a life. Oh yeah, I'm sure his son is real glad his dad sat in front of the computer for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours farming influence instead of spending that time reading or playing ball with him.

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I believe that idiot was me. No kids. I only did it while my wife was at work or watching her soap opera. She would occaisionally say something like "Ugh.. Badging again?" But was generally very supportive. The dogs may have gone to the park a little less than they would have otherwise.

And it only took 10 weeks per billion. So about 5 months. All solo. If anyone wanted to work on it much less obsessively than I did they could get it in a very reasonable amount of time. Its not nearly as rough as people are making it out to be.

I have to say again, Geko, that your assumption that trying to get empath constitutes unhealthy behavior is baseless. As someone who has it and knows several people who have it I can say that I have real world proof that it isn't. Until you can give me examples of people who have lost their job, spouse, money whatever I don't see how you can expect anyone to except the argument as valid.

How exactly do you think its unhealthy? If you can be more specific I can be more specific in my refutation.

Not a huge fan of this personally. You should get the badge for what the badge is for IMHO.

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Now if a dev comes out and says, look we're sorry we messed this one up and changes it I'll try real hard to not throw myself off a cliff.

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Lets face facts here. Unlike zookeeper, which is part of an accolade, Empath is not needed for anything else.

So your choices are: (A) Try get the requirements changed, or (B) Do meta-gaming to "have them all".

You chose option (B). That this took nine months of your gaming time is no one else's fault.

I guess that is the price for having the badge sooner than the rest of the population.

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I was trying to funny with my statement. Failed. Came off a little snarkier than I meant.

I am not at all bitter that it took me nine months and it didn't really cut into my gaming time since I only farmed it when I would have been afk anyway. What I should have said is if they end up cutting the requirements for the badge its the one I would understand the most. I may be mildly annoyed the same way I was for zookeeper or OB isolator, but you gotta roll with the punches. If I had known that those badges were going to change when I got them I probably would have got them when I did anyway because I like to get the badges early. That's just personal preference and I understand why some people would feel differently.


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My guess is a lowering of the empath requirement will have to have some kind of dev face saving game change to make it "make sense".

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They have that already: Enhancement Diversification. This alone cut all heals across the board in half. It doubled the anticipated timeframe to get all healing badges and the damage taken badges as well.

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Seems a little late for them to use that as an excuse, but they could I guess. I'd be surprised though.

Empath is a little tricky since its the only epic badge where the only way for most ATs to get it is by doing something that has not much to do with the badge. I agree that its likely that whoever came up with the requirement did so without really thinking about it and so I think it has the most legitamate argument for change.

Having said that, my own opinion is that it shouldn't. Why 100 million instead of 25 million? Because even if an epic badge is awarded for basically doing nothing it should be awarded for doing a whole lotta nothing. My opinion is that an epic badge needs to feel huge. A badge for nine months of leaving my computer on is a goodly amount of big. The roughly two months of doing it for 25 million, not big enough. All of this is my opinion and as such is worth as near to nothing as yours or anyone else's. Now if a dev comes out and says, look we're sorry we messed this one up and changes it I'll try real hard to not throw myself off a cliff. Or, ideally, if they make gladiator and pet healing (to counteract lava baths) not count toward the badge, knock the number way down to where an actual empath could get the badge in a year or two of post 50 play and make the badge mean something, that would be fantastic.

If this is going to be changed it will probably ostensibly be as a reaction to a change in game play and not because the people have been clamoring for it. Most badges that were changed that I can remember could be traced to some other change that gave the devs an excuse to make the change, RV isolater being one (of many I'm guessing) exception. Zookeeper's change coincided with a tank nerf which greatly reduced their monkey herding capabilities. Longbow and OB contaminated were put into zones and stories where they made alot of sense given the themes of new content. My guess is a lowering of the empath requirement will have to have some kind of dev face saving game change to make it "make sense".

A while back I said I would support lowering the requirements if they could legitamately close the loopholes. If they can't, then I would rather they did nothing for pretty much the reasons you gave.

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So that brings me back to the options I support. Removing the badges, allows the OCD folks to let it go and do something else that they might actually enjoy. Doing nothing maintains whatever minor validity the "game" of badging has. But if that's not acceptable, if you're going to change the rules, then change them for that one badge. Just give Empath to everyone with the badge before it basically and be done with it. Then everyone has the badge and you're done. No need to break all the healing badges which people don't really complain about much.

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What if the OCD folks enjoy doing the OCD things? I enjoyed getting Empath just the way it is. I met some great people who all share the same affliction as I. Those are the same people I got MoSTF with which was one of my favorite activities in me entire time on CoH.

I've grinded through all the story lines a few times, did some pvping, went to the parties, Hami raided, etc etc, but badging is my biggest love and always will be, just like you enjoy the loot and others would quit if they couldn't pvp. I still have a job, pay my bills, enjoy a perfectly fine social life with my wife as do pretty much all the other people who heal farmed in the arena with me. Can badging be unhealthy? Probably. But it isn't an assured cause and effect situation. Can playing a bunch of violent video games be unhealthy? Probably for the wrong person. Ban all violent video games? I hope not.

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My main point about these badges being so far out of reach is, and I quote:
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The badges are almost all just a cool title you can wear that you think is a good description of your character.

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They are there to allow you to be add a title like "Exalted", "Immortal" or "Empath". I could see having to wait years for them if they offered some really awesome power, but they are just received through grinding and the only reward is a new title. I see the guy with 500+ badges as just pitiful, no offense badgers. It is not because they wasted their time so much, but that the developers made it so they had to go through that.


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That may be the only reason you try to get badges, but different people get them or don't for different reasons. I like having a large badge count. Bragging rights, something to do, a reason to keep going back to my main character, showing that I am familiar with different parts of the game, a nice subtitle, proof of insanity are all some of the reasons I enjoy getting badges. If some or none of these reasons match yours, more power to you. Please save your pity for folks in Somalia or those alone for the holidays. You needn't give me, and I suspect those like me, a second thought.

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At this pace the last inf badge will take 80 times as much time as I've spent in game already, if I concentrate on one character completely.

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At that pace, yes that is true. So you need to find a way to get inf quicker. I went from 1 billion to 2 billion in under 10 weeks. Sure I have more time than most to play and I did nothing but gather inf in that time and I do not expect others to be as diseased as myself. That said, if you take an hour or two every time you play to gather inf, you can still get the last inf badge inside of a year. If you don't want to do that, well, its an epic badge and I think it should require special effort. There are plenty of badges that people can get in the normal run of play to 50th level. It doesn't bother me that there are some that take longer.

The inf badges do not take that long. Its fairly easy to get it in under a year if you are really working at it which seems right to me for an epic badge. I wouldn't have a problem with lowering requirements if they could find a way to close all the loop holes for everyone. Shutting down arena healing doesn't close the "imps in the lava" farming for controllers or MMs. Closing down damage farming would probably be harder. I realize that just because I can't think of a way doesnt mean it can't be done and if they can do it, great. I'm all for it. But I would prefer keeping the current requirements over giving one AT an insumountable advantage in getting the badge or nerfing them to the point where they lose their epic quality. But overall I would prefer closing all of the loopholes and lowering the requirements.

This just shows yet again that I just need to wait and let those with bigger brains than I tell me how best to deal with all the new data. Without people like you I'm sure I'd just cripple my toon horrifically.

Thanks