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We wanted to find a solution that made everyone happy.
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LOL Pos - Now you know thats impossible. 
The arena badges aren't for ratings, they are for winning a tournament in the chosen weight class.
Sure, you can just enter a tournament with 7 friends and have them quit and get the badge, but I don't think anyone takes PvP (and by proxy, PvP badges) that seriously in this game.
Current Badge Hunter: Plot Device (Rad/Thermal/Dark) - 1,268 Xbox Live: Friggin Taser
King of Electricity, Lead Inmate running the Carl and Sons asylum, the "Man" behind the Establishment, Given Honor in Hat Form By Paragon City (Favorite Forum Poster 2006!), Master of Ceremonies of the Fair Use Law podcast
Will the Witche's Hat be the only costume piece available? I'd love to see other Accolade costume pieces! Kinda the Cape of the Four Winds (Collector's Edition) is rewarded for the V.I.P. Badge (in a way).
Just curious.
So basically you are telling us that you guys did a crap job of implimenting them, no proper way of keeping track of them and that it will take at least a year to fix them.
Why did you even bother? I guess its on par with most other things in CoH.
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So basically you are telling us that you guys did a crap job of implimenting them, no proper way of keeping track of them and that it will take at least a year to fix them.
Why did you even bother? I guess its on par with most other things in CoH.
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Now be nice. Positron is actually giving us detailed reasoning and communicating with us in a polite and informative manner, rather than talking down to us with brief, snippy answers like another red name we know has been doing.
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Now the biggest pain in the butt Task Forces are most resoundedly the Shadow Shard ones. I talked with Manticore this morning about this and he agreed to rework these into shorter, more engaging, Task Forces in an upcoming issue (possibly 7 or 8, maybe sooner though).
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Hopefully I'll have done them all before that time, but still awesome. Thanks Manticore, and you too Positron.
I should have stopped paying you as soon as I realized that you were using my money to change the PvE game I love into a PvP game. It was foolish of me to trust you to leave PvE intact.
Thank You for the update Positron, good info.
In the future, it would be wise to make it so *every* task force has a badge associated with it. Badges are easier to track and monitor on a character then sovegneirs anyways.
Saddly from what I understand to do with databases, it is *very* difficult to re-structure a database long after it has been in use, especially with the given magnitude we're talking about here (200,000 people times 8 possible characters per server = very very very big database querry/reshuffle).
Oh, and the Task Force Commander badge sounds like a good idea. If you can get some resources on it, it might be worth it to make that 3d costume peice a reward from doing that. A reward for doing all the Freedom Phalanx task forces would be very cool and would encourage me to get off my butt and do them all
As for the Shadow Shard task forces... they are a massive pain in the [censored] due to both travel time, and hunting missions. A typical Shadow Shard task force looks like "Okay go to Fire Base Zulu to get the job. Now go out to the Charlie Point to beat the snot out of 50 Nemesis'. Now talk to the Fire Base Zulu contact. Now go to door mission. Now talk to the contact. Now take thing in door mission all the way to Atlas Park. Now go back to Fire base Zulu, now go bet up 50 more Nemesis' out in the boonies. Now visit the Fire Base Zulu Contact. Now do another clear all door mission. Now talk to the Fire Base Zulu contact. Now talk to some guy in Atlas Park's basement." Repeat X number of times then "Clear all Ruthulu out of a massive Orenbanga map(!?)"
This litterally took me and 3 of my closest friends (whom I would call "pro" at this game, as they have been here since beta) at least 10 hours in total to finish this task force. We never wanted to do this one again. Compared to say a well run Synapse task force which would take a good team about 2 hours and you rarely need to leave the yellow line zones.
Less running around, more beating on bad guys. Oh and make it so you can phone your contact earlier on to keep things moving.
The truth is the solution from an equation of lies. ~Maileah Kirel
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Heck, how about limiting Task Force Commander to the Shadow Shard TFs (complete all four to get it), and it gives you something like Requiem's epualets for a Shoulders option? Or maybe some other knick-knack that screams "Shard". 
That way, you can actually give some coherence to the zone by encouraging people to follow the only storylines it offers.
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Nice suggestion. Have some stars: *****
I should have stopped paying you as soon as I realized that you were using my money to change the PvE game I love into a PvP game. It was foolish of me to trust you to leave PvE intact.
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Hope that clears that up.
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It does, I now understand the decision process that led to not having badges for the other TFs until much later.
Thanks a lot for this explanation, I know that you didn't have to give it, and appreciate that you did anyway.
Please try my custom mission arcs!
Legacy of a Rogue (ID 459586, Entry for Dr. Aeon's Third Challenge)
Death for Dollars! (ID 1050)
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare (ID 1218)
Win the Past, Own the Future (ID 1429)
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Sorry. No new Hollows badge. My bad.
New badges are for Moonfire, Dr. Quaterfield, Sara Moore, and Faathim the Kind.
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Whew. My first thought was "Dear god, don't tell me I have to do the Hollows trial again!" That and the Sewer trial are the two most difficult things to finish in the game, now, IMHO. Task Forces can be boring, but all they really take is time (and players to commit that time, which is a whole separate challenge, but still...)
And yeah: Did Justin Augustine get anything?
1st thanks for the info positron, the explaination helps us understand and accept this, but Can we have the "Accolade was called the Task Force Commander badge. It was to grant you a costume piece as it's "special thing", much like the Croatoa Witches' Hat." Now that you have the witch hat thing worked out. CAN WE HAVE THE TASK FORCE ACCOLADE please?????
Maybe if u guys weren't working so hard to nerf everyone and cause mass uproar only to brush it off with inconsistent bogus "vision" reasons, then u'd have time to data mine.... Grrr..
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Positron, they aren't TF badges, but can you let us know when Arena Tournament badges will actually work? Are tournaments fixed in issue 5? Is this is priority?
Seems like it's been a while with only 1 new badge in an update (Issue 4 only had Kill Skuls).
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Arena tournament badges? HA. U gotta b kidding. I think they should work on gettin the badges for those that did the Shards TFs or other TFs. Never mind for half dozen or so people who play in the Arena...
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Arena tournament badges? HA. U gotta b kidding. I think they should work on gettin the badges for those that did the Shards TFs or other TFs. Never mind for half dozen or so people who play in the Arena...
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There's a difference between having to datamine 18 months of data for a handful of badges that people can earn by redoing a TF and just making badges ACTIVE and ABLE TO BE EARNED instead of just sitting there in their bugged state. Maybe then, with the badges working correctly, more people would actually use the arena.
Now go back to your poorly spelt manifestos against the devs.
Current Badge Hunter: Plot Device (Rad/Thermal/Dark) - 1,268 Xbox Live: Friggin Taser
King of Electricity, Lead Inmate running the Carl and Sons asylum, the "Man" behind the Establishment, Given Honor in Hat Form By Paragon City (Favorite Forum Poster 2006!), Master of Ceremonies of the Fair Use Law podcast
Heck, having Positron post so many times to clear up all of these questions makes me feel all good inside. Here, have 5 stars, Positron.
*****
Save the drama for yo' mama.
I have to say this, not that I particularly care about the TF badges, but if the company wonders why we question what you do, your design, your changes, well you can see it here. No reason to keep track of who did a tf? Yet you had in mind a badge for doing certain task forces, but not others?
From the perspective of someone who has worked designing databases, you created MORE work for yourselves but seperating the 2. That's absolutely ridiculous andd terribly short-sighted. The kind of short-sightedness that repeatedly shows up when you nerf something that was "never intended".
For the love of god, this is about the most ridiculous thing I've seen. 1 table, or a dozen fields added to the character table (after many many fields are already there), this should not have been a complication.
Sorry to be rude, sorry to not offer help or constructive suggestions. This is the kind of stuff that has me doubting my renewal.
you know Positron I think it was Wierdbeard and Poz that figured out a much faster way to retro award the mission badges back when that was an issue. Since TFs are just a series of linked missions wouldn't there be a way to easily test the completion of say the first and last missions to award the badge? This may allow for a margin of error but to truely "finish" a TF you need to be there from start to finish and since you can't join a team in progress the likely hood of those finishing the last mission finished the TF.
Yay! Answers! Much giddiness abounds! 
Wouldn't it be simplier than that and just check who completed the last taskforce mission? As you mentioned you can't add people to a taskforce.
Maybe the issue of ghosting through missions is an issue but if there are specific objectives to meet. Kill all the enemies in one room, activate 4 glowies at once, defeat the boss, or other things. Given issue 5 I doubt anyone is going to be ghosting, or even if they do adding defeat enemies takes care of it.
Maybe there's other exploits, I'm sure people will think them up. That's probably our problem, is that we're forced to try and fool those creative enough to exploit the system, while everyone else is left suffering.
Let's make it real easy. Last mission of any taskforce is a kill all. Have it end with an AV in a final seperate room. Badges are not rewarded to teams of 1 and if all the other people have quit the taskforce only leaving 1 person left it kicks them from the taskforce after twenty minutes.
Anyway, I think the one thing these post really show is we need a lot of work, a lot of communication on both sides to work it all out so both sides are comfortable with the result. Both the developers and the players. Many in game issues require this, unfortunately, we seem to be doomed to never have this happen.
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There's a difference between having to datamine 18 months of data for a handful of badges that people can earn by redoing a TF and just making badges ACTIVE and ABLE TO BE EARNED instead of just sitting there in their bugged state. Maybe then, with the badges working correctly, more people would actually use the arena.
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Given the fact so many people did Shards TFs without badges and lousy souvies, and many people clearly just don't play in the Arena period cause they don't like it, I don't think badges for the Arena will encourage people to play in it more.
As for Datamining for 18 months... Shards hasn't been around for 18 months.. So that's a poor excuse to say they have to go back since day 1 of the game when that game content didn't even exist back then to have it be data mined. Considering those who did the Shards TF and got Souvies for it and also have to b a certain level to get into the Shards, this doesn't seem like some outrageous 18 month in the making request that will require as much effort as a year for a supposed small amount of players that are high level players considering the entire CoH community. This excuse sorta is in the lines of many of the other ones Statesman has comically shelled out the last few updates.
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Now go back to your poorly spelt manifestos against the devs.
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No such word as spelt in the context you meant it, even it u were refering to a sub species of common wheat. Perhaps u meant spelled. Glad to have helped.
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you know Positron I think it was Wierdbeard and Poz that figured out a much faster way to retro award the mission badges back when that was an issue. Since TFs are just a series of linked missions wouldn't there be a way to easily test the completion of say the first and last missions to award the badge? This may allow for a margin of error but to truely "finish" a TF you need to be there from start to finish and since you can't join a team in progress the likely hood of those finishing the last mission finished the TF.
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My educated guess on this is that missions and TFs are just handled differently.
A mission you can only finish once. So after you finish a mission, it probably sets a flag somewhere in your character data saying you've completed the mission, so that you don't get it repeated. Checking for this flag would be an easy way to retroactively award a badge for missions.
TFs, on the other hand, can be repeated as many times as you want to do them, so there's no need to set some sort of "TF completed flag".....and there just isn't one. So no easy way to retroactively award a badge.
That's my guess, anyway.
Culex's resistance guide
Sure I can understand this. Customer service proaly has a zillion things to do as it is.
Here's one concern I have though: The Calvin Scott task force. If I could do it again I would but the poor boy is gone so there's no way to. I did this TF and kinda liked it and would have liked to have something to show for it and even re-read what's an important pard of CoH continuity (it explains why sister psyche "doesn't look the same" as before etc...
Thanks, Posi. As you said, not everybody will be happy with this, but at least we have a real explanation on the reasons. And I'm looking forward to the redone Shard TFs, since I'm convinced they'll be so good, that people who have done the actual, longwinded ones will want to do them again.
I really love the idea of getting rewarded with costume pieces for accolades, even more than the powers! I hope you get to put those in (not just Freedom Phalanx, but the Hero Corps and Thug one) once the situation at Cryptic has calmed a bit.
Poison � Sabbath
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Positron, they aren't TF badges, but can you let us know when Arena Tournament badges will actually work? Are tournaments fixed in issue 5? Is this is priority?
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I seriously hope they dont ever release arena badges. The rating system is too flawed to reward honest pvpers. As it stands now anybody with 2 accounts could artificially boost their rating. Not to mention, there are a few other ways that come to mind. They need to reset everyones ratings and make the system work like chess rankings. Then award badges.