I agree. The devs have show that they do not want people to afk farm. They have made a lot of changes in the last 3+ years to get rid of afk activities. So why allow them to continue?
I know badges do nothing for you (with the exception of a few). So why have them so high? I understand the accomplishment part but really? Some of the parameters for the badges are ridicules.
Rikiti monkeys were dropped because of the farming methods people had to use. Why not some of the other "epic" badges? I like badges but really some of them are too much, and require afk methods to get.
I would like to see a change.
Im currently working my MM towards several of the villain accolades and it does annoy me that to obtain them I need to die multiple, multiple times (4th debt badge) and will need to afk damage as well (4th damage taken badge).
My last MM got to 50 with only the 1st debt paid off and damage taken badge, despite playing on relentless since 18 or so. So I know that if I carried on just playing the game I wouldnt get these badges (and the accolades) til 50. Which is pretty pointless.
I personally think that they should never attach any badge (let alone accolades) to anything that forces the player to die in order to achieve them. Thats poor design imho.
FeeFye
I can see the high requirement for badges that count towards accolades. Accolades give an advantage, advantages should be heartily EARNED. However, yes, it seems fairly pointless to earn an accolade through normal play at level 50. Plus, am I really going to devote 1 year+ of 4-hour a day play working only on achieving a badge that has no real value? 'Prolly not.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love my badges. But has anyone actually gotten the 6th influence badge yet? What is it, 100 Billion?
This is coming from a casual, yet committed, player. I can only squeeze in about 15-20hours a week. Divide all that into the alts. . .doesn't leave much time for my badger (currently at 393 badges, yeah, yeah, I'm getting there. . .). 
I agree that the numbers are too high. Who decided this when making them, anyway? I can understand achievement, but ... what the heck, man!
I always get the impression that no one wants the difficult badges for their own sake, they want them for a sense of completeness. Does that mean that even 1/100th of its current value for Empath would have the same effect? It's *still* be out of reach of very casual players, and still just as effective for those who have to put in extra work.
Healing badges always get the attention because they're the only badge specific to a certain set of powers. Maybe the fuss about non-healers chasing heal badges would be lessened if there were other badges that were dependent on the details of character design. eg...
- a set for dealing X damage with weapons
- a set for dealing X damage with Snipe powers
- deliver X amount of Criticals, or Assassin Strikes, or Scourge hits
- summon X amount of pets
- spend X time with your Fury or Defiance meter over 75%
- can you track Taunting somehow?
(I'll stop there because I don't want the examples to distract from the point.)
The point is: if there's a badge set for healers, it's hard to say to players "sorry, this was never intended for your set" unless you can answer the obvious follow-up question "ok, then what *is* intended for my set? What makes me unique?"
Consider if we had 3 damage dealt badges for each damage type. Yes, some people would work on more of them than others, but it would reinforce the idea that some badges may be out of reach simply because of your character.
Then you don't need to keep Empath at a huge number to supposedly prevent non-healers from ever getting it (which obviosly doesnt' work anyways). The design would be "yeah, we know not everyone has a heal, not everyone has Phase Shift, or a Snipe, or a Weapon, either." It kills the Completeness problem that drives non-healers to get Empath.
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I can see the high requirement for badges that count towards accolades. Accolades give an advantage, advantages should be heartily EARNED. However, yes, it seems fairly pointless to earn an accolade through normal play at level 50. Plus, am I really going to devote 1 year+ of 4-hour a day play working only on achieving a badge that has no real value? 'Prolly not.
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and say you did. would you send another 1+ year of 4-hours per day USING said accolade that you bothered to get? or would you be rather desperate to finally make an Alt?
My issue with the 10 million damage badge is that the value really doesn't matter. I set up a farm, go AFK, and wonder why I have to do this for so many days. I've proven I can take infinite damage, why prove it so many times over?
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Now, don't get me wrong, I love my badges. But has anyone actually gotten the 6th influence badge yet? What is it, 100 Billion?
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Yes, I have all the influence badge now. Yes, they were very hard to get and took loads of missions and TFs for this. Will I try to get this on another hero or villain, Hell no, too much work for a shiny to be honest.
I can say this as I have all the badges, I would not object if the devs were to lower these requirements for others. I have been here since day one and recently obtained all the badges and its been a little over 3 years now, and it is a great achievement, but at the end of everything, all you have is a lot of time in the game with no extra powers or anything other than to say you have them all.
Edit**
Just to let you know out of all of these epic badges, there is only one badge that I truly feel has any worth to me and that is the Leader badge for the 2 billion influence.
Next would be the Bug Hunter, but thats a different topic. 
[B]Leading Badge Holder in the City of Community[/B]
Owner & Operator of...
[URL="http://www.vidiotmaps.com/"]Vidiotmaps.com[/URL] & [URL="http://www.badge-hunter.com/"]Badge-Hunter.com[/URL]
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It's probably that way to keep some playing just to complete their favorite badger. That just might be the driving force behind some staying with this game versus going to another game.
I know some that have all but just a few badges on their main badgers. I'm sure some of them are probably obsessed with getting those last few....
Then, a new issue comes out and voila! They have to go get those too. It's just like the whole MMORPG concept. There's never a point where you say "I'm done! I've completed this game, time to move on!".
My Guide to the Hero-side Venomous badge
(622 Badges on my badge-guy)
number of lvl 50's: 24
number in the 40's: 3
[u]Galleryview[u]
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I can say this as I have all the badges,
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Do you ever feel a sense of exhaustion at the thought of more badges coming out each release?
My Guide to the Hero-side Venomous badge
(622 Badges on my badge-guy)
number of lvl 50's: 24
number in the 40's: 3
[u]Galleryview[u]
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I can say this as I have all the badges,
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Do you ever feel a sense of exhaustion at the thought of more badges coming out each release?
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Absolutely not, I welcome them. That is my fun in the game I enjoy the most and thats the badges. Of course the content is a major part but the most of it comes from the badges and being with friends while earning them.
[B]Leading Badge Holder in the City of Community[/B]
Owner & Operator of...
[URL="http://www.vidiotmaps.com/"]Vidiotmaps.com[/URL] & [URL="http://www.badge-hunter.com/"]Badge-Hunter.com[/URL]
[URL="http://net-warrior.mybrute.com/"][B][SIZE=3][COLOR=darkorange]Challenge My Brute[/COLOR][/SIZE][/B][/URL]
I've been here since day one and I agree that the epics should be lowered and that earning prestige for your SG also counts towards the Influence badges...I had my hero badge character (Energizing Ion) in SG mode all the time until about 2 months ago when I was trying to get all the badges...It doesn't make sense that prestige shouldn't count towards the badges....unless they made new prestige only badges... :P
I would really like for them to lower the epic badges (influence, damage and healing....and the pillbox one in RV )
Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
SSBB FC: 2062-8881-3944
MKW FC: 4167-4891-5991
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I've been here since day one and I agree that the epics should be lowered and that earning prestige for your SG also counts towards the Influence badges...I had my hero badge character (Energizing Ion) in SG mode all the time until about 2 months ago when I was trying to get all the badges...It doesn't make sense that prestige shouldn't count towards the badges....unless they made new prestige only badges... :P
I would really like for them to lower the epic badges (influence, damage and healing....and the pillbox one in RV )
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Well as much as people say they would like the prestige to count for the Influence badges. I would have to disagree with this, as the prestige is earned for the SG not your personal hero or villain.
As for the prestige badges, I believe this was in the works and was scrapped after further review of the way the system works. So I highly doubt we will see these badges, but I can only hope
As for the others like Healing and Damage taken, I could see these being lowered to make them more realistic, as for the influence badges, I feel these are fine, they are far fetched but they can be earned by normal game play.
[B]Leading Badge Holder in the City of Community[/B]
Owner & Operator of...
[URL="http://www.vidiotmaps.com/"]Vidiotmaps.com[/URL] & [URL="http://www.badge-hunter.com/"]Badge-Hunter.com[/URL]
[URL="http://net-warrior.mybrute.com/"][B][SIZE=3][COLOR=darkorange]Challenge My Brute[/COLOR][/SIZE][/B][/URL]
<-- still working on the epic cookie eating badge.
That blue thing running around saying "Cookies are sometimes food" is Praetorian Cookie Monster!
Shoot on sight, please.
Maybe the original post should be sent to Positron (or one of the Devs) in a PM? Not sure if the Devs read the Badges and Gladiator board, so maybe a little reminder to one of them of the impossibility of earning some of these badges might be in order. Just a thought.
Founder/Leader of the JUSTICE F0RCE
http://JusticeForce.guildportal.com
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Maybe the original post should be sent to Positron (or one of the Devs) in a PM? Not sure if the Devs read the Badges and Gladiator board, so maybe a little reminder to one of them of the impossibility of earning some of these badges might be in order. Just a thought.
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This is a part of a current effort to gather such issues. See this post for the start of it all.
So yeah, there's going to be some serious advertising done for this, and other issues.
Yes the Epics are too high, yes they should be lowered.
while it wouldn't outright solve any of the issues a reduction of say even dropping a 0 from each of the epics would go a long way, and i feel would go a ways to making them more accessible - healing badge notwithstanding.
Taking a computer geek stance here a minute... this is a Big-O problem.
For those not in the know, Big-O is a way to measure how long a process takes by its dominant looping routines. A small tweak to one step in the process doesn't matter if you're still looping a lot of times.
Printing 500 pages on a 5 page-per-minute printer vs a faster 6 page-per-minute printer in both cases still takes A Long Time because it's 500 pages, not because of printer speed. Printing 3 pages in those 2 setups is not a noticable difference, either, both take A Short Time.
to turn this to (metered) badges: there are badges that you earn very naturally (clockwork gears, freak tanks, first 2 Inf), badges that take a little work to finish (fake nemesis, rikti monkeys, sky raider FFG), and badges that take a lot of work to finish (epics, toxic tarantulas, carnie pets).
I propose to you this: it doesn't matter how high you crank up the "lot of work", it's still "a lot of work". So there's no benefit in making epic badges too hard to get.
A "little work" badge just needs to be slightly past the level of what you earn in normal play and it serves that purpose well. A "lot of work" badge just needs to be over that line from "little work" to "lot of work" to serve its purpose, it doesn't have to be insanely past that line.
I'll use a non-epic example that's in the Badge Issues list. It takes 200 Toxic Tarantulas to unlock a contact. You don't get that many of them at all on your way up to 40, and have to finish it by 45. So I set out to hunt them. They're level 44+ bosses, so they're yellow-con to me at best, probably orange and red, it takes some effort. Once I've killed 50 of them, I think I've proven my point. I've spent a lot of time killing Tarantulas. I've had to SPECIFICALLY kill Tarantulas, I didn't just luck into the requirement for the contact. So what's the point in making me kill another 150? I have to do this another 3 times over??? Why? What do I gain by those additional 150 that I didn't gain from the first 50?
Same with epic healing. My villains dont' even do 1 million healing by level 50. When that third badge comes along it means I've been healing a little beyond my normal 50 levels. By the time I hit 10 million, it shows I'm doing A LOT of healing. What does another 990 million possibly prove that I haven't proven already? I'm past the point of inceidental earning, I'm past the point of minor effort to finish off a badge I had mostly done, and I'm past the point of major effort for something most people don't achieve.
Then what should an 'epic badge' feel like?
Where is the line between 'easy enough to get without thinking' and 'insano high level obtainable only in 8 years through an exploit'?
I'm going to get flak for this, but I love the RV Isolator badge. It felt epic to me, I cheered when I got it. And it took a year of just checking maybe once or twice a week. It is a badge of honor to me in how I got it. The epic badges should feel the same: a struggle to obtain, and maybe even dare I say epic to obtain, but obtainable in the realm of acquiring.
Arc #345863 - When The Bough Breaks
"Curse you Perry the Plata...wait, is that Love Handel?" - Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, Phineas and Ferb
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Then what should an 'epic badge' feel like?
Where is the line between 'easy enough to get without thinking' and 'insano high level obtainable only in 8 years through an exploit'?
I'm going to get flak for this, but I love the RV Isolator badge. It felt epic to me, I cheered when I got it. And it took a year of just checking maybe once or twice a week. It is a badge of honor to me in how I got it. The epic badges should feel the same: a struggle to obtain, and maybe even dare I say epic to obtain, but obtainable in the realm of acquiring.
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It might sound strange for someone like me to say this, but as far as RV Isolator is concerned I actually think the level of effort to get it is just about right for a typical epic level badge. Not trivially easy, not multiple years long. 
Where I adamantly loathe RV Isolator specifically is that the Devs took a badge that most people could get within an hour in Outbreak and TURNED IT INTO an epic level badge for no redeeming reason. Had the Devs introduced an entirely new badge back in I7 that worked -exactly- like RV Isolator does I wouldn't have minded in the least. New badge - new requirement.
The only real mistake the Devs made with RV Isolator was making an epic level badge out of a badge that was never intended to be an epic in the first place.
Loth 50 Fire/Rad Controller [1392 Badges] [300 non-AE Souvenirs]
Ryver 50 Ele� Blaster [1392 Badges]
Silandra 50 Peacebringer [1138 Badges] [No Redside Badges]
--{=====> Virtue ♀
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Maybe the original post should be sent to Positron (or one of the Devs) in a PM? Not sure if the Devs read the Badges and Gladiator board, so maybe a little reminder to one of them of the impossibility of earning some of these badges might be in order. Just a thought.
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Some have gone the PM route already. Yes, I know that Positron reads this section (Hah! Even the forum purges are no match for my Search-Fu! 
):
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It was a bunch of little stuff I hadn't even seen in the "big list of badge bugs" you guys are keeping on these forums (yes, I do read that).
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Anyways, as MadScientist has said, we are preparing for an "Official Badge Issues" thread in the coming weeks. In order to do that, we need to blow the dust off of a few topics. This just happens to be one of them.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
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Then what should an 'epic badge' feel like?
Where is the line between 'easy enough to get without thinking' and 'insano high level obtainable only in 8 years through an exploit'?
I'm going to get flak for this, but I love the RV Isolator badge. It felt epic to me, I cheered when I got it. And it took a year of just checking maybe once or twice a week. It is a badge of honor to me in how I got it. The epic badges should feel the same: a struggle to obtain, and maybe even dare I say epic to obtain, but obtainable in the realm of acquiring.
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Part of the problem is that these badges are referred to EPIC due to their requirements when perhaps calling them the final badges of their particular sets would be better.
Refer to them as Final Set Badges, lower the requirements and as to Isolator and Jailbird, well lets hope that the upcoming Flashback system lets those that need those badges to flashback to get em.
While lowering the requirements for the Final Set Badges wont eliminate the AFK'ing it will reduce it I'm sure.
Also aside from a certain level of prestige/ego boost one gets from gaining the Final Set Badges, there is no other reward. No extra cash or powers. They are trophy badges. Not everyone cares about gaining the badges in th first place and others only care about securing the ones for accolades.
Lowering the Final Set Badge requirements might entice more to seek em out....or maybe not.
If I find an Action Comics #1 someplace but the only way to get it is to deep fry 100 live puppies every day for a month, I'm going to take a pass. But if I have a chance to earn that comic in 10 years by doing nothing more than what I'm doing now...well, I'll take the choice where I won't feel as though I spent alot of time doing something I hated.
The offer might not still be available in 10 years, but I won't at least have spend alot of time making myself miserable.
On the other hand, I do feel the badges encourage AFK farming. I can't offer any creative solutions, so perhaps lowering the requirements might be the best answer. But I have to tell you, earning a few billion anything sure seems epic to me!
I will say that I think it's very unfair that Villains have 2 epic bages required for accolades. That just seems like a poor decision on someone's part.
*edit*I upped the years to earn by a few
Some 'epic' badges are too high, some just right and some too low.
Healing, influence and damage taken.
I agree. These are too high and you have gone into sufficient detail regarding the particulars.
Debt, Mez
These are about right. My scrapper got the last debt badge at 49 after many levels of tanking (and dying), plus carrying perma-debt from about level 14-34 to get Karsis, Hess and Hannon as contacts. He only had 2 mez badges, but that's due to getting mez protection at level 16. A 'squishy' would have had more of them. When I say "about right", I mean "not off by a multiple factor". The devs may adjust them, but they don't need to be doubled or halved.
Sidekicking
This one is too low. When the requirements were lowered, my scrapper had all of them by, I think, level 32. If the second set of three are the 'epic' ones, then I would think an 'average' player should have the first three some time between level 40 and 50.
Someone also mentioned the RV pillbox badges. I suppose the last one is kind of epic. Since the heavies have been savagely nerfed, the 3rd pillbox badge should probably be lowered somewhat.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
As much as I know this topic amounts to a Flame War, hopefully this time it will be flagged not to be deleted.
Here goes:
Epic healing badges are nigh-impossible to get, with the last two only currently achieveable by one of the several AFK methods (Arena Farming, Lava Spas, Warming several MM & pets on a CoT Pain Crystal), but not by actual at keyboard playing.
In fact, several of us have predicted that if someone was going to dedicate themselves to getting the badge with aid other during play, that they would finally get it sometime around 2040. This upsets those classes without heals. On the flip side those with healing powers that are doing it "by the intent" would get the badge sometime between 2-5 years/365 days a year/around 4+ hours/day.
Given that is unhealthy at best, and destructive at worst, why is this allowed to continue?
- Would take 30 years for non-healers to get using Aid Other.
- Would take 2+ years of unhealthy play for the classes that CAN heal.
- Under 5 healing characters have earned Empath, most used multiple accounts.
- More characters have the Empath badge on characters that do not heal than those that do heal.
- Empath is 20 times the value of the 2nd last. Twenty times.
- Empath is ten times the amount of the last GROUP badge.
Epic damage taken badges are only slightly less insane than the healing badges.
- Even 10 million damage taken is afk farmed, let alone 1 billion. All the Epic damage badges suffer from this. (edit: I should point out that the 10 million damage taken badge is not in the epic group, but still only achievable by play post level 50.)
- Speaking of 10 million damage, that is needed for a villain accolade, which means it is unlikely to be achieved before 50, so there is no point to get the accolade. This is because an accolade earned at level 50 is only useable at level 50.
Epic Inf badges:
- Forces choice between character and SG, thanks to sgmode tax.
- The scale from the 1st Epic Inf badge to the last two is, frankly, dumb.
- Multiple-year commitment, we already have the Vet reward badges for that.
I have tried to present the above list with the least amount of personal bias. I ask the same from others. Please, please do not discuss afk farming, as everyone already knows that will only get this thread locked or deleted. If that happens, we lose yet again.
Are the Epics too high? Given that the flamewars only surround afk farming, not lowering the values of them, I am guessing that a lot of people would love to see these reduced.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters