I think this is a great move. Badges that create the mental need to go into farm/grind mode are bad. I would have to wager it is not fun for most people, if not all, to have to grind out 80+ badges. It is more like the satisfaction for getting them is there, or the sense of completion, but really, did anyone have FUN getting the last badge for killing test enemies? Clicking a glowie over and over to get quick mission completion?
I know the Oro badges pretty much turned me off to badge collecting, and Day Jobs killed the last remaining ember of enthusiasm that may have remained.
In this case they certainly could have kept many of those badges and just lowered the number, but I understand the motivation for the change and support it. If badges in the future stick to the "do it once or only a couple times" model, I may even start to care about them again. Earning badges through normal gameplay > grinding badges to say I got them.
Why can't they keep some of the easy counts badges?
I totally give kudos to the devs for doing this but damn, some of those badge titles are really cool.
EDIT: obvously I did tl:dr and now see you suggested this as well.
I think it is wrong to take away things people have already earned. I would very much prefer them to just lower the numbers to something a lot more manageable. I myself do not badge, but I helped friends get at least 30 of all the badges that are being removed. It makes me feel like I wasted a lot of time. I think that in the future, they should fix how badges work, but retroactively removing things.... just seems so cold.
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I'd actually like to see them revisit all badges and lower requirements. I prefer lowering to removing, but really, badges that set "unfun" game habits are bad badges IMO.
Most badges serve no real purpose other than to collect them. If you are going to make a badge "not earnable," you almost have to remove it from everyone. Nothing gets the collector nerdrage going more than things that cannot be obtained. See the various posts on Bug Hunter, VIP, etc..
...so to recap, i have a strong dislike of the devs at this time, i worked hard to get the badges that i have. i know badges do nothing other then be there but with this list there is no way for me to get above 600 badges again
My 2 cents on this whole thing, leave the badges in but lower the requirements substantially so they can be earned via normal play. Say scale most of the AE Badges like this:
1 > 2 > 5 > 10 > 25
lower the kill and ticket badges to:
10 > 25 > 50 > 100 > 250
and eliminate the Hall of Famer badge and possibly the builder line. I'm not into badges anymore so I don't know for certain but I "think" these badges are the ones people are causing alot of the abbernat behavior "you rate me and I'll rate you."
It is better to ask forgiveness than permission.
I just love how they have basically said "Well, these NEW badges that encourage farming are bad, but... those earlier ones? Yeah, they can stay."
As if there is any reasonable way to earn Immortal or Empath without farming damage / healing...
And for Synapse to say "We want badges to be something anyone can earn <cough cough> BUG HUNTER <cough>" No casual player is ever going to earn that one - you're not even guaranteed to earn it if you regularly submit bugs. Don't even get me started on Passport...
Meh, I'm not too upset I suppose, but this does smack of inconsistency.
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Arc #36984 V'kta A'cha Vox'm
I, for one, welcome the total and complete destruction of MA badges. I'm sad we're losing some great badge names.
For those of us who will say that we wasted our time: yes, we did. You are very much correct, we wasted our time. On an MMO. Doing silly things for pixels that don't affect our characters in any way, shape, or form. If we had known of these changes at the start, I would have still wasted my time. Doing something else, yes. But I still would have wasted my time. 
Now I can trully focus on some of my other characters again, or get back to Borea runs on DC. Happy days are here again.
@Death Conqueror
-Goal for 2011: Survive, stay alive, and continue to thrive.
I never thought some of those badges were bad at all. I mean, rescuing 50 hostages (for the final badge)? That really wasn't bad at all, easily obtainable through regular play. (Which is how I got pretty much all of my MA badges.) Yes, there are some extreme cases like the Virtual Slayer (50k kills in test) that needed to be nixed...
The biggest thing that irritates me is the loss of titles. I'm very bummed that Brimstone-Preacher will be losing the Savior badge title. It was just perfect for him. 
I hope they either 1) keep the badges but reduce the requirements or 2) give use some mechanism to keep the titles (even if one badge awarded 5 titles, for example).
What bums me most about this is that I made a character for whom having the "Bard" badge was important to the concept. Now that's broken.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
After watching to much Dr Who i'm selecting 'Time Lord' for all my toons.
Horatus - lvl 50 Fire/Elec Blaster
Sigh..
Goodbye Asa Nasmaru the Obliterator. That title worked so well with her background, too.
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I just love how they have basically said "Well, these NEW badges that encourage farming are bad, but... those earlier ones? Yeah, they can stay."
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So true. Badges which require grinding are still in the game. Why is this any different? Illusionist and the Fake Nem badges are some serious grindfests - there just aren't enough of them readily available without getting in a group to cause them to spawn en masse.
Those are OK, but MA "grindy" ones aren't?
Partial Character List:
LENINA 198-DELTA - 50+3 DP/Kin Corruptor (Main) / Captiosus - 50+3 Energy/Energy Blaster
Highlands.Hellraiser - 50+1 DS/Fire Tanker / SpazRat - 50 Claw/SR Stalker
Col. Gregor Aktaybr - 45 Robots/Time MM
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I just love how they have basically said "Well, these NEW badges that encourage farming are bad, but... those earlier ones? Yeah, they can stay."
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I think the big difference between the removed badges and the old ones is that the new ones required using the MA to farm. As long as it's not in the MA the Devs don't care about badges that encourage farming.
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
More importantly, it encouraged people to create MA "farm missions" that would clog up the search window list and create "5 star cartels" in order to farm the badges. The search options in the MA suck enough as it is, there's no need to encourage people to game it.
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More importantly, it encouraged people to create MA "farm missions" that would clog up the search window list and create "5 star cartels" in order to farm the badges. The search options in the MA suck enough as it is, there's no need to encourage people to game it.
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This change isn't going to stop people making crappy 1 or 2 arc MA farms or pushing 5-star cartels. They'll still do it for tickets (even with the 1500 cap), or XP/INF, or in the vain hopes of getting a DC tag. In short, even without this, there's going to be a lot of useless trash on MA.
Additionally, half of the badges on the list are from test mode. None of those 'clogged up' MA because they were hosted on people's local machines and provided no rewards other than badges.
Synapse said:
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This is because they encouraged farming, because they encouraged aberrant behavior by doing one thing over and over again, they were unobtainable by a large portion of our players, or earning them was completely out of a players hands and in the hands of other players.
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The devs, themselves, encourage farming (and possibly even aberrant behavior, as defined by Synapse) through a lot of the badges they've put in. Badges such as Illusionist, Unveiler, Protectorate all encourage farming and people padding groups for mob spawns, resetting missions, et cetera. A lot of people don't have these badges because they're equally as difficult to obtain. Yet, they're not removing or changing them.
The only part of Synapse's post with which I agree is removing badges dependent on other player feedback. That was bad design from the start.
Partial Character List:
LENINA 198-DELTA - 50+3 DP/Kin Corruptor (Main) / Captiosus - 50+3 Energy/Energy Blaster
Highlands.Hellraiser - 50+1 DS/Fire Tanker / SpazRat - 50 Claw/SR Stalker
Col. Gregor Aktaybr - 45 Robots/Time MM
They can have my badges as long as I can keep mah precious xpeez!
�The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
@Mr. Magnifico
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I think the big difference between the removed badges and the old ones is that the new ones required using the MA to farm. As long as it's not in the MA the Devs don't care about badges that encourage farming.
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I disagree with your broad generalization there, MG. While I won't argue that some did (Virtual Slayer - 50k enemies in Test Mode), but not all of them were that heinous (To The Rescue - 50 hostages, Cataclysmic - 50 destructible objects). I thought the last ones took a bit of work / playtime, but in no way did they require farming.
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I think the big difference between the removed badges and the old ones is that the new ones required using the MA to farm. As long as it's not in the MA the Devs don't care about badges that encourage farming.
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I disagree with your broad generalization there, MG. While I won't argue that some did (Virtual Slayer - 50k enemies in Test Mode), but not all of them were that heinous (To The Rescue - 50 hostages, Cataclysmic - 50 destructible objects). I thought the last ones took a bit of work / playtime, but in no way did they require farming.
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I didn't mean that the badges necessarily required farming, I meant that the badges required using the MA, so if one were inclined to farm to get badges quickly, one would necessarily have to use the MA to farm it.
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."
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I think the big difference between the removed badges and the old ones is that the new ones required using the MA to farm. As long as it's not in the MA the Devs don't care about badges that encourage farming.
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I disagree with your broad generalization there, MG. While I won't argue that some did (Virtual Slayer - 50k enemies in Test Mode), but not all of them were that heinous (To The Rescue - 50 hostages, Cataclysmic - 50 destructible objects). I thought the last ones took a bit of work / playtime, but in no way did they require farming.
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I didn't mean that the badges necessarily required farming, I meant that the badges required using the MA, so if one were inclined to farm to get badges quickly, one would necessarily have to use the MA to farm it.
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Okay, I can concede that point.
I think they're not looking at the old badges because their primary goal is to "fix" the MA and then move on to adding new content. I, for one, would rather have City of Rogues than a few hundred badges revisited.
This is a quick fix to a current problem. The MA arcs that exist only for badge hunting are a problem they want solved quickly, so they're removing any use for them. It's quick, simple, and while I'll miss my badges (especially the ones that let me brag about tickets earned by my arcs), I think it's pretty elegant.
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I think they're not looking at the old badges because their primary goal is to "fix" the MA and then move on to adding new content. I, for one, would rather have City of Rogues than a few hundred badges revisited.
This is a quick fix to a current problem. The MA arcs that exist only for badge hunting are a problem they want solved quickly, so they're removing any use for them. It's quick, simple, and while I'll miss my badges (especially the ones that let me brag about tickets earned by my arcs), I think it's pretty elegant.
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This makes sense. Quick fix, move on. I also agree that I would rather see work put into Going Rogue than have devs waste there time on badges.
Why couldn't they just lower the counts substantially???
Some of those badge-titles were awesome. This is a shame.
The fact is that farming will never stop, because there are too-many "official" missions and badges that encourage it. You'd think after so many years of seeing farming patters, the Devs would have been able to anticipate this.
I'd like to hope that as a result, we'd see more players willing to gather for GM kills, and certain TFs which are are almost impossible to assemble these days, but I have my doubts.
i wonder when i should start farming the damage badge redside for my isolator?
Horatus - lvl 50 Fire/Elec Blaster
Damn.
DC? Sadys? How are you guys handling this?
Agua Man lvl 48 Water/Electric Blaster
"To die hating NCSoft for shutting down City of Heroes, that was Freedom."