Badges that are long term WITHOUT the grind.
By
Big_cuban,
Posted on: 2009-05-27 21:58 in Badges and Gladiators
I'm right there with you Wen_Ho. I want things to get better, not just change; that was why I made a suggestion. I want to open up dialog that might spark an idea that brings us the next great thing.
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I really don't get the big deal about kill-count badges or "farmability" factors. seriously, who cares? why is this an issue? whose game is this breaking?
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the whole pogrom reeks of ex post facto rationalization by Posi.
"Oh, I never wanted MA to be a farmer's paradise!"
"Then why did you design it to be a famer's paradise?"
"BAH I'M TAKING OUT ALL THE BADGES, see, see how I don't want it to be for farmers!"
It's like watching a teenager throw away all their comic books to prove they aren't a nerd, while ignoring the wall-to-wall covering of Anime posters.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
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Players feeling like they have to farm for badges has always been an issue with me.
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Admittedly "count" badges are the easiest to design. You figure out what you want to count, then design a series of badges around progressively higher numbers of those counts. This is why we never abandoned them in the past, when we probably should have.
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Positron's post. (for those who may not have seen it)
I didn't mean to give the impression that they were removing high kill count badges; but if they had it to do over again, they wouldn't be in there to begin with. Also, I doubt we'll see any new ones from here on out.
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you miss my point. There's that word again, "high".
Read the quote you used from Positron again. He does not limit his stance to "high" at all. He says "This is why we never abandoned them in the past, when we probably should have." referring to ALL COUNTS.
So any post that's taking a stance of "this is why it's OK something high goes away" is missing the point that *not-high stuff is disappearing, too!* That means lower kills, moderate kills, and (in the case of the previous poster who said "high kills" and not just "high") it means non-kill counting such as clicks, hostages, mission runs, etc., etc. Now if you want to talk about click badges, there shouldn't be a 1-click badge, and that's still not relevant to a counting badge change.
(plus most of your argument comes down to clicks being team-unfriendly, which is a problem in their implementation, not their theory.)
But where do you draw the line? Is 50 high? 25? 10? If there was a badge for collecting ten clickables in MA missions, the very same day, someone would make a mission with the smallest map possible (casino style) with ten 1 second clickable items labeled "Get Your Clickable Badge Here Quick!".
Granted, as the number goes down in value, so does the need to "farm" them. I don't think anyone will dispute that. Is there a happy medium? Perhaps. There's no magic number that will stop everyone from farming a badge and just earn them naturally except one: one. Of course, even that has issues. There's nothing to "collect" when you just need one of something. Nothing to strive for. You get badges by accident. As a reward you weren't even trying for. That is why I suggested what I did. Collect several "ones" to form a badge.
So really, what are badges? Rewards for accomplishments? Or goals to strive for? If all future badges have a value of one with no collectible conglomerate, than they are clearly rewards for doing a task. A nod by the Devs for trying new things in a way. If they are goals to strive for, then doing something once and getting a badge clearly will not work. You should never need to look outside of the game (websites, guides, etc) to find what you can do to get badges. So a new "something" would need to be added to the game to tell you what you can do to earn a certain badge... which kinda defeats the purpose of the badge system in the first place. It truly is a messy situation.
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Players feeling like they have to farm for badges has always been an issue with me.
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Admittedly "count" badges are the easiest to design. You figure out what you want to count, then design a series of badges around progressively higher numbers of those counts. This is why we never abandoned them in the past, when we probably should have.
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Positron's post. (for those who may not have seen it)
I didn't mean to give the impression that they were removing high kill count badges; but if they had it to do over again, they wouldn't be in there to begin with. Also, I doubt we'll see any new ones from here on out.
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Counting clickables is trouble in its own right. Do we really need teams fighting over who's going to click on the pulsating objects on their race to one hundred pulsating objects? The Devs have discovered that some gamers, instead of earning a one hundred clickable object badge through twenty levels of play or thirty days of play, will instead find the highest clickable count mission and run it over and over until they get the badge.
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So players went and did everything they could to get the "long period of time" badges as quickly as possible. So we upped the numbers. THIS was a mistake as it only exasperated the problem instead of fixing it. Now players just farmed longer, and more specifically.
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This is exactly the behavior they are trying to curb to prevent burnout. While you or I might be content on naturally earning such a badge, another player is going into the same mission for the sixth time wondering why he's playing this gawd forsaken game -- missing the point of the badge completely. You can't explain to people that they'll earn that badge over time, no need to rush it, so the Devs are corking the forks, so to say, in an attempt to preventing us from hurting ourselves.
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And yet. some people find that FUN.
How many times do we have to say that to get it through peoples heads that some people find grinding high count badges enjoyable, and taking that completely out loses them a reason to be interested in the game?
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Also, and I'm sure this is true to some Devs more than others, they want you to experience all of the game they've created -- not just 2% of it in the doorway of a Freakshow mission or spending all your time beating on Illusionist. I'm sure they're proud of their creation, they think of all the amazing stories they've told and visuals they've produced, then look in game to see herding; it must be maddening.
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This is all well and good in a perfect world where there is enjoyable new content coming out often enough to keep people interested but I don't think that there is. Many people have played just about all of the game, mostly many times over. Maybe we haven't all done it with every AT variation available, but running Tina Mcintyre for the eighth time with a stone tank rather than a kinetics defender isn't experiencing new content, it's just experiencing the same content differently, which for me isn't enough to hold my interest. I have to find something that keeps my interest in the game. For me that something is collecting badges, usually as quickly as I can because it's part of the fun.
Admittedly there are new arcs coming out every day with MA but as many have mentioned, it's fanfic and not canon and doesn't really hold the same weight. I will play it occasionally especially if I'm told by a friend that there's an arc that's really good but I won't often go looking for the gems myself.
I am all for a new dawn of badge hunting where there are challenging, non grindy badges that are fun and time consuming to hunt but what they have shown us with their MA badge fix doesn't show much creativity or thoughtfulness so I'll believe it when I see it.