Anyone else unhappy...

I have no substantial problem with a future fix allowing for global anniversary badges. a retroactive change is wrong in my opinion. however, I don't feel strongly enough to fight about this. like someone wrote above, it ultimately smacks of homogeneity

---

Each badge reads:
You have helped celebrate the X anniversary of City of Heroes.

It is for the player logging on, not a character badge. When a badge is for out of game actions, then it ceases to be a character badge.

---

[ QUOTE ]
Thematically, the Rogue Isles "existed" during the 1st Anniversary. Just because they weren't 'playable' then, doesn't mean they just poofed into existence in the fictional, Co* universe, during Issue 5 (or 6, can't remember exactly).

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, but the badge isn't for the Rogue Isles celebrating the anniversary, it's for "my character" celebrating. My villain wasn't "around". Thematically, as it stands right now, it makes sense. I don't see a need for making it global. I see other people desiring it, sure; I just don't understand that desire.

It's okay to disagree. If it passes, yay you. If it doesn't pass, yay logic.

---

[ QUOTE ]
My guess (and this is purely a guess) is that if this change happened it would NOT be retroactive.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? I disagree. It seems to me that the biggest part of Positron's uncertainty of whether or not it's even possible, probably relys on this very thing.

Any future anniversary badge will, of course, be a new badge that they can assign any reward method they want to. And since we already know that they know how to make account wide badges, I don't forsee any technical difficulties at all to this.

Honestly, if they can't make the badges retroactive, I say why even bother?

---

[ QUOTE ]
Each badge reads:
You have helped celebrate the X anniversary of City of Heroes.

It is for the player logging on, not a character badge.

[/ QUOTE ]

And Immortal reads: "You are truly Immortal. You have survived one billion points of damage." The player didn't earn sustain one billion points of damage, the character did.

Same with Empath: "You have helped your fellow heroes by healing them for one hundred million hit points." Again, the character, not the "player".

See? The logic doesn't play. At best, it's being interpreted to suit a viewpoint, but then it would have to apply to all over similarly worded badges - like, all of them. Should ALL of them be global? No. Vet badges, VIP, etc., all of those are "global" to the actual player. Everything else is engaged by action of a toon - including logging in for the anniversary month. See my point?

---

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Each badge reads:
You have helped celebrate the X anniversary of City of Heroes.

It is for the player logging on, not a character badge.

[/ QUOTE ]

And Immortal reads: "You are truly Immortal. You have survived one billion points of damage." The player didn't earn sustain one billion points of damage, the character did.

Same with Empath: "You have helped your fellow heroes by healing them for one hundred million hit points." Again, the character, not the "player".

See? The logic doesn't play. At best, it's being interpreted to suit a viewpoint, but then it would have to apply to all over similarly worded badges - like, all of them. Should ALL of them be global? No. Vet badges, VIP, etc., all of those are "global" to the actual player. Everything else is engaged by action of a toon - including logging in for the anniversary month. See my point?

[/ QUOTE ]

much more eloquent than what I was about to write out

VIP is for me buying a game with money. much like the costume packs are for people who bought those in-game items with money. thus it makes sense for them to be account wide. the anniversary badges are for a person "celebrating" that anniversary with a character by logging in and participating in an event

why not then make *all* badges account wide? that follows the same logic

---

[ QUOTE ]

1. Log into a character with the badge.
2. Open up the badge window.
3. Click on the events tab (unless new "account badges" tab is made in which case open that instead), click on existing badge.
4. Game now (after change) understands that your account should have the badge and sets the flag on the account to award it to all characters from that point on.

Clear now?


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, that's clearer. Also clearly undesirable. It functionally overloads the act of setting a badge as your title to propagating that badge to other characters.

This makes a lot more sense, and accomodates more character options:

1. Add an "Claimable Badge" badge tab
2. For each event, add a "Event badge" which shows up under the Claimable Badges tab comparable to the veteran rewards badges. Give that badge a claimable reward which is the actual badge for the Event.
3. Upon logging in any character during the event timeframe, award the Event Claimable badge to the *account*, which by extension will award that badge to every character in that account when they next log in, including characters created after that point in time.
4. If the player wants that specific Event badge on any specific character, they can simply claim it in the same manner that they claim veteran awards.

Players can now award the badge to any characters they want, no characters they don't want, it still requires actually logging in during the event at least once, it leverages a pre-existing mechanism and UI metaphor to claim the award, and requires no more tech than the above suggestion (which both revolve around a feature to award an account-based reward based on an in-game action, which I'm not sure currently exists at the moment).

My questions were not based on not understanding your original post, but requesting clear restatement as it seemed extremely improper design at first glance, but with sufficient ambiguity that it was possible you meant something else completely different.

---

[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Thematically, the Rogue Isles "existed" during the 1st Anniversary. Just because they weren't 'playable' then, doesn't mean they just poofed into existence in the fictional, Co* universe, during Issue 5 (or 6, can't remember exactly).

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, but the badge isn't for the Rogue Isles celebrating the anniversary, it's for "my character" celebrating. My villain wasn't "around". Thematically, as it stands right now, it makes sense. I don't see a need for making it global. I see other people desiring it, sure; I just don't understand that desire.

It's okay to disagree. If it passes, yay you. If it doesn't pass, yay logic.

[/ QUOTE ]

In a way, unless your villain is a robot/dimensional wanderer/etc, then they were 'around'. Since the villains were all in the Zig, then they existed prior to CoV coming out for some <x> length of time. Now, granted I don't know for sure at what age they throw people into the Zig, but one would think they'd have to be at least a mid-to-late teenager (or developmental equivalent) to get chucked into there.

Again, that whole poofing into existence thing.

And as for the badge text, *shrug*. Text can be changed. It's not like they are unalterable.

---

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Thematically, the Rogue Isles "existed" during the 1st Anniversary. Just because they weren't 'playable' then, doesn't mean they just poofed into existence in the fictional, Co* universe, during Issue 5 (or 6, can't remember exactly).

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, but the badge isn't for the Rogue Isles celebrating the anniversary, it's for "my character" celebrating. My villain wasn't "around". Thematically, as it stands right now, it makes sense. I don't see a need for making it global. I see other people desiring it, sure; I just don't understand that desire.

It's okay to disagree. If it passes, yay you. If it doesn't pass, yay logic.

[/ QUOTE ]

In a way, unless your villain is a robot/dimensional wanderer/etc, then they were 'around'. Since the villains were all in the Zig, then they existed prior to CoV coming out for some <x> length of time. Now, granted I don't know for sure at what age they throw people into the Zig, but one would think they'd have to be at least a mid-to-late teenager (or developmental equivalent) to get chucked into there.

Again, that whole poofing into existence thing.

And as for the badge text, *shrug*. Text can be changed. It's not like they are unalterable.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then where does the rewriting to suit a viewpoint end, exactly? Your hero/villain "wasn't around" for an anniversary. Your hero/villain may also have not gotten Empath, while another of your toons did. Why not change that too?

Here is the basis of the argument: "We know the badge means this. But we WANT it to mean THIS." What is the benefit of changing the badge's intent? What is it you're "looking" for? It's not the original intent of the badge, because you're saying "that's unfair because a toon wasn't there to get it".

So, what is it? What's driving the need?

---

[ QUOTE ]

Then where does the rewriting to suit a viewpoint end, exactly? Your hero/villain "wasn't around" for an anniversary. Your hero/villain may also have not gotten Empath, while another of your toons did. Why not change that too?

Here is the basis of the argument: "We know the badge means this. But we WANT it to mean THIS." What is the benefit of changing the badge's intent? What is it you're "looking" for? It's not the original intent of the badge, because you're saying "that's unfair because a toon wasn't there to get it".

So, what is it? What's driving the need?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's called a 'retcon'. Quite common in comics.

---

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Then where does the rewriting to suit a viewpoint end, exactly? Your hero/villain "wasn't around" for an anniversary. Your hero/villain may also have not gotten Empath, while another of your toons did. Why not change that too?

Here is the basis of the argument: "We know the badge means this. But we WANT it to mean THIS." What is the benefit of changing the badge's intent? What is it you're "looking" for? It's not the original intent of the badge, because you're saying "that's unfair because a toon wasn't there to get it".

So, what is it? What's driving the need?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's called a 'retcon'. Quite common in comics.



[/ QUOTE ]

That's a what. I asked for a why. Try to be more informative and less dismissive, eh?

---

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Then where does the rewriting to suit a viewpoint end, exactly? Your hero/villain "wasn't around" for an anniversary. Your hero/villain may also have not gotten Empath, while another of your toons did. Why not change that too?

Here is the basis of the argument: "We know the badge means this. But we WANT it to mean THIS." What is the benefit of changing the badge's intent? What is it you're "looking" for? It's not the original intent of the badge, because you're saying "that's unfair because a toon wasn't there to get it".

So, what is it? What's driving the need?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's called a 'retcon'. Quite common in comics.



[/ QUOTE ]

That's a what. I asked for a why. Try to be more informative and less dismissive, eh?

[/ QUOTE ]

That is also a why.

As to your specific thing, what is the benefit of leaving it as is?

What about for those people who made characters using the original powersets, but there are now more thematically appropriate sets?

Then there are also those (like myself) who are stuck with characters that are pretty much unfun, but can't/don't want to be deleted due to having the 1st/2nd anniv badges. I've got about 5 heroes on my main server that simply aren't fun to play, yet they have those badges. I don't want to spend $50 moving them to another server, but would like those slots for ones that would be fun to play. If I could delete them without fear of losing those badges, I would do so. But I can't, so those slots are wasted.

And then there are those people who are around, with active accounts, but for some reason can't login. If they can get it with 1 char, then they shouldn't be penalized on the rest of their chars.

Finally, since this is a game that encourages many characters per player, what benefit is there to making a person login an absurd number of characters just to get that badge? I've got around 50 alts, no they aren't all active, but they are made. That's a decent chunk of time JUST to log them in.

It's a quality of life feature. Sure, there'll be a minority that aren't happy with it being account-based, but the benefits outweigh the downsides.

---

Thanks for taking the time to reply. (And retroactive continuity is a method, it's not a logic.)

What's the benefit of leaving it as it is? Continuity for one; the badge states "You get this for doing X". It signifies a character presence for an anniversary. It's a visual cue as to when the toon came into being. It doesn't cause harm by staying as it has for the last four years.

For those people who made characters, but want more thematically appropriate sets? I think, instead, there should be an "epic respec", honestly: Where your character is reborn, atom by atom, according to a fresh design. Maybe you ticked off some god. Or you shoved your face into a microwave wearing your tinfoil helmet. THAT's common in comics too. And, it has a much wider scope of impact than just five badges.

[ QUOTE ]
Then there are also those (like myself) who are stuck with characters that are pretty much unfun, but can't/don't want to be deleted due to having the 1st/2nd anniv badges. I've got about 5 heroes on my main server that simply aren't fun to play, yet they have those badges. I don't want to spend $50 moving them to another server, but would like those slots for ones that would be fun to play. If I could delete them without fear of losing those badges, I would do so. But I can't, so those slots are wasted.

[/ QUOTE ]

Waste... what? If you don't play the toons, then the badges are already a waste. Or are all five of these toons your only badge hunters? If you don't want the toons, delete 'em. The badge on them isn't doing you any good anyway, right?

What value does this badge have for you that you MUST have it, at extreme cost such as being unable to delete a toon you hate, because it happens to have it?

[ QUOTE ]
And then there are those people who are around, with active accounts, but for some reason can't login. If they can get it with 1 char, then they shouldn't be penalized on the rest of their chars.

[/ QUOTE ]

...because it's a per-character badge. Not having isn't a penalization. It's just you not having the badge.

[ QUOTE ]
Finally, since this is a game that encourages many characters per player, what benefit is there to making a person login an absurd number of characters just to get that badge? I've got around 50 alts, no they aren't all active, but they are made. That's a decent chunk of time JUST to log them in.

[/ QUOTE ]

My response here is twofold: 1.) If you want the badge, even with 50 toons, that ain't that much time over the course of a month. You're talking an hour total's work, give or take 10 minutes. 2.) ...why do you HAVE to have it on all these alts? Even the ones you don't want to play? (Like the five heroes you mentioned earlier?)

That's my argument here. It's NOT a quality of life issue. It's an obsession issue. Hey: I do it too. But it's a no brainer for me. My Mastermind doesn't get the 1st anniversary badge. Life goes on.

Why is your life ruined by its absence? Because that's how you're painting it to me. Your five heroes that you want to delete, you can't... because of this badge. It leaves you helpless to make new toons, because you HAVE to keep them... because of this badge.

This isn't a reward. The way you describe it? It's a cancer.

---

Why are people even arguing about this?

It is by far the best way to do it and I thank Posi for this new philosophy against badge farms and pointless logins.

---

A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!

[ QUOTE ]
Why are people even arguing about this?

It is by far the best way to do it and I welcome Posi's new philosophy against badge farms and pointless logins.

[/ QUOTE ]

/agreed

---

I live in FREEKIN WISCONSIN BABY!

I think it makes the most sense to have one set of time involved badges tied to an account and one set to a character if only to have both bases covered. It seems a little redundant to have both sets tied to an account.

---

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Each badge reads:
You have helped celebrate the X anniversary of City of Heroes.

It is for the player logging on, not a character badge.

[/ QUOTE ]

And Immortal reads: "You are truly Immortal. You have survived one billion points of damage." The player didn't earn sustain one billion points of damage, the character did.

Same with Empath: "You have helped your fellow heroes by healing them for one hundred million hit points." Again, the character, not the "player".

See? The logic doesn't play. At best, it's being interpreted to suit a viewpoint, but then it would have to apply to all over similarly worded badges - like, all of them. Should ALL of them be global? No. Vet badges, VIP, etc., all of those are "global" to the actual player. Everything else is engaged by action of a toon - including logging in for the anniversary month. See my point?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I knew I should have also quoted the second half of that:
(This badge was issued to every character who logged in during the month of May, 2009)

Player action required for badge = logging in.

---

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

1. Log into a character with the badge.
2. Open up the badge window.
3. Click on the events tab (unless new "account badges" tab is made in which case open that instead), click on existing badge.
4. Game now (after change) understands that your account should have the badge and sets the flag on the account to award it to all characters from that point on.

Clear now?


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, that's clearer. Also clearly undesirable. It functionally overloads the act of setting a badge as your title to propagating that badge to other characters.

[/ QUOTE ]
So what if it overloads the setting a badge as a title, we're talking a grand total of 6 badges to check against.

[ QUOTE ]
This makes a lot more sense, and accomodates more character options:

1. Add an "Claimable Badge" badge tab
2. For each event, add a "Event badge" which shows up under the Claimable Badges tab comparable to the veteran rewards badges. Give that badge a claimable reward which is the actual badge for the Event.
3. Upon logging in any character during the event timeframe, award the Event Claimable badge to the *account*, which by extension will award that badge to every character in that account when they next log in, including characters created after that point in time.
4. If the player wants that specific Event badge on any specific character, they can simply claim it in the same manner that they claim veteran awards.

[/ QUOTE ]
Okay if the whole point is to NOT log in to every single character, then that point is entirely crushed by your point #4. Secondly, it isn't retroactive, thanks to your point #3. Last of all needlessly complicates the process. Sorry, no dice.

[ QUOTE ]
Players can now award the badge to any characters they want, no characters they don't want, it still requires actually logging in during the event at least once, it leverages a pre-existing mechanism and UI metaphor to claim the award, and requires no more tech than the above suggestion (which both revolve around a feature to award an account-based reward based on an in-game action, which I'm not sure currently exists at the moment).

[/ QUOTE ]
It also needlessly complicates the process, and does not work in a retro-active fashion.

I will point out that:
We both require one character to have logged in during the event.
We both use the existing UI, even though we use different aspects of it.
We both require new tech.

Where we differ:
You want a reward "badge" placeholder, I just want to select the badge.
You want each character to claim the badge, I want one character to claim it for all characters.

Early Bird and the lost ticket badges seem to indicate that badges can now award an account based badge based on an in-game action.

[ QUOTE ]
My questions were not based on not understanding your original post, but requesting clear restatement as it seemed extremely improper design at first glance, but with sufficient ambiguity that it was possible you meant something else completely different.

[/ QUOTE ]
What, exactly is improper about it? If the only objection is selecting the title, then logging into the character with the badge should set the award to the account and at that point every character should be awarded the badge when they next log in. This would annoy those that don't want the previous badges from activating globally.

Why not just add a /check_global_badges command? Type it in and it checks if the character has any of the few badges, if it does then it sets the account flag.

---

[ QUOTE ]
With Posi saying he's looking to have the Aniversity Badges be account wide instead of Charater spefic?

I know he said he wasn't sure it could happen or not, but, well, I LIKE the fact I only have 4 guys out of around 30 active alts that have the year 1 badge. And a few have the year 2's... all the rookies have only the year 5's.

I mean... we have vet badges that show how long you as a person have had an active account, but the aniverisity badges IMO show how long THAT hero or villan has been around.

I'd be bummed to lose that. Am i alone?

[/ QUOTE ]

Makes no difference to me, but I do have toons that I didnt bother to log on for all the anniverseries. So I would like to have it on them. Goes for this one too.I didnt log in all my toons to get it.

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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Then where does the rewriting to suit a viewpoint end, exactly? Your hero/villain "wasn't around" for an anniversary. Your hero/villain may also have not gotten Empath, while another of your toons did. Why not change that too?

Here is the basis of the argument: "We know the badge means this. But we WANT it to mean THIS." What is the benefit of changing the badge's intent? What is it you're "looking" for? It's not the original intent of the badge, because you're saying "that's unfair because a toon wasn't there to get it".

So, what is it? What's driving the need?

[/ QUOTE ]

It's called a 'retcon'. Quite common in comics.



[/ QUOTE ]

That's a what. I asked for a why. Try to be more informative and less dismissive, eh?

[/ QUOTE ]

asking for a non-dismissive answer from the "omg its not fair" crowd on the forum or ingame on any subject is rather pointless. All they ever give is dismissive answers.

---

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Arc ID 58363!

This is an awful lot of metaphysics over a simple missable reward. The real question that needs to be asked is whether missable rewards are good for the game.

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[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

1. Log into a character with the badge.
2. Open up the badge window.
3. Click on the events tab (unless new "account badges" tab is made in which case open that instead), click on existing badge.
4. Game now (after change) understands that your account should have the badge and sets the flag on the account to award it to all characters from that point on.

Clear now?


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, that's clearer. Also clearly undesirable. It functionally overloads the act of setting a badge as your title to propagating that badge to other characters.

[/ QUOTE ]
So what if it overloads the setting a badge as a title, we're talking a grand total of 6 badges to check against.


[/ QUOTE ]

The fact that it is only 6 badges makes it even less desirable to modify the system. If you wanted to do this with 1000 badges, there's a compelling argument to make the change. Doing it for only 6 badges requires special code to program in the exception. This requires more documentation, more code, more effort, more testing, more time, more manpower, and more money. And as you say, "we're talking a grand total of 6 badges." Not worth it.

By your logic, they would have programed in a special bar for Vandal long ago. After all, we're talking a grand total of 1 badge.

-----------------------

As to the primary topic at hand, I'm kind of wishy washy about making them all global retroactively. I can definitely see an argument against villains getting the pre-COV anniversary badges, especially since players who joined because COV would be permanently ineligible for badges despite joining their game at its inception (and for the record, I have always been against having more than one veteran badge... I think they should work like X Times the Victor does).

My preference for any retroactive rewarding of badges would retroactively reward them to toons who's creation dates precede specific anniversaries. If the database doesn't contain a creation date, then they can look at each toon's earliest anniversary badge and award them each subsequent anniversary badge, thus making it still apply to toons based on when they were created, but allowing people to not have to log in several hundred toons. And I know of people IRL who were completely unable to log in for reasons beyond their control (ie Iraq or Afghanistan), except by exchanging their user names and passwords to friends, which technically is a violation of the EULA. So should anyone who chose not to do that, thus choosing to abide by the EULA, be punished for it? Personally, I should hope not, but I'm not going to keep my fingers crossed.

---

[ QUOTE ]
The fact that it is only 6 badges makes it even less desirable to modify the system. If you wanted to do this with 1000 badges, there's a compelling argument to make the change. Doing it for only 6 badges requires special code to program in the exception. This requires more documentation, more code, more effort, more testing, more time, more manpower, and more money. And as you say, "we're talking a grand total of 6 badges." Not worth it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I doubt it's very complex.

We have code for account-wide badges. They can exist. So create a new account-wide Anniversary 1 badge. Leave the old one for a moment, we'll come back to it shortly.

We have code that upon login checks the status of all account-wide badges. That is how if you get Jackpot on one character, the next character finds it awarded when they log in.

So all that's needed is to know when to award that new badge to the whole account, and the rest will take care of itself. They could do that with a database script (which would make it easy to then remove the old badge completely) or could compare to each character when you log in and award the account if you log in a character with the badge.


as to some other questions, they have easy answers...
Don't like villains having Anniversary 1? OK, make that badge Hero-only, since there were no villain characters at that calendar time.
Too much fuss over Account vs Character? Then put the new account-wide anniversary badge in the Veteran tab instead of Events. (and for those who are really nitpicky, suggest a broader name for that tab) That way an Anniversary is clearly an out-of-game event, not an in-game event like the Halloween stuff. It's not relevant to the point that missable badges suck, it's just a consideration in the design to fix them.

---

I think it would be nice to have two different anniversary badges. One that is static and is given for the earliest anniversary that a character was in existence for and one that is account wide that auto updates like a vet badge and shows the latest one obtained like x times the victor. I think that would satisfy most of the concerns written about here.

---

I just wish I could get the 3rd year badge. Damn computer frying on me and my lack of funds to replace it.

---