Issue 15 Mission Architect Badge Changes

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With a full team, the Illusionist hunt takes, what, an hour? An hour and a half? Still within the bounds of sanity, IMO. And, ultimately, still plausible to get via standard play, as long as one is running numerous Carnies missions (though it might help to have a Carnies-heavy TF in place; a good deal of the other multi-defeat badges can be gotten via TFs, after all).

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Oh I agree with you. I was just using it as an example of the most spammed "Farm for badge" thing I've seen outside the MA, ie not very much spam at all.

I'd agree with JDs post on how these abuses of the MA system were supposed to be automatically detected and dealt with too, but I must admit my cold and cynical heart I didn't actually believe it when they said it in the run-up to i13. Still, it sounded nice for the website interviews, didn't it?

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There's a fair few I've had to grind out, simply because I outlevelled them before I got them. Things like the Tsoo Mask badge I got by wandering a corner of Talos, waiting for night for them to spawn and trying to kill them.

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The problem you had was hunting Tsoo Masks rather than the badge-awarding BP Masks. Simple mistake to make.

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.......look, if you're just going to use logic and common sense, I can't possibly talk to you!

The windfall to Jackpot line of badges (for surplus badges) were often earned by intentionally leaving tickets until the ticket cap was hit and then the surplus tickets earnt for the badges. If the surplus ticket badges were not available then I would imagine that no-one would ever have obtained these badges, as they would spend the tickets rather than lose rewards.

So presumably the removal of these badges will be performed alongside a corresponding boost of accountwide tickets - won't it?

If so, can we have reasonable warning of when this is going to happen so that accountwide tickets can be spent to leave enough room for the compensating tickets to be placed there?

If not, doesn't this mean that the devs have effectively retroactively altered the risk-reward equation that was in effect whilst players were intentionally gaining surplus ticket credit?

It's not too different to if the 'Payoff' badge was removed.

Sadly, even a cursory glance at the MA indicates that the process of clearing the Augean stables is, indeed, going to be Herculean; there are still plenty of obvious farm missions, "Rikti Dolls", etc.

I dunno though, seems a lot of people were expecting MA to come out perfect first time. I couldn't even get lasagna to do that, much less a user-generated content system :P

I'm dumb today, JD, so not entirely following your logic there

If you put up an MA arc and went on holiday for a fortnight, during which 999 people five-starred your mish, wouldn't you also have soared through the ticket cap and got the entire Windfall->Jackpot line, or did that line only award for tickets in one's salvage inventory?

If the former is the case, surely that's reward for absolutely zero risk? If the latter, then yeah, inasmuch as I can understand your point, I think it's valid.

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With a full team, the Illusionist hunt takes, what, an hour? An hour and a half? Still within the bounds of sanity, IMO. And, ultimately, still plausible to get via standard play, as long as one is running numerous Carnies missions (though it might help to have a Carnies-heavy TF in place; a good deal of the other multi-defeat badges can be gotten via TFs, after all).

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No - that's only within the bounds of sanity if you consider forming teams to farm illusionists as being the sort of 'sanity' that the devs want in this game.

Playing without ever being on an illusionist hunt, my main is now on over 1000 hours played, quite enjoys facing carnies and still has only c.150 credits on the illusionist badge.

I'd argue that having to form teams to farm any type of mob for a badge is wrong.

Though some people would form teams to farm them even if the required number was only 20.

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Sadly, even a cursory glance at the MA indicates that the process of clearing the Augean stables is, indeed, going to be Herculean; there are still plenty of obvious farm missions, "Rikti Dolls", etc.

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It makes little difference to an automated farm/exploit detection routine if there are only 100 arcs or 100 thousand arcs.

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If you put up an MA arc and went on holiday for a fortnight, during which 999 people five-starred your mish, wouldn't you also have soared through the ticket cap and got the entire Windfall->Jackpot line, or did that line only award for tickets in one's salvage inventory?


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The former would indeed get you the Jackpot badge, although I would imagine that to be a very rare scenario that you outlined - and if someone in that position got awarded 1000 tickets for the removal of the Jackpot badge then so what? They still would have earnt the tickets if you accept that authoring arcs should get rewards.

What you actually highlight more is the idea that there are now 2 paths to rewards:
* Playing which brings should be within acceptable risk/reward limits;
* Authoring content others like.

Obviously there is no ingame risk whatsoever for authors - so maybe some would argue that they shouldn't get tickets/rewards at all. If, however, they are awarded the same rewards that are earnt by play then they should be eligible for recompense as the windfall/jackpot badges are taken.

Certainly most players with these badges will have earnt them by playing arcs rather than by having their arcs played, and so, with the removal of these badges, will have effectively been playing for highly reduced rewards.

Thinking about it, JD, you're in the right on this one (I was trying to think of something, well, anything that compares with the time it takes to get "Unbreakable".)

My feeling is not dissimilar to yours on the issue; badges unobtainable within a reasonable amount of play-time should at least be non-requirements for accolades (and yes, people would still farm for the top-tier ones for completeness' sake, but I've no problem with that, not particularly having a horse in the 'must get all badges' race.)

right got to be careful here so i dont get deleted again. first off this is not an official post it is my post. i dont represent any of the official people and am just a player. that ok Av?

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That’s all I can really say right now as I don’t want to spoil any of the exciting badges that will go into future issues at this time.

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surely nuking the badges now means people wont want to try for them in furutre?

as for identifying farmed missions. what an easy thing to spot. i can provide a checklist that will kill them easy.

<ul type="square">[*] is the mission repeatedly played by the same people. who are not a. mission owner.[*] does the mission contain any of the enemies that are favoured by farms.[*] does the mission return higher than an average mission repeatedly.[*] is the mission repeatedly reset (don't understand why you would want to for MA but it goes in).[*] does the arc have a hugh amount of plays and no ratings?[/list]
if the arc conforms to the above. mark it as possible farm for gm review. a gm should be able to tell at a glance if it is a farm and blow it away.

It still flumoxes me that the devs didn't see this coming. A friend said to me from when MA was first announced that it'll be used for farming. How did the devs not see that? Where they really under too much pressure (self-imposed?) from the US contingent to really sit down and think of ways of how to farm with MA, then take the appropriate action?

I'm just really disappointed by the way the devs have handled this whole situation. Maybe (and I'm sure we'll only get a cursory glance) we should be a little more involved with upcoming issues. Like testing at the same time as the US, or heaven-forbid that we get to test before they do (wishful thinking, I believe).

I still think this is the best MMORPG going due to the friendliness (most of the time) and helpfulness of everyone playing this game. Shame the devs can't spend enough time with us Europeans like they do with the Americans...

OK, I think I get your original post on this now, and I even sort of agree, but I fear you've got more chance of getting a temp Rularuu the Ravager pet than getting 1K tickets in lieu of the Jackpot badge.

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The windfall to Jackpot line of badges (for surplus badges) were often earned by intentionally leaving tickets until the ticket cap was hit and then the surplus tickets earnt for the badges. If the surplus ticket badges were not available then I would imagine that no-one would ever have obtained these badges, as they would spend the tickets rather than lose rewards.

So presumably the removal of these badges will be performed alongside a corresponding boost of accountwide tickets - won't it?

If so, can we have reasonable warning of when this is going to happen so that accountwide tickets can be spent to leave enough room for the compensating tickets to be placed there?

If not, doesn't this mean that the devs have effectively retroactively altered the risk-reward equation that was in effect whilst players were intentionally gaining surplus ticket credit?

It's not too different to if the 'Payoff' badge was removed.

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I second that! It would only be fair.

Poor Sal

Shame about those shiny badges I will loose now. I understand and agree the why this is done. But it is a lot of wasted time for me, let alone those dedicated badgehunters who worked hard to get theirs on more then 1 toon.

Poor Sal


Ps. If you want to butcher badges, make sure that some non MA badges are attainable in a normal non farming way. Especially on red side this is often a problem. Anyone can say Untouchable or Weatherman? Fix those.

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It still flumoxes me that the devs didn't see this coming. A friend said to me from when MA was first announced that it'll be used for farming.

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I honestly didn't think the MA would be used for farming, but then I honestly didn't think the developers would be crazy enough to have MA missions give full rewards either.

There is a lot of very good work put into the MA, but at the same time some aspects are so designed with so obviously little thought that as a developer I'm appalled.

i still trying to get my head around there are some maps that let you put in i think 125 glowies, now if they didn't want to do these types of farms, why the hell did they put that in there?? i mean come on something like this should of show a promblem would happen as get all glowy badge getting is a 100 i think

it a tool they give us for some wierd reason and it made no reason

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well its been fun while it lasted.

i had said before in the forum that if you take a way the badges i put so much time, effort and money into collecting that i would take away my subs.

i dont play this game to negate my time here - the devs coqued up, NOT me. i just played within your rules (no i'm not a farmer).

hope to see my friends on another mmo in the future. be well and take care.

:={}

i had lots of fun over the last 18 months. made some friends and 1 enemy. (you know who you are)

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Awwww boo-hoo.
Yer, they messed up with MA badges and for some seemingly stupid reason they didn't expect MA to be used as a farming tool. But they are only human, just like everyone else who plays this game. To those who are annoyed at this decision: ITS ONLY A GAME! Sure I enjoy it a lot and want it to succeed but at the end of the day I play for fun and I don't find grinding fun in the slightest.
If you are for the changes, good. Glad to see some positive thinking for once.

Edited by Avatea.

Butt licking?

its only a forum.

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It still flumoxes me that the devs didn't see this coming. A friend said to me from when MA was first announced that it'll be used for farming.

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I honestly didn't think the MA would be used for farming, but then I honestly didn't think the developers would be crazy enough to have MA missions give full rewards either.

There is a lot of very good work put into the MA, but at the same time some aspects are so designed with so obviously little thought that as a developer I'm appalled.

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To me, I honestly thought that this was a great concept and to do for some fun/light entertainment. I also had plans to make an arc around one of my charatcers. At the time, I couldn't see how it could be used for farming either. I believed the devs had said when it couldn't be used for farming and they had things in place to stop potential exploits (as mentioned by Judgement_Dave above).

I did feel let down when these statements hadn't come to fruition, as I was so sure farming wasn't going to be an issue. It's quite surprising how much it affects the view of MA when there's such a kerfuffle following it.

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well its been fun while it lasted.

i had said before in the forum that if you take a way the badges i put so much time, effort and money into collecting that i would take away my subs.

i dont play this game to negate my time here - the devs coqued up, NOT me. i just played within your rules (no i'm not a farmer).

hope to see my friends on another mmo in the future. be well and take care.

:={}

i had lots of fun over the last 18 months. made some friends and 1 enemy. (you know who you are)

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Awwww boo-hoo.
Yer, they messed up with MA badges and for some seemingly stupid reason they didn't expect MA to be used as a farming tool. But they are only human, just like everyone else who plays this game. To those who are annoyed at this decision: ITS ONLY A GAME! Sure I enjoy it a lot and want it to succeed but at the end of the day I play for fun and I don't find grinding fun in the slightest.
If you are for the changes, good. Glad to see some positive thinking for once.

[/ QUOTE ]yes change can be good, but this to me seem like a big bully come across did not like you having your ice cream and tossed sand into it to spoil you enjoyment.

you can say what you think i feel about this. but i know im just dishearted by the action here, they could of do this i don't know something more of a 50/50 then here it hammer time and smash every single china in a china store

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If your outraged enough to leave, so be it.
If your staying, maybe see you in MA where we may now see some REAL Story missions up =]

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It's not about the badges really. It's more of another point which to me indicates that this game is administered by people who have very little clue how handle both business and customers. Now, I know it's just a game and it's not that big a deal. I have just taken the decision to leave the game due to it's long history of incompetence management expertise. I still laugh sometimes when I think back to what Statesman managed to do to the game with his totally %&amp;¤&amp;%¤ up "vision of balance". Too bad they are still on the track to Dumbville.

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i still trying to get my head around there are some maps that let you put in i think 125 glowies, now if they didn't want to do these types of farms, why the hell did they put that in there??

[/ QUOTE ]The idea is that you don't actually put 125 glowies so that a low number has 'random' positioning. The flooded city Ghostworld version has you looking for one glowie which means 125 possible locations for it.



And as for anyone who complins about badges being their right to have; no it isn't. Aside from your own character profile (which even that is under limited licence) everything in the game; badges, costumes, loot, etc. belongs to NCSoft and you agreee to that every time you play. It's in the EULA.


Not to say I'm not evil-laughing a little at seeing yet another change to the MA 'to make it better'. Now if they would change customiser to an account-wide badge, they'd probably see fewer arcs published and unpublished for the accolade.

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Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

your entitled to your opinion as we all are

call me a bully - quite the opposite, in my experience certain members in game ARE bullies. this is just my response to having stuff i have earned taken off me.

but dont worry your pretty little head about it because after the 4th june i wont be here. much to the multitudes pleasure (before you sate it)

so you dont mind having your own rewards taken off you I DO