Issue 15 Mission Architect Badge Changes

Well it is a bit of a shame but I never understood why the virtual line of badges even existed except to pad out the badge list. The Mission Architect is a virtual environment in and of itself so how does a virtual testing environment differ from a virtual regular one?

Still there'll be other badges. What gripes me at the moment is:[ QUOTE ]
Q: What about non-Mission Architect badges?

A: We have no current plans to revisit old badges at this time, and I don’t foresee us doing this really. All badges unrelated to the Mission Architect will remain unaffected by the changes outlined above.

[/ QUOTE ]And why the hell shouldn't they be looked at?

I was planning something for the Fusion Generator badge and noticed an in-progress healing SG badge for 100,000,000 points. The number seemed familiar, very familiar and when I looked it up I found exactly why. In the patch notes for December 2nd (Issue 13 release) the Empath badge was reduced to 100,000,000. Now when you consider the solo badge had to be lowered to the same as the SG badge; there's something wrong there. Surely the individual badges should be significantly less since the group badges can potentially be a group effort? Not just the healing one either. The damage and debt badges are also significantly higher for a single character than they are to unlock other SG items.

I agree with others who think the regular badges should get a look at. Most of the end tier badges have rediculous quantities atached to them. Inventions goes from 1,000 for the fourth to 10,000 for the fifth, influence jumps up from 20 mill to 100 mill to 1 billion to 2 billion. There's a few of them could do with being knocked down a peg or two.

Quote:

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.

[ QUOTE ]
I never understood why the virtual line of badges even existed except to pad out the badge list.

[/ QUOTE ]
Easy when you consider that badges are actively seeked by some players and so a smattering of badges will be used as an incentive to get people using new features.

The devs didn't want a load of untested dross with basic flaws hitting the MA arc store and so gave us a way to test without publishing.

Q: But how to make sure that people do test their creations before publishing?
A: Stick in a few badges so that there's an added incentive (or thank you) for testing.

Of course that didn't quite work as the choice for arc authors was (and still is):

(1) Expend lots of effort testing your arcs yourself just for badges and ensuring a higher quality of arc when it is published. Conscientious authors would probably do this with several characters and maybe even try to get teams to test, but still wouldn't be able to test exhaustively before publishing.

(2) Just publish the arc and 'test' it there. This way it's easier to get others to test it (and maybe even a few people will play it after randomly finding it) and you'l get proper tickets/rewards for both testing and if anyone rates the arc. If badges are your thing, you'll also get progress to the live badges whilst 'testing'.

For anyone who isn't serious about writing an arc for the creative/storytelling purposes the choice became a no-brainer: Publish it without unpublished testing. This apparently surprised the devs (going off a comment Posi made at the EU pocket D) - though it shouldn't have given the reward structure in place.

Even for those who are serious, the test badges are only of use (as a thank you or incentive) to those who want to publish the first time with as few errors/issues as possible.

Since arcs can be unpublished then published again with no trace of old comments/complaints/ratings anyone who doesn't worry about trying to launch a faultless arc first-time should have no qualms about publishing a reasonable first-pass and then finishing testing from the live copy. If there's a major problem just unpublish/edit/publish - but you'll have still earnt proper tickets whilst finishing testing.

Of course, removing all the badges that are going just means that there is even less reward/purpose to testing for all but the most serious authors.

With each of my published multi-mission arcs I used several characters for between about 8 and 20 hours of test runs. Even though a lot of this time was on the test server, it was oddly satisfying to see the virtual badge progress slowly creeping up - and a nice little reward when the odd test badge dropped. With I15 even I think that there is virtually no point in doing more than 1 or 2 test runs of a new arc before publishing.