Account Wide Badges: which would be good ones to convert?

Okay, this thread is, as some probably already suspect, driven by the incessant whining for "Ultimate Re-Archtyping". Given that, I'll give a quick background synopsis:

The Paragon Studios developers have flatly come down against implementing any system that allows players to change their power set within an archtype, or to change the archtype itself. The developers stated reasoning is that any such implementation counters the design philosophy of City Of Heroes.

In other MMOs players often have limited character slots on any given server, and it makes sense for the developers to allow the players to change their power choices. In MMO's where the level-cap is continuously raised players are generally forced to play only a few select avatars in order to keep pace with the level increases, and the game design makes having multiple avatars with multiple classes largely unfeasible. In such games the ability to change how any one class performs, or the ability to change classes themselves, is one way to give players a sense of variation within the few avatars any given player is able to field.

The design of City of Heroes largely counters the trends of other MMOs, with a focus on limited levels and large numbers of character slots across multiple servers. CoH has pioneered gameplay designs like Sidekicking and Super-Sidekicking, as well as rewarding character experience while exemplared, removing the level-difference limitation from large portions of the game's existing content. There is, however, one aspect of City Of Heroes that is still has roots in the World of Dark Ages MMO design: the Badge Collection.

• All Anniversary Login Badges

  There are various badges awarded for players having logged in during a specific number of days surrounding the anniversary of the game. For players with multiple avatars across multiple servers, they'll easily spend more time logging characters in and out... than they'll spend playing the game. Making these badges apply to a player's global account solves the issue of logging multiple characters in for a single badge, and gives those who want to re-roll / re-create a character proof that they were indeed around for that anniversary event.

• All Holiday Login Badges

  there are also various badges awarded for players having logged in during the holiday events. Same reason as Anniversary badges, they should be tied to global accounts, not character accounts

• For things like the exploration badges, they are now tied to a merit reward for trekking all over a map.
• For things like the Holiday Mission Event badges, such as Father Christmas's Snaptooth mission, or the Zombie Raid from Halloween, these events are largely repeatable.

completely agree with this, in all the events with login badges ive never really tried to get the badges on anything other than my bade toon cause i dont want to log 36 toons in and out to get the log in badges

1000 agreements on the anniversary badges.

/signed

<gives Je_Saist a cookie>

those all sound good to me.

I'm not much of a badger, but it'd be nice to not have to rotate through my stable for event and anniversay login stuff.

Nice proposal - well written, I think it captures the discussion well.

/signed.

The real problem here is that the Devs were initially sloppy with what they allowed to be badges in the first place. Strictly speaking it would have been far better if the Devs had limited "badges" to only be things that were earnable by individual characters via actions in the game.

Where this all got fuzzy is with things like anniversary badges and vet badges. These badges denote things that the PLAYER has done or experienced in the real world. These things have absolutely no relation to individual characters. Why does Captain Awesome of Paragon City care that a MMO has been around for X years or that a player has paid for a MMO account for X years? These things have no bearing on the in-game universe so these things should have never been badges to begin with.

That being said I don't really mind if the Devs retconned badges like these to be global account badges because I don't really effectively consider them to be "real" badges anyway. *shrugs*

All costume unlocks. I don't want to grind 30+ levels to finally match a character concept.

If it becomes a fight, then capes & auras can remain level restricted (I guess).

/signed

Maybe this will finally shut down the argument of switching Archeotypes, at least it will shut the badgers up about it.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

/Signed to that. Nicely written. And;

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBQ_Pork Okay, the Dice one I could go either way on, the Witch Hat I want and Capes being L20+ I'm fine with, but I was primarily thinking about this: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Weapon_Customization The weapons, although I described it as "costume unlocks". My unfortunate choice of words. My example was the Tommy Gun. So with what I'm thinking, let's say a badger gets darn near every badge on thier L50. Thier L1 Blaster can start with a Tommy Gun. The Vanguard Rifle, though, I could see as "not quite unlocked, but reserved" on that L1 blaster. With Vanguard being a L35+ outfit, that Blaster would get it as soon as they hit L35, instead of hitting L35 AND THEN getting it unlocked normally.

I'd have to murder the entire world to steal it's supply of /Signed just to have half of what I need to /Sign this part.
VG rifle I can settle for being 35+. But the frakin' Nemesis rifle? Villain side? In fact, most of the weapons redside? (Redcap knives, Rularuu weapons, I'm looking at you!)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I would like to see those side specific weapon customization options be available to both sides too, the Red cap daggers however I believe you could get as a villain if you did enough save the baby new year missions and killed all the redcaps in the mission each time. But the Rularuu weapons I wanted to see redside just because they look evil and would fit on many players concepts of their toons. I am afraid this is a mute point for the side specific costume options and the badges that unlock them now as toons can just switch sides to pick up the badges they need and then switch back or w/e.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

All login specific.

Also these should be assigned as an account affector, like Veteran Badges. Whereby if i have an active account, i get the badge, its a pain if I happen to be away during the anniversary or I go home for christmas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

For capes and auras, if you have the magic booster pack you get the cool cape right away at L1 and then unlock the traditional capes at 20. As the L20 cape quest is a "prove yourself worthy" type of quest, I'd rather not see it become a global unlock.

Auras: Combat aura and now the Alpha and Omega auras are available at level 1. Since the L30 auras are meant to be a power boost of sorts for hero (an adrenal booster installed near your heart at the tailor shop) or proof of being a Destined One on redside, then they shouldn't be a global unlock.

Anniversary Badges: oh yes, these should be a global unlock without a doubt. Also however there should be a way to get ones that might have been missed. After all sometimes RL interferes for long stretches of time and you may miss the log in period to get the badge.

However we already have an ingame precedent: every Winter Event we can craft badges from the current and previous events, including the login badge from the previous years. As Winter Event login badges are strictly speaking a "Winter anniversary" badge, then the precedent is established and the devs could add the main anniversary badges as craftable badges during the Winter Event. Thus for a whole month or so, players can accumulate enough candy canes and inf and craft a lost anniversary badge they may have missed. Make these badges account based and then once crafted for one character it will cascade to all present characters and future characters on the account.

Also I disagree that the 5th column gladiator badge should be tied to an anniversary badge. Now that we have the Khan TF and Barracuda SF, can't that badge be tied to the badge you get from winning either of those?

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Only one problem with the anniversary log-in badges.

How do you justify a character that could not possibly have existed when it was available having a 1st year anniversary badge?

Really? Your Dual Pistols/Pain Domination corruptor has been around for 6 years? How did you pull that off when none of those things, including the archetype, existed back then?

What is the driving need to have every single possible badge on every single character you will ever create? Does it do something I'm not aware of? Or does it just make an otherwise irrelevant number 1 higher?

I have 2 characters that have the 2 year anniversary badge. I have others that have the later ones, but only those two have the 2 year badge. I feel absolutely no need for every single character on my account to have those badges. I feel it would kind of cheapen it for those two characters. They are kind of special for having been around that long, because it's something none of my other characters will achieve.

Sorry, but I don't feel a character you create TODAY deserves a badge you got for logging in FIVE YEARS AGO. That's like saying I deserve a purple heart because my grandfather got one in WWII.

Using that logic then that Dual Pistols character of yours should only have earned 6 or 7 months of vet badges because that AT has barely been out for half a year.

Anniversary badges have no impact on game play so there's no reason why they can't be account based rather than character based, and it's much easier to make those badges account based than to rework the respec feature to allow people to change AT's because they don't want to create a new character that won't have those badges.

Sorry, but I don't feel a character you create TODAY deserves vet rewards you got for logging in FIVE YEARS AGO. That's like saying I deserve a purple heart because my grandfather got one in WWII.