How can a Praetorian character have 1229 badges?

I agree that they are mutually exclusive at least by design. But if you read what I said a bit more closely you would see that I was trying to explain HOW Blazing Tiger could have had both versions of the badge verified at one time, not that the fact that she managed to have them both verified at once was a desirable or legitimate situation.

Basically the Badge Hunter code wasn't implemented to make sure no one would have them both verified because until now there was no reasonable way anyone could have managed it in the first place. I don't really consider it a "failure" of the Badge Hunter code. It's just a unique, very rare situation that Beef_Cake is going to have to handle as he's already described.

I have no problem with the idea that Primal characters may eventually get a legitimate way to get a badge like Avid Reader. But I would agree that a pair of badges that were DESIGNED to be mutually exclusive should be kept that way not only by the game but by a website like Badge Hunter.

Obviously what happened here was an accidental scenario that allowed Blazing Tiger to earn a couple of badges (or at least be able to verify a temporary Primal/Praetorian "flip" of one of those badges) that should otherwise not have been possible. I don't consider what she did an "exploit" at least from the point of view of her going out of her way to actively trick the system into giving her the badge. She was simply in the right place at the right time during a random mapserver crash and got the badges while she happened to be in a mission she would of otherwise had no possible access to. In the grand spectrum of badging I don't consider what she did as strictly wrong. On the other hand I really don't consider that she should legitimately keep those badges either, and if the game itself can't prevent her from keeping them then at the very least a website like Badge Hunter should do what it can to make sure that it remains consistent to the "rules" of the game.

So Blazing Tiger should not be "punished" for her luck. But in this case she shouldn't really benefit from it either.

If I may make a suggestion?
Actually, given some things I know about the system, Paragon Studios could make a script for the Agent of X badges where it checks characters to see if they have the 2 badges (2 different set_titles). If the script finds both badges, the script can then check the award dates and remove the newer badge.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Something like this may be possible (and might even be necessary) assuming there is no other more obvious way for the game to know that a given character is a "Praetorian native" versus a "Primal native". If there is no such simple flag in the character data then all I could say to that is that the Devs probably should of thought to include one for just such a contingency.

As far as the other "Praetorian only" badges go I would actually hesitate worrying about stripping them from lucky Primals just yet, at least until the Devs have made a decision on whether or not they will ever let Primals get those badges legitimately. I mean if say by Issue 21 or 22 the Devs are already going to be giving us a "Praetorian Ouroboros" to get those badges then I don't think they need to make a big deal out of a few Primals who may already have Avid Reader today. Case in point there were a few people who had (via a bug that was stumbled upon) opposite side respec badges for months before it was "legitimate" for that to be possible and it didn't ultimately harm anything.

So yes badges which are supposed to be mutually exclusive should be fixed regardless.
But everything else may just end up being "resolved" by retroactive additions to the game.

It is presumptuous to pretend it is simple to muck with a database like this. Quick, easy fixes are usually the ones that cause the most damage when they go wrong.

Bug hunter is only peripherally award via a bug. It's awardes via dev concesus for discovering a major issue. No bug, exploited or not, can award it.
Part of the issue is often the only difference between being award via bug vs. exploiting is intent. So it makes it easier to just remove it.

debatable. Like I stated above, intent is a big part of it. Exploiting is punishable by ban, merely benifitting from a bug isn't.

Rare yes. Unique? No, not after Halloween with the fitb tip
Mission badge as I understand it. The fifth(/sixth) badges are exclusive despite being awarded as different badges - swapping sides, as I recall, didn't change thenbadge title - you had to re-earn it and the new one removed your old one.

It would have been interesting to see if Tiger had yet to collect any badges that were praetorian specific (inf collected, damage taken, healing, etc) after this. However there are several badges, besides the praetorian duplicates that could be checked against. The 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 level badges for instance.

Which is why I suggested different approaches for Avid Reader and Agent of Praetoria.

I'm a programmer, I work with databases, I don't pretend for a moment what I'm suggesting is "simple". However, what I'm suggesting is possible within their system. They have the means of automatically removing badges (they did so with several badges in Issue 7). They have the means to identify dates of badges earned since 2008 (Issue 13). The problem only deals with Issue 20 badge rewards (within the last 2 months).

They could easily check the level 10 badge for any character that has Agent of Praetoria. If it is a praetorian badge, then the character gets a "pass", if it is the primal version, the Agent of Praetoria has been awarded improperly and should be removed at that time.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Zwiffenpuff, would you explain this please? What ARE the normal channels and how do we file an appeal?

If you are referring to the /petition process as being the normal channels, how do we file an appeal?

To report someone you suspect is exploiting?

/petition

Of course.

I am a programmer, and while I did suggest something similar, I wouldn't want it as a process that is continually run. A script they could use during maintenance would be ideal as that would be a one time check for every character.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Actually, I already have part of the code needed for this, at least I hope it'll work the same way with some modifications of course. The 4 Villain Patron badges have this particular code I spoke of. You can't verify more than 1 badge, you can't manually check more than one badge. All four of those badges count as a single badge since a single character can't possibly earn more than 1. I will be doing the same thing with the Praetorian Acheivement badges as well, but that's gonna take some time.

I'll basically have to recycle that code with a small modification and it should work, but I'll find out when I find time to do so. It's not that big a deal as it doesn't break the site, but it's on the to do list.

Please keep us posted on this information, it would be appreciated.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

The problem with this line of thought is that *unless* there is an alternate way to achieve the badge, the devs cannot close the bug itself. Doing so would mean this was a true statement: its valid to achieve an ordinarily unachievable badge via a bug so long as the bug exists, but only as long as the bug exists. This would mean it would not be in the best interests of the playerbase to report a bug that allowed access to ordinarily unachievable badges.

To put it another way, a badge achievable by a bug that is fixed by the devs is in effect an unannounced time limited badge. There should never be unannounced time limited badges.

Why ?

It would just be another type of badge that everyone wouldn't be able to get.

Merging tables qualifies as 'mucking' with a database. What SnowGlobe described is very routine. I do it every day at work. Well, not every day but it's not a big deal.

The stated reason for the badge awarding IS exclusive. Agent of X is awarded for owning Going Rogue. Primal Earth characters earn Agent of Order or Chaos and Praetorian characters get Agent of Praetoria. The intent is clear that these are mutually exclusive badges.

The game may let you have both badges, but you can't fulfil all the requirements in one character (owning Going Rogue and being a Primal character or owning Going Rogue and being a Praetorian character), unless you are a developer. The game may even award the badge for getting into the tutorial, however that isn't working as intended according to the developers. Zwillinger, as a community rep, has already stated that "there were some players (not just the one referenced) who were able to get badges they weren't normally able to".

It doesn't matter if a bug allowed primal characters to get the badge. It was never the intent to be able to get both Agent of Order/Chaos AND Agent of Praetoria. A company representative's word that the characters aren't normally able to takes a higher priority than having screenshots of a character with both badges. In other words, if I can show with a bug with a screenshot that doesn't mean that it is working as intended.

Leandro, what you are saying is that the game has nothing to prevent both badges from awarding, like the patron badges. In reality there is just as much normally preventing people from having all 4 patron badges. The ONLY two badges that are mutually exclusive with the definition that YOU are using is Trusting and Arriviste badges. That level of distinction isn't needed in the Agent of X badges though.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

You're missing the point of my post. A few people were thinking that the badges were mutually exclusive and the only reason that they both appear as verified for a single character is because the player verified one badge and then the other (at which point, presumably, they wouldn't have the first). In reality, they have both badges, and the site's verification is working in a way that is consistent with what the game does.

Yes, that would tie into Zwillinger's post. I suppose I could have gotten technical and saying that the earning conditions should have been mutually exclusive, but that isn't the point. Like I said, in reality the patron badges are not mutually exclusive either. Any developer can turn them all on for a character, I know I have pictures of Black Pebble's badge list with all of them. I'm sure you have a similar screenshot of a Developer's badge list.

My posts about the two badges being mutually exclusive came at it from a different point of view, one that seems to be shared with the majority of players in this thread AND the developers: A primal character should never had access to the Agent of Praetoria Badge in the first place when they had the Agent of Order/Chaos badge. In that sense, they ARE mutually exclusive. THAT is the point that everyone here is trying to make.

In this case the badge has been identified as being improperly awarded by the game. I suspect that the badge sites will have a fix out sooner than the game itself.

Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters

Actually this situation is still unique because this is the first time that badges which, according to the Devs, are supposed to be mutually exclusive have been proven by events not to be. When someone can manage to stumble onto a way to have both Trusting and Arriviste at the same time then we'll be dealing with a more similar situation.

To put it another way Badge Hunter already had to take into account the mutual exclusivity of the Trusting/Arriviste pair because of the way characters can manually switch those badges. On the other hand there was no original consideration for the Agent badges in Badge Hunter because those were supposed fixed in stone by the game and there was (up until this mapserve bug) no way anyone could potentially have both at the same time.

Beef_Cake mentioned he has a good handle on this situation. Again I don't fault him for not checking for this up until now because no one (Devs or players) ever had any expectation it was a potential possibility in the first place. The game allowed a buggy situation to expose a shortcoming in the code. It's up to Beef_Cake to eventually handle his side of things in Badge Hunter regardless of what the Devs ever do to fix this in the game itself.

Thanks clearing this point up. Again I was just looking at the Blazing Tiger badge situation from the point of view of "how did she get 1229 badges VERIFIED on Badge-Hunter". Not knowing the exact nature of the how mutually exclusive the Agent badges were I simply theorized that she might have been able to verify these badges at different times to accomplish the net effect of making Badge-Hunter list them both as verified.

But now that you've shown that a character can actually have both Agent badges at the same time we now see that the "mutual exclusivity" of these badges is only by the Devs' intent, not by the actual game code. The Devs relied on the idea that in a perfect game (one without mapserves) no player would ever normally have the opportunity to earn both badges. It was simply a case of the Devs not "bulletproofing" their code because they didn't envision a scenario that would have allowed for that in the first place.

Either the Devs are going to have to figure out a way to purge the "extra" Agent badges from those who have more than one or they are going to have to rethink their intentions for these badges to be mutually exclusive in the first place.

OK, two things:

(1) This is the first thread that I've EVER started that has had a red-name weigh in on it.

(2) Since I did start a thread about a bug related to the badge system which, until now, appears to have been unaddressed (at least on the forums)...

...umm...

...any chance of getting Bug Hunter out of it...?