Low level content "mastery" badges

Hey all.

I took a hiatus from CoX around the time of Going Rogue for fiscal and technical reasons, and returned in late March when I got a new PC. So, obviously, I had a lot of badges to catch up on, especially since my main badger hadn't even touched the alignment system yet. I'm pleased to report that I've had resounding success and fought my way up to 1,218 badges (I was at 583 before).

But there's a couple that have been annoying me a bit that I haven't gotten...Corpse Counter and Brotherly Love. I've found that most reliable vets already have those badges and aren't particularly interested in running the content again. It's not hard to find a Death From Below or Drowning in Blood, but it is hard to make sure that everyone involved is willing to pull the Vazhilok boss or able to help take out two big mobs at once. I had no issue getting Sidereal Researcher or whatever the one for clearing Lost minions is, so I don't think there's an issue with having mastery badges on low level stuff, but I do think that the badges need to factor in what's appropriate for the general player base of that level.

I'm sure this has already been complained about elsewhere, ad nauseum, and really, in the end, I do think they're not ridiculous and I will get them, but I do think that the low level content mastery should be set up in a way that makes vets want to team with the new players to get them and not just run through it in big all-vet groups.

Thoughts?

I think I've only ever seen a DFB team specifically not want to get Corpse Counter maybe once. It's a stupidly easy badge to get and anyone who doesn't want to make the "effort" at helping someone else get it is not worth teaming with under any circumstances and should be immediately one-starred (and possibly placed on global ignore).

As for Brotherly Love, yeah that one is just a pain. The DFB badges had the right idea, tasks that are pretty easy to get while still requiring you to know what to do (as opposed to getting the badge passively). True, Corpse Counter can be ruined by one idiot with AoEs, but then the same can be said of almost any cooperative badge.

I think these badges are so easy to get that it's ridiculous to complain about them at all. It's not like you have to complete the trials with no deaths and no use of temp powers. Now THAT would be harsh at low levels.

In fact, I would like to see more badges along these lines - you need to use SOME brains and get SOME cooperation, but you don't need to flawlessly herd 16 or 24 cats.

Reflecting on it, especially after Amy totally called me out, I've probably asked for it at bad times on the channels I'm on, and just tried to make the best out of a hastily assembled Help situation a few times too often.

But yeah, I've run DFB at least four times and each time gotten people who felt going for Corpse Counter was "dumb" andrefused to go along with it.

I have often thought that there ought to be an actual content "Mastery" Badge at certain low levels which would be account-wide and would mark the completion of all content below that level. Earning the mastery badge could unlock the option at character creation of 'jumping' directly to 6th, 10th, or other predetermined level without having to re-run the content. To make it market-friendly, maybe have the badge unlock the option at the market.

I think it would encourage everyone to use the content at least once, make sure that each player is at least familiar with the lore, and with the lessons learned along the way, and would cut down on the promiscuous use of dfb to bypass content which, lets face it, many new folks have never even seen.

Just a thought - I'm sure there's downside as well, but players who enjoy badging and running all the content on all toons, or just want to always start at 1, would still be free to do so, and at least at low level, it would tend to reduce PL & PL spam (at least I think it would).

Almost every DFB run on Virtue is a badge run.

If I really wanted it, I'd start recruiting for it in Atlas, "DFB BADGE run lfm". Lead the team yourself.

DFB also teaches avoiding standing still in one place while you fight.

I actually earlier today managed Cadaver Counter in a manner similar to this. I felt a bit like the Badge Door To Door Salesman because I joined a group of newbies, told them I was interested in this partially due to the badge, and they asked me what the point of badges was. They didn't seem too sold on it at first, but they said they'd like me to lead the team and tell them what to do. When I went to pull Geist, they specifically were telling another member of the group to stop attacking non-Geist enemies and to listen to the team leader. Actually helping them get started in the game made me happier than the badge.

I always found it helpful to inform the other team members that cadavers aren't worth any XP

Corpse Counter should be easy to get until you get that 1 person on the team who will not listen when they are told that it is a badge run and to take the vassie boss first and not to use pets or aoe powers,single target only,then the proceed to use everything that they are not supposed to.
I have had this happen a few times in the same team but for some reason the leader would not kick them even tho the said they didnt care about the badges,that annoyed me so much I quit the team as it was a waste of my time as I needed the badge

The worst low-level badges are the Safeguard ones. Not the badges for the side missions, but the badges for the maps. People tend to run DFBs until they hit DiB range, than run DiBs until they go off doing mission/radio teams.

The Safeguard missions, especially the first three, get overlooked almost completely.

They NEED to just let us exemplar ourselves down and let us do the low level radio missions.