Re: Coffee Talk and global anniversary badges

So on the coffee talk the other day, Positron discussed the technical reasons why the Anniversary badges can't just be made global. Sounds like they inadvertently painted themselves into a bit of a technical corner there, and they're probably gonna have to fix that for something else down the road eventually anyway. In the meantime however, I wonder if there might not be another solution that benefits everyone.

The query was also made about putting some stuff (pretty much anything) on those floating islands in Ouroboros. And that led me to this idea. Lets put some historical mission contacts on those islands. You go there and talk to a contact, each one being an Echo of someone especially relevant to each year of the game. The mission is mostly just a long conversation about highlights of what went on that year, from an in character perspective. Maybe with a cutscene. At the end, you get a badge with the same name as the anniversary badge, but it shows up in History Badges instead of Events. If you already have the Event badge however, you get slightly different dialogue options, since he's talking to someone "who was there." This effectively acts like a different branch of the mission. At the end, your event badge is stripped away (or made invisible) and replaced with a different but identical event badge of the same name that is global instead. Maybe you get a slightly different cutscene as well, that has your character in it during the scenes.

Each of the old anniversary badges will have a contact that can lead them on this trip down memory lane. New anniversary badges can either be global by default, or a new such contact can be added somewhere a year later to do the same thing for the most recent badge (making the badge exclusive to people who logged in at least for a year). I'd be more in favor of just making the new ones global since it doesn't contract the devs into building a new anniversary contact every year.

This then benefits everyone in one way or another. The players who want those badges to be global for whatever reasons (in my case, I'd like to rebuild some old characters using new sets or AT options without having to lose an irreplaceable badge) can convert them into global badges. Players who missed out but want that particular badge because it fits something on their character can go earn the History version. The characters who didn't miss out still maintain an exclusive benefit, in that they get the cutscene that shows them taking part in the historical events. And finally, we get something interesting and not inappropriate to the zone context added to those floating islands in Ouroboros.

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Unless they can fix the authbit situation, I think they can make a grand total of 2 badges global.

As described, every global item requires an authbit (and they can't change existing authbits due to legacy unlocks like the Super Boosters 1-5, the Steampunk Pack, the Collector's Editions, etc.). They can't begin to address your suggestion without finding away around the situation. In other words, they can't make 9-10 new global unlocks and you are pretty much asking for double that. Not to mention adding 9 new arcs for the badges will take away time from other content they have planned.

There is also the problem that you are set to completely mess up the badge tracking sites if they put 18 new badges with the exact names of 9 existing badges. Both Badge hunter and the Titan Network (among others like myself) would be fairly annoyed with Event and History badges having the exact same name.

Now admittedly I do have a solution to get around the authbit problem (re: A suggested solution for the anniversary badges).

While it would be nice for new history badges, I don't think having them with the same names is a solution.

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Ahh, that was my misunderstanding with how the authbit issue worked, I thought it was something that was required for changing an existing *thing* into a *something else* (note my apparent programming expertise by way of the highly technical programming jargon I use, and set your expectations accordingly )

As for the rest, well, I make no apologies for suggesting content that might take development time away from other content that is already planned. That's kinda the point of a suggestion. If I were to limit my suggestions to things already planned (even though those plans are rarely shared with us in even general terms) there would be little point to making the suggestion. I also have little consideration for the outcome of a suggestion causing difficulty for unaffiliated groups that provide a secondary service, like badge tracking sites suffering difficulty based on a suggestion to the game. I have no responsibility to limit my suggestions to things that will not make their voluntary contribution more difficult. It's great that they're out there, and doing what they do for those that find importance in that. But it's up to them to accommodate changes to the game, not up to the game to accommodate such service.

Should the unlikely day ever arrive where I become a valued and respected member of the development team and am expected to contribute ideas that fall within certain technical limits or accommodate various secondary service parameters, I will be happy to comply. As it is, I'm just a player who gets to add to the volley of spitballed ideas in hopes that even if my suggestions are not feasible in themselves, perhaps they might trigger a thought process that leads a member of the development team in a direction they may not have considered otherwise.

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Dear NCsoft, if you go through with this shutdown you've guaranteed you'll not see another dime from me on any project you put out, ever.


http://xx-starhammer-xx.deviantart.com/