Chad Gulzow-Man

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I don't neccessarily agree that the world shouldn't try to accomdate you, but there is a difference between accommodating and focusing completely on your personalized needs. There really should be a meeting half way.

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He played the "disorder" card. I have no patience with people who do that, and since I'm one of them I have no trouble calling them out for it.

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Oh <bleepity!>ing hell, I didn't say "cater to meh!" I stated that I do in fact have a legitimate problem (and in another thread, that medication breaks other aspects of my life so it's not an option).

The point I wanted to get across: what do YOU gain from putting the carrot on a longer stick?

How the <bleeeeeeep!> do you suffer if they reduce the time from 30 days to 10-15?

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I was asking Chad. He's the one who is frustrated that they keep moving the goalposts, and that will continue happening as long as they add new badges.

And if you don't like the method of earning the badges, then don't earn them Games should be about having fun. If this isn't fun to you, you shouldn't worry about them. Me? I love the idea of giving my character something to do when I'm not around. A badge and accolade on top of it is just a cherry.

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I have no problems with them adding new badges. I like that they add new badges, in fact, because it temporarily enables me to do things other than arena farming--which, as I've mentioned, I hate and is no fun.

I (and every other badger I've seen post here for that matter) just want them to create badges based on gameplay. What's the point of having a tangible reward for not playing the game for 2.6M seconds?

You guys want your temp buffs and what-not? Go ahead. I don't want the buffs or temp powers. I just want the badges. I'm okay with not getting them all "Now now now now NOOOOW!!!" but I'd like to earn them for actually actively doing something.

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If you reduce the number of days to 10 it would only take 120 days to earn 12 badges, which is a bit more reasonable but still quite a bit.

It doesn't matter one stinking bit how long it's going to take to get 12 day job badges because you're not supposed to have 12 on the same character.

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If they allow you to have 12 on the same character, then you're not not supposed to have them, either.

Any badge that's attainable is fair game, and it's not a good idea to push away collectors (who are some of the most hardcore customers you'll ever meet) by saying that you have to choose whether to get a badge exactly every thirty days or wait an extra 5 days because you're playing 4 hours a day.

And all these comparisons to coin collections aren't feasible. The whole "coin of the month" idea is the same thing as Veteran Rewards (already broken, but survivably so). It doesn't preclude you from going after other coins.

If you're a die-hard collector of ANYTHING, and you have a 90% complete collection and are working out the extra difficult and time-consuming 10%, and are suddenly told that you can choose to get a brand new doohickey for every thirty days that you don't spend collecting, it's going to kill the joy of collecting. (And that's assuming you're still enjoying it and not doing so because of OCD.)

Mr. Syndrome Icon Birthday Boy, I know you keep saying that "blah blah blah, you're not supposed to be able to get them all." But the fact of the matter is that it is possible, and several of us are trying to get a complete collection.

Those of us who are shooting for the stars don't like to see the stars suddenly jump an extra year away, especially when we're told that we have to sit on autopilot if we don't want to make that year take even longer.

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I knew we were heading down the wrong path with the silliness of crafting badges which require you to make thousands of IOs even though a vast majority of them won't get used. But this is going even further down that wrong path.

No one is required to get these. My character builds for our supergroup, so the crafter table and memorization badges are great for me. But if you are just feeding a Gotta Get Them All mentality, you are the one being silly, not the game developers.

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And for those of us with legitimate mental disorders (obsessive-compulsive collecting habits)? What benefit is gained from making us wait, inactive, and penalize us for playing the game we want to play it?

And not everyone wants to make more alts, nor do we want to play all the alts we might already have.

(As for "Gotta Get 'Em All," yes, I've played all the Pokémon games. For every single one, I catch everything that's available in the game... then buy a $20-40 cheat device to get those that are from the alternate copy or some kind of event rewards, because it's the only way I can relax in the end.)

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Do we get badge credit for places we have already logged out in the last four years of playing? I doubt that there is some data file out there keeping track of every place we logged since we started playing the game but it would be kind sweet.

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No, because they're adding the "Day Job zone" flags to the maps with Issue 13.

I sincerely doubt there's a stored record of every X,Y,Z location your character has ever logged out in, as well as how long you stayed logged at those locations.

If a dev wants to correct me, though, I'll be very happy to admit that I was wrong.

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You have to be logged off for a full 24 hours to get half a bar of 'free' XP. (One bar of double XP split between 'normal' XP and 'free' XP.) This is just not a big thing.

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It obviously is to some people.

The double experience points thing isn't a HUGE deal for me, but given the choice I'd prefer to abstain.

MMOs aren't like other RPGs. In a normal RPG, you can power level and still go back to fight level 1 critters for gold and potion (or whatever) drops, and you can progress the story at a rate you're comfortable with. In CoH, you can't go back and beat up a level 1 Hellion to get the 15 exp and 20 inf once you're past level 5, and once you've outlevelled content, your only hope is Ouroboros (which, while not perfect, is far better than the options we had last year).

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Here, lets clear that up for you: Don't care in the slightest about the powers. Didn't want any badge "given" to us. Want badges that can be earned by our own efforts in the game rather than watching the turning of the hands of a clock.

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I don't know if you're a man or woman in real life. All I know is, after that post, I want to have your babies.

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jeeeez 30 freakin days?? screw that, not even gonna touch the day job thing.

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Now now now now! I want everything NOW!

Does that sound like you?

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Not really. There are quite a few numbers between 30 and zero (even if you just stick to integers).

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Agreed, I don't want everything "now now NOW!" I just want it in a reasonable amount of time. I'd also like to, y'know, earn them through playing the game, but that's apparently that's not going to happen.

Yes, I'm heal farming. I hate it. Everybody I've spoken to in heal farms has basically said that they're only doing it because it's the only option they have to get the badge. (I had the medicine pool for over a year and only got about 3/4 the way to the first healing badge, which itself isn't even 1/100th of the final badge.) Pretty much everyone agrees that it's not the fact that it takes 6+ months to *ahem* "earn," it's that you earn it by not playing--and if you're not playing, then you're not having fun.

I would probably shut up completely if the badges were reduced to 10 days, and complain significantly less if they were reduced to 15.

Or at the very least, my complaints would stop being about badging and get back to the fact that they're trying to get us to keep paying them to not play the game. Yes yes, I can make as many alts as I want... I've been here for over 4 years, I've made and deleted more alts than I can possibly remember. It's the characters that I have now that I care about, and I don't care to earn "free stuffs zomg!" for the time I'm not playing them, and especially don't want to be penalized for playing them.

Keen, you're essentially correct, but it's 10 days to get the full benefit, not 8.

I, for one, wish to forgo double experience. I'd rather enjoy the journey to 50. Since debt reduction and XP-curve smoothing, I can already make a new character and take him to 50 within 2 months, whereas it used to take closer to 6. It's actually made me create fewer characters, because I don't feel any accomplishment from levelling them anymore.

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The Devs, I think, intend this to simulate a workplace. You don't (usually) get the top job within a day or two of arriving, do you?

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You also don't pay YOUR JOB to let you be there.

Nor does your job give you any bonuses for not showing up for a month straight. Unless you count a nice pink sheet of paper.

A lot of people seem to be saying, "60 days is fair to earn an Accolade because you get a power at the end of it."

You may have failed to read that you can only use the power a set number of times, and then you have to log out at one of the two job locations that led to that Accolade for 8 days to fully recharge it. It's not like "Elusive Mind" and "Geas of the Kind Ones" where you just wait 15 minutes and they come back. They probably don't have a 15 minute timer between uses, either, but when they're gone, they're gone until you actively choose to spend 8 days not playing that character.

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My only gripe against the badge collector arguement (which has kind of died out over the last page) is that the current system is already borked for newer people to become badge collectors.

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Excuse me for requiring four hours of sleep before work.

Everyone's all, "I have no sympathy for badgers because of X," or "I don't care because I can't get all the badges either, so no one should care." Everybody had a chance to get every badge. It's not the game's fault if you hadn't heard of it prior to two months ago (there was plenty of advertising when it came out). Nor is it the game's fault if your computer couldn't run it (I used to play at 800x600 resolution with all the graphics turned down to near minimum). You could have started playing at the beginning, but for some reason or another you (or a parent or guardian, if you're a minor) chose to not start playing until a reward was no longer available.

See? I can make accusatory arguments too.

I don't mean any of that. Obviously, you could have medical reasons for not being able to play sooner, or maybe you lived in another country that never got the ad campaigns, or you didn't have time for video games due to work or family even though you were interested in CoH.

Yes, the current badge system is a little bit broken. Most of the epic badges are ridiculous, and a person playing 10 years wouldn't be able to get some of them without resorting to farming. Even the anniversary badges are a bit of a cruel touch--if I got in a car accident in late April and was in a coma until early June, I would miss that year's badge. That's kind of ridiculous. (I'd make the anniversary badges global anyway--if your account was active during the anniversary, every character you have and every character you'd ever make would automatically get the badge.)

The point is, if the system is already broken a little bit, why try and push it off the cliff by saying we'll only give you these badges if you don't play our game?

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The time it takes to get a badge or the bonuses are just fine IMO.

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I'm not a heavy badger and the temps don't interest me a lot.

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No offense, but why state an opinion at all if you're just going to follow up by saying you don't care about the subject?

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Again, completely irrelevant to what I was saying.
I did not argue that the time requirement was appropriate (or not).

I simply said that your claim that increasing the number of badges but keeping the amount of time required to get all of them would make it easier to stay competitive is wrong.
If you disagree with that, then fine, discuss that, not the price of tea in China.

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Oh, see, I was misunderstanding you.

I disagree, in that allowing people to make small but visible steps towards progress in the badge community is better than requiring larger, slower steps. Sure, the end result is that you spent a year off the game, but you have more to show for it, and if nothing else, it feels less detrimental to fall behind because you make progress more quickly.

If you're behind 10 badges for 50 days of off-line credit, then in 5 days you're only behind 9, in 10 days you're only behind 8, and so on.

Since you make more visible progress, it's easier on the psyche. I can't say that this works for 100% of those with a collector mindset, but it should ease the strains on most of them.

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This is the first time that a badge has been awarded to a player for NOT actively accomplishing something.


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Not true. There are badges you can get just standing AFK in certain zones. This used to be especially annoying in Siren's Call, due to the way the 'mini game' there is set up.

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Those badges are not designed to be achieved by AFK. Those were meant to be earned by participating in the zones.

I've said for years now (literally) that AFK exemptions such as Task Forces should be removed. That would force people have to do something (even if it is logging on) to earn those time badges.

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Every time I've gone AFK in a PVP zone, I get TPed and ganked by 2 Stalkers and a Mastermind.

I got my PVP zone time badges by getting Shivans in Bloody Bay, nukes in Warburg, and farming Contaminateds (stupid me should've been doing pillboxes ) in RV. I think I ended up AFK farming about 45 minutes in Siren's Call, since there's nothing really worthwhile to be gained by going there. (I tried to get the Blue Ink Men Tsoo, but kept getting ganked by teams while I was solo.)

The point is, you can earn those badges through regular play if you play enough.

Day Jobs actually give you LESS credit if you play a lot, making them highly flawed. Other than the rush of endorphins I get every time I see "Badge Earned!" fly across my screen, Day Jobs have nothing to offer someone like me who actually wants to be in the game as much as possible.

Now, I'M GOING TO BED! I MEAN IT THIS TIME! ... ... ...

Dude, I have 578 badges. A couple of the ones I'm missing are still within reasonably grasp: MSTF, some consignment sales, the 5th invention, and the last Ouroboros badges.

I could probably grab those all in a reasonably short amount of time if I really pressed them... say maybe 2 weeks?

After that, it's the last pillbox badge, 3 damage badges, and 2 inf badges. Each of those is a SUBSTANTIAL time requirement--we're talking months of effort, not days or weeks.

And there are others who have completed most of those already and are down to maybe one or two left.

So can you see how maybe adding in 12+ more badges that take a minimum of 1 month each to "earn" by NOT playing the badge character might be considered a slap in the face?

I'm not asking you to say that it's right. I don't care if you collect badges or not. In fact, I've been told (today) that I'm "sick" for my obsessive-compulsive gaming habits, specifically those involving badges.

All I'm asking is, try to see things from our point of view.

(Not mine specifically, because I want Day Jobs taken out back and shot in the head execution style, then doused in gasoline and burned, then have its ashes sent back to the marketting department as a warning to stop trying this baited hook B.S. to keep people paying by giving them crap for not playing. )

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Ahh, I get it now. A badge, i.e. a graphical symbol of an accomplishment in an online game, is just like food: you'll die if you don't get a badge often enough. Now I understand...


Devs - here's a solution. Remove all the badges from all of these jobs, then there's nothing left for people to whine about.

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You apparently missed the part where I said I had OCD.

As for the latter bit about completely removing the badges from the Day Jobs? Sweeeeeet. I could just ignore that they ever put this system in, since I have no intention of willingly using it, ever.

Rewards for not playing < being extremely hungover < rewards for playing

(Hmm... I wonder if my character can get drunk and call in sick to his Day Job...? )

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The last healing badge is bad enough as it is, aswell as the last pillbox badge (both of which I have given up on at this stage because they are ridiculous to get).

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I long for the days when I've finished with Empath. I'm at 77% right now.

I'm actually looking forward to farming some pillboxes. At least it'll mean getting to play the game again.

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If the obsessive-compulsives are willing to accept that, they're playing dog in the manger and need to be smacked.

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I don't even understand what that means.

All I know is, you're still being rude and directing it specifically at other forum viewers. Nobody's talking about smacking you... no matter how much we might be thinking it.

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Build a bridge and get over it.

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Until the system is gold, I don't need to "Cope". It's an open discussion, and valid points are made reguarly.

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Yeah, and you're being awfully rude for it being your birthday. Go eat some cake and mellow out.

I may be bleeping a lot, but at least I'm not directing it at anybody.

EDIT: Oh, and for everybody who says, "You're logged out at least 8 hours a night to sleep," <BLEEEEEEP!> YOU! I have to be at work in just over 7 hours, and this whole concept of Day Jobs has me too angry to sleep.

(The bleepy bit was a joke. Have a nice night, and enjoy your full night's rest. I can't remember the last time I had one. )

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And as for your other comment, about making 73 badges that take 5 days each? You'd hear a lot fewer complaints about that, because it's a time vs. reward equation.

73 rewards in a year > 12 rewards in a year

You get visible progress faster, and [color= orange]you can stay competitive with the rest of the badge community even if you want to play your badger here and there. Adding 4 hours to 120 still leaves a smaller lag than adding 4 hours to 720[/color].

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Ehm, no.
You'd fall further behind.

Let's say that it's 10 or 100 rewards instead (for easier examples).
By the time you're 1 badge behind in the 10 badge system, you would be 10 badges behind in the 100 badge system. The gap between you and the really really hard core would increase.

A gap of one badge is easier to make up for with other badges than a gap of 10 badges is.

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Say you're in a prison (because let's face it: as an OCD gamer, that's pretty much what badges are to me at this point).

The warden gives you a choice between two options:

1) You can have 6 decent-sized meals a month, one every 5 days.
2) You can have a feast every 30 days.

(Also, every 2 meals you eat comes with a dessert to help tide you over to the next meal.)

You could manage to survive only eating a good meal once every 5 days. But how long would it take before you and the other prisoners (badgers) died out completely waiting for the thirty day feasts?

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That is not a relevant example.

Will you get more frequent gratification (or nutrition)? Sure.
But that's not what I was talking about, and not the only thing you [color= orange]claimed[/color].

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Okay, then say you had free time (were playing) for 4 hours. The warden doesn't count time spent outside your cell towards the time between your meals.

Waiting 5 days and 4 hours to eat is still a helluva lot better than waiting 30 days and 4 hours.

You might miss out on a few meals that the more dedicated prisoners eat without you, but since you're waiting less time in between meals, it doesn't mean as much.

(Going by badges again, if you lag behind by 10 badges at 5 days per badge, as was the previous argument, that's 50 days--less than 2 months. That means being behind 10 badges on a 5 day scale is still better off than being behind 2 badges on the current 30 day scale.)

And FYI, if we have to have this at all (and apparently we do), I'm for a 10-15 day scale, leaning towards 14 days (2 weeks). 4-6 months to get 12 badges, as opposed to the currently proposed year.

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And as for your other comment, about making 73 badges that take 5 days each? You'd hear a lot fewer complaints about that, because it's a time vs. reward equation.

73 rewards in a year > 12 rewards in a year

You get visible progress faster, and you can stay competitive with the rest of the badge community even if you want to play your badger here and there. Adding 4 hours to 120 still leaves a smaller lag than adding 4 hours to 720.

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Ehm, no.
You'd fall further behind.

Let's say that it's 10 or 100 rewards instead (for easier examples).
By the time you're 1 badge behind in the 10 badge system, you would be 10 badges behind in the 100 badge system. The gap between you and the really really hard core would increase.

A gap of one badge is easier to make up for with other badges than a gap of 10 badges is.

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Say you're in a prison (because let's face it: as an OCD gamer, that's pretty much what badges are to me at this point).

The warden gives you a choice between two options:

1) You can have 6 decent-sized meals a month, one every 5 days.
2) You can have a feast every 30 days.

(Also, every 2 meals you eat comes with a dessert to help tide you over to the next meal.)

You could manage to survive only eating a good meal once every 5 days. But how long would it take before you and the other prisoners (badgers) died out completely waiting for the thirty day feasts?

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Even if it's your most played character I certainly hope that character spends more time offline than on.

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I'm currently on 23.75 hours a day (on non-maintenance days) in a heal farm. Hurray for existing broken badges, let's just add some more shall we?

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My point's still valid though! Read my post further up and tell me if you think my compromise concept passes.

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I find it about as acceptable as I could ever possible find the idea of out-of-game rewards to be acceptable.

Run it like the Villain Patron Badge, where it's just one badge with 12 (or whatever) different titles. Sure. It's better than the current implementation where you can supposedly have 12 (or whatever) completely different jobs.

(30 days is still waaaaay too long though, especially for something I'd prefer not even exist in the first place. )

EDIT: ((Pssst, gratz on 13000 posts Trizz.))

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There's nothing wrong or broken with this system except your impatience.

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There's nothing right with the system, either.

"We're so worried that you're going to leave us that we'll give you free <beepity beep beep!> when you're not around, just to keep you from leaving!"

Eff that. I don't care if the other MMOs do that. That's one of the many reasons I don't play the other MMOs. My ex plays WoW, and I told her countless times that it's stupid that she has to log off when she'd rather play if she wants to get full exp so her account can "cool down" or whatever.

And as for your other comment, about making 73 badges that take 5 days each? You'd hear a lot fewer complaints about that, because it's a time vs. reward equation.

73 rewards in a year > 12 rewards in a year

You get visible progress faster, and you can stay competitive with the rest of the badge community even if you want to play your badger here and there. Adding 4 hours to 120 still leaves a smaller lag than adding 4 hours to 720.

But regardless, giving rewards away for not playing is a weak and desperate tactic that I had hoped CoH/V would have been bigger than. I don't blame the developers for the <more bleeping!>-up that is Day Jobs; I blame marketting.

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Badgers are collectors. Setting this system up the way it is is bound to feel punishing to that personality type.

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Agreed. My OCD has been screaming full-force in the back of my head since the original Issue 13 announcement over this. I thought this idea was just bad from the beginning.

I can't stand the idea of paying to not play. $15 a month to game whenever I want? Sure, fine, great, sign me up.

$15 a month for a badge, but I can't play my character and get the badge? Now we've got issues.

And for the "hurray, free <bleepity!> for nothing!" crowd, nothing is ever free. If you choose to actively pursue any of these rewards, then you're paying an opportunity cost.

It's one thing to say, "I'm going to grandma's for a week, so I'll park Super Buffalo Man in the hospital to get some Medical Specialist credit." It's another entirely to say, "I'd rather play Super Buffalo Man, but he's gotta work on that badge (or whatever reward you're going for), so to maximize his earnings, I'll play a different character that I'm really not as much in the mood to play."

This is a GAME. Please let us actually play it, without penalizing badgers?

(The sad thing is, if they gave me the option of just paying $15 for each of these badges, I probably would, and I'd feel a lot better about it than I do about not playing my mains for over a year while they *cough* "earn" the badges.)