Judgement_Dave

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I'd just like to point out that the Dominator inherent only ever so slightly supports not stopping.

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True - but it still encourages not stopping. And the effect on individual players will vary greatly - some players won't want to loose any form of minor benefit.

And the simple fact that both ATs with greater benefits from continuous play are in CoV could easily lead to teams often having one or more of these in them. This can lead to a faster playstyle for all as no-one wants to be the one person lagging behind and possibly holding up the group.

I'd guess that when you get used to play at a faster pace it's possible that you'll carry the faster-playstyle over to your other characters.

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there aren't actually all that many truly dedicated badgers around; the numbers who actually sit down and farm on the Epic scales required are relatively very, very small. Think about it; I'm ranked 9th, and I've never bothered to sit down and leave myself damage farming overnight, let alone using the Medicine pool to heal and heal and heal. So is it really that much of a problem that there's perhaps 2 or 3 people in total (who aren't Sal) who actually have?


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It may be because you're looking at a tiny part of the playerbase that exists on an EU server. As with many changes it's probably lead by the behaviour of the larger US playerbase, which can often be somewhat different to EU behaviour*.

Heck just from the playerbase numbers, I guess we'd probably have an easily searchable MA-arc store if it we only saw EU players - we'd miss out on some great arcs from the US and the MA would be much poorer on both sides if it was region specific, but the EU would end up with a smaller store that wasn't too bad to search.

Of course, if MA was region specific we'd still be hit by the same changes to badges as the effects of farm missions in the US arc store would be just as bad as they are now.

* Instances of apparent behaviour differences that spring to mind include the US fondness for sewer runs and IIRC Hami still gets visitors in the US.

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There are several factors that "ruined" the datamining in favour of heroes:
- Many TFs being longer than SFs means that teams have the chance to really rack up some time until completion with players getting tired and more breaks for all kinds of purposes with the timer running, so that TFs give a few more merits per actual content.
- With blue-side being closer to "traditional" MMORPG playstyle with tank-healer-damage as an option it lends itself better to a "slow and safe" method while red-side "peace through superiour firepower" is as safe as any other method most times. This leads to the average villain team going at a faster pace than the average hero team, thus further leading to a better merit per content ratio for heroes.
- I do not know demographic statistics, but I am quite sure that blue-side the average age is significantly lower than red-side. (Either that or it is just a matter of maturity, but the effects are basically the same.) I do not want to offend anybody with uncalled-for generalisations, but I think that many of us have already been in a situation where even one single immature player slowed down the team`s progress and if my assumption is correct the chance of this happening is higher for heroes.

These factors slow down average hero-teams in comparison and make it easier to be "ahead of schedule" in a good team.

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There is also the fact that villains have ATs that are designed to keep up a high pace. Brutes and Dominators both have inherents that reward play with minimal pauses/stops.

In CoH there is practically no downside (other than time spent) to pausing between mobs and getting back to full health/end etc - so many teams, particularly those newer to the game, may do this and take a slow and careful approach. Any teams doing this obviously push up the average time a little, making it easier for non-stop teams to beat the average time.

In CoV there is a definite downside to pausing between mobs in the loss of a serious damage boost for brutes and loss of extra control/damage for dominators. Since the system promotes 'keeping going' the average doesn't rise as much as teams don't tend to stop between spawns so much - so the average is kept quicker.

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I can agree that, for example, positron could be worth more merits since it is a low level TF and some people might actually play it at those levels for xp etc. Having some 49's in an ITF is not a problem, having some lower levels in a low level TF is.


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Just a minor point, but lower levels aren't necessarily a problem for the lower CoH TFs. As the level ranges are so small and the characters can generally level pretty quickly. The TF Omega challenge showed that teams full of characters starting a TF at the bottom of the level range can still put up some excellent fast times.

The biggest issue with some of the early TFs is more an issue of them being many people's first experience of TFs when they may still be reasonably new to the game or at least new to the character. It's more a problem of possible player inexperience rather than character inexperience/low-level.

I've done TFC on many characters now - and often run Posi at the level for xp. You certainly don't need an uber-team of seasoned pros to do good times.

The odd thing is that the introduction of the improved search and keywords in I15 could probably have been used to allow 'badge farm' missions to exist in their own category - and so have minimal (or at least greatly reduced) impact on people looking for story content.

Pretty sure that that could have been used to present a solution that was seen as giving/improving MA for all rather than being seen in an adverse light by anyone.

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As it happens, my mission seems to be fairly popular on Union at the mo, so I'm pretty chuffed.


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Gratz on that.

I presume that know that from tells whilst you're on Union, as if it's just the number of ratings that you're going off then remember that the published MA arcs are available to all live servers - both EU and US.

The only way to tell is often if you get a comment tell about your arc then you know that the person played an EU account (as currently there's no comments being transferred between EU and US servers).

Looking on test, the map in question (Zig Breakout) appears to have:
- 3 boss/ambush/patrol/destroy object spawn points (all in the cells)
- 3 rescue/escort/ally/defend object spawn points (which appear to be in the corridor leading up to the cells)

All 6 of these are marked as 'FRONT' locations.

Thanks for the repost, Forsaken_Empire.
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but these were our choices:

(A) Leave everything alone.
(B) Stop giving out the badges, but let the people who earned them keep them.
(C) Remove the badges.


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That's reminiscient of when Blackadder sees the wisewoman and she basically says that the options are:
(A) Kill Bob
(B) Kill Himself
(C) Kill Everyone else in the whole world

There were other options available (such as merely changing the numbers required so farming wasn't perceived to be required or stopping badge farms and punishing those repeatedly publishing them).

It's probable that, even if quickly dismissed, other options were considered and Posi is only mentioning the 3 options for brevity. But, in that case, he'd do better to at least indicate that other options had been considered and dismissed.

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Why does Awesome Man get to keep badges that no one else can even get, doing the exact same things?
The only badges that should act this way are the Anniversary ones.

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If the only badges that should act this way are anniversary ones then it looks like either:
a) Passport is being removed;
b) A new way to gain Passport is being introduced;
or
c) Posi forgot about Passport!

I guess (c)

Birthday Gratz Liz

Do cakedays still mean as much after so many centuries?

IIRC the Zig breakout map only has 3 spawns points for allies/bosses/battles etc - all 3 are in the cells at the end of the map.

There is currently no way in MA to start a map with an accompanying ally.

i.e. sorry - you're doing nothing wrong. Nothing similar to what you want to do can be done on this map.

Big Gratz at last!

Well done - wouldn't mind trying a 8-MM sometime.

With all those henchmen, did the dippy arsonist still try racing off to melee to solo the map and die first?

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It's a shame that the automatic griefing/farming detection can't be used to identify offenders to be punished with the scalpel rather than blitzing the badges with a nuke.

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Can you suggest a griefing/farming detection algorithm that would never produce false positives?

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Not at all - and if I could then publishing it here would only lead to it's downfall as farms/griefers move just outside the limits it checks.

But presumably if a false positive is thrown up the misidentified party can contact the GMs and have the situation addressed. It's unlikely, IMO, that those griefing or creating farms would appeal the decision since they would be in the wrong - the GM would look at the case and dismiss it.

So I imagine that most GM involvement would be for misidentifications, so the key is to not produce too many false positives.

And, in this case, as you can't have a system that will never produce a misidentification then it is far better to have a few false positives than false negatives.

IIRC the devs stated in pre-I14 interviews that automated routines would be used to detect griefing. Post release, they've used routines to detect farms (including some false positives). I'd have hoped that the devs have found a level of misidentification that they are happy with and that the GMs can cope with.

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The MA is for people who want to create their own stories or experience other players' stories.

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Well then, with all due respect, be done with the hypocrisy and just remove all rewards from it and make it the tool it's supposed to be. No inf, no XP, no Prestige, no badges, no inspirations, no recipes, no enhancements, no rewards. Oh, and no debt, of course. Make it the simulation environment it was meant to be in the first place. If it's just for telling stories and going through other people's stories you really don't need those.


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Although the use of MA would plummet and would lead to one of the problems that the devs seem to be trying to address: Author disatisfaction at using the MA as intended but no-one plays their arcs as they're lost in the sea of farms.

Or: What's the point in writing an arc and telling your own story if no-one ever plays it?

I think that the devs were generally happy with the rewards, as Positron stated in the EU test server anniversary appearance:
04-28-2009 17:42:50 [Local] Positron: XP works and got a lot of people to play it who probably never would have touched it
04-28-2009 17:43:44 [Local] Positron: We are looking at the XP.

These were in response to player comments about the level of farming and suggesting that xp should be removed from MA or only on Dev Choices. (I'll ignore the wag who called out that a good solution would be to remove MA)

So it looks like Posi is pleased that full XP worked to get players interested in MA and playing MA arcs, but, with the second sentence, hedges his bets in case a reduction of xp rewards is neccesary in the future. (it would have been foolish of him to state that no xp reduction would ever happen, but he doesn't state that one will either - looking at XP could just imply that they're monitoring the rewards)

I suspect that badges worked for some players as well as XP did for others in tempting them into AE. I suspect that it's only because of some people's extreme behaviour creating too many pure badge farms (that hide what the devs consider proper MA arcs) and grief/cartel voting that any badges are being removed.

It's a shame that the automatic griefing/farming detection can't be used to identify offenders to be punished with the scalpel rather than blitzing the badges with a nuke. Why a nuke is being used rather than a scalpel is known only to the devs.

IIRC when MA was originally announced all early reports were that the MA would carry reduced or no xp - with the possible exception of Dev's Choices arcs which we were told would carry normal rewards. It was one of the biggest shocks of MA in beta to find that the devs had U-turned on this.

Presumably their early tests had told them that reduced XP/INF rewards were as much of a disincentive to using MA as no XP/INF would be. If not then I really wonder why they didn't introduce MA at a reduced but reasonably high level of XP/INF (maybe 80%) and then increase the rewards level if no problems were caused by the initial level.

This approach would have:
* Helped reduce any farming/PLing being done in MA;
* Seen a gentler introduction of MA, buying time to measure it's effects (as opposed to the frenzy that happened due to a easily farmable system complete with full rewards);
* Let the devs be seen as good guys when they increase the levels of reward.

The same could have been done with badges. Launch with 20 or so and add more later in a staggered fashion. That way the devs look like good guys giving us treats to earn, rather than the current image they give of taking away our treats (and because a few bad apples abused them).

Cynically I think it's possible that MA had to launch with full rewards and a host of badges even though it was apparent that some problems would be encountered because it was vitally important to get as many people using MA in the first few weeks after launch.

MA was being sold to the press as revolutionary, and NC rightly wanted to be able to say that it had been a massive success.

Having full rewards and a large range of badges ensured that it would be a success. Having slightly reduced rewards and very few badges would, IMO, have still let MA be a success, but it probably wouldn't have had such attention from PLers/farmers/badgers - so the number of published arcs and the number of people playing in MA wouldn't have been quite as impressive.

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Also hope there's still som HoF/Devs choise reward, like a temp. in-game or at least forum title.

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They get a publishing slot back - not really an extra slot since the promoted arc becomes uneditable and is locked. They also get frontpage/above-the-fold exposure for their creations.

Reading some of the US thread re: the badge changes I get the impression that some wouldn't want a ingame/forum title so quickly as they get enough abuse/grief for having a Dev's Choice arc as it is. IIRC one mentioned that if they could return the Dev's choice honour then they would due to the abuse it's brought them.

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If you put up an MA arc and went on holiday for a fortnight, during which 999 people five-starred your mish, wouldn't you also have soared through the ticket cap and got the entire Windfall->Jackpot line, or did that line only award for tickets in one's salvage inventory?


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The former would indeed get you the Jackpot badge, although I would imagine that to be a very rare scenario that you outlined - and if someone in that position got awarded 1000 tickets for the removal of the Jackpot badge then so what? They still would have earnt the tickets if you accept that authoring arcs should get rewards.

What you actually highlight more is the idea that there are now 2 paths to rewards:
* Playing which brings should be within acceptable risk/reward limits;
* Authoring content others like.

Obviously there is no ingame risk whatsoever for authors - so maybe some would argue that they shouldn't get tickets/rewards at all. If, however, they are awarded the same rewards that are earnt by play then they should be eligible for recompense as the windfall/jackpot badges are taken.

Certainly most players with these badges will have earnt them by playing arcs rather than by having their arcs played, and so, with the removal of these badges, will have effectively been playing for highly reduced rewards.

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Sadly, even a cursory glance at the MA indicates that the process of clearing the Augean stables is, indeed, going to be Herculean; there are still plenty of obvious farm missions, "Rikti Dolls", etc.

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It makes little difference to an automated farm/exploit detection routine if there are only 100 arcs or 100 thousand arcs.

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With a full team, the Illusionist hunt takes, what, an hour? An hour and a half? Still within the bounds of sanity, IMO. And, ultimately, still plausible to get via standard play, as long as one is running numerous Carnies missions (though it might help to have a Carnies-heavy TF in place; a good deal of the other multi-defeat badges can be gotten via TFs, after all).

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No - that's only within the bounds of sanity if you consider forming teams to farm illusionists as being the sort of 'sanity' that the devs want in this game.

Playing without ever being on an illusionist hunt, my main is now on over 1000 hours played, quite enjoys facing carnies and still has only c.150 credits on the illusionist badge.

I'd argue that having to form teams to farm any type of mob for a badge is wrong.

Though some people would form teams to farm them even if the required number was only 20.

The windfall to Jackpot line of badges (for surplus badges) were often earned by intentionally leaving tickets until the ticket cap was hit and then the surplus tickets earnt for the badges. If the surplus ticket badges were not available then I would imagine that no-one would ever have obtained these badges, as they would spend the tickets rather than lose rewards.

So presumably the removal of these badges will be performed alongside a corresponding boost of accountwide tickets - won't it?

If so, can we have reasonable warning of when this is going to happen so that accountwide tickets can be spent to leave enough room for the compensating tickets to be placed there?

If not, doesn't this mean that the devs have effectively retroactively altered the risk-reward equation that was in effect whilst players were intentionally gaining surplus ticket credit?

It's not too different to if the 'Payoff' badge was removed.

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Instead all it does is annoy/irritate pretty much everyone to varying degrees.


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Doesn't bother me in the slightest.

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That would be the lowest degree then.

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I hope they extend this design phlosophy to the rest of the game, and reduce the requirements of a lot of the hunt badges (Illusionists!)

Although Bug Hunter would also have to go...

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No plans for this, as synapse says in his post:
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Q: What about non-Mission Architect badges?
A: We have no current plans to revisit old badges at this time, and I don’t foresee us doing this really. All badges unrelated to the Mission Architect will remain unaffected by the changes outlined above.


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There's a fair few I've had to grind out, simply because I outlevelled them before I got them. Things like the Tsoo Mask badge I got by wandering a corner of Talos, waiting for night for them to spawn and trying to kill them.

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The problem you had was hunting Tsoo Masks rather than the badge-awarding BP Masks. Simple mistake to make.

Edited by Avatea. The constructive feedback was however kept.

Tier 9: Numberwang

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Level one wouldn't really give anyone enough time to have established a side to change over from

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Not neccesarily true. Freeze xp and you can play for months and still only be lvl 1.