Snow Globe

Well there was also the fact that the missions tended to last a day before they were removed by the GMs and they made badges for getting rated on missions.

Very nice grades! I have a 3.8 GPA (surprising considering my "off time" work at the Scoop and the commute to school). I haven't taken time off so I have been at this since April 2007, and if I went full time I would have been finished last June.

However, I think we are both proving the point that we are working towards our own goals.

You "win".

Yeah, I'm looking forward to September.

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And while I have no money for college I'm currently working through a pile of books Ghost Falcon linked me to.

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I can fully understand this. I'm in my 26 month of 30 months of my "18 month program" because I am forced to only go part time due to having to pay living expenses. I have over $30,000 in student loans. Yet despite this I would do it over again because it will get me closer to my goals.

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Of course, I would like to hear from the people who put in a badge for 50,000 virtual kills just how we were supposed to accomplish that without "aberrant" behavior.

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I think we both will have to wait till Ragnarok for that to happen.

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There are many sorts of people.

Some people say, "Hey, I got X. I'm happy."

Others say, "I have X and you don't. I'm happy."

I personally don't want the latter sort of person to be happy.

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Don't forget, "You have X and I don't. I won't be happy until I have it too, you don't have it either."

And, here we are.

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Actually I think you used a comma instead of an "or".

On the other hand I think there is a fourth group that said "I want reasonable badge requirements. Who cares if farmers burn themselves out sooner?"

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In effect calling them farmers and aberrant is quite bewildering.

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Not all, but some definitely were farmers and there has been a lot of aberrant behavior (PVP Rep Farms, Arena Healing Farms).

Attention!

Surveilance outside the City Scoop building

My advice: get that late night job, take out student loans, or whatever to get an education. Pick a facet of this project that interests you and get an education diploma/degree that goes with it. By investing in yourself to further the project along, you are demonstrating to the people you are trying to convince that your dream is worth investing in. While this may take years, build towards your goals.

If you are not willing to put the effort why should anyone else? Even if they did put any effort into a Steampunk MMO, it would likely not match your vision.

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I don't want to pay money to people who don't have an interest in the game itself, and are only doing the pieces for money.

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You are shooting yourself in the foot (or maybe nailing the coffin shut) by refusing to even consider paid artists. This, to me, shows that you don't want this done. If you did, you would not reject any ideas out of hand.

Thomas Edison is quoted as to the following:
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Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

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It looks like you got 1% of your goal. Go out and work on the rest. Show commitment to your goals and you'll attract more interest. As it stands, I just don't see it.

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Architect:

Test Mode:
* What is the goal for Virtual badges? If the goal is testing your arc with many characters, then some badges are set so high as to discourage that since you need to focus on one character to even have a chance at reaching the badge. If the goal is testing as an author (out of character) then shouldn't all test badges apply account-wide? Perhaps both goals could be achieved if the low-count badges were character-based and the high-count ones tracked all characters.

* Virtual badges are too artificial, since there's no real reason to "handicap" yourself to test mode - you can publish a draft and earn real, spendable ticket drops just as easily. Thus, a virtual badge is not really "normal play" at all.

* Virtual Slayer is 5 times the original value of the Zookeeper badge. This is insane as no one would test their missions that extensively for zero rewards.

* End of Mission virtual tickets do not exist on Test. This makes the virtual ticket badge much harder than the same amount of Live tickets. (In general, beyond badges, knowing virtual mission rewards would seem useful to evaluate a mission's ticket production levels.)

* Mission High Inquisitor: This badge is for completing 100 MA arcs in test mode, not just missions as the text says.

* Virtual Slayer is far too high to be realistic. Were the requirements for the Victor and Virtual Victor lines switched?


Publishing:
* Customizer badge should be account based, as it is the Player publishing the critter, not the character.

* Chosen One is considered too subjective to be a fair badge reward. Seeing as Dev's Choice is nothing but an award all by itself, does that reward really need a badge award on top of it?

* Badges for receiving good ratings - the Builder line, and by extension Hall of Famer - are too problematic. They can be griefed. They encourage nepotism (ie: star cartels). Suggestion: change these badges to track an accumulation, not an overall average. Such as counting ratings of 3+ stars, or counting tickets received from ratings. After all, no other badge gets negative progress based on some other person's actions. (If the Hall of Fame remains based on rating alone, perhaps Hall of Famer badge should be removed?)

* Badges for arc ratings (the Builder line) should be able to accumulate from many arcs, not just the best rated arc you own. Problems from the current setup include resetting progress with unpublished arcs (or arcs promoted to Dev Choice), and general confusion/untrackabililty. An accumulated total (as described in the prior point) would easily dodge this problem.

* Are tickets earned from mission ratings supposed to be giving credit to every character on the account? Should they only be awarding the charcter who claims the tickets?


General architect usage:
* Inspiration drops on Dev Choice arcs are not counting for the badges. (Probably because of the way those mobs have normal non-MA rewards.) Suggestion: add Achievement badges for normal Inspiration drops; that would not alter the DC drop system, but would be simple to realize what's counting for which badge.

* Dev Choice arcs give normal drop rewards, but don't give normal badge credit. This is a source of much confusion (is it made clear enough in the MA documentation?) What is gained by denying the badge credit from an arc that the devs have decided is balanced enough to give normal drops?

* Click Objective and Escort tasks not team friendly. This includes non-required objectives of those types. (See the General section for more details.)

* End of Mission ticket drops do not count for the over-the-cap badges. This makes the badge much more difficult than it should be, not to mention a bit ironic since typically the in-mission tickets are more likely under the cap and the end-of-mission ones are more likely to be over the cap after you've filled up in-mission. This should change so that end-of-mission tickets are never wasted (and compensating for wasted tickets over the cap was the whole point of having this badge).

* Badges for running Hall of Fame arcs have a problem in that an arc can lose it's HoF status while you are running it, thus nullifying your credit. Can this be improved somehow? (Either on the badge side, or improve the volatility of the HoF status.)

* The badges in the inspiration earned series do not produce credit if your tray is full, even if the drop is otherwise earned.

* The Mission Engineer accolade counts for the Architect X line of badges, even though it's in a different section. This causes confusion, especially compared to things like Architect or Master Architect that are in other sections and don't count for Architect X badges.

* Is Early Bird supposed to be account-wide? Particularly after the change in Beta to make it one of the first 10 to play the arc, not the first 1.

* Early Bird does not always award account wide, unlike official statements state.

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Oh, and this section is now almost entirely useless.

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Epic problems:

* Just what is the dev definition of "epic"? Two specific details that would help: What percent of characters/players do you feel should reach an Epic level of any achievement? For a single achiever, what time frame do you expect them to be working on that badge? If we know the dev goals, we can offer better feedback on how the badges meet those goals.

* Epic Heal, Damage, and Mezzed badges are considered by many people to be so high they can only be achieved through AFK farming, not through regular play. Is this really the intended design?

* Epic Inf badges are considered by many people to be so high they can only be achieved through farming or grinding, not through regular play. Is this really the intended design?

* Empath cannot be achieved through regular play at all given the potential lifespan of the game. It needs 1,000 hours at 100,000 hp healed/hour (roughly 1,700 hp/minute), and that rate is very difficult to achieve even as the only healer on a full team of 50s. (Note: this calculation is based on the I13 fix to its originally intended value.)

* Immortal cannot be achieved through regular play at all given the potential lifespan of the game. (See also: issue with +HP and damage, under Achievements.)

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I guess Synapse gave us an answer to the above:
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So, going forward—beginning with the Mission Architect badges—we’ve decided to move away from “count” badges that might encourage farming and/or aberrant game play.

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Okay, that is a reasonable criticism. So what is the threshold for variance? 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10? Ten seems way too much. I personally would prefer as close to zero fluctuation, as shown above.

My preferred numbers for costume:
Costume collection during Halloween - 10 - 20 - 40 OR 15 - 30 - 60

There are a lot more than 11 series that I consider broken, as I did lump almost all the AE badges there. I also did not take the time to go through all the IO crafting badges.

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Debt for example, this scales as you level. As a lowbie it takes quite a lot of dying to get that 1st one, and assuming your are meant to earn them consistently as you level, there should be a non-linear interval.

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The problem is that the Debt, Inf, Damage Taken, and Healing badges are not earned consistently as you progress. Therefore even by this definition they are broken.

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You can ask the same of literally every single badge.

Why 50 Hellion bosses not 25 ?
Why 333 Cabal and not 250 ?

Every single badge has a number the majority of which are purely arbitrary.

Those that aren't are the series badges where each member of that series has at least some limits set by the others in that series.


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Okay setting aside all the "one-off" badges, let us look at the badges with series.

<ul type="square">[*]Ski runs - 10 seconds apart[*]Bobsled runs - 10 seconds apart[*]"Badge Earned" badges - 25 - 50 - 100 - 200[*]Level badges - 10 levels apart[*]Mentoring - 4 hours - 8 hours - 12 hours - 16 hours - 20 hours - 24 hours[*]Veteran Rewards - 3 months apart.[*]RV Pillboxes - 10 - 100 - 1,000 (I dislike the 10x factor here, but the series is consistent.)[*]RV Heavies - 10 - 50 - 250[*]IO Crafting badges - seem to be weighted by group[*]Ouroboros time badges - 120 minutes - 60 minutes - 30 minutes[*]Ouroboros mender badges - 5 apart.[/list]I would consider these as broken series:
<ul type="square">[*]Damage taken - 100 k - 500 k - 1 million - 10 million - 100 million - 500 million - 1 billion[*]Healing badges - 250 k - 1 million - 2 million - 10 million - 50 million - 100 million[*]Mezzed - 0.5 hour - 2 hours - 10 hours - 20 hours - 40 hours - 80 hours[*]Inf - 1 million - 10 million - 10 million - 100 million - 1 billion - 2 billion[*]Debt - 100 k - 400 k - 800 k - 1.2 million - 2 million - 10 million[*]PVP Rep - 100 kills - 400 kills[*]General Crafting badges - 50 - 100 - 500 - 1,000 - 10,000 (A reduction to 5,000 would bring it in line with the series.)[*]Sales badges - 10 - 50 - 100 - 250 - 500 - 1,000 - 2,000 - 3,000 - 4,000 - 5,000 - 6,000 - 7,000[*]Costume collection during Halloween - 10 - 25 - 50[*]A lot of the AE series badges - 10 - 25 - 50 - 75 - 100[*]Complete X player-created or dev choice story arcs - 1 - 10 - 25 - 50 - 100[/list]For what it is worth, I think they should actually increase some of these numbers while lowering others:
<ul type="square">[*]Mezzed - 2.5 hours - 5 hours - 10 hours - 20 hours - 40 hours - 80 hours[*]Debt - 250 k - 500 k - 1 million - 2 million - 4 million - 8 million[*]PVP Rep - 100 kills- 200 kills (new badge)- 400 kills[*]General Crafting badges
100 - 250 - 500 - 750* - 1,000 OR
125 - 250 - 500 - 1,000 - 2,000 OR
50 - 100 - 500 - 1,000 - 5,000[*]Sales badges - 500 - 1000 - 1500 - 2000 - 2500 - 3000 - 3500 - 4000 - 4500 - 5000 - 5500 - 6000[*]Costume collection during Halloween - 10 - 20 - 40 OR 15 - 30 - 60[*]General AE series - 25 - 50 - 75 - 100 - 125[*]Complete X player-created or dev choice story arcs - 1 - 5 - 10 - 50 - 250[/list]*(note this is still more than all the IO crafting badges)

I could finish citing every badge series in the game, but I have homework due in the next few days.

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What is to be gained by dropping from 10 000 to 2500?

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Not pushing customers over the edge of "this isn't worth it", reducing needless grinding (which brings apathy to paying customers), and to bring the badge rewards in line with the "we don't like farming" policy the developers have with other rewards.

800? I thought it was 500 total.

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Incidentally, you can get a High Collar version of the Arachnos Cape if you have both CoV special edition and the Magic Pack.

It's as awesome as it sounds.

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You shouldn't be able to do that since the Arpil 20th, 2009 patch. Additionally, you can't edit that costume without one or the other being stripped from your costume.

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The Magic Cape having access to the CoH CE and CoV CE Capes was not affected by that fix, Snow Globe. This isn't the getting two capes at once deal. This is just the fact that you choose any Cape design you have access to for the High Collar Mantle, just like you can choose them when you use the Asymmetrical Mantle or the Over the Shoulders Mantle.



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Thanks for the clarification. I don't have the booster due to my student budgetary concerns.

Synapse is handling rewards, and Castle is handling powers. I'm not sure who would be more "in charge" about this at this time.

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Incidentally, you can get a High Collar version of the Arachnos Cape if you have both CoV special edition and the Magic Pack.

It's as awesome as it sounds.

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You shouldn't be able to do that since the Arpil 20th, 2009 patch. Additionally, you can't edit that costume without one or the other being stripped from your costume.

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In order to preserve the Badge Issues thread from tangents, please post feedback about the following point in this thread:

* Fabricator is too high. Base salvage gave opportunities for 5 or more craftings for one Empowerment buff, now that same buff produces only 1. Base salvage also gave an opportunity to craft components to sell, which were much cheaper than crafting IOs. Reach 10,000 is now a very unrealistic number.

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I think I have to ask what is gained from making the players craft 10,000 times that couldn't be shown by crafting 1,500-2,500 crafts?

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It's a comic book superhero based game and since all the hero and villain groups in the comics have to pay rent on their various lairs, bases, and whatnot, it would be silly to not have the heroes and villains in a comic based game also shelling out rent like thier comic book counterparts.

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I have a problem with this blanket statement. Some groups pay rent on their lairs, bases, and whatnot and some do not.

To whom do you pay rent to for a space station, a lair in a swamp, hanging out on rooftops by the gargoyles, in the sewers? Or how about in a park, inside a volcano, on private island, on a flying fortress, inside a pocket dimension, or alternate reality?

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Oh cool, I did not know that, might get it today then, they do look nice, also If's not much to ask, Is there a way other than the CE of CoV to get the arachnos cape? They don't sell those on my region nor other regions ship to it.

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Sorry, no there isn't.

Also, there are currently no plans that the general player base is aware of to sell a "collector's pack" for either of the CoH DVD goodies or the CoV CE goodies.

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That's correct. Just chest symbols.

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Although it has been asked more than a few times to put chest symbols on capes - so perhaps in the future, who knows?

(Well, the Sexy one probably knows, doesn't he? But he's not sharing that with us right now.)

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The CoV CE cape will likely NEVER be available in this manner. It was a paid premium, and will not be given out for free.

Even the vet reward Arachnos chest symbol is different than the CoV CE version (the vet reward version has a border and does not have a smooth transition from color 1 to color 2).

Villains have to suffer mainly with newspaper missions, sorry.

I believe you are referring to her left leg. There is a link to the full picture at the top of the image, or you can use this link:

http://end-reitanna.deviantart.com/a...Widow-71085966
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Also:

My apologies for some of the interesting layout problems. The forums likes to play havoc by randomly removing some HTML tags.

Awesome Mothership raid last night! 500+ vanguard merits.

Congratulations on 5 years!