Curious about very early CoH

[Ukase]

While looking for various badges on an alt, I stumbled across a plaque in RWZ not associated with a history badge, so it wasn't on my VidiotMaps overlay. 

That got me to thinking...

In some ways...I kind of wish Beefcake and others had never done the pigg diving and made things so easy. I can't fathom how difficult it would be for some to find things like "egg hunter" in Faultline without vidiotmaps.  And, I am making an assumption about Beefcake. I didn't know him/her/them, and am assuming that's how the precise locations were found. It would have been interesting to see how long I would have actually spent searching for such things...and not even knowing if they were there to be found. 

 

How long would you search for a badge if you weren't even sure there was one to be found? Or where it would be found? 

This is the kind of thinking that kept me out of the better schools, as it's completely unproductive. But, I can't go to lunch with my crew of hot soccer moms, so I'm asking this question instead. 

[Techwright]

The exploration badges are associated with a progress bar under "closest to completion" under the Badge tab.  So the easy assumption is that there is at least one badge per zone, and once you get one, the progress bar will give you a good indication of what's left.  Finding them would be a whole different matter, especially those that have a marker that doesn't readily appear even when you are practically on top of them.

 

That said, it would be sheer dumb luck if someone discovered an exploration badge in a safeguard mission if the development team hadn't made us aware of them.  Most never take the time to stay in the mission after the bank op.

[Lines]

If you take a look at the Homecoming Faultline badge changes, you'll see it was a bit of a collective effort to find the new badges. They were hunted down within a couple of weeks, no piggs were harmed.

 

I think the early badge hunting was much the same, but I wasn't really active at that time to know for sure.

[ImpousVileTerror]

Given that the first Mayhem Mission (Atlas Park) starts you right next to the Exploration Badge, I think the precedent for Safeguard Exploration Badges was set fairly early on there, even with people generally not playing Villains as much as Heroes.

 

I'm also of the opinion that these things should be completely and unambiguously documented, but that documentation be kept in such a way as to allow players who -want- to be surprised and to search for things on their own the opportunity to do so without "spoilers."

 

There are bound to be things in these games all the way back from Legacy Issue 0 which are still not documented in Wikis, not widely known, or even not discovered yet!  I mean, it seems most people don't even know about the Rikti Monkeys who fight in the Rikti Monkey Fight Clubs, and that there are -two- of these clubs.  And the SCoRE and/or Homecoming Teams have added various tribute and memorial NPCs to all sorts of zones ( https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/10666-curupira/ ), and we haven't even documented all of those yet either.

[Greycat]

Speaking of very early COH... (though the video didn't get archived. Blurry version here. )

[AboveTheChemist]

1 hour ago, Lines said:

I think the early badge hunting was much the same, but I wasn't really active at that time to know for sure.

It was. When badges first came out on the test server, I spent almost all of my time there hunting them down. There were other folks who were better at it than I was, but I remember being the first to find several of the badges/plaques in Boomtown. I think I hunted in other zones as well but if I remember there was something of a collective effort to fan out and cover as many zones as possible. I remember there was one plaque in Boomtown that I knew existed but that I could not find for the life of me. Someone showed me how to replace the texture for the plaque (in much the same way that Vidiotmaps or custom sounds are loaded via the data folder)  so that the plaque would be more visible (see attached screenshot), and I was finally able to find it (although I think someone else found it before I did). The rest of the ones I found, though, were found without such aid, although I have no idea if other folks used similar methods to help locate badges and plaques. I do remember there being a record of some kind (perhaps a thread on the CoH forums?) where they kept track of who found which badges. I've looked for it a time or two but have never been able to find it.

 

If anyone is curious the date on that screenshot is 9/11/2004, five days before Badges went live with Issue 2.

 

[Lines]

2 hours ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

I'm also of the opinion that these things should be completely and unambiguously documented, but that documentation be kept in such a way as to allow players who -want- to be surprised and to search for things on their own the opportunity to do so without "spoilers."

A clues based badge hunting walkthrough would be a pretty neat project!

[Dafydd Hywel]

I am loving bei g back in Paragon having only found out the other day about homecoming but.....I am surprised and a tiny bit dissapointed at how it's possible to get everything up front now.

 

I rember getting, badges, capes, costume slots, auras, all took real effort and they felt like proper milestones and achievements.

 

Small gripe though, overall  it's FABULOUS having all my old alts recreated again😁

[Gulbasaur]

3 hours ago, Dafydd Hywel said:

I am loving bei g back in Paragon having only found out the other day about homecoming but.....I am surprised and a tiny bit dissapointed at how it's possible to get everything up front now.

 

I rember getting, badges, capes, costume slots, auras, all took real effort and they felt like proper milestones and achievements.

 

Small gripe though, overall  it's FABULOUS having all my old alts recreated again😁

Yeah. I'm torn between being able to just jump in where I left off and things being a bit easy. Having pretty much all all trials soloable took something away from the experience.

[Coyotedancer]

You still have to have a character that's capable of it... It's not like you're going to solo an STF on +4/x8 with an Archery Sentinel running on SOs.

[ImpousVileTerror]

 . . . I'd say "challenge accepted," but . . . I just don't have the patience for that right now, heh.

[Coyotedancer]

If anyone actually manages it... Please FRAPS or demorecord the run. And post your build. Because I seriously want to see it. 

 

As fond as I am of the things, my Archery Sentinel was the only one I completely gave up on. XD

[Frostbiter]

Archery is kind of meh even on Blasters. It's good late game but the leveling experience is remarkably like having your grandpa teaching you archery on a hay bale. 

[Coyotedancer]

I've had good fun with my "random roll" Archery/Time Corruptor... and I liked my Archery/Energy Blaster well enough back-in-the-day... But that Sent? Ooof. Archery is *defiitely* one of the Sent damage sets that could use a little help. I went Archery/WP and it was just a total slog. o_0

[macskull]

On 7/11/2020 at 12:39 PM, Ukase said:

How long would you search for a badge if you weren't even sure there was one to be found? Or where it would be found? 

I wouldn't. I'll let the people who find that interesting spend their time on it for me.

[Ukase]

Interesting stuff. 

I did like looking about for the faultline stuff when HC came out...and have to say, I don't think I'd be even a half-decent badger back in the days before vidiot maps. I just don't think I would have taken the time. Or maybe that's all I would do. I dunno. 

Appreciated all the comments. 

As for the couple of you that may appreciate the "harder" version of CoH, there are other private servers. I've played on them. One of them, I still do - but primarily only when HC is down for maintenance. None of these private servers are "the same" as it was, because none of them have the player base we had back then. Even HC is a small fraction of that community, and it's easily got 5x more than any other private server that I know about. (at certain times, anyway)

[Scientist]

Also remember there was "less to do" then.  Fewer task forces, and they were harder to run in part because you had to have specific sidekicking setups, no incarnate content, no IOs, so not a lot of reason to keep running max level characters once they were max level, no red side or Praetoria.  Hunting around for badges and easter eggs was something to do other than street sweeping. 

 

That is one reason heroside content is much more thoroughly documented on the wiki than villianside content, people had time to do it.  

[Bionic_Flea]

On 7/11/2020 at 12:39 PM, Ukase said:

How long would you search for a badge if you weren't even sure there was one to be found? Or where it would be found? 

For the most part, I used Vidiotmaps to find most of the exploration badges and plaques.  A few I just stumbled across.

 

But I have intentionally found a few on my own, the Faultline and new PvP explore badges specifically.  I did that by looking at the name of the badge and thinking of where might be a good location that fits the name; sometimes a location looks like it should have a badge; and then a combination of determination and luck.

[Rathulfr]

On 7/12/2020 at 10:42 AM, Frostbiter said:

Archery is kind of meh even on Blasters. It's good late game but the leveling experience is remarkably like having your grandpa teaching you archery on a hay bale. 

Can confirm.