Long gone AE badges?

[Jacktar]

Hello everybody, just found a number of very old alt screenies on an old PC I have and saw my main Badger back on live had all the badges except Bug Hunter (that whose name should not be spoken about!) which included a lot more of AE badges than we currently have ingame.

 

I remember I got them all after a slog only to have a whole bunch of them removed by the Dev’s just two days later.

 

I do not recall there being anything very controversial about the ones they removed from the game and was a bit grumpy for ages (lol still am, and yes I need to get over it 🥲) about my diminished badge count.

 

So, does anybody remember those badges going, and more importantly, does anybody have any idea what led to their demise?

 

Thanks 👍

 

PS Dear Dev’s, can I have my badges back please?

 

 

[AboveTheChemist]

Just looking over some wiki info briefly, it looks like the AE badges were added in Issue 14 and many were yanked in Issue 15. According to the I15 patch notes page, the badges were removed because the devs wanted AE to be focused on playing story arcs rather than grinding badges. I was not playing during that time, so there may be more to the story than that. I know a handful of those badges (e.g. the Terminator badge) have been re-purposed as "new" badges on HC.

[Cobalt Arachne]

8 hours ago, Jacktar said:

PS Dear Dev’s, can I have my badges back please?

 

You don't want those badges back as they were... They promoted aggressive and unhealthy 'rating farms' where player circles would organize running pointless empty missions (which fill up the AE database) for the sole purpose of quickly finishing them and ranking them 5-stars to try and farm/boost their way up to Hall of Fame and the 2,500 star badge.

Things that promote negative community interactions are not good ideas for badges.

[Zhym]

From the old forum post about the removal of the badges: 

 

"We really didn’t want the Mission Architect to be an environment that encourages farming for XP, Rewards or Badges."

 

Well, that didn't quite work out the way they've hoped, although I guess one out of three isn't too bad.

[Heraclea]

Soon as I got the 'Bard' badge that used to be available, I rolled...

 

Removing the badges did not change your display badge, so I dared not even look at what other badges this character might earn, for fear of losing it.