Account-wide Exploration Badges

[Duuk]

Please, for the love of everything holy, my 2 biggest desires for this game are:

 

1) Account-wide exploration badges, which code-wise isn't complicated (I think)

 

and

 

2) Fixing every single contact storyline to stay in its own zone so you can level with the story and not want to punch babies.  But this one is harder, so I'll settle for the exploration badges.

[Greycat]

Can't say I agree with the badges. Some should be account wide, yes, but exploration badges - and the accolades that go with them - should not be on that list.

 

Among other reasons (such as no, character 1 has *not* visited Praetoria and should not have those badges,) by making explore badges account wide you're throwing away a *lot* of merits... 5 per zone adds up, funds a lot of lowbies and helps with at higher levels, as well. And I should note, while disagreeing, that I've got well over 100 characters. It would very much *not* be convenient.

 

As for the other? We've got a city. Nothing wrong with being sent elsewhere. Some of the more annoying missions that *should* be cut ("Hey, hero, take these newspaper clippings to my buddy!") are in the same zone, after all. Doesn't make *them* any better.

[0th Power]

Each character is a different hero (or villain).  I don't think Random Hero 27 should be awarded the Flying Shark badge, when they never have visited the top of the Zig.

 

I enjoy the zone specific arcs too, but the one thing that is missing (may just be nostalgia getting me) is the travel between missions.  Between base ports, ouro portals, mission transporter and the team transporter, there isn't a whole lot of travel going on.

[macskull]

On 11/2/2021 at 3:32 PM, MadCow99 said:

1) Account-wide exploration badges, which code-wise isn't complicated (I think)

Standard code rant applies in this case.

 

TL;DR: Account-wide badges are not by any stretch of the imagination easy to implement, code-wise. The code to make AE badges account-wide is a nightmare.

[Ruin Mage]

CoH Code is a nightmare if the conversations with the HCdevs is anything to go off of.

[Luminara]

On 11/2/2021 at 6:32 PM, MadCow99 said:

1) Account-wide exploration badges

 

In addition to @Greycat's point about merits (one can acquire nearly 250 merits from exploration badge completion), exploration badges are also tied to numerous accolades.  The expectation is that we earn those accolades, not that they be automatically granted.  Removing the exploration badge requirement on those accolades means you have to replace it with another requirement, or dump the accolades entirely.

 

Additionally, it would make absolutely no sense for, to make one example, a native Praetorian to have exploration badges from Kings Row, or a level 3 villain to have exploration badges from the Shadow Shard.  While that wouldn't be game-breaking, it would completely destroy any sense of immersion we experience now.

 

On 11/2/2021 at 6:32 PM, MadCow99 said:

2) Fixing every single contact storyline to stay in its own zone

 

The requirement to travel to other zones is the primary justification for having travel powers in the game, and for having travel powers function in the ways they do.  Isolating everything to individual zones would necessitate redesigning travel powers across the board to give them purpose, or relegate them to something as meaningless as origin attack powers, barely differentiated and eventually useless.

 

Finally, travel powers and exploration badges are intimately interconnected.  Those badges exist, and were placed where they are, specifically to encourage players to explore the zones in an organic fashion, to acquire those badges on the way to missions or while passing through zones.  And travel powers exist, and work as they do, specifically to enable players to move extensively throughout the whole of the game, not within individual zones (one can cross even the largest of the non-Shadow Shard zones in less than three minutes with no travel power).  Both travel powers and exploration badges still serve that purpose, giving the character, and the player, a sense of the scale and scope of the greater game while rewarding them in some small way for using their travel powers and occasionally making a short detour on the way to a mission.

 

I foresee both of these changes as being detrimental to the game.

 

[TheZag]

12 hours ago, macskull said:

Standard code rant applies in this case.

 

TL;DR: Account-wide badges are not by any stretch of the imagination easy to implement, code-wise. The code to make AE badges account-wide is a nightmare.

 

 

I have the code here if anyone wants to take a look through it.

 

 

 

 

 

[Glacier Peak]

39 minutes ago, TheZag said:

I have the code here if anyone wants to take a look through it.

Post modern impressionist are so hot right now

 

[Coyotedancer]

Thee are a lot of reasons why account-wide Exploration badges wouldn't be a great thing... But there *is* one sort of badge I'd love to see become global on an account. The Anniversary badges. It's a pain in the rump to log in every single character individually to get them if you have a lot of alts. It's also annoying when you have a new one that's perfectly suited to the badge title.... that was issued last year. Long before you made the character in question. <_<

 

(Yes, I know you can trade merits for the older ones on individual characters at certain times of the year, but that seems to be more hoop-jumping than ought to be necessary for the things. If the account was active during the anniversary, it seems to me like that ought to be enough to make the badges available on any of that account's characters.) 

[Duuk]

You know, because of the great work the HC team has done running CoX like it never missed a beat, I sometimes forget that CoX isn't running on an old Unreal Engine like everything else is these days.  (Now called "Unity" for your history lesson.)  I swear I'm hoping that the HC team finds a way to get the IP from NCSoft and makes a "Universe of Supers" based on spiffy new unity.  Imagine it... no war walls with load times, truly interactable cars, ability to shoot down the stupid blimp...

 

...and a codebase built after Ronald Reagan left office.