Focused Feedback: Team Badges

[The Curator]

Team Badges - Task Forces

New Badge Checks

• New category of bonuses added to Task Forces that are always enabled by default. This automatically checks if the team meets any composition criteria to reward the earned badge.
• Team badges function by checking team members as they enter the mission, if a player does not enter any missions they are not counted for the check.
  • Teams that meet the criteria described are automatically granted the badge upon the content's completion.
  • Qualifying teams for these badges will be notified by a small icon appearing near their challenge status icons.
    • / Role Diversity - Complete the content on a team with Archetypes that fulfill all five roles.
    • Archetype Duplication - Complete the content with a team of 4 or more using only the same Archetype.

 

• This feature is only for associated badges and does not change any other rewards granted by the content.

 Teamwork makes the dream work! 

[Ruin Mage]

Mirror Image is a fucking great badge title/name.

[Koopak]

I mean its a couple badges. I just don't see a point to this, without the constant reward the value dips even further. The Aether reward needed to go live to actually see real testing. I guess this badge can form a soft test for the idea to prove people wont be as toxic as people feared but this will only matter to badgers, and they will get it on accident, and then this will just be some background detail forgotten immediately.

Really displeased with this change personally, but I guess its less contentious.

[FupDup]

4 minutes ago, Koopak said:

I mean its a couple badges. I just don't see a point to this, without the constant reward the value dips even further. The Aether reward needed to go live to actually see real testing. I guess this badge can form a soft test for the idea to prove people wont be as toxic as people feared but this will only matter to badgers, and they will get it on accident, and then this will just be some background detail forgotten immediately.

Really displeased with this change personally, but I guess its less contentious.

Maybe a compromise could be for the badges to come with a one-time aether reward similar to Halloween badges? 

[arcane]

Removing the aether reward makes this entire change kind of pointless. I'd just scrap the whole thing if we can't have the aether reward. 

[Indystruck]

Yeah okay badges sure neat I guess. I'll get them once and then totally forget about them? I dunno what to say about this for feedback.

[gameboy1234]

26 minutes ago, Koopak said:

I guess this badge can form a soft test for the idea

 

I like this idea.  I'd like to see a couple more roles added in (like the original five ATs), but the HC team are volunteers and I don't want to overload them with requests.  Let's see how folks react and take it from there.  If all goes well more work can be done and Prismatic Aethers added too.

 

[Fade]

I really appreciate this change. It solves a number of the pain points I brought up in the last thread:

• Being a one-time badge, instead of a daily repeatable bonus, does not incentivize repeating the same short TFs over and over every day to maximize rewards
• While it doesn't solve the issue of roles not matching up with how archetypes actually play, it notably lessens the problem. Now any given character might experience the problem only once in their career, instead of potentially every day.

Perhaps a one-time bonus of aethers can be associated with the badges (or is it just a single badge for doing either team? I'd assume its two badges, but a bit unclear), like there are aethers awarded with the newest halloween badges. That would be a small, but still meaningful, injection of aethers into the economy accessible by lower level characters and newer players.

[Clam Leader]

This is actually just incredibly dissapointing. The aether bonus was small enough to encourage good team arrangement while not being so large as to matter extensively.

 

These badges accomplish nothing.

 

Anyone that thought people were going to speedrun ... what? Tin Mage? For 1 aether per alt. Do you really think 40 merits arent already enough pf a reason to do that? Which are worth far far more than 1 aether.

[warlyx]

more aether into the game was good even if it was just for new players , just 1 aether give enough inf to level w/o having to look at inf , the upgrade button is there but a new player wont be able to use it 

 

 

[SaxyGuitar]

I like doing all one AT sf/tf and getting a badge for doing them is cool. I also like the idea of this as a whole. I think I could understand an argument on not having the duplicate runs getting a reward, but it would be nice if they both did. Removing some form of secondary reward seems odd, unless all you want it to be is another badge to hunt. Which isn't a terrible thing.

 

Is the problem that it gave Aether? Have you consider it just giving some extra merits, enhancement salvage, etc? Also it's hard to test what the rewards will do until then hit live. 

[Troo]

8 hours ago, The Curator said:

Qualifying teams for these badges will be notified by a small icon appearing near their challenge status icons.

• / Role Diversity - Complete the content on a team with Archetypes that fulfill all five roles.
• Archetype Duplication - Complete the content with a team of 4 or more using only the same Archetype.

 

I guess it makes sense, folks at least tried it once.. here's your badge.

 

8 hours ago, The Curator said:

 

Still think the descriptions need to be consistent one way or another throughout the game and documentation.

Don't let folks think they are filling one role when they create and play a character, but have to fill a different role listed on one list somewhere... just my opinion.

 

I'll do some testing again and report back.

[Troo]

"You could make a team with a Tanker, a Brute, a Stalker, a Sentinel, and a Blaster. That's five ATs but it's not anything like five roles. It's NOT a "balanced" team, which is what they are trying to encourage."

 

5 different ATs alone is diverse.

 

 

"And the roles aren't fuzzy at all. They're very clear.

The ATs with Defense primary, as well as those with AoE Taunt and punchvoke, are Tanks.

 

The ATs with Melee damage primary, but without (or MOSTLY without) AoE Taunt, and without punchvoke, are Melee Damage.

 

The ATs with Ranged damage primary are Ranged damage.

 

The ATs with Control primary, as well as those EATs with specs that heavily feature control, are Control.

The ATs with Support primary, as well as those who support their pets doing most of their damage, are Support.

 

Sure, there are individual Power Sets that break these outlines, but generally they make sense. Standard ATs counting for their primary role, and EATs counting for all roles they CAN spec for makes sense. Not everyone likes it, but it makes sense."

 

Above is a pretty good breakdown. I don't agree with how cut and dry it is, but it is straight forward,

Above, however, does not match the game descriptions.

 

Corruptors twist the forces of the universe to do their bidding. As a corruptor, you might strike your foes down with blasts of fire, entomb them in ice, infect them with radiation, or curse them with pure darkness. As your foes are weakened, your scourge ability kicks in, increasing your damage to an enemy as their hit points drop. You can even impart a portion of your twisted power to your allies to protect them from harm, heal them, or increase the damage they deal. This wide array of abilities comes at a price. Your defenses aren't strong, and you can quickly attract the ire of your enemies if you aren't careful.

 

[Indystruck]

This is going to encourage bad behavior. I don't have any proof of this, but it's a hunch and I think we should act on it supremely, decisively, and immediately, by reinstating the aether bonus concept, thank you.

 

Your thumbs down mean nothing, I've seen what you approve of.

Edited February 7 by Indystruck

[Cyclone Jack]

2 hours ago, Troo said:

Above is a pretty good breakdown. I don't agree with how cut and dry it is, but it is straight forward,

Above, however, does not match the game descriptions.

 

Corruptors twist the forces of the universe to do their bidding. As a corruptor, you might strike your foes down with blasts of fire, entomb them in ice, infect them with radiation, or curse them with pure darkness. As your foes are weakened, your scourge ability kicks in, increasing your damage to an enemy as their hit points drop. You can even impart a portion of your twisted power to your allies to protect them from harm, heal them, or increase the damage they deal. This wide array of abilities comes at a price. Your defenses aren't strong, and you can quickly attract the ire of your enemies if you aren't careful.

 

This is the key.  All they have to do is update their little chart to match the Playstyles already in the Character Creator.  I don't know why that's so difficult.  Updating the chart would help show new players just how diverse the ATs are in CoH.

[Ruin Mage]

5 hours ago, SaxyGuitar said:

Is the problem that it gave Aether?

There was one issue that people kept latching onto:

That it would encourage "picky" teams / encourage shitty picky nature. Something that already happens without the Aether reward.

That's it. That's all people thought was a big bad deal outside of the placement of ATs (which is w/e - its a hard balancing act to get that right and you can't please everyone)

[ranagrande]

Good change.

 

I still have the same concerns about the role diversity list, but a once-per-character badge should be much less disruptive than a daily reward.

 

Hopefully you can find another way to award aether that isn't tied to team composition for those who feel slighted by this change.

[Blackbird71]

The change from a repeatable reward to a one-time badge has likely moved this feature from "hotly controversial" to "all-around meh."

On top of that, the AT categorization still doesn't fit the character creation descriptions or practical function of several ATs.

 

There's really no purpose to release a mediocre feature that gives incorrect/incomplete information.  At this point, it's probably best to just scrap the whole idea.

[Vanden]

Honestly, this seems pointless. Just more busywork badges.

[Seed22]

So people got mad about one PAP, whined, and we get this garbage instead. This is goddamn beanbag all over again

[Koopak]

I think others have mostly hammered home the point that a badge is just not a reward that will hold any meaning to experienced players, but looking at this from a player education perspective I feel it's completely lost it.

 

Critiques (the valid ones at least) about the roles and what goes where in them aside. A valuable reward that helps a new player for trying to form a diverse and cohesive team helps teach what a strong team usually looks like, helpes drive player behavior toward successful patterns.

 

A badge doesn't accomplish this because there is no value. Unless the player is an active badge hunter it won't incentivise any long term behavior. At best it just acts as a vector to deliver this tooltip, a tooltip that is inherently flawed in its role definitions in order to facilitate the reward in a balanced way.

 

Obviously this thread is still young but I think it's telling that a lot of the detractors of the system are responding to this change with some version of 'this has no value's with several saying to just scrap it. I never expected this system to be as polarized as it is and am still baffled but I feel confident in saying that without a consistent reward, it's just needless chaff in the system.

 

If the goal is to test the community by adding these badges and see if people get toxic over them, then add some regular reward next page or whatever, I can see the idea, and I can even see why you'd avoid saying that outright, but as is? Id rather just see the system scrapped too, everything about this is now self defeating.

Edited February 7 by Koopak

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Blackbird71 said:

The change from a repeatable reward to a one-time badge has likely moved this feature from "hotly controversial" to "all-around meh."

On top of that, the AT categorization still doesn't fit the character creation descriptions or practical function of several ATs.

 

There's really no purpose to release a mediocre feature that gives incorrect/incomplete information.  At this point, it's probably best to just scrap the whole idea.

 

My main issue was the incorrect information it was giving to new p;layers versus what's on the New Character creation screen.

 

I don't really care if it's a badge or aether reward if it's contradictory with the New Player Experience.

 

EDIT: Also I like the idea of giving a rewards also for those who have multiples of the same AT. The archtype duplication badge is nifty.

Edited February 7 by golstat2003

[Cyclone Jack]

I will say that I do like the idea of Team Badges for TFs/SFs, and hopefully we can see more of these added over time for fun.  For example, all Hero, all Villain, all EAT, all Praetor, all Pet, maybe even throw in some weird ones like, Blasters and Brutes, Controllers and Corruptors, Defenders and Dominators, Scrappers and Sentinels and Stalkers (Oh my!), Warshades and Peacebringers (War & Peace), Mastermind Madness, all Tanks on a Tuesday (for the Tanker Tuesday Badge), etc. 😄 

[Jimmy]

Hey folks. Two things.

 

1 - This is a feedback thread for the new badges. Not a feedback thread for the now-removed Aether reward.

 

2 - Let's try to keep it civil. Getting grief over something being removed during beta makes us less likely to want to solicit feedback and try experimental ideas during the Open Beta phase, and more likely to keep updates in Closed Beta longer until all the issues are ironed out. We don't want to do that, because getting opinions from a larger group can be very helpful - but you also need to understand that sometimes features don't work out, and they need to be removed. That's just part of game development.

[Jimmy]

12 hours ago, gameboy1234 said:

I like this idea.  I'd like to see a couple more roles added in (like the original five ATs), but the HC team are volunteers and I don't want to overload them with requests.  Let's see how folks react and take it from there.  If all goes well more work can be done and Prismatic Aethers added too.

 

We actually discussed quite a few options internally, including stuff like this. Something to keep in mind is that we need to ensure every badge can be earned on every character, so "Team of 5 with only original ATs" wouldn't work (but there are similar options that could work). We're definitely open to more badges like this in the future (hence, this feedback thread).