Focused Feedback: Team Badges

[sbloyd]

12 hours ago, Wispur said:

All Peacebringer teams are gonna be fun!

 

Hrm.  I have to pause and wonder if there are enough people actually playing Warshades on Everlasting to make this sort of thing work.

[Tigraine]

21 hours ago, Jimmy said:

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.

 

To be blunt, this comes off as a message of "We don't like the feedback you're giving, so you'd better tell us what we want to hear or we'll stop listening," which of course isn't really listening at all.  It makes me worry that you (the collective "you") are ignoring a lot of perfectly valid points and concerns just because there have been some responses that you didn't like.  If you wonder why players feel that devs don't listen, this is why.

 

I sincerely hope this isn't the case and that you are not ignoring the forest for the trees, so to speak, but it's the impression given by the responses so far.

[Voltor]

1 hour ago, SupaFreak said:

 

Right on.  Well there's always the option to make a team of 4 a requirement:

Role Diversity: Complete the content on a team of 4 or more with Archetypes that fulfill all five roles listed below:

 

I mean, I'm fine with people being able to get away with only 2 person teams but I'd also be cool with it if a team of 4 was the minimum.

 

Why bother? People will still find quick ways to get the badge with a team of 4.   Why install a limiter just because Khelds and Veats cover 3 categories?

[BlakeTheDrake]

Gotta admit, I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about this... I'm a Badger, so more badges to collect is always nice, and I can certainly see the argument in favor of taking this approach in favor of the old, discontinued idea of Aether. I LIKE seeing people announce TF's in the LFG channel with "Everybody's welcome, as long as you meet the minimum level requirements!" It'd be a shame to lose that... welcoming attitude. Not sure if the originally-proposed rewards WOULD have caused such a shift, but I'm clearly not the only one who saw it as a very real possibility that it might.

 

However, it honestly seems wasteful to have a whole system like this set up for just two badges that a large percentage of the player-base won't care about in the first place, and which the rest will just... get, very quickly, and then forget about. Of course, this could be expanded by having separate badges for doing this with every TF and Trial (or at least with the 'core' ones and otherwise most significant ones) - but I'm not sure how much that would ACTUALLY change.

 

As others have also proposed, the clever play here may be to add some kind of reward to these 'Diverse Team' badges - by its very nature, it'd be a one-time reward, so it would be unlikely to engender any kind of large-scale shift in player behavior, but it WOULD provide a motivation for those otherwise uninterested in badges to engage with this 'Balanced Team' system in the first place. Mind, there ARE other options than just providing a one-time Aether Particle payout - that one is obvious, considering the original shape of the system, but if more 'Team Composition' badges were added, they could also add up to an Accolade with some kind of desirable power attached to it.

 

Suggestions for other badges utilizing this system? How about "Dance Partners" for running a TF where every member is matched with their archetypal counterpart on the other side (Defender/Mastermind, Blaster/Corruptor, Tank/Brute, etc.) - whether that's just as a duo, or as four full pairs? Could be fun, and pretty easy to do these days, since you don't need a 'Co-op' TF for it. Or, just for the name, "Seven Nation Army", requiring a team of five different 'basic' ATs, covering all five roles, AND two different EATs! (the eight slot being a wildcard, I suppose!)

 

Shame 'account-wide' Badges are such a hassle, though - otherwise, a particularly fun challenge would be to run a 'Diverse Team' TF as each of the five roles! Which would, obviously, require multiple characters... though, thinking of it, EATs would have to be excluded from the count there, or else mess it all up by occupying three roles at once, each. Maybe not ideal, then - but it WOULD be nice to have something like that, to encourage people to try more different archetypes. Some people just land on one Archetype, and wind up playing dozens of different powersets for it without really feeling any drive to try something else...

[Jimmy]

2 minutes ago, Tigraine said:

 

To be blunt, this comes off as a message of "We don't like the feedback you're giving, so you'd better tell us what we want to hear or we'll stop listening," which of course isn't really listening at all.  It makes me worry that you (the collective "you") are ignoring a lot of perfectly valid points and concerns just because there have been some responses that you didn't like.  If you wonder why players feel that devs don't listen, this is why.

 

I sincerely hope this isn't the case and that you are not ignoring the forest for the trees, so to speak, but it's the impression given by the responses so far.

 

This isn't the case at all. The feature was reworked precisely because of the feedback. It's obviously impossible for us to action all the feedback when such a wide range of opinions are shared, but we absolutely do listen. We just maybe didn't listen to the opinions you agreed with (this isn't personal, just an example - I don't know what your opinions on this are - but posters will frequently be offended when we listen to feedback they disagree with).

 

Everything posted in the feedback threads is read and considered. We keep them heavily moderated to ensure they remain useful (even when comments get hidden due to going off-topic, we can still see them and do read them). With that said, giving us feedback about a feature we are no longer pursuing doesn't help anyone, all it does is get in the way of the feedback for the new feature - which many players are helpfully providing in this thread, as requested.

[Bionic_Flea]

But Jimmy, why should I tell you anything if you don't listen and obey?

[SaxyGuitar]

2 hours ago, sbloyd said:

Hrm.  I have to pause and wonder if there are enough people actually playing Warshades on Everlasting to make this sort of thing work.

 

I will happily transfer my warshades over to help with this badge. Just let me know. Shades are sick and I need to play mine more.

 

Also Soldier only runs will be fun. I might have to find a day to run them weekly with my main.

 

 

[Cobalt Arachne]

Reiterating on what Jimmy said, this new feature is the response to the feedback.

There were concerns brought up that adding continual currency incentives to the team assembly process would pollute the inclusive spirit of City of Heroes where you can join almost any team and have no idea what will be on it, but can still complete the content without issues. To that end, we shifted to a reward that simply represents that you've done it once, instead of requiring on-going, continual team composition management to maximize your rewards.

Personally, this was the argument that resonated most with me, and prompted discussions on alternative solutions.

This feature originally arose from the added capability to run Lua scripts through the challenge settings feature automatically and we used it to write scripts that can check the team's composition, which wasn't previously possible as a criteria check for rewards.

 

---

AT Duplication was added as a foil to the AT Diversity.

While educating new players on team role dynamics was one of the goals of the previous feature, there were several issues with the reward delivery and incentive consistency that made us determine it would not be the best idea for the game.

We decided that it would be healthy to also establish that you can take a team of all duplicate archetypes and still clear most content.
This way all team configurations remain 'valid' in the eyes of the players as far as badges are concerned, and nobody loses out on rewards for prioritizing playing the game how they prefer over the team's composition.

[Digirium]

Thanks for listening to the feedback in the original thread.

 

I think this re-work award of badges is good and something I would have suggested.

[Grouchybeast]

I love badges, so yay, more badges!  Two badges is a great start, and it sounds like now there's the tech in place to check team composition this has scope for a lot of expansion and even  MOAR BADGES, which is even better.

 

Some of the role categorization is still a bit odd (poor MMs, classified by their secondary), but as it now has lower stakes tied to it I don't think that it's as big of a deal.  Thanks for listening to the feedback.

[Cyclone Jack]

1 hour ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

This feature originally arose from the added capability to run Lua scripts through the challenge settings feature automatically and we used it to write scripts that can check the team's composition, which wasn't previously possible as a criteria check for rewards.

I guess the only question I have is, why the hard push to marginalize the ATs into a single "role" so to speak, when its obvious that most of the ATs are much more diverse than that?  I think that's the part I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around, and I know I'm not the only one.  And I'm not talking specific combos, because there are always outliers, but the core design of many of the ATs is to have the diversity to fill more than one role (Controller, Defender, Brute, Corruptor, Dominator, and Mastermind).

[SupaFreak]

4 hours ago, Voltor said:

 

Why bother? People will still find quick ways to get the badge with a team of 4.   Why install a limiter just because Khelds and Veats cover 3 categories?

 

It's just a suggestion for 4 to be the baseline.  I mean... why bother showering every day when you're just gonna get dirty again?  So many puzzling questions.

If Role Diversity can be fulfilled with 2, then why not make Archetype Duplication only require 2?  Just asking.

 

Maybe it's a dumb question but mama always said questions are like a box of chocolates.  You never know what answer you're gonna get.

 

[Cobalt Arachne]

47 minutes ago, Cyclone Jack said:

I guess the only question I have is, why the hard push to marginalize the ATs into a single "role" so to speak, when its obvious that most of the ATs are much more diverse than that?  I think that's the part I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around, and I know I'm not the only one.  And I'm not talking specific combos, because there are always outliers, but the core design of many of the ATs is to have the diversity to fill more than one role (Controller, Defender, Brute, Corruptor, Dominator, and Mastermind).

Simplicity and fairness primarily. One AT, one primary team role.

Example: Stalkers would only qualify for Melee Damage... No matter how creative you want to try and be with it, their main advantage involves using stealth to drop aggro at any time (opposite of a Tank's job), and doing critical melee attacks for massive damage.

How would it be fair to Stalkers that they get to just naturally earn less Prismatic Aether than everyone else?
Because other multi-role ATs would qualify for the bonus more often and thus earn more over time.

Since some ATs would only be able to qualify for a single role, for simplicity and fairness, we went with everyone's one primary role. (Not counting the Epic Archetypes.)
Fairness was weighted far more heavily in the design considerations earlier for the previous feature due to that reward involved.

[Cyclone Jack]

15 minutes ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

How would it be fair to Stalkers that they get to just naturally earn less Prismatic Aether than everyone else?
Because other multi-role ATs would qualify for the bonus more often and thus earn more over time.

Why would they earn less?  Every team that fulfills all 5 roles would gain the reward, no matter what ATs are in the group.  Warshade, Stalker, Blaster, Scrapper, Defender:  Fulfils all roles even though there are 3 Melee Damage ATs and 2 Ranged ATs listed.  In fact, with ATs covering all the roles they are designed for, the specialized ATs would end up have a higher chance of getting rewards since more roles are covered by fewer ATs, leaving more room on the team for a wider variety of ATs in general.  Going by the current list: Warshade, Peacebringer, Mastermind:  Fulfils all roles.  That leaves 5 more ATs that can join the team, all of which could be Stalkers.

 

Additionally, it is important to remember that Epic Archetypes aren't epic because of what they can or cannot do, they are Epic because they are tied to the storyline.  Granted, Kheldians are an advanced AT, but that's more from the standpoint of building and slotting, whereas Arachnos are pretty generic but stack Leadership buffs.

[Cobalt Arachne]

55 minutes ago, Cyclone Jack said:

Why would they earn less?  Every team that fulfills all 5 roles would gain the reward, no matter what ATs are in the group.  Warshade, Stalker, Blaster, Scrapper, Defender:  Fulfils all roles even though there are 3 Melee Damage ATs and 2 Ranged ATs listed.  In fact, with ATs covering all the roles they are designed for, the specialized ATs would end up have a higher chance of getting rewards since more roles are covered by fewer ATs, leaving more room on the team for a wider variety of ATs in general.  Going by the current list: Warshade, Peacebringer, Mastermind:  Fulfils all roles.  That leaves 5 more ATs that can join the team, all of which could be Stalkers.

 

Additionally, it is important to remember that Epic Archetypes aren't epic because of what they can or cannot do, they are Epic because they are tied to the storyline.  Granted, Kheldians are an advanced AT, but that's more from the standpoint of building and slotting, whereas Arachnos are pretty generic but stack Leadership buffs.

They would have earned less Aether over time if we changed non-epic ATs to qualify for more than one role per the character creator.

Not every team is going to be lead by somebody who cares about getting the bonus, leaving more chances that could be swayed by the AT you yourself play which would lead to reward imbalances inherent to certain Archetypes.

Example: If you played a Warshade, you automatically fulfilled 3/5ths of the criteria by yourself and only needed two other roles on the team to qualify, making it easier to earn the bonus regularly without trying for it.

That being said this thread is about the current feature, so we'll let that get back on track.

[Cyclone Jack]

1 minute ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

Not every team is going to be lead by somebody who cares about getting the bonus, leaving more chances that could be swayed by the AT you yourself play which would lead to reward imbalances inherent to certain Archetypes.

Exactly.  With more ATs covering more roles, it becomes easier, in general, to fulfil the requirements.  If your average team leader creates a party of 8, regardless of them aiming for the bonus or not, the more coverage the easier it becomes.  Stalker, Scrapper, Tanker, Brute, Controller, Blaster, Corruptor would fulfil all roles based on what is in Character Creation, but would fail to fulfil all roles with the proposed list.  Now, it may be that this trivializes the reward, and in that case I would agree, but since the reward was taken away in this case I don't see why the Roles screen can't be expanded to fit the Playstyles during Character Creation, which would actually be a very good reminder to everyone, new and old players, of who can do what.

 

Now, If the goal is to have team leaders have to think about party composition, I really don't think roles is the way to go, because eliminating ATs from roles they were designed to fulfil is just going to cause more confusion than anything; these threads alone should be enough proof of that.  😉  Instead, I would focus on just having a diverse team overall.  For example, by not having any duplicate ATs on the team.  Another option, as has been pointed out by a number people, would be to have Classic Hero ATs and Classic Villain ATs options.  That alone opens up 3 different party compositions, with a 4th being the Duplication option.  All 4 of these offer entirely different experiences and would be beneficial to both new and old players alike, IMO.  To me, these would be much more fitting for rewards.  As for what kind of reward, I'll leave that part up to someone who understands the economy much more than myself.  🤣

[Voltor]

Role Diversity Badges test fail:

 

Yin TF,  we ran thru it FAST with the following teams:

 

1. Tank + PB + WS + Defender   looking at the list, the criteria were met,  no badge

 

2. Tank + SCrapper +Blaster + Defender + Controller = no badge.

 

3.  4 tanks, Yin TF, no Mirror Image badge.

 

4. 4 blasters, LGTF, no Mirror Image badge.

 

Okay found out the error after reading the notes again for the previous reward version:

 

• Team members are checked when they zone into missions, if they don't zone into any mission the challenge won't check them.
• Epic archetypes count for three different roles at once.
• Once the bonus is fulfilled, you'll get a pop-up float and a small TF/SF-specific icon will appear to signify the team has qualified for the bonus on completion.

It seems that the whole team needs to enter the first mission and wait a moment for the check to complete, one of us on the team was not entering the mission so the whole team wasn't checked. 

 

Variety Act badge obtained

Edited February 9 by Voltor

[Voltor]

• / Role Diversity - Complete the content on a team with Archetypes that fulfill all five roles.

Badge name is Variety act,  confirmed that the image changes when you change from blue to red alignment and back.

[Ariamaki]

I think this is good, and that the Aether reward also needs to come back in addition to these badges. It's not going to crash the entire particle economy, which could use deflating anyways: If people are raising so much of a stink about it they could do better math and stop being so reactionary to something that wasn't even tested. If the tests do come back poorly, just shift it to a weekly cooldown period instead like the WST, nobody's got a problem with those rewards (which are often the same or higher).

 

On 2/7/2024 at 11:05 AM, Jimmy said:

 

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).

 

I'd like to suggest that both VEATs and both HEATs count as "the same archetype" for the purposes of these badges (and, ideally as said above, actual tangible rewards): A friend and I have regularly run impromptu Arachnos-only SFs and TFs, and it's never been an 8-stack of one type or the other. 

[SaxyGuitar]

52 minutes ago, Ariamaki said:

I'd like to suggest that both VEATs and both HEATs count as "the same archetype" for the purposes of these badges (and, ideally as said above, actual tangible rewards): A friend and I have regularly run impromptu Arachnos-only SFs and TFs, and it's never been an 8-stack of one type or the other. 

 

I do like this idea, and would prefer it. However I could understand why the devs might not want to do it.

[Andreah]

I am generally pleased with this change. Making the reward for role diversity a badge is huge improvement over the previous means. It will still cause people to stop and think about team composition, but with the counterbalance for Archetype Duplication, I think it will get people to think about how the game supports player choice, and doesn't pigeon hole a team into roles. Badges are important and noticeable, but won't skew team building on an ongoing basis like a compensation with in-game financial value would.

 

This now leaves me in a neutral position. I may not love it, but I don't hate it.

[Coyotedancer]

Good change over-all, I think, and I'll never say NO to cool new badge titles. (And 'Mirror Image' is definitely a cool one. 'Can't wait to do an all-Controller run to get that one for Aegis and her clone-phantoms. 😎 ) 

 

I do still give a bit of a side-eye to the whole "roles" thing, though. That still feels like trying to knock a bunch of square pegs into round holes in this game.

 

Maybe just dropping the whole role bit entirely is the way to go... By encouraging people to run with an assortment of different ATs via the diversity badges, you'll accomplish at least a good portion of the same goal, without having to artificially pigeon-hole any of the individual archetypes into roles they don't really fit. To get to the magic number of five different ATs in any given group, you're naturally going to end up with a mix of types. 

[Blackbird71]

2 hours ago, Andreah said:

Badges are important and noticeable,

 

I know some people really like collecting badges, but at least for me this statement is totally wrong.  I couldn't tell you what badges my characters have; I don't care.  Plus there is so many of them already as to make them largely meaningless; each is just one more drop in the proverbial bucket.  And I don't ever bother displaying badge titles, and I don't care about what titles others show - it just comes off as bragging.  So no, I don't consider them important or noticeable.

 

That's probably a minority opinion around here, but I still think it's worth expressing that not everyone thinks badges are worthwhile.  As far as I'm concerned, adding badges is a waste of time and resources.

[Andreah]

Whenever I run a Death From Below, there are at least a few people who want the badges and we try to get them. I suspect it will be the same. Many people will notice if they get one of these badges, and sometimes, if the roster looks close to getting one or the other, someone will speak up and ask about it or offer to swap to get it. 

 

Yes, there are people who don't care about it at all and think it's a waste of effort, but that's true about almost every game change.

[Blackbird71]

The difference being that you typically only get the stuff like DFB badges in a certain range of levels while running that particular content, while these badges could be picked up any time, any level, on any content.  I doubt there will be nearly as much demand for groups to get them, just because of the wide opportunity, a lot of which may happen naturally without specific effort.

 

Not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, just an observation.