Recommendations for Reworking Badges

[CoeruleumBlue]

Hello, I think basically every badge you get other than the badges for reaching levels, veteran levels, and incarnates should be account-wide. I think this would encourage people to play the story content instead of just farming all the time. It's probably actually good farming is allowed on Homecoming and most private servers because there's basically no difference between fire farming or farming ToT and official content like DFBs anyway, and the ridiculous amount of farming and people not knowing the content is simply due to there not being much incentive to play it. I believe that if most badges were account-wide, this would encourage people to play the story content to get them, and it would also discourage things like people spending all month farming Trick-or-Treat for the prismatic aethers and badges (which you get from the badges.) Once you got the Halloween badges, you would have them for all your characters, so just replaying those events would be the same as anything else you could replay, and if they make a new set during the middle of spring you want to use on a vampire character you still have Vampiric Heritage for that character.  

 

You should probably also be able to pick any version of the badge you want once you earn it, the hero one, villain, or Praetorian, once you get a hero, villain, or Praetorian character to level 20.

 

Praetorians should have two level 20 badges, one for Resistance and one for Loyalists, and once you get the Resistance one you should be able to treat Resistance alignment like Rogue/Vigilante and take Resistance characters out of Praetoria or change their alignment, same for Loyalists. If someone only likes Resistance or Loyalist they can just make those and still play the main game instead of running tutorials or fire farms over and over again, same as if someone only likes Heroes or Villains, but you still have to do it once per alignment. I have legitimately seen someone start in Praetoria on a character that wasn't supposed to be Praetorian just to get a title, which is not the same as a badge, but now she can't ever change her title if she switches alignment. You should really be able to switch to Praetorian both because that's canonically what Maelstrom did and also just for the titles and badges if you want them because it's literally just a cosmetic, you can literally name a hero Mr. Badguy and put him in an Arachnos suit and name a villain Mr. Goodguy and put him in a blue and gold tights and cape outfit, who cares. 

 

Likewise, I also recommend a change to patron badges. You should have to do the specific patron unlock to get a powerset but that should be account-wide too. I can barely ever get patron unlocks and I've never actually been in a single one that's played all the way through, and people seem to never want to do Ghost Widow's, I'm guessing because it probably involves a lot of psionic damage and most builds don't want to deal with that. With this rework I think people would play through all of them, including Ghost Widow, and no one would have to sit around waiting for an outleveled patron unlock and also not get to actually see the story. 

 

I'd also let villains do the Law Enforcer day job or give them their own version. That way Loyalists in Praetoria can also have a version (but it can probably display differently than the villain version.) Every other day job can be totally alignment locked or not necessarily have an equivalent since you can just switch anyway, except for Praetorians who want to stay in Praetoria, or if you want to become Praetorian, but see above. 

 

Those are just my ideas, thanks for your consideration!

[Rudra]

If you discount the level badges (including vet levels), there is a very large percentage that are tied to specific missions and arcs. If those badges become account wide, then there is less incentive to do regular content than to just farm rather than more reason to do so. A very large number of badges are held by TFs/SFs, iTrials, and other story arcs. If they are account wide, why is there a reason to run that content when you can just sit in a farm and max out because you automatically got all the badges from a previous character?

 

Edit: Also, if you can't find a team that is running the specific patron content you want? Then either form your own team for it or just solo it. The patrons are not difficult and you only need the first arc for the pool unlocks. (Any patron arc unlocks all the patron pools.)

 

Edited Monday at 07:27 PM by Rudra

[CoeruleumBlue]

5 minutes ago, Rudra said:

If you discount the level badges (including vet levels), there is a very large percentage that are tied to specific missions and arcs. If those badges become account wide, then there is less incentive to do regular content than to just farm rather than more reason to do so. A very large number of badges are held by TFs/SFs, iTrials, and other story arcs. If they are account wide, why is there a reason to run that content when you can just sit in a farm and max out because you automatically got all the badges from a previous character?

 

There's always new content and you can make more content in AE. I think no one plays all that content specifically because they don't want to redo it on all their 200 alts, especially when people barely do it. I barely can do all the content on my one main. I don't think people want to play every single story in the game over and over on all of their characters, especially when, and I think I probably should have included this in my OP, the game is not designed that way. The game is designed for people to have different characters who do different roles and take them to different content. Making it so you only get the badges on your one character works against the way the game is designed. I want to see the story, not have people just give up. Plus, there are always weekly trials and TFs. People will always run the weekly ones repeatedly. There are even badges for running the weekly ones repeatedly but how can I do that when I haven't even done all the main ones on my main character, I have alts, and there are also fun AE missions to play? 

 

In thermodynamics and some of its applications, there's something called the Maximum Power Principle. A complex system such as an organism or an economic agent doesn't do what maximizes their total energy, they maximize their total power. I believe the Maximum Power Principle is actually just making people ignore almost all the of the content in favor of farming. There isn't too much content, but there's too much content compared to the perceived rewards. You could play all the task forces or strike forces on each of your alts to get 5% health and 5% endurance on each of them, or you could just play each of the task forces or strike forces on your best build for that particular one and just play weeklies when they come up some other times which have good value as well.

 

So I do actually think this game is just suffering because of not following the Maximum Power Principle just makes people farm all day and not do anything else, even though there's no reason farming should be against the rules since it's basically the same as DFBs or ITFs. Declaring farming against the rules doesn't encourage people to play through all of the content either because people just perceive it's inefficient to do so. Even if there are dedicated hero players and dedicated villain players who don't want to play through all of the content for the other side, they can still already earn all the accolade powers anyway, so that part is fine. I think people want to play through the whole story, I just think they are disincentivized to because of low perceived rewards, and due to the fact no one else is playing through it, so no one wants to sit down and play through it all alone. 

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I think basically every badge you get other than the badges for reaching levels, veteran levels, and incarnates should be account-wide. I think this would encourage people to play the story content instead of just farming all the time.

 

46 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

I don't think people want to play every single story in the game over and over on all of their characters,

Pick a stance. Either you want players to play the content or you don't.

[lemming]

iirc, a dev stated they dislike account wide badges.

And I think Rudra pointed out the same reasons I would give for not wanting this.

[Psyonico]

I suspect a large percentage of players who are running TFs/SFs are doing it for the badge (really, for the accolades) if badges were account wide, there would be less reason to run anything other than the most optimized content because you already have the reward.

[Glacier Peak]

I already dislike getting every Architect Entertainment account wide badge applied after creating any alt because my one badger got it. I would not like further contributing to this.

[Ukase]

I can't speak for everyone else. I'm all over the place. 

Some days, I don't want to do the same old content on a different character, because it seems like I just did that content on a previous character. 

But, every once in a while, I find myself having actually invested time - a bio. Not just an rng costume, but one that seems (at least to me) thematically tied to the powers, the origin, and the bio. And those characters, I find I'm more willing to endure repetitive content, and even other content that might showcase what that character has gone through on their journey to 50. 

I see some characters have bought every gm recipe available. For a time, I would just sell the recipes. Why piss away a prismatic for mini-pet that I'm likely to never spawn? What is the point of those things, anyway? Some people like 'em, though. I have no issue with that. 

Then I began just crafting the temp pet powers for the gms my character faced in battle; kind of like a souvenir. For me, I think that's a better path forward. Doesn't make sense for my character to have a Caleb pet if I've never beaten Caleb. 

If badges were account wide, then my level 8 Peacebringer (just made him the other day) would have a badge for beating every GM in game, even though it's never faced any GM. Would that make sense? I don't think so. 

At the heart of the OP is a hopeful attempt to get people to leave the repetitious farms and team up and play. At least, that's what I'm reading between the lines. Maybe I'm wrong. 

Everything in game is a farm of sorts. But some just aren't that lucrative. Either way, it's all repetitive content done for rewards. And we need the rewards to outfit our characters. So, farms will always be with us. And there will always be soloers, people who won't team for whatever reason. So, while I think the heart of the original post comes from a good place, it's kind of a waste of time - as is this post of mine.