Recommendations for Reworking Badges

[Frozen Burn]

On 11/17/2025 at 2:37 PM, CoeruleumBlue said:

 

....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. 

 

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.....

 

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...  ...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. 

 

I don't know the circles you play in, but I see few farmers.  I know of people who do, but they also play content.  I, myself, and many of the people I play with prefer running content - yes, over, and over, and over again.  Same content on all toons.  I never farm (unless I'm shy on purples for a build and I don't want to spend the inf or merits on them).  

 

Not including TFs, SFs, and Trials, there is SO much content, I will run a toon through one set of story arcs, and then run the next toon through  a different set for a new experience, and the the next new toon through yet a completely different set of arcs for yet even another new experience - and still, I will not have touched all the hero arcs.  I can do the same with villain arcs and Praetorian arcs.  And when I've gone through it all, I'll repeat the process and go through all the arcs again.

 

And I don't need all badges on all toons - only my 1 badger.  On my other toons, I'll get the important accolades (not all), and any badges I get beyond that are just icing on the cake and a nice "Ooo, cool!" moment.

 

But anyway, there are plenty of people out there that like to run content.  And as mentioned above, if you make badges account-wide, it's less incentive to run the content.  

[UltraAlt]

3 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Also, what about all the alts who are literally supposed to be the same character?

 

Er, are there are lot of alts that are all the same character?

Are they the same level? Do they have the same power sets?

 

3 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

What about PvP builds who are unlikely to ever do all the TFs but would get accolade badges for that that make them stronger?

 

They would have to get the badges if their player wants to make them stronger through use of badges.

If they don't run the content, they don't get the badges.

 

3 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

What about when they release some kind of new power set or change old ones and that makes me want to play a different character, which ties into the alts one, but you can't blame someone in that case since it isn't the same as when they made the character?

 

You can /respec for existing characters.

New characters are new characters. 

 

If you decide to play a character other than one that you have gained badges on, then that is on you. 

 

The game is built to keep records of all of your characters individually.

 

The game knows how long that an account has existed, the link of the game account to an email address used in the forums, the saved game options for new characters (Existing characters have whatever options they are set up to have), the global name associated with the account, the global friends list, the globals that are on ignore, the in-game email associated with the account, and what characters are linked to that account on each server.

I can't offhand think of any other things that are linked in-game that are account wide. None of the characters information cross references between characters.

 

I know this is something you want. Some other players would like it as well.

I don't want it.

I don't think it fits with the history of City of Heroes.

I think it would be very time consuming for the Devs to set it up.

 

All that being said, if the Devs want it implemented, it will be worked on, and I'll be stuck with it regardless of my opinion in the same way that you are stuck when a power set is changed (which happens to me at the same time).

 

3 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Importantly, I also think it would incentivize people to play more AE missions.

 

It won't. Farming ruined with the AE was supposed to be, and there is no going back.

 

3 hours ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Part of the reason I joined this game to begin with is I wanted to make and play custom missions, but it seems like no one is doing that because people are too busy chasing accolade badges and such. 

 

First off, there are people playing AE missions all the time. Most of the time, they are playing farming arcs rather than story arcs.

 

One of the reasons that fewer players are running story arcs is that there is a perception that all AE arcs are farming arcs.

Another reason is that farming arcs get the most play and positive feedback. The system shows the number of times an AE arc was played and the rating. People are less likely to play story arcs because they have fewer plays and some of the people that do play story arcs are very, very harsh critics so story arcs tend to have lower - sometimes much lower ratings - than farming arcs.

And there are so many farming arcs that it is hard to find story arcs unless you figure out how to search for them.

And, as @Dacy pointed out in a thread in the AE forum section, there aren't enough missions created that can be played through the lower levels to allow players to progress through the game by simply playing AE story arcs. Part of that is due to how the system sorts and the other reason is that if you want to get "plays" on AE content you're going to lose more than half the community if the missions aren't set and balanced for level 50.

 

If the goal is really to get players to play AE story missions, then the best way to do that is to run teams and recruit for AE story missions. You can pick which AE missions to run, and the team will join you running the content you selected. There are players already actively doing this. 

Also, please check out the https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/31-mission-architect/ 

There is a player-run story mission contest going on ... or maybe it has already ended, but it started fairly recently.