Year Round Purchase Ability

[Rudra]

Given the discussion being held on the "Recommendations for Reworking Badges" thread, I am presenting an idea to see how it will be received. For badges we can purchase but only during a specific window of opportunity each year, like the anniversary badges and the winter badges that we get for just logging in during the event, what if we could purchase the badges we missed all year? This would help alleviate the strain on players with lots of alts that struggle to cycle through their characters for the login badges as even if they fail to cycle all their characters they want the badges on, they can still go back and buy them. The character would still have to be logged in during the event to get the badge for free, but it would take away the pressure of playing catch up on characters they couldn't log in during that window of opportunity, so they won't wind up in a compounded situation of still trying to log all desired characters on during the event and also have to go back and find the characters that missed the previous years' badges, driving them even further behind.

 

I'm not asking for more vendors to make those badges available, just for the vendors that already sell the badges to have those badges available for purchase all year.

[Glacier Peak]

I don't support a year round purchase ability.

 

If the requirement for a badge is that a player logs in at certain time of year in order to receive the badge, that is the requirement.

 

I worry that if this change were to be implemented, other badges that have requirements that aren't convenient for players would be looked at to become purchased instead of meeting those requirements as well. Slippery slope as it were. 

[Rudra]

4 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

I don't support a year round purchase ability.

 

If the requirement for a badge is that a player logs in at certain time of year in order to receive the badge, that is the requirement.

Except it isn't. The requirement for the Exultant badge was to log in the game between 11 AM ET on Saturday May 1, 2010 and 11:59 PM ET on Monday May 31, 2010. If you did not log into the game during that window, you missed the opportunity to get that anniversary badge on that character. And yet we can go to Luna every year and buy the badge from her for 100 Reward Merits. That badge's window of opportunity is gone. And yet we can still go back and buy it.

 

We can have 1,000 characters per server. And for players that collect badges and play lots of alts, that is a constantly growing problem of accessibility. Back on Live when we could have 48 characters per server, and only if we bought the expanded character slots? Getting limited access badges was much less difficult. There are players with hundreds of alts as opposed to Live's 48. Surely some allowance for players with lots of alts can be accommodated?

 

12 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

I worry that if this change were to be implemented, other badges that have requirements that aren't convenient for players would be looked at to become purchased instead of meeting those requirements as well. Slippery slope as it were. 

The issue I have with this argument is that the only badges I am talking about are badges we can already purchase. The request isn't expanding what badges can be purchased. I wholeheartedly agree with you on not expanding what badges can be purchased. However, anniversary and winter badges can already be purchased. All I am asking for is an expanded window for those with lots of alts to do what the game already allows.

[Glacier Peak]

3 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Except it isn't. The requirement for the Exultant badge was to log in the game between 11 AM ET on Saturday May 1, 2010 and 11:59 PM ET on Monday May 31, 2010. If you did not log into the game during that window, you missed the opportunity to get that anniversary badge on that character. And yet we can go to Luna every year and buy the badge from her for 100 Reward Merits. That badge's window of opportunity is gone. And yet we can still go back and buy it.

I'm in favor of removing the purchase ability entirely, if that's your argument. 

 

4 minutes ago, Rudra said:

We can have 1,000 characters per server. And for players that collect badges and play lots of alts, that is a constantly growing problem of accessibility.

If a player can get the badge on one character, they can get them on all their characters. Outsiders of Praetorian locked badges. 

 

5 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Back on Live when we could have 48 characters per server, and only if we bought the expanded character slots? Getting limited access badges was much less difficult. There are players with hundreds of alts as opposed to Live's 48. Surely some allowance for players with lots of alts can be accommodated?

Alts are not a persuasive argument to me to change the requirement. 

 

6 minutes ago, Rudra said:

The issue I have with this argument is that the only badges I am talking about are badges we can already purchase. The request isn't expanding what badges can be purchased. I wholeheartedly agree with you on not expanding what badges can be purchased. However, anniversary and winter badges can already be purchased. All I am asking for is an expanded window for those with lots of alts to do what the game already allows.

Oh that actually makes sense. That would satisfy myself because I could choose not to purchase the badges outside of the window of the event and players who want the badges could do so if they so desired. 

 

You might be changing my mind. 

[Rudra]

This isn't something I'm going to put effort into fighting for. If we disagree, we disagree.

[Glacier Peak]

14 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

You might be changing my mind. 

 

9 minutes ago, Rudra said:

This isn't something I'm going to put effort into fighting for. If we disagree, we disagree.

What

[Rudra]

14 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

29 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

You might be changing my mind. 

 

23 minutes ago, Rudra said:

This isn't something I'm going to put effort into fighting for. If we disagree, we disagree.

What

I'm glad I might be changing your mind, but I'm not going to have a lengthy debate on the matter. (Edit: Especially if the response is to remove the purchase ability entirely.) If you have questions or concerns, I will address them for you. I'm not sure what more I can say beyond what I already did. Between the desire for things like the anniversary badges to become account-wide as stated on the OP referenced thread or having an expanded window of opportunity to get, I'm more in favor of the expanded window. However, I don't feel strongly enough on the matter to engage in a lengthy debate on the matter.

 

If you have further questions or concerns, I will address them to the best of my ability. If you disagree with me on the full year window though? That's fine. We disagree. I'm not inclined to argue.

 

Edited yesterday at 01:03 AM by Rudra

[ShardWarrior]

4 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

I worry that if this change were to be implemented, other badges that have requirements that aren't convenient for players would be looked at to become purchased instead of meeting those requirements as well. Slippery slope as it were. 

 

There is no slippery slope.  The badges in question are already only obtainable by purchasing them with merits from a vendor.  All the suggestion is for is to lift the narrow window of when they are available for purchase.  That is a very far cry from "make all badges purchasable". 

[Ghost]

6 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

There is no slippery slope.  The badges in question are already only obtainable by purchasing them with merits from a vendor.  All the suggestion is for is to lift the narrow window of when they are available for purchase.  That is a very far cry from "make all badges purchasable". 

I see where Glacier is coming from.

 

It starts with, “allow me to purchase anytime”

and then COULD slowly morph into “well, we can purchase those whoever we want, so why can’t we purchase these? Not fair!!!”

 

Remember, a certain percentage of the player base always wants more, more, more - and those requests are usually justified with “that gets it, so this should too”.

 

Edited 17 hours ago by Ghost

[Rudra]

7 hours ago, Ghost said:

I see where Glacier is coming from.

 

It starts with, “allow me to purchase anytime”

and then COULD slowly morph into “well, we can purchase those whoever we want, so why can’t we purchase these? Not fair!!!”

 

Remember, a certain percentage of the player base always wants more, more, more - and those requests are usually justified with “that gets it, so this should too”.

 

And that is countered by we can already purchase the badges in question and there are already threads asking to be able to just buy other badges, especially accolades. I am very much opposed to adding to the array of badges we can purchase. I am of the opinion badges should be earned by the character getting the badges by doing the content. Especially in the case of accolades which at least one previous thread has asked to be able to purchase. Expanding the window in which something that can already be purchased is available for purchase does not open the door to requests for more badges to be purchasable.

 

This suggestion has nothing to do with badges that must be earned by doing content. It is only about badges that can already be purchased and requires no actual game play to get.

 

Edit: So the suggestions you and @Glacier Peak are concerned will start happening if this is implemented already get asked for. Kind of hard for this to lead to that starting when it has already happened.

 

Edited 10 hours ago by Rudra

[lemming]

I think the various anniversary badges should be purchasable year round.  But just the anniversary ones.  (winters and the cov one)

But that's it.  It's still an investment, just not with timing.

[TheMoneyMaker]

I'm going to agree with Rudra on this one. The original window to earn the badges is passed and they chose to make them available to buy. And we have another precedent to consider with the ski chalet being open all year long and allowing anyone that gets the candy canes (plenty available on AH) to purchase the winter event badges all year long. As for the anniversary badges, only the old badges are purchasable......a newly introduced badge shouldn't be added to the purchase list until the following year, so that can give the people that feel a need for badges to be special to have a whole year of showing off theirs before those that couldn't log in or didn't have time to log in all their alts get to buy it.

[JKCarrier]

I would certainly appreciate being able to knock these badges off my list without having to wait. As a compromise, perhaps the badges could be more expensive if purchased outside the usual anniversary window? That way there's still an incentive to wait, but the impatient can trade inf for time.