Badges Account Wide

[Gravitus]

My thoughts are that the purpose of badges is sort of like a resume on what you’ve done in the game as a player and they’re just cool to look at .

 

There are just too many badges for it to be feasible  to have all of your toons to hunt badges and more often than not makes me feel restricted to keep playing on just my main toon since I’m a badge hunter .

 

Thoughts ?

 

EDIT:  Team badges (such as TFs)  would stay toon only as to not discourage team activities .

Edited August 22, 2019 by Gravitus

[DSorrow]

I both agree and disagree with this suggestion, and I'm not really sure which way I'm leaning. Let's look at some of the (IMO) biggest pros and cons:

 

Pros:

• even if you don't badge hunt, getting accolade powers one every character is kind of boring because it forces you to repeat specific content so avoiding this might be nice
• some badges can't be earned "naturally" on many characters (e.g. healing badges on a Scrapper) so it would even out some disparity between classes

Cons:

• a sweeping change like this would devalue badging if the required badge values weren't adjusted: what are reasonable adjustments (5x, 10x, other?) and how to deal with badges already earned?
• it might kill many TFs, pretty much nobody would run stuff like Synapse if you only had to do it once per account

In the end I'd say the cons are too big to do this. Maybe the devs could look at showing an "account badges" type of counter besides the current badge count, but that would most likely be pretty difficult to implement.

Edited August 22, 2019 by DSorrow

[cbr7598]

I'm on the fence too.

 

I do agree that account-wide badges might potentially de-value certain activities and that's a definite concern. At the same time, I sometimes feel restricted (perhaps just me though) to playing my main for badges instead of playing any character for badges. 

 

I wonder if the right move here is to sort of borrow a page from how WoW does this - the majority of achievements in that game are account-wide, but some are not. I think the balance might be different for CoH, but the same idea might work. I'm honestly not sure which badges should be considered account-wide, but I know that if there were steps taken in this direction, I'd feel more free to play whatever characters I want (again, I'm not going to pretend that this is a feeling affecting the majority of the player base,  but it definitely affects me).

[Gravitus]

21 minutes ago, DSorrow said:

I both agree and disagree with this suggestion, and I'm not really sure which way I'm leaning. Let's look at some of the (IMO) biggest pros and cons:

 

Pros:

• even if you don't badge hunt, getting accolade powers one every character is kind of boring because it forces you to repeat specific content so avoiding this might be nice
• some badges can't be earned "naturally" on many characters (e.g. healing badges on a Scrapper) so it would even out some disparity between classes

Cons:

• a sweeping change like this would devalue badging if the required badge values weren't adjusted: what are reasonable adjustments (5x, 10x, other?) and how to deal with badges already earned?
• it might kill many TFs, pretty much nobody would run stuff like Synapse if you only had to do it once per account

In the end I'd say the cons are too big to do this. Maybe the devs could look at showing an "account badges" type of counter besides the current badge count, but that would most likely be pretty difficult to implement.

I don’t think it would “devalue the badges”  you still have to put in the time and effort regardless to get said badge and what fun is it to have to duplicate that effort for something you’ve already earned to have to earn again? 

 

I doubt folks quit doing TFs. I seem to have no problem forming them with folks who have already done the TF on a toon.

 

At the very least I would want to transfer badges you get from story arcs and accolade powers . Playing through the games story once is punishment enough   Lol. 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Gravitus

[DSorrow]

4 minutes ago, cbr7598 said:

I wonder if the right move here is to sort of borrow a page from how WoW does this - the majority of achievements in that game are account-wide, but some are not. I think the balance might be different for CoH, but the same idea might work. I'm honestly not sure which badges should be considered account-wide, but I know that if there were steps taken in this direction, I'd feel more free to play whatever characters I want (again, I'm not going to pretend that this is a feeling affecting the majority of the player base,  but it definitely affects me).

If it were up to me, I'd draw the line at badges rewarded for specific activities, like TFs and such so that they wouldn't die out. Then again, if everything else was account wide I'm not sure how many character specific badges would be left behind and we'd still be left with the problem of adjusting badge requirements. 

 

It's not really a huge problem for me as I'm not a badge hunter (well, not yet at least), but on the other hand at least part of the reason why I'm not hunting badges is that I don't feel like picking a main character when there are several characters I enjoy pretty much equally.

[Gravitus]

8 minutes ago, cbr7598 said:

I'm on the fence too.

 

I do agree that account-wide badges might potentially de-value certain activities and that's a definite concern. At the same time, I sometimes feel restricted (perhaps just me though) to playing my main for badges instead of playing any character for badges. 

 

I wonder if the right move here is to sort of borrow a page from how WoW does this - the majority of achievements in that game are account-wide, but some are not. I think the balance might be different for CoH, but the same idea might work. I'm honestly not sure which badges should be considered account-wide, but I know that if there were steps taken in this direction, I'd feel more free to play whatever characters I want (again, I'm not going to pretend that this is a feeling affecting the majority of the player base,  but it definitely affects me).

Absolute yes! I also feel more restricted to my main because of this .  

[Gravitus]

6 minutes ago, DSorrow said:

If it were up to me, I'd draw the line at badges rewarded for specific activities, like TFs and such so that they wouldn't die out. Then again, if everything else was account wide I'm not sure how many character specific badges would be left behind and we'd still be left with the problem of adjusting badge requirements. 

 

It's not really a huge problem for me as I'm not a badge hunter (well, not yet at least), but on the other hand at least part of the reason why I'm not hunting badges is that I don't feel like picking a main character when there are several characters I enjoy pretty much equally.

Seems like it would be fair to say the badge system as it sits currently has discouraged you from badge hunting.

 

You seem to have the same concerns we do as badge hunters.

 

What if we made it to where “team badges” TFs etc. are not account wide and everything else is?

Edited August 22, 2019 by Gravitus

[DSorrow]

12 minutes ago, Gravitus said:

Seems like it would be fair to say the badge system as it sits currently has discouraged you from badge hunting.

Well, that's only one part of it. Back in the day I had a massive badge collection on my main and I was really committed to badging. The more impactful reasons include:

• not being a part of any badge hunter/TF community so to say, I mostly play with a RL friend or then just random people
• at least closer to the launch of Homecoming I was really skeptical of how long it was going to last so I didn't focus on long term goals like badge hunting
• I've had other priorities like leveling up alts and building a bankroll
• I value being a completionist much less than I did almost a decade ago

And only then we get to the fact that I don't really have a main character. I'm closing in on the saturation point for 50s (one 50 for pretty much any role) so after that I'm probably starting to focus on the end game stuff. For example, none of my characters have more than one T4 at the moment only because it hasn't been a priority for me, much like badging. 

 

Don't get me wrong, though. I'd definitely like most badges being shared between characters, but I think there are at least two things I'd want to consider:

• where do we draw the line?
• what's the opinion of the people with 1000+ badges right now?

My biggest badge collection right now is maybe 300 badges, a number you can easily achieve in one evening by getting exploration badges so badges becoming devalued doesn't affect me at all: I haven't put any effort towards getting them. Basically the two sides I can see to the change: maybe it will vitalize the badging community by lowering the threshold to join, maybe it'll make some already invested people pissed off. If the latter is true, is it a reasonable cost for the former?

[Marine X]

On a related Note, I was wondering if anything is planned to make Unattainable Badges Attainable. These would be all the Veteran Badges, VIP Badges, Purchase Badges, Badges for events from early in the games History, Anniversary Badges. I was looking at Paragon Wiki and there are a bunch of badges that will never be available on Homecoming unless how they are awarded is reworked. Some could easily be placed in Kallisti Wharf as exploration badges, which would help bring some traffic there in the form of badge hunters, or as Accomplishment Badges for things only Possible on Homecoming, such as some applied to Base Building.

 

As far as Global Badges, I don't know how I feel about that, certainly would make sense to award Anniversary Badges to all Toons on an Account since that is how it was done on Live, but the Accolade, Accomplishment and Achievement Badges, I don't think that would be good because those are tied to personal stats, but maybe Exploration badges because it takes a lot of time to get them all and gets boring if you feel you need to do it over and over.

[PaxArcana]

I would be okay with Exploration and History badges being Global.

I think the badges for doing things, though (other than just "go to X location and maybe click on a plaque), should stay per-character.  TFs, missions, trials, all of those should not become Global, IMO.

[Burnt Toast]

No thanks... badges are reflective of what THAT specific character has done. Badges are tied to accolades (even exploration ones) and thus should have to be earned specifically for that character. 

[Gravitus]

1 hour ago, DSorrow said:

Well, that's only one part of it. Back in the day I had a massive badge collection on my main and I was really committed to badging. The more impactful reasons include:

• not being a part of any badge hunter/TF community so to say, I mostly play with a RL friend or then just random people
• at least closer to the launch of Homecoming I was really skeptical of how long it was going to last so I didn't focus on long term goals like badge hunting
• I've had other priorities like leveling up alts and building a bankroll
• I value being a completionist much less than I did almost a decade ago

And only then we get to the fact that I don't really have a main character. I'm closing in on the saturation point for 50s (one 50 for pretty much any role) so after that I'm probably starting to focus on the end game stuff. For example, none of my characters have more than one T4 at the moment only because it hasn't been a priority for me, much like badging. 

 

Don't get me wrong, though. I'd definitely like most badges being shared between characters, but I think there are at least two things I'd want to consider:

• where do we draw the line?
• what's the opinion of the people with 1000+ badges right now?

My biggest badge collection right now is maybe 300 badges, a number you can easily achieve in one evening by getting exploration badges so badges becoming devalued doesn't affect me at all: I haven't put any effort towards getting them. Basically the two sides I can see to the change: maybe it will vitalize the badging community by lowering the threshold to join, maybe it'll make some already invested people pissed off. If the latter is true, is it a reasonable cost for the former?

I went ahead and edited my OP to leave team Badges alone. (Such as taskforces) This would address the only potential negative I can foresee.

 

as for the other badges I think they should be global.  There is absolutely zero pros to having to re-earn a badge you can get solo.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Gravitus