Born in Battle --- 500k Damage badge plz

[RubberDougie]

As a very very suicidal AOE stalker, I've only taken 700k damage to get to 50.  My Tankermind MMs (due to how suck their provoke is?) only took 350k to get to 50.

I think the 1 million damage badge we need for the accolade is excessive.   Damage farming is just a waste of electricity.  Down with big fossil fuel!!  :P

[MetaVileTerror]

While we're at it; how about readjusting all the BIG NUMBER Achievement Badges to not reflect level 50 only.

I get it that most people are just farming up to 50 in a matter of a day or two on average, but the game /does/ keep track of things like Level relative to these values, doesn't it?  I mean, I can get Patroller/Criminal at level 1, technically, and it would take roughly the same amount of work as for a level 50, no?  

(And before anyone mentions that Criminal and Patroller are Day Jobs, they're actually unique in that they don't count days offline, but instead count Patrol Experience relative to current level to determine their award conditions.)

 

Let's see . . . just some slapdash math here, to see what some other options might look like . . . 

 

1 million Damage for a Level 50, assuming a sloppy average total HP of 1,177, would take roughly 850 defeats from 100% health.

850 defeats for a level 1 would amount to roughly 86,500 Damage.  Let's err on the side of making it slightly more difficult for lower level characters to earn these badges, and make that a solid 100,000 points of Damage.

Any time the player-character's Combat Level changes, the value of Damage necessary would adjust, but the percentage completed toward the Badge would remain the same.

 

Now, I could see that as potentially having some holes in it which could result in a little potential exploitation, and so we might have to introduce a "grace period" when changing Combat Levels where no damage will count toward the badge progress.  That would suck a little, but I don't think it's terribly unreasonable from a player standpoint.  The real concern there becomes "how do you even program something like that in to the spaghetti without the risk of it unwinding all the time?"

 

Likewise for the Damage Dealt Badges that were introduced, although I've found them to be slightly less of a pain to get.

 

 

On the other hand, the Inf Badges and Debt Badges should be a bit easier to program for, since that is based on your True Level, not your Combat Level or Trained Security/Threat Level.  And considering the Inf Badges were ramped up, I think it would be especially fair to implement something like this to compensate for that.

 

It's my personal belief that we do not want to be providing any additional incentivization to "reaching level cap."  That has never been City of Heroes' strength.  I believe we should be rewarding players for taking their time and enjoying the wide variety of content the game has to offer.  There should be additional perks for playing "the long way" if we really feel that power-levelling is a problem (as I've seen many people adamantly declare).

[Autumn]

Agreed. The accolade is usually within reach at level 35 with the "Bad Luck" badge, except for this weird hoop.

[MunkiLord]

For badges like debt and damage received I'm not in favor of lowering the time it takes to get them. If they were tied to level and therefore the number was lower for lower levels, that sounds reasonable. I'm not much of a badge person, but I do enjoy when I get the ones that involve me face planting or getting hit. That being said, if they were changed so they were achieved quicker, I wouldn't throw a fit or anything. 

[Razor Cure]

Damage farming is not hard though. And it used to be WORSE. I think. ALmost certain it was 10million on Live. 10! To get it on one of my early toons, an MM, I had to respec (no alt builds back then) and full slot Rest for healing, so I could farm the damage up. It took maybe 2-3 nights doing that. But yeah, even 1 mil is a bit much, easilly if you are an AT that doesnt get hit much.

[MetaVileTerror]

Farming in general isn't "hard," but I also don't think its preferential.  

It's a hard-learned lesson, but a lot of developers learnt too late that Achievements/Badges/Trophies/whatever-you-call-'ems shouldn't be easier to acquire by an automated process in a game:  They should happen for doing things tantamount to the gameplay experience itself.  By making a Badge easier to farm than to get through healthy play validates the farming as more rewarding than playing.

[Razor Cure]

42 minutes ago, MetaVileTerror said:

Farming in general isn't "hard," but I also don't think its preferential.  

It's a hard-learned lesson, but a lot of developers learnt too late that Achievements/Badges/Trophies/whatever-you-call-'ems shouldn't be easier to acquire by an automated process in a game:  They should happen for doing things tantamount to the gameplay experience itself.  By making a Badge easier to farm than to get through healthy play validates the farming as more rewarding than playing.

I dont know about this. Sure, farming IS easier to get the badge, by far. But giving how utterly, stupidly unrealistic the badge was (500k isnt 'so' bad), farming was really the only option. 10mil damage, on an MM? Yeah right. I think my first brute only has about 750, reaching 50. So that would be like 10 times that!

[MetaVileTerror]

That's what I'm saying.  They should be adjusted so they /aren't/ utterly, stupidly unrealistic values to achieve the badges.