Unheralded in City of Heroes Issue 16, some of the more insane badge grinds were toned down. Some were cut in half, some had a 0 lopped off the end, and a couple added more enemies that count towards earning them. This is a good thing: do not encourage your players to leave the computer on overnight in a low-damage perma-mez situation, for several nights, to earn a badge. That would be aberrant gameplay. Which I have done on a few characters…
I approve of making badges/achievements/deeds/trophies/accomplishments more about exploring and doing a variety of things, less of making them about grinding.
: Zubon
Amen to that. But it is also us players who have to send a message to devs that they cannot get away with such cheap & lazy content extenders of questionable value.
Because no matter how ridiculous and often plain idiotic some “achievements” are, some players even argue this gives them special value.
IMO this achievement trend started out as a nice idea, by now it is only an “achievement: did this crap, grinded that crap – spammed it on twitter, too!” abomination. Give players more options and things to do, without trying to add a progress bar and quest style to-do list to every imaginable and (near) possible player activity, it is an immersion breaker for me and puts me really off.
There’s an Achievement in CO for killing 5000 Burnside Ghosts. Burnside Ghosts are a faction you only encounter at level 10-12 or so in one tiny area of the desert. You will probably kill 100 or so questing normally there. Only 4900 enemies you’ve outlevelled left to go…
To make things worse, this achievement unlocks a costume piece, making it even more attractive to certain OCD players. The costume piece is a transparent cowboy hat.
I really like the term “aberrant gameplay”.
Leese… damn, I was hoping you just encountered more of those ghosts later on when leveling…
Well, costume piece aside, many of the CoH badges were so high because they were SUPPOSED TO be the hallmarks of ridiculous extremes. Roughly 60% of the badges could be obtained through regular gameplay, another 30% through a bit more little concentrated effort, and the last 10% were to be the ones that sparks exclamations “OMG- you actually EARNED THAT?” that are part awe and part concern for the person’s mental health.
It’s kinda like if they had a badge for taking down 10 Rikti Destroyers (the big ships that fly overhead, take 40 heroes to defeat in the short time they’re there, and offer no XP and no reward save bragging rights). It’s an achievement, yes, but one that few are expected to waste their time getting.
Alas, they don’t offer a badge for that because they’ve since learned the determination of completionist mindset. People are weird like that.
(Full Disclosure: I’ve been on two takedown teams, 8 total destroyed. )