You may be interested in [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/what-will-make-subscription-worth-buying]this thread about subscriptions[/url].

Beautiful Maddie wrote:

[...] the players that had f2p accounts got everything we saved for the last 5 years as their subscribers

Gangrel wrote:

As soon as you start putting in exclusive "system rewards" in there, you start to get the feel of "Pay 2 Win" even if it is only P2W on the surface and actually *isn't*.

I totally hate the concept of "permanent exclusivity" in games. Here's what I mean by that: Let's say a given game has been around for 5 years. Obviously a player who's been playing it since launch is going to have more "toys" than the player who just started yesterday. But ultimately I think there should be a way for the new player to get everything the old-timer has, even if that means the new player has to pay extra for those things or maybe has to do extra things in the game to get those "toys" the old-timer didn't have to.

One of the major reasons I usually don't start playing any game that's been around for awhile is that there's usually no realistic way for a new player like me to ever "catch up" to having all the special permanently exclusive bonuses (like beta vanity pets, one-time badges, etc.). Even though these rewards seem cool they actually serve as a barrier to keep newer players from ever wanting to start to play.

I would like CoT to avoid (as much as possible) having a bunch of permanently exclusive benefits that you could get only if you were here years before someone else. My ego doesn't need to be stroked so hard that I must permanently have more "toys" than anyone else who might be newer than I am.

Radiac wrote:

I have to disagree with the sentiment expressed in the original post. I feel that if they're going to be charging people money to download/install the game in the first place, they really need to encourage new players to join, not just reward loyalty with exclusive stuff that only the entrenched "old boys and girls network" can access. Permanent in-game stuff like costume pieces, etc should not, in my opinion, become "limited time offer, get them while supplies last" type stuff, because that only prohibits you from offering it to new people who didn't have the money for it or the inclination to get it the first time, and unlike the McRibwich or foil promotional Magic cards, this is stuff that doesn't cost money to manufacture in small batches and ship across the world, you just make it, and there it is in the game forever, as much of it as you want. As an 8 year subscriber of CoX it never bothered me that they were offering the vet rewards to newbies. I mean, they're not taking that stuff AWAY from the vets, so what's so bad about giving it to new players to encourage new people to play? The more the merrier, I say.

Exactly. I'm not against having "exclusive" things in games like this - I just don't like the idea of things being PERMANENTLY exclusive, especially when those things tend to negatively discriminate against newer players.

For instance I really liked the idea that the CoT Kickstarter introduced of having things being "exclusive for one year or four Issues". Being able to have something special that someone else can't have for ONE WHOLE YEAR should be more than enough time for anyone. After that if a newer player (a player I might add I'll probably never personally see or be affected by at all) wants it then more power to them. More than likely that newer player would have to pay real money for it, which would only help the game I care about - why on earth would I not want new players spending extra money here?

I don't have a really strong opinion about exclusive rewards, but I do kinda see the OP's point. I think it comes down to being very clear about the conditions of the reward and sticking to them. If a reward is stated as being granted exclusively for time subscribed but is then later given to others who are willing to pony up extra cash, that's not fair to the folks who earned it according to the original rules. If a company gives its employees a watch, say, for working there for 20 years, a new employee can also get that watch. All they have to do is work there for 20 years. That's the deal as stated. I was never able to get the 1st Year Anniversary badge (Celebrant) in CoX because I didn't start playing till after the 1st year, but I was ok with that because I didn't meet the criteria. Simple as that.

However, I take Lothic's point about how this might dissuade some newer players. Which means to me that a game just has to be clear from the outset what the rules are. As Lothic points out, some KS rewards were clearly stated to be "temporarily exclusive" while others were defined as permanently so (see Bright Lights Big City). I think the key to avoid being unfair to the playerbase is to be careful and sparing with exclusive rewards, set out the rules clearly, and then stick to these definitions and avoid altering the deal. ("Pray I don't alter it any further.")

Cinnder wrote:

I don't have a really strong opinion about exclusive rewards, but I do kinda see the OP's point. I think it comes down to being very clear about the conditions of the reward and sticking to them. If a reward is stated as being granted exclusively for time subscribed but is then later given to others who are willing to pony up extra cash, that's not fair to the folks who earned it according to the original rules. If a company gives its employees a watch, say, for working there for 20 years, a new employee can also get that watch. All they have to do is work there for 20 years. That's the deal as stated. I was never able to get the 1st Year Anniversary badge (Celebrant) in CoX because I didn't start playing till after the 1st year, but I was ok with that because I didn't meet the criteria. Simple as that.
However, I take Lothic's point about how this might dissuade some newer players. Which means to me that a game just has to be clear from the outset what the rules are. As Lothic points out, some KS rewards were clearly stated to be "temporarily exclusive" while others were defined as permanently so (see Bright Lights Big City). I think the key to avoid being unfair to the playerbase is to be careful and sparing with exclusive rewards, set out the rules clearly, and then stick to these definitions and avoid altering the deal. ("Pray I don't alter it any further.")

I'm not necessarily against the idea of "sticking to the rules" as far as how these things are established in games like this. Like your 1st Year Anniversary badge example I'd agree that based on how that badge was originally offered that you didn't "meet the requirement" for it so you shouldn't have been able to get it at a later date.

My point is that the idea of having any rewards that work like the CoH Anniversary badges did (ones that would by definition be unobtainable by newer players) are fundamentally flawed and unacceptable in the first place. My contention is that a new game like CoT could have been clever enough to come up with a wide range of rewards that didn't have any "one time windows" associated with them. Unfortunately CoT already missed its chance to strictly do that by offering the "Kickstarter" badge that presumably will be unobtainable by anyone else in the future.

So I'm not against following the rules once they are set in stone - I'm just for making sure the rules won't discriminate against newer players before they are established.

Cinnder wrote:

Lothic wrote:
My point is that the idea of having any rewards that work like the CoH Anniversary badges did (ones that would by definition be unobtainable by newer players) are fundamentally flawed and unacceptable in the first place.

I probably don't need to do this, cuz I expect you'll understand, but just in case I'll restate that I don't have a strong feeling one way or another about this kind of badge. I want to be clear I'm not arguing, but trying to understand the objection.
What if the devs want to use badges as a reward in order to increase participation in specific scheduled events? To get more people to log on during holiday events, expansion launches, or for specific load tests -- like the badge (that I can't seem to find on ParagonWiki) they gave us for logging into Infinity when they were testing increased server capability? Don't those have to be available only in a specific window in order to achieve their purpose? Or would you suggest some other way of encouraging such participation?

The CoH Holiday badges were available every year - if you missed them one year you had a chance to get them again. A badge for special beta testing or expansion launches could be generically called "Beta Tester" or "Launch Day" and be available every time special beta testing or expansion launch events occur. Even the "Anniversary badges" could easily be morphed into "Character Birthday" badges so that eventually anyone could have recognition for their X year old characters if they played long enough.

I hope you get my point here: There's really no reason ANY badge would ever have to be made to be strictly "one time only" based on a specific calendar date or event. It may take some extra creativity but it would be far from impossible to do.

P.S. The badge you may have been thinking of was [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Bug_Hunter]Bug Hunter[/url], which had the dubious disctinction of being the only subjectively awarded badge in CoH based solely on the whims of the Devs. Despite its questionable method of reward it at least had a generic name so that it could be applied to all sorts of events/situations.

Lothic wrote:

Unfortunately CoT already missed its chance to strictly do that by offering the "Kickstarter" badge that presumably will be unobtainable by anyone else in the future.

I'm of a split mind on that one. On the one hand, it is a badge that will not be atainable by players who missed the KS, but on the other as a backer (don't let the lack of a “K” fool you, I'm the other half of a Dynamic Duo) I do want some recognition of that fact in game.

Quote:

The CoH Holiday badges were available every year - if you missed them one year you had a chance to get them again. A badge for special beta testing or expansion launches could be generically called "Beta Tester" or "Launch Day" and be available every time special beta testing or expansion launch events occur. Even the "Anniversary badges" could easily be morphed into "Character Birthday" badges so that eventually anyone could have recognition for their X year old characters if they played long enough.

That's a great idea on how to handle limited time badges without badge-blocking newer players.

Cinnder wrote:

I hear what you're saying, but if a badge like "Beta Tester" (just to look at the one example) were available on multiple occasions, doesn't that dilute its usefulness, if we assume the purpose is to get a large number of people to log on at once?

I see your concern about the possibility of "diluting" the usefulness of awarding badges in these situations. But I honestly believe you're ascribing too much significance to the idea of needing unique one-time only badges for every single case.

To begin with over the course of 8.5 years CoH never actually awarded -any- badge to all testers along the lines of a "Beta Tester" anyway. There were no badges in the game at all until Issue 2 (so thankfully nothing equivalent to a pre-launch Kickstarter type badge) and there were only a handful of "[url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Praetorian_Accolade_Badges#Perk_and_Loyalty_Badges]badges for buying expansion X, Y or Z[/url]" badges. Basically CoH for the most part wisely minimized the "do something outside the main game to get a badge" badges.

People who like to beta test usually beta test regardless of needing a carrot like a badge regardless.

Cinnder wrote:

If the majority of players log on for the first test, then there is no further incentive, badge-wise, for these players to log in on the next occasion. Such a badge would fire most of its payload on the first event, if you see what I mean, and I could see the same happening for holiday events, etc.

CoH already established the precedent that all of its older Holiday badges were available every year. The method it used to "keep people coming back" was that in later years they added new badges to many of the events so even if you already had all the badges from previous years you were still motivated to get the newer ones.

But focusing back on "rewards for beta testing" I think it’s pretty obvious that there's all sorts of non-unique things you could give players to get them to participate. Badges are simply bad for this kind of thing specifically because they lead to the trap of becoming "one-time only".

Cinnder wrote:

I like the idea of character birthdays, but that wouldn't be the same thing as encouraging a lot of people to log on the game's birthday. (I have no idea if that was their purpose in the anniversary badges; if not, it does seem just like a flawed design decision as you suggest.)

I'm sure it's not going to surprise you to hear that I hated the "must log on within a certain period of time to get a badge" concept. This is why having badges for "character birthdays" makes more sense because the game would simply keep track of the given date and reward the badge to the character the next time it's logged in. No need to log in on the exact date - it just happens automatically.

The main annoyance of the Anniversary badges was having to log on every single character to get them because they were not account-based. My "character birthday" idea avoids all that and also avoids the more important problem of screwing over newer players. Sure a player who's been playing for five years might always have characters that are older than a player who just started yesterday. But at least that new player will always have the POTENTIAL to get all those badges eventually. Missed Anniversary badges were forever beyond a new player's reach.

Cinnder wrote:

Maybe there are other incentives to encourage specific event participation, but it would seem to me that even a non-badge reward would have to be either unique to the event or cumulative to be an effective incentive, and I think either of those would still fail your test for newer players, correct? Is there any incentive you can think of that would be of equal value for each event (i.e. a way of encouraging someone to participate in subsequent events after they got the reward) without being exclusive to that event?

(I'm not really sure how significant an issue it was for the devs to try to encourage participation in a limited window, so this may not be something that would be required very often, but I think it's interesting to consider in case the occasion does arise in CoT.)

Again I'm not sold on the idea that awards must always have some kind of unique connection to a specific one-time event. I think this leads back to the more fundamental misconception that something described as "exclusive" means it will be PERMANENTLY exclusive forever. I think MMO players in general have gotten too used to assuming that exclusive rewards automatically imply they would (and even should) be exclusive forever. I disagree with that notion.

Bottomline there are always alternatives to "one-time only" awards: Things like in-game store credit, free t-shirts or other real-world prizes, a choice of vanity pets (that may even be "temporarily" exclusive for some period of time), head-start access to new features, etc. All these things again avoid screwing over new players in the long run.

Cinnder wrote:

P.S. Thanks, but it wasn't Bug Hunter. It was a badge awarded when they were testing the newly-increased server capacity and asked as many people as possible to log onto -- no, wait, it wasn't Infinity; it was Freedom server! Rats: that still doesn't help me find it on ParagonWiki. The only reference I can find is in the 3rd post on this thread (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=9954.0) but it doesn't tell us what it was called.

The only other badge that ever came close to be being awarded for logging into and/or "switching" servers was the [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Passport_Badge]Passport[/url] badge.

The original idea behind the Passport badge was that you would get it if you transferred a character from one server to another. But that concept was conceived literally years before server transfers actually became a reality. In the meantime the Devs decided to "repurpose" the badge to be related to people transferring their NA server characters over to the EU servers. This is why theoretically no NA character was ever supposed to have Passport, but in reality a very tiny handful of NA players got awarded Passport via some kind of bug/accident and were allowed to keep it.

As I said before there was never really actually -any- badge that was awarded for beta testing other than Bug Hunter. There were rumors that such badges existed in the pigg files, but if there were they were never used.

syntaxerror37 wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Unfortunately CoT already missed its chance to strictly do that by offering the "Kickstarter" badge that presumably will be unobtainable by anyone else in the future.
I'm of a split mind on that one. On the one hand, it is a badge that will not be atainable by players who missed the KS, but on the other as a backer (don't let the lack of a “K” fool you, I'm the other half of a Dynamic Duo) I do want some recognition of that fact in game.

I understand there's a certain amount of "coolness factor" to being able to show off something like a pre-launch badge. But as a long time CoH badger I saw the negative ramifications of people getting screwed by those sorts of things as well.

I was lucky enough to have started playing CoH from essentially Day One - I had badging characters who had every "limited/one-time only" badge the game ever offered. But I had good friends in the game who, through no fault of their own, started playing the game some time after the start of CoH.

Some of them became avid badge hunters but were forever screwed because they weren't around to get some of the earliest one-time only badges. It was an annoying sticking point that dogged them for years and it ultimately casued several of them to quit the game because they knew they would never be able to "catch up" to other older players. It was an unfortunate sitution that was entirely avoidable with a little better foresight on the part of the Devs.

So yes while it might be nice to "show off" if you're in a game from the beginning it also permanently relegates newer players into an almost "second class" limbo that doesn't really help anyone.

syntaxerror37 wrote:

Quote:
The CoH Holiday badges were available every year - if you missed them one year you had a chance to get them again. A badge for special beta testing or expansion launches could be generically called "Beta Tester" or "Launch Day" and be available every time special beta testing or expansion launch events occur. Even the "Anniversary badges" could easily be morphed into "Character Birthday" badges so that eventually anyone could have recognition for their X year old characters if they played long enough.
That's a great idea on how to handle limited time badges without badge-blocking newer players.

Thanks. Again I think with a little cleverness pretty much any "one-time only" award/badge can be avoided in general.

syntaxerror37 wrote:

Now, I will say if MWM runs another fundraiser before launch and gives the KS badge to those who missed the original kickstarter campaign I am fine with that; it does not decrease the meaning of the badge to me at all. In fact that is a much better idea than offering a second backer reward badge.

I'd agree that morphing the "Kickstarter" badge into a more general "Founder" badge that could be applied to ANY fundraising effort (Kickstarter or otherwise) might be a good idea.

But an even better alternative would have been to have made this particular "reward" non-badge based to begin with, or at least a badge that could have been generic enough that it could have been re-used at any time either before or after the game's launch.

[I'm going to respond to some specific points here for clarity's sake, but if this conversation is becoming tiresome feel free to ignore this post; it's the previous one that I'd really like to understand better.]

Lothic wrote:

I see your concern about the possibility of "diluting" the usefulness of awarding badges in these situations. But I honestly believe you're ascribing too much significance to the idea of needing unique one-time only badges for every single case.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say (and don't think I actually did) that one-time-only badges are needed in every case. Just that they have a usefulness in particular instances.

Lothic wrote:

To begin with over the course of 8.5 years CoH never actually awarded -any- badge to all testers along the lines of a "Beta Tester" anyway.

Again, my bad: I didn't mean to argue the merits of a specific "Beta Tester" badge; I just picked your first example as a random name. (But also, see the reference to the Defender of Primal Earth badge above.)

Lothic wrote:

CoH already established the precedent that all of its older Holiday badges were available every year. The method it used to "keep people coming back" was that in later years they added new badges to many of the events so even if you already had all the badges from previous years you were still motivated to get the newer ones.

That's kinda my point: once they made the holiday participation badges available retrospectively, they lost their "oomph". If the devs were trying to get more people to play during the holidays and away from competing products, knowing that "Oh I can always get that badge next year" removes the incentive (badge-wise) to log on [i]this[/i] year.

Lothic wrote:

I think this leads back to the more fundamental misconception that something described as "exclusive" means it will be PERMANENTLY exclusive forever. I think MMO players in general have gotten too used to assuming that exclusive rewards automatically imply they would (and even should) be exclusive forever. I disagree with that notion.

You've used that word "misconception" in this context before, and it always makes me uncomfortable because it implies that your preferred definition (temporarily exclusive) is the correct one. Would it not be fairer to call it "ambiguous"? Isn't the problem that the term "exclusive" on its own can mean either permanently or temporarily so, and that devs should specify which one at the outset?

Lothic wrote:

Bottomline there are always alternatives to "one-time only" awards: Things like in-game store credit, free t-shirts or other real-world prizes...

1) The problem with real world items is the increased cost for the devs: it's a lot cheaper to put together a bit of artwork and text one time for a badge that can be copied than it is to give one of these rl rewards to each participant.

2) Would not these rl rewards be subject to the same objections if they were awarded as "one time only"?

I'm with Cinnder on this one. I don't see the problem with having badges that are offered for a limited time and are exclusive. I think of badges as trophies. Some people like to have them, others don't really care. I don't have a Super Bowl Trophy. I don't have a baseball Pennant. To me it almost sounds like kids sports where everybody that participates gets the trophy whether you win or lose. Yay you! I understand that there are completionists out there and it drives them absolutely nuts that they can't complete every badge known to man because they were unable to perform or participate in some event. I'm sorry. Suck it up buttercup. Having a special badge, costume item, or title is special. People who have those accomplished something for it. As such they deserve to be rewarded for it. Didn't do it? You don't get to have the reward.

I suggest that one-time-only stuff could exist, as long as the badge hunters all agree not to consider that stuff "canon" in terms of badge collecting. Assuming you don't actually CALL these event things "badges" but something else, like "mementos" or something, it think it's okay. The complete set of canonical "Badges" per se should be limited to things that the new player CAN possibly get somehow, but events can still reward stuff that you had to be there to get.

Edit: I would also recommend that the game itself track badge hunting stats in a public way in the game overall, going by what the devs consider canonical, lest the players say "to heck with that noise, I gotz more mementos than you, so I'm counting it!"

MWM has already established that certain 'rewards', as it were, are exclusive for a limited time. Personally, I would consider a costume piece, pet, pet skin, etc. to be much more enticing than a badge. After three to six months, I very much doubt that I would care that this item would become available to everyone else.

Heck, make it an interesting and fun temporary power. I'm there.

If people will only participate in events if they can get something that those who did not, or could not, participate in those events cannot get then, I have little sympathy for them. If participating in the event itself was not special enough then, to quote Static, "I'm sorry. Suck it up buttercup."

Radiac wrote:

I suggest that one-time-only stuff could exist, as long as the badge hunters all agree not to consider that stuff "canon" in terms of badge collecting. Assuming you don't actually CALL these event things "badges" but something else, like "mementos" or something, it think it's okay. The complete set of canonical "Badges" per se should be limited to things that the new player CAN possibly get somehow, but events can still reward stuff that you had to be there to get.
Edit: I would also recommend that the game itself track badge hunting stats in a public way in the game overall, going by what the devs consider canonical, lest the players say "to heck with that noise, I gotz more mementos than you, so I'm counting it!"

When Matt Miller (a.k.a. Positron) first established the Gladiator badges in CoH he made it known that he didn't feel they were like the other "badges" in the game and that badge collectors shouldn't treat them as such. That sentiment lasted for about one millisecond before all the major badge tracking websites had the Gladiators listed in the rankings along with every other so-called "normal" badge in the game.

I guess what I'm saying with this is that if the CoT Devs still really want to give us "one-time only" rewards for things they would probably be better off not letting them be in any way, shape or form anything like "badges" at all.

Darth Fez wrote:

MWM has already established that certain 'rewards', as it were, are exclusive for a limited time. Personally, I would consider a costume piece, pet, pet skin, etc. to be much more enticing than a badge. After three to six months, I very much doubt that I would care that this item would become available to everyone else.
Heck, make it an interesting and fun temporary power. I'm there.
If people will only participate in events if they can get something that those who did not, or could not, participate in those events cannot get then, I have little sympathy for them. If participating in the event itself was not special enough then, to quote Static, "I'm sorry. Suck it up buttercup."

This is a key concept I've never really understood about the "permanent exclusivity entitlement" mindset: After a few months not only would I not care if a newer player got access to things I ALREADY had (it's not like I'm going to LOSE any of the toys I've collected) but the chances that I would even be aware of the existence of that newer player in the game is effectively 0%. How on earth can the enjoyment of other players getting access to things bother or affect you in ANY WAY whatsoever other than the perceived reductions of your imaginary e-peens?

Scott Jackson wrote:

I won't speak for Lothic, but I believe one general objection to the use of exclusives (badge or otherwise) is that the desired effect (time-sensitive participation in event P) can almost always be obtained through a different technique, with zero downsides. Your toaster example demonstrates this; it is the -free- aspect that's the draw. The customers can buy toasters anywhere (toasters are not exclusive), but this is the only place to get a free one, at least during the early sale period.

Thanks for the reply. You're right: to be more effective my example should have included some sort of toaster of which there were only 100 available.

Scott Jackson wrote:

Another general objection is that the exclusive may not be desirable to the target group of customers, and thus may require supplemental incentives to reach them. For example, giving out 100 exclusive toasters signed by Scott Jackson would only motivate my biggest fans to visit the shop, but a 50% discount on any item would attract the interest of all potential customers. Exclusive badges only attract a portion of the playerbase, unless very cleverly named or as part of a larger package of rewards.
I prefer the use of store credit bonuses, free in-game items that would otherwise require some work to obtain, costume unlock codes, temporarily boosted item drop rates, and similar non-exclusive rewards as the means to encourage participation in testing / surveys / events.

Your alternate reward suggestions make sense to me. Though, as you suggest, any reward has the potential to attract less than 100% of customers, which would suggest to me that your list of rewards plus an exclusive reward would cover all the bases.

Scott Jackson wrote:

I'm not saying that exclusive rewards are ineffective; they can be very effective if the goal is one-dimensional; purely to get X customers. However, there is usually a secondary goal - to have all the customers feel fairly treated, even if they didn't "win". The feeling of fair treatment is put at highest risk when a permanently-exclusive, untradeable, artificially-scarce digital item is used as a limited-time reward, since the customer may not get a fair shot at obtaining the item due to military duty, illness, ISP downtime...and there is absolutely no alternative allowed.

OK, I think this is getting closer to my primary question of why exclusives are seen a bad thing, because I don't see how offering everyone a chance to get something on a particular date is unfair. To use my silly example from earlier for illustrative purposes, my personal circumstances (of not being born) prevented me from attending the Gettysburg Address. That's a bummer, but I don't see anything unfair about it. I didn't meet the criteria (like being alive and in Pennsylvania at the time) so I didn't qualify. Sounds perfectly fair to me.

That's the bit that isn't computing for me: I never got upset about the badges I could never get in CoX, so I don't understand why others get upset by it. If anyone can explain the upset reaction to me, perhaps I can understand the whole argument better.

Cinnder wrote:

Scott Jackson wrote:
Another general objection is that the exclusive may not be desirable to the target group of customers, and thus may require supplemental incentives to reach them. For example, giving out 100 exclusive toasters signed by Scott Jackson would only motivate my biggest fans to visit the shop, but a 50% discount on any item would attract the interest of all potential customers. Exclusive badges only attract a portion of the playerbase, unless very cleverly named or as part of a larger package of rewards.
I prefer the use of store credit bonuses, free in-game items that would otherwise require some work to obtain, costume unlock codes, temporarily boosted item drop rates, and similar non-exclusive rewards as the means to encourage participation in testing / surveys / events.

Your alternate reward suggestions make sense to me. Though, as you suggest, any reward has the potential to attract less than 100% of customers, which would suggest to me that your list of rewards plus an exclusive reward would cover all the bases.

But now you've made the false assumption that an "exclusive" reward would automatically attract "everyone" else, or at least whatever remaining percentage non-exclusive rewards don't manage to accomplish.

I think the main disconnect here is that there's no certain way to quantify if one-time only awards are always, or even mostly, more effective than non-exclusive ones. Even if we have to agree to say something arbitrary like "one exclusive award packs the same motivational punch that two non-exclusive ones do" then what's wrong with ALWAYS choosing to go with two non-exclusive rewards?

Basically you haven't really established the actual necessity for one-time only rewards beyond "they seemed like a good idea at the time". *shrugs*

Cinnder wrote:

Scott Jackson wrote:
I'm not saying that exclusive rewards are ineffective; they can be very effective if the goal is one-dimensional; purely to get X customers. However, there is usually a secondary goal - to have all the customers feel fairly treated, even if they didn't "win". The feeling of fair treatment is put at highest risk when a permanently-exclusive, untradeable, artificially-scarce digital item is used as a limited-time reward, since the customer may not get a fair shot at obtaining the item due to military duty, illness, ISP downtime...and there is absolutely no alternative allowed.

OK, I think this is getting closer to my primary question of why exclusives are seen a bad thing, because I don't see how offering everyone a chance to get something on a particular date is unfair. To use my silly example from earlier for illustrative purposes, my personal circumstances (of not being born) prevented me from attending the Gettysburg Address. That's a bummer, but I don't see anything unfair about it. I didn't meet the criteria (like being alive and in Pennsylvania at the time) so I didn't qualify. Sounds perfectly fair to me.
That's the bit that isn't computing for me: I never got upset about the badges I could never get in CoX, so I don't understand why others get upset by it. If anyone can explain the upset reaction to me, perhaps I can understand the whole argument better.

Yeah sometimes you can't have everything you want IN REAL LIFE. But guess what? We're talking about a computer game here... a computer game no less about roleplaying fantastical beings with powers and abilities that don't exist IN REAL LIFE. Why must there be anything in such a game that couldn't be accomplishable by ANY player regardless of when they started to play?

That's the bit of your position on this that isn't "computing" for me (pun intended)...

Radiac wrote:

For the competitive badge hunter, I agree with the idea that whatever is being collected or hunted be available to everyone, somehow, some time. But there is the desire among people to have a t-shirt or button or something that says "I attended the BLANK, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" as a keepsake. I mean, in the military, they have campaign badges to represent which military campaigns you were involved in. People who joined the marines in 1990 did not get any WWII campaign insignias to wear, because they simply weren't there.
While it's true that I don't like telling newbie badge hunters that there's something they'll NEVER be able to get, I DO like the idea of being able to wear my "Rikti Invasion of 2011" t shirt, badge, memento, insignia, etc once in a while, when I want to let people know how much of a veteran pro I am at defeating Rikti.
In this regard, I submit that badge hunters are their own worst enemies, and you can't save people from themselves. I think making one set of "Badges" THE canonical set to collect, and all other "non-Badges" operate along similar principles, which are meant not to be collected by players in a competitive way but simply as a way to remember stuff you did, in the "I have in fact been there, and did in fact do that" sense.
And to ensure enforcement of this as the officially accepted badge hunting hobby, I would stipulate that the game itself keep track of these stats as the official word on who is where in terms of badges. Comparing someone who has collected a lot of old stuff from campaigns of the past to a new recruit is apples to oranges anyway so I don't think you can really expect the newbies to be able to compete, and if people are apt to do that despite the obvious flaw in the logic, that's their problem.

Ironically enough (given the position I've been arguing in this thread thus far) there have been a number of times in the past (on the old CoH forums) where I proposed the idea of separate listings for "account-based badges" and "character-based badges".

The simple distinction between these two types of badges would be that account badges are ones that are not character specific: things like anniversary badges, pre-order badges, vet badges, etc. whereas character-based badges are ones where you actually had to "play" a specific character to accomplish an in-game goal: defeat badges, TF badges, mission badges, etc.

The listing of account based badges (being the ones that are general to the player regardless of which character you're playing) would show up "linked" to any character you're logged into at the time. Obviously on the other hand a particular listing of character based badges would only show up when logged into a specific character. Thus when an old-time player creates a brand new character all of their long-time account badges will "carry over" while playing the new character because those badges aren't really tied to any given character - they are tied to the player themselves.

I feel organizing badges into these two categories addresses many long standing problems badge collectors had with the CoH system and I can only hope the CoT Devs will consider something along these lines. Regardless I would still recommend the awarding of account-based badges be kept to an absolute minimum in favor of keeping the system as character-centric as possible.

As to whether CoT badge collectors would consider only character-based badges when compiling ranking lists or count ALL badges again like they did in CoH is anybody's guess. Ideally they would consider account-based badges as "non-canonical" as you put it, but sadly I suspect that wouldn't be the case and we'd be right back where we started from.

Still sounds like a petulant child throwing a tantrum because Billy has a shiny that Timmy doesn't have and Timmy wants it, wants it NAO!! It's not fair that Billy has the shiny and Timmy can't have it! We can't all have Geese that lay golden eggs.

Well, I started typing a detailed reply, but the sheer number of times my words have been misinterpreted or misrepresented sapped my will to continue a discussion that seems to involve more passion than logic. One can type "But I never said anything of the kind" only so many times before one realises the futility of an attempt at balanced conversation. If anything smacks of "desperate" it's the need to distort the other person's words to make a point. (My sincere thanks to those that refrained from this behaviour.)

For example, I've been accused of overstating the value of exclusive rewards, which I find fascinating given that I have said only that they can be useful and never once claimed to know the magnitude of that usefulness. (In fact, I quite specifically stated that I didn't know.) Having said that, if I can return to the Defender of Primal Earth badge: Lothic correctly points out that the window for obtaining the badge was widened. This was because so many people logged on during the specified window that many players who were trying to meet the conditions of the badge were unable to get access to the game. So the devs, seeing that it was the game's fault and not the players', made the badge available for longer. Note that they didn't extend the server load test event, just the availability of the badge -- which means it was the badge, not the event, that people truly wanted. I find it hard to come up with a better example of how useful a tool such an exclusive tied-to-event badge can be.

I'll say one final time that I'm not advocating either the use or the disuse of permanently exclusive rewards. It wouldn't make much difference to me if all or none of CoT's badges were event-tied permanently-exclusives. I still don't understand why some people feel they should be able to have access to everything throughout the entire span of the game (and do get a chuckle from claims that it's the folks in favour of event-tied-permanently-exclusives who are the "entitled" ones).

However, it's not I who needs to be convinced, but MWM. So I'll wish you luck in your campaign and just suggest that you might want to tone down how important it is to get ALL the shinies, because I can't think of any argument that more strongly indicates to a developer how powerful a tool such rewards are if they ever want to... say...for example... encourage a surge in event participation.

I hit on this succinct summary of my thoughts and, it being succinct, I thought I might as well share it:

"Persistent rewards only through persistent game play. Temporary rewards/exclusivity for temporary game play."

Foradain wrote:

Cinnder wrote:
However, it's not I who needs to be convinced, but MWM. So I'll wish you luck in your campaign and just suggest that you might want to tone down how important it is to get ALL the shinies, because I can't think of any argument that more strongly indicates to a developer how powerful a tool such rewards are if they ever want to... say...for example... encourage a surge in event participation.

I'd like to thank you for this last comment, Cinnder. I would be hard pressed to find a better way to suggest to this group of devs that they may wish to take into account fairness when deciding whether or not it is necessary to skirt the edges of extortion to encourage a surge of event participation.

Come on, Foradain. Considering limited access badges is a widespread, common, accepted, and perfectly legal practice, calling it "skirting the edges of extortion" is a bit hyperbolic.

I see your point, but phrasing it in such an over-the-top way doesn't strengthen your point, it weakens it. Just say what you mean--that you think that limited badges are unfair and a bad way to encourage participation.

I personally disagree that it is unfair, but I do agree it's far from top of the list of best ways to encourage participation.

Darth Fez wrote:

One could call it a question of perception. Some people do feel that strongly about such a subject. Imagine if, instead of something like a badge, the reward were a costume piece/set, or animation, etc. I think this thread has shown that this issue is more likely to be fueled by emotion than logic. Fortunately many at MWM are former CoH players, and their number undoubtedly includes badgers, so there's every reason to hope that they'll approach the issue with more tact than a 'mere' developer.

Ok, once again, touche, Darth (STOP DOING THAT! :P).

But just to clarify what I meant, I'm pretty sure when it comes to throwing a word like extortion around--even accusing them of "skirting" it--it doesn't come down to how strongly anyone feels about it, but whether it is legal or not. And limited access badges, no matter how strongly anyone feels about it, isn't illegal.

So I'm not at all debating Foradain's point, because I'm not a badge-hunter at all (though I have been outside paywalls or totally excluded from things that I wanted in games before) and so really I have no significant input into this particular argument. I just wanted to point out to him that he wasn't really helping his argument with that.

Nuff said from me, I'm not a badge guy. I don't need no stinking badges (sorry, sorry, had to say it.)

Foradain wrote:

You do have a point, Empyrean: Even with skirting, "extortion" was too strong a word. "Pressure" would be a much better fit.

For the record, I like your posts. I like what you have to say and I'm glad you're on the forums.. And I get carried away too sometimes. Your point is valid and relevant, your verbiage just got a little extreme :). No biggie.

Honestly, could use a group hug right now. Had a rough night. You in, Foradian :P?

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