IIRC, many of them were just stat boosts like +5% health or +10% Mental Resitance, though some were moderate damage abilities.

Yeah, account-based unlocks are something I always wanted.

I made the mistake of my original badge character being a Spines/Regen scrapper. Okay AoE, good survivability, totally and utterly bleh at taking down single hard targets.

So after playing a few more characters that I liked the feel of more, I essentially had to start from scratch.

There's also the prospect of power sets released later, and thus characters who become someone's main being unable to get time-sensative badges as well.

Eh.. costume unlocks being account based, I like. But powers? Character based. I think it can be abused WAY too much by getting all the badges on one toon, having it apply to all, and then being ahead of most players on new toons in both PvP and PvE scenarios. Dealing a bit more damage than usual? Looks like someone's got threat taken from the tank. A science based being able to use a magical bolt? Concept breaking, much?

That'd be fine as you couldn't do it whenever. Also, I'm sure time-based would also be costume pieces anyway.. or emotes.. or powers that don't do much besides be like"WOW That looked cool!"

GFN wrote:

Eh.. costume unlocks being account based, I like. But powers? Character based. I think it can be abused WAY too much by getting all the badges on one toon, having it apply to all, and then being ahead of most players on new toons in both PvP and PvE scenarios. Dealing a bit more damage than usual? Looks like someone's got threat taken from the tank. A science based being able to use a magical bolt? Concept breaking, much?

That's assuming there even *are* accolade powers in CoT. Who's to say they wouldn't be switched off in PvP? As for PvE, is it really going to be any different from running with a higher level character exemplared down? For the last point, not everyone cares about their concept, and even those that do could have a very good reason story wise to have a "magical bolt" on their super-science accident character.

(Edit to avoid double post)
This would probably be an all or nothing item. Either the badges are unlocked account wide or by character, not mixed & matched.

Someone may have said this before me but make the accolades do something like permanent HP and energy/endurance/mana/whatever the blue bar is increase along with like some powers or something, not over the top god like powers but like a unique hold or a ranges attack that can debuff a target a little.

GH wrote:

Also discussed on other threadhttp://cityoftitans.com/forum/musings-badge-addict
There has to be a mix. Well there doesn't.. every badge could be character only but the CoX mixed method worked for me.
...snip...

I had to cut the quote short because this got bigger than I planned, so I'll just address by paragraph..

1. Honestly, I do not thing the achievements should give you anything other than bragging rights and titles to use. I do grant that, yes, *if* we did have something akin to accolade powers it would have to be tracked by account. The leader boards would not be broken. It is not that "every character" has the badge it is that "You" have the badge. Now, having all your characters feeding in can lead to a quite full bottom tier on the rankings, but there will be plenty of competition on the upper tiers to fill in the harder, more involved badges.

2. Day jobs would not have worked as originally designed, that does not mean they could not have worked if designed around account-based achievements. Lets take a look at the day job badge. We all know how it worked. In the account wide system it would have worked like this, the badge for a given day job would be given the first time a single character accumulated 30 logged off in a given location. It doesn't matter how many people you park in a police station for the achievement, but as soon as one hit the 30 day mark you would get the achievement, however the benefit would only go to the one who achieved it. If you want the benefit on multiple characters they would have to unlock it again. If this sounds too complicated, it really isn't. In GW2 crafting works this way; you will only receive an achievement for the first character to reach say level 100 tailor, but if you want another character to tailor something, you will have to learn and train the skill. All the XP rewards are achieved again, but the achievement is "done" for the account.

3. First of all, bear in mind, there is only one server. You may have multiple accounts (plenty of CoH players did), but then I'm not advocating linking achievements across accounts. If the TF (or even badge mission) was fun, had good tangible rewards (XP, Money, salvage, merits) I would run it again. If it wasn't I'd only run it once and forget it. For example, I loved the ITF for many reasons. I would run it on any character lvl 35 or over if asked. I didn't care about the fact that I got the badge, I didn't even care about the merits or getting costume pieces unlocked, I just wanted to run it. If anything account-based achievements remove repetition of whatever content you personally don't like, whether it's fighting a certain faction, a mission arc, even a part of the city you'd rather avoid. "extending the thinking" to other awards doesn't really apply (although I would like some kind of account based storage to move money and stuff between characters, but that's for another thread). as I said in the first point, it is not that all of your characters have earned the achievement, it's that *you* have earned it. It doesn't matter whether you used a single character or fifty to rack up 1000 achievements, its that you as a player invested the time and effort to get a large amount.

4. So, yeah I am pretty much the opposite opinion, 100% account based if possible. This is far from a make or break issue for me. I will play the game no matter which system the devs end up going with. I hope nothing I wrote here is taken in offense, I just wanted to offer my own opinions on the issue.

If I had my way with this new game I'd make it so there were NO account based badges/achievements. I roleplay individual characters who earn their own individual rewards. To use a D&D example when one of my characters earns a +5 sword it doesn't mean that every other character I've ever rolled up automatically gets the benefit of one as well. But don't worry - I'm pretty sure the Devs won't be as strict about the "no account based" concept as I'd like. ;)

Seriously though I would actually prefer the Devs of CoT to break out badges/achievements into two distinct groups: Account based and Character based. What I mean by this is that I want to see the "meta" account badges (like anniversary and holiday badges) kept in their own grouping separate from the "individual" character badges (like defeat and day job badges) so there's a clear distinction between what you did with an individual character versus what you've done as a human player playing and/or logging into a MMO. This way it'll be easier for the Devs to let things like holiday badges count as a meta-badges (that technically appear on every character you own) just so that people don't have to log in every alt just to get those on "every" character. Badges like that have nothing to do with what an individual character does - that's the real distinction that needs to be more clearly maintained in this new game.

Mendicant wrote:

I'd say that time-limited unlocks, like logging in during a holiday, should be account based.

I would like to see certain badges/costume unlocks be account based, such as Anniversary and certain holiday ones. Badges/costume pieces that come from completing story arcs and TFs etc. should be character based though.

I mean if a character has never done a particular TF (or whatever the mirror will be in CoT) why should that character have the badge/costume? And this is coming from a rather dedicated badge collector in CoH.

Yeah, account based would be things that aren't really relatable to the game world. Like anything involving game mechanics.

"Deal 1 million points of Fire Damage"
"Heal 1 Million points of damage"
"Take 1 million points of damage"
"Work off 1 million points of XP debt"
Etc

And I would think the sort of meta-game badges that are a bit odd, or going around typical mechanics, like the Master of (TF) and (Trial) sets of badges were in CoH.

Something that would be readily trackable in the game-world rather than the game browser I think might make for things to have on a per-character basis. Defeating (x) members of enemy factions, for example.

Or getting the complete badge for a story arc or task force.

Though I think anything that awards a costume piece should be account wide.

I hated having to wait forever to get the Roman and Vanguard armor pieces, and that I had to peck away at the amount of Vanguard pieces slowly. Until the packs came out the made it so I didn't have to do that any more.

That way if you have a character that just wouldn't be the same without a certain costume option, if you've already done that, you can get the option right from the beginning.

Mendicant wrote:

Rezelius wrote:
Mendicant wrote:
I'd say that time-limited unlocks, like logging in during a holiday, should be account based.

I would like to see certain badges/costume unlocks be account based, such as Anniversary and certain holiday ones. Badges/costume pieces that come from completing story arcs and TFs etc. should be character based though.
I mean if a character has never done a particular TF (or whatever the mirror will be in CoT) why should that character have the badge/costume? And this is coming from a rather dedicated badge collector in CoH.

Pretty much what I was thinking. To simplify it a little, consider having 2 categories: Achievements and Badges.
Achievements are account-based and are for things like 'Logged in during the 10 year anniversary' or 'Created one character of each category".
Badges would be character-based and are for things like 'Completed the ePunk story arc' or 'Reached level 20'.
Shorter: Achievements are given for things the player accomplishes. Badges are given for things the character accomplishes.

Please note my every comment is IMHO and at no time meant to offend anyone...

I think these guys make a lot of sense, as do most of you after having already hashed this out pretty thoroughly.
Some deeds belong to an account, some to a character. In summary, if it is cosmetic (costume parts, etc) then it's account specific, if it is a mechanic benefit (power of any kind), character specific. The only exception to this I can see is perhaps benefits from veteran type rewards those are clearly account specific. A holiday reward might give costume parts to an account but also some special ability to only the character/s that did the deed.

I'm not sure how difficult it will be to "track" any of this data, but I think mapping out what belongs to an account versus a character should be rather simple compared to many other aspects of this game.

Pleonast wrote:

I hope the badges, etc, are all account unlocked. The player is more important than the character.

Obviously a human player is more "important" than any game character. But when was the last time you rolled up a new character for a Dungeons and Dragons PnP game and gave him some kind of special magical bonus just because a character you played a few years ago earned that bonus in a different campaign?

The fact that you have multiple characters under one "account" is an artificial construct that allows a computer-based MMO to better organize your characters for payment purposes. It doesn't automatically mean your characters should be able to share ANYTHING other than the fact you're the human being making them do things inside a game.

Our devs have not come to any conclusion over personal v. account badges, but I personally feel there both have their place.

The question every badge should ask is, who is being rewarded... the player or their avatar?

Unfortunately, that WOULD imbalance things if there were more than 100 badges. Remember, on the CoH Forums there was a thread titled "1200 Club Represent!" for people who had collected at least 1200 in-game badges. Even at +1 hit point per badge ... that can seriously add up and create a game of HAVES vs HAVE NOTS (particularly in any kind of PvP context). So I would be ... leery ... of offering such a bonus on an open ended basis, in part because it could (fairly easily) wind up being something where it ultimately grants over +100% hit points to a character, which then just becomes an absolute nightmare to try and balance the game for.

I was referring to a 1st level character to starting out with 1,000 hit points. While 50th level with 50,000 hit point those 1,200 hit points is barely a 3% Increase. A level 1 character trying to get all those badges probably wont stay level 1 for long. (;

Doctor October wrote:

I did like it when they added the smart progress bars though, so you knew how close you were to earning whatever.

omg seriously yes.. did you kill 10 snakes? probably.. 10 skuls? maybe.. I think I did.. 10 pirates? Well.. I must have done right? Well there's this 10 skuls, 10 snake, 10 pirate and 10 ghost accolade. Guess which one you are missing.. no, go on, guess.

The progress bars were a godsend, the visual element for being less than or over half way on something was very often the inspiration for going getting the rest of it.

GH wrote:

omg seriously yes.. did you kill 10 snakes? probably.. 10 skuls? maybe.. I think I did.. 10 pirates? Well.. I must have done right? Well there's this 10 skuls, 10 snake, 10 pirate and 10 ghost accolade. Guess which one you are missing.. no, go on, guess.

LOL!! So true.

Redlynne wrote:

Unfortunately, that WOULD imbalance things if there were more than 100 badges. Remember, on the CoH Forums there was a thread titled "1200 Club Represent!" for people who had collected at least 1200 in-game badges. Even at +1 hit point per badge ... that can seriously add up and create a game of HAVES vs HAVE NOTS (particularly in any kind of PvP context). So I would be ... leery ... of offering such a bonus on an open ended basis, in part because it could (fairly easily) wind up being something where it ultimately grants over +100% hit points to a character, which then just becomes an absolute nightmare to try and balance the game for.

I agree - the bad could add up pretty fast. I DID however LOVE the Accolade bonuses and powers from CoH - hopefully we see something similar in this game as well.

As for Character vs Account badges - what kinds of things would you get an Account badge for? Hmmm....number of max level characters (1/5/10/20/30, etc), total amount of cash store purchases, length of subscription, number of hours played, number of bug reports filed? lol.