City of Heroes Mission Architect Farming

The CoH devs have decided to crack down on MA farming, specifically badge farming. To sum up their response; say bye bye to lots of current badges.

My first gut reaction was, “ugh” removing content from a game = bad. Then I started to come around a bit. Only to end up feeling a bit lied to and almost glad I am not an active badge hunting subscriber, and particularly a Mission Architect Author.  Here was my thought processes:

Did these badges encourage farming?

Sadly, yes many of them did.

Did these badges encourage people to play the game specificly play with the MA?

I believe the answer is yes; a lot.

Does farming these badges hurt the game on a whole?

Sort of. If people are only doing MA mission then they are not available to take part in other aspects of the game.

Are some of these badges worse than others?

Yes. Clearly a badge that requires 25,000 tickets will lead to farming.

So what do we do with these sorts of badges?

Ok. Fine. Some of the badges are going to have to go. Lets look at the list and pick out the worst offenders.

So there at this point I agree with Paragon Studios; some of these badges have to go away.  Where we diverge is in the list, they decided to removed 80% (no I did not do the math, simply guessed) of the badges. Including most if not all of the badges to reward authors. *boggle*

Then I read this section:

Q: Why did the Dev Choice and Hall of Famer badges get removed?

A: We realize that a lot of players worked really hard for these badges and to create content worthy of these prestigious awards. However, we want badges to be something that everyone can obtain. We also want badges to be completely within a player’s grasp, so no outside influence should affect earning these badges.

Since they do not directly address the removal of the badges for players playing your missions, you playing other players missions, and your mission achieving certain ratings, I can only assume the above answer also applies to them.

I am not even an active player and this makes me want to scream! I believe the above attitude is wrong. I think it is ok for some badges to be special marks of achievement. Rewards for taking part in producing and promoting good MA content should certainly stay in the game.

Heck with the way the CoH badge system is in place, in game hiding from the player badges and how to complete them I would say that the statement ” We also want badges to be completely within a player’s grasp, so no outside influence should affect earning these badges.” is patently FALSE.  With out access to outside sources, I doubt there are many players that would ever gain all the badges, or even a majority of them.

So my question is why the change of heart when it comes to MA author badges? I would think these are the exactly the sort of badges you would want to have in the game.

*shrug*