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Nexus Clash :: View topic - Dev Blog: Badges and what to do about them
Joined: Jan 19, 2010 Posts: 2278 Location: Charlotte's Bakery University
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2019 5:41 pm Post subject: Dev Blog: Badges and what to do about them
As the dev team has worked toward delivering the next Breath, one of the most complicated and difficult topics is CP badges. Historically this has been one of the more contentious topics in the Nexus, and not without reason, because it is a topic that requires drastic action when a new Breath happens.
When it's described that way, one might ask...
Why not just keep badge CP exactly the way it is forever?
The current badge CP mechanics introduce several concerns for the health of the Nexus community:
● Nexus is primarily a social game of factions and organized warfare, and many badges are an asocial activity. We've made recent changes to help people get some badges more naturally during normal play (items crafted for faction alchemists, pets killed for raid tanks, etc), but overall, current badge mechanics strongly incentivize isolating your characters from others for a long time and doing repetitive things.
● Current badge mechanics strongly reward player veterancy; on average, they give returning players and longstanding players an enormous advantage over new players, that sometimes adds up to hundreds of points of CP. For characters that pre-date the broad Nexus reforms of 2018-2019, they particularly reward old players who engaged in asocial and grindy activity, and favored some classes (Void Walkers) over others. Even with many grinds made easier, it's possible for some characters to have a "head start" hundreds of CP deep that would take years to catch up to.
● In conjunction with the above point, the length of the current Breath (Breath 4) has meant that we have had a very long period of time in which grinds are easy, the rewards are enormous, and there's not nearly enough other endgame content. Many or perhaps most current players have some characters with a very large pile of badge CP.
● Currently, badge CP is granted at levels 10 and 20, which makes it easier for veteran characters with legacy badges to level to maxout faster, which makes it easier for them to get to the point where they can focus on more grinds, etc.
When Breath 5 comes out, we hope to invite back as many old players as we can and attract many new players. If we leave things the way they are, those players will be entering an environment where players who stuck it out through Breath 4 have a seemingly insurmountable advantage over them. That's a huge discincentive to join or rejoin the Nexus (no one wants to be the most junior member of a gerontocracy), which would seriously threaten the continued survival of the community.
With that in mind, one might also ask...
Why not just get rid of badge CP?
Badge CP has several perks that represent good reasons to keep it around:
● In a game with a limited level cap (which is a very good thing to have) it's good for people to have forms of progression beyond maxout. Players need to feel that further character improvement is always possible.
● Badgegrinds are another form of play that keeps people involved even when they aren't involved in highly active community activities; in particular they are endgame content favored by maxed characters, which we don't have enough of.
● Badges are tied to many much-liked and iconic parts of playing Nexus, and it is the dev team's understanding that the vast majority of Nexus players to date feel that the game has explicitly or implicitly promised them some amount of CP for their badge-gathering activities.
That last one is a particularly dangerous issue. We are concerned that if we scrapped badges - or nerfed them too hard - we'd be looking at the final end of the Nexus community as the entire community would quit en masse over losing what they felt they worked for. It'd hurt the game in the eyes of returning players almost as badly, and would probably even offend new ones (would you join a game whose developers had snubbed its playerbase that hard?)
A similar case applies to Why not keep badges, but get rid of the part where they provide CP in future breaths? If we did this, breath changeovers would become immensely unpopular - possibly to the point of not being doable - because people would feel bad about losing their character progress. People are attached to their characters. Breath changeovers happen. Those are two of the best things in the Nexus, and an approach like that would put them at odds.
What does the dev team think we should do?
Not all devs hold the exact same opinions on badge grinds. However, many of the same underlying design principles have consistently recurred in all dev discussions on badge grinds:
● Badge grinds are endgame content and should not help people level. Legacy badge grind CP should be granted at maxout and no sooner.
● People should receive some amount of CP for legacy badge grinds.
● The amount of CP attainable through legacy grinds right now is immensely overpowered and should be substantially nerfed.
● Badge grinds as a feature should be something the average (new) player sees as accessible to them. As such, the rewards from grinds should be greater for early grinds than later ones; "completionism" is its own reward to some degree and should not confer enormous advantages.
● There should be a lot more options for endgame content, such as better raid rewards, measurable player impact on Breath outcomes, Cults, boss monster battles, and others.
As a result, the intervention that most devs who have weighed in on the topic have spoken in support of has been a policy of frontloaded "diminishing returns". Specifically, the current plans are to do the following:
1. Completing a grind in "breath stats" causes the CP award immediately (e.g., get 500 Books in a breath, you have unlocked Grind 1's 10 CP immediately regardless of level).
2. Reaching level 30 causes CP to be awarded for grinds based on career stats (that hadn't already been earned on the way to Level 30):
Grinds 1-4: 10 CP for first badge, 15 CP for second (same as the current CP grants)
Grinds 5-8: 10 CP for first badge, 10 CP for second
Grinds 9-12: 5 CP for first badge, 10 CP for second
Grinds 13-20: 5 CP for first badge, 5 CP for second
What does the playerbase think we should do about badges?
With all of the above said, we want to hear from you on the topic in as much depth as you're willing to share. How do you feel about badges, and what does gathering them mean for you? Are our fears for the survival of the community (or your personal continued involvement in it...) if we either eliminated them or failed to enact changes well-founded? Do you think the proposed diminishing-returns solution goes too far, or not far enough? And what do you wish for from endgame content, that other forms of endgame content might provide?
Joined: Jan 19, 2010 Posts: 239 Location: USA - CST
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2019 6:12 pm Post subject: Re: Dev Blog: Badges and what to do about them
Kandarin wrote:
As a result, the intervention that most devs who have weighed in on the topic have spoken in support of has been a policy of frontloaded "diminishing returns". Specifically, the current plans are to do the following:
1. Completing a grind in "breath stats" causes the CP award immediately (e.g., get 500 Books in a breath, you have unlocked Grind 1's 10 CP immediately regardless of level).
2. Reaching level 30 causes CP to be awarded for grinds based on career stats (that hadn't already been earned on the way to Level 30):
Grinds 1-4: 10 CP for first badge, 15 CP for second (same as the current CP grants)
Grinds 5-8: 10 CP for first badge, 10 CP for second
Grinds 9-12: 5 CP for first badge, 10 CP for second
Grinds 13-20: 5 CP for first badge, 5 CP for second
I feel like this is more than fair, I'd say that 1-4 grinds are in the area of what you get currently in the course of getting from level 1 to maxx. I have seen some argument where people feel like they lose out or have a disadvantage by starting the game at this point, but that is mostly how it really should be. That said, obviously after a couple months of a new breath, many many characters will be at maxx anyways. This becomes a little bit more of a moot point though with character resets a thing now, I feel like that gives more variety to the levels of the characters you see around. (I know I have personally reset a handful of my characters to take them in different directions)
That said though here is the feeling I got in my own NC career. I played NC in 2010-2011, I didn't get any badges durring that time. I took a many year break and then I started back up again in 2018, years after breath 3 began. By the time I started back again, lots of people were in that category of super badge grindy. At no point did I ever feel that I was at a disadvantage because of this. My not very grindy characters that are now maxxed are just as effective as some of the characters I've met with nearly all the 15cp badges.
Now in the event of a new breath, I could certainly see this getting unfair feeling with the current game mechanics. Where in a new breath setting, everyone is hitting level 10 around the same time and half of everyone gets an extra 10 levels of CP to spend, yeah unfair feeling for sure. But if the payout for career badges happens at maxx, then that takes most of the apprehension and unfair feelings out of the equation. Then to go ahead and reward breath grinds at the time of the accomplishment makes it still feel like you've achieved something. It's the best of both worlds there really.
Overall, I don't mind the current system as it is, but the proposed changes seem pretty darn solid. I guess I'm not terribly worried about the diminishing returns on badge cp for two reasons, one, I don't have that many grinds, and two, I don't think we know exactly how the classes and skills will be rebalanced next breath, so that could certainly change my opinions as there are a few classes that are inherently grindy if you want to get the skills that are useful all in one character. _________________ "Hey, don't talk about bacon." - Frank Lapidus
plscks-20 | Davington-25 | James Ford-26 | Wiggles-1297 | Desmond-1298 | Richard Feynman-2769 | a random janitor-2772 | Kaz-12345 | Advocado-12867
Addressing your point 2 - regardless of what happens to badges, one of our aims for B5 is to avoid having classes where you feel like you need badges to be a functioning character.
Joined: Jan 19, 2010 Posts: 239 Location: USA - CST
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2019 6:51 pm Post subject:
Saint_Jimmy wrote:
Addressing your point 2 - regardless of what happens to badges, one of our aims for B5 is to avoid having classes where you feel like you need badges to be a functioning character.
And that is exactly the thing that I am hoping for. If things get rebalanced to not have certain classes feel like grinding badges is required to make them successful, then these proposed changes feel like a really good plan to me for breath 5. _________________ "Hey, don't talk about bacon." - Frank Lapidus
plscks-20 | Davington-25 | James Ford-26 | Wiggles-1297 | Desmond-1298 | Richard Feynman-2769 | a random janitor-2772 | Kaz-12345 | Advocado-12867
Joined: Mar 20, 2016 Posts: 8 Location: Probably somewhere in stygia
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2019 7:07 pm Post subject:
Saint_Jimmy wrote:
Addressing your point 2 - regardless of what happens to badges, one of our aims for B5 is to avoid having classes where you feel like you need badges to be a functioning character.
I like the badges and they seem to help out a ton like for example giving you 1 cp for when you have 19 cp and need 20 after spending cp on something that turned out to be a waste like swim or buying impact spells because you thought impact enchants were a thing. On a side note, we should make corrupters more op.
Joined: Mar 20, 2016 Posts: 8 Location: Probably somewhere in stygia
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2019 7:31 pm Post subject:
Saint_Jimmy wrote:
Those are exploration badges which will be staying. Also smh wasting CP on swim and not waterbreathing
Ooo those, yah those are pretty amazing way to show off how long you been around the nexus and achievements you have gained and been awarded for doing.
TL;DR The changes all make sense to me but I think the diminishing returns should nerf cp gain even harder than what is proposed.
How much badge grinding you (both playing the game naturally, and if its something you want to focus on) is going to vary from class/character to character along with personal playstyle.
I'd estimate a new character/player would on average complete 2 1000 stat grinds with maybe another 1 or 2 500 stat badges by the time they hit level 30.
Small/Mid grindy:
https://www.nexusclash.com/modules.php?name=Game&op=character&id=10358
Has 5 1000 badges (nearly 6), +1 500 stat badge. =135 CP
If I hadn't spend the last year or so grinding food/booze/targets in my spare time they would have completed books, crafting and repairs naturally over time.
Under the proposed system i would lose only 5cp
Larger Grindy:
https://www.nexusclash.com/modules.php?name=Game&op=character&id=10068
8 1000 badges (9 including damage taken) +1 500 stat badge =210 CP
Aimed to grind a large amount while still having some fun
Under the proposed system i would lose 25-30cp (If i am reading this correctly) on a very well grinded character.
I'd probably prefer if the grind tiers were dropped down in badge quantity from 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-20? You could maybe even stagger/bump the CP gain back up in a later tier 15-15(5/10cp) if neccessary.
Dropping the above badge quantities required for diminishing returns would cause a loss of 10cp, 45cpand 90cp for above 3 examples.
You could also require 100 (current breath) stat/badge ontop of the level 30 requirement for re earning previous breath CP badges instead of instantly gaining a huge cp bonus upon reaching level 30 (unless your character managed to grind 100 of the required stats before hitting level 30).
This might be a bit trickier to balance for some of the more difficult badges (i.e angels/demons killed, reduce to 50kills?) but for the generally easier to grind stats it wouldn't be too bad to spend a week~ for a cp boost. _________________ A Stinky Hobo (id=9592)|| METTATON (10068) || Tamamo (10358) || Feely (9584) || Goat Wizard (void 9585)
TL;DR The changes all make sense to me but I think the diminishing returns should nerf cp gain even harder than what is proposed.
I agree with this.
On another note, I’m really happy with the reworking of the badge grind, a big part of me walking away from NC before was the seeming insurmountability of most of the grinds that stood between my characters and more fun. It feels great to be progressing towards badges while playing my preferred style of tanky wardbasher!
The new badge reward system seems like a worthy compromise buoyed by the fresh attainability of many of the badges earned through normal play. Great job!
The currently proposed "diminishing returns" will remove 180 CP from the game which with current breath skills is not a small number. I don't know how the classes and skills are going to be working in the next breath and it really isn't something that can be fully weighed in on without that knowledge. However, the rework seems to be more of a nerf on long term or dedicated players unless the total cost of character skills is also being reduced by the same 180 CP value.
With current information available I do not like the current plan in regards to CP. This may change once the next breath information becomes available but I would encourage the devs to look into how this will limit and nerf characters and how the front loading would plateau growth.
On a related note, can we think of some new terms for '500 stat badge' and '1000 stat badge' so they aren't so easily mixed up with exploration badges etc.
e.g 500 could be an 'achievement' and 1000 could be a 'feat' or something.
I'm sure someone can come up with some better terms. _________________ A Stinky Hobo (id=9592)|| METTATON (10068) || Tamamo (10358) || Feely (9584) || Goat Wizard (void 9585)
Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2019 12:21 am Post subject: Dev Blog: Badges and what to do about them
As a new player - this is my first breath - I find that grinding badges made my character barely playable at the level that I feel like I am comfortable with. I was also looking forward to the next breath where I would get better and more skills so that I feel like I am having a progression. Though I will agree that grinding skills is not very playable with others oriented but a much more solo task and I am starting to get to the point where I was ready for a new breath with things I like to do available again.
Currently At max level I miss the progression but getting badges made me feel like the next breath would be better.
Having said all that I find that with a playable character there is not enough to do where I feel like I am having fun so looking forward to a better character progression in the next breath with more fun and better skills was worth the grind.
btw, I play a conduit so my cp is always tough to decided what to do with as I always felt like I had to sacrifice some part of the game to be good at one thing. So getting more cp in the future seems much more important to me. Now taking years to get to the good stuff is less interesting to me so there should be a way to be involved along the way of getting the skill necessary to play the game in interesting ways to start, while going onward on your journey, at maxx level, and progression on each breath and the involvement and progression of involvement could be better during the whole life and involvement of the player and character..
Also I designed my conduit as a support character but there was already others grinding support character stuff badges so I stayed away from them. So it really didn't seem to encourage play together with badge content.
As far as end game content it might be nice to have content that drove social interaction with each other other than combat and have things to discuss about what is happening around the nexus. I have schemes lol. Ultimately I want to feel important and have an impact on the nexus and right now I don't feel like I stand out but am just a cog and I am not as interested in grinding combat and if there were other things to do like this that you also got experience for that might be an interesting way to drive progression. Maybe stuff where others get the dawning realization that the characters, that want to, are having an important impact on things.
Joined: Jan 19, 2010 Posts: 239 Location: USA - CST
Posted: Fri Sep 06, 2019 5:19 am Post subject:
Dimentia_McCrea wrote:
With current information available I do not like the current plan in regards to CP. This may change once the next breath information becomes available but I would encourage the devs to look into how this will limit and nerf characters and how the front loading would plateau growth.
I think this plays a huge part in the ability of one to judge this change. A lot of it has to do with being able to attain my perfect build of any given character, so that makes things increasingly personal and subjective. I don't however feel that there is anything wrong with having to work towards a goal post-maxx in order to achieve that. My grindiest feeling characters to date are my Revenant plscks, and my Wizard Wiggles. Neither character though gives me the feeling that I am up against immense odds to achieve the build I want, but I do realize that it will take time and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Long story short here, it really would give us the ability to better judge this matter if we did have all the information, because optimum character build (and a feeling of further progression)is ultimately the reason people feel the need to grind. And if our only reference point for this is the current skillset, then yeah, taking a load of cp away from us will be met with disapproval.
Molovian wrote:
As far as end game content it might be nice to have content that drove social interaction with each other other than combat and have things to discuss about what is happening around the nexus. I have schemes lol. Ultimately I want to feel important and have an impact on the nexus and right now I don't feel like I stand out but am just a cog and I am not as interested in grinding combat and if there were other things to do like this that you also got experience for that might be an interesting way to drive progression. Maybe stuff where others get the dawning realization that the characters, that want to, are having an important impact on things.
This too is an issue that parallels the badge grind, and I do believe that it is a thing the devs would like to make happen. Ahem, infusion, passive kinds of infusion, that sort of thing along (hopefully) with some mechanic for player shaped end of breath. So again, the badge grind becomes sort of a secondary issue here. breaths were never intended to last half a decade, and before resets were a thing, the only option was to toss the whole character in cold storage and hope for a new breath.
As much as I dislike certain aspects of the climb from level 1 to 30, I really do enjoy the process of building a character, this is probably why I've reset some of mine a few times already. But resets aren't necessarily a thing for everyone, and it is important to keep some form of self-improvement progression available to us, without it feeling absolutely unfair. _________________ "Hey, don't talk about bacon." - Frank Lapidus
plscks-20 | Davington-25 | James Ford-26 | Wiggles-1297 | Desmond-1298 | Richard Feynman-2769 | a random janitor-2772 | Kaz-12345 | Advocado-12867
I think there should be more CP granted in the level up process, like 15cp/level in T1, 30cp/level in T2 and 45CP/level in T3! To further minimize the CP difference between newbies and veterans with the badges.
(Plus, having more skills to play with is generally more fun, and the game can then be balanced around expecting everyone to have more skills)
Dunno if I have the grindiest character in the game, but it's got to be close, so I thought I should weigh in.
I 100% support only getting the extra CP at lvl 30. Not only would that be more balanced when compared to "normal" characters, but I actually felt kinda dissappointed when I reached a new tier, and immediately bought every skill I would ever want from that tier (This is illustrated best by a couple of my othercharacters and their tier 2 selections)
Changing it to diminishing returns is a good plan overall, I think that the actual numbers can't really be decided without seeing the skillsets for next breath.
In general I think that every character should be able to reach the pinnacle of their chosen "path" with only level CP. EG max out one combat tree, plus supporting skills, or complete support set of enchanting (only one or two types of damage though) or other "Support method". This is so that non grinders don't feel useless compared to grinders.
Extra CP from badges should be for filling out a character for RP reasons, or taking backup combat/crafting trees (Catvom only uses ranged weapons against PCs with Auras, but has the full combat and gunsmithing trees), or getting every single possible enchant etc. etc. Things that round the character out, or make them more effective in specific circumstances, or make them a little more powerful generally, but not unfairly so.
The amount we get from badges now is definitely too much. Catvom has every Pariah and VW skill, and while that is an accomplishment, not needing to make choices does take something away from the game in my opinion.
TLDR: each class should be able to attain a level of power using only level CP (maybe plus a couple of badges cos nearly everyone has a couple), as long as they focus their skills, that is balanced with all other classes. Badge CP should then grant enough that they can get some more interesting powers, or a backup skill set or 2, but doesn't fundamentally increase their power when compared with others.
Personally even if there was no bonus CP, I would still grind as I want the most badges possible at the bottom of my character sheet
Regarding end game content, the most fun I have had is doing events etc. I love it when an admin has time to organise an event and then participate to enhance the players experience. Things like the chaos event etc.
Automated stuff such as a well balanced infusion type mechanic and boss npc's (the Wyrm etc) help, but I have always found the crafted plots/events more engaging. _________________ Bob Ross | Feral | 3628 - Catvom | Feral | 3627 - Haldos Jnr. | RRF | 3659 - MonkeyDawg | PoR | 3631 - A Speciality Priest of Tempus | Lawful Good | 4489
Retribution | Eternals | 9134 - Minsc | Scales of Namm the Vigilant | 9008
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