May as well give an idle a full set of badges If the naysayers are right, and the general badge hunting population hates them, then this idle thing will experience a massive rating drop with the addition of badges, and greg won’t go near another one If not, then where’s the problem Anyway previous idles such as burrito bison already have full badge sets, so this isn’t exactly setting a precedent

> *Originally posted by **[LouWeed](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=199#posts-10178800):*** > > May as well give an idle a full set of badges > If the naysayers are right, and the general badge hunting population hates them, then this idle thing will experience a massive rating drop with the addition of badges, and greg won’t go near another one > If not, then where’s the problem > > Anyway previous idles such as burrito bison already have full badge sets, so this isn’t exactly setting a precedent Burrito bison is a launch game. :/ Anyways, I’m gonna go ahead and make a list of badge ideas for idle games when I get home. I love free internet points for not doing anything at all.

I think everyone missed the point of greg bringing up Crusaders of the Lost Idols. It wasn’t to discuss the validity of badging it/idle games (and the implications), it was to… suggest badges. :/

> *Originally posted by **[Holy2334](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=199#posts-10179106):*** > > Burrito bison is a launch game. :/ Are you sure? Because I got all the badges by doing nothing other than occasionally clicking on the screen In between clicking on the BB/BBR screen, I would actively play one of the papa’s games, I don’t recall which Seemed like an idle to me Was I dong it wrong

> *Originally posted by **[LouWeed](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=199#posts-10179130):*** > > *Originally posted by **[Holy2334](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=199#posts-10179106):*** > > > > Burrito bison is a launch game. :/ > > Are you sure? > Because I got all the badges by doing nothing other than occasionally clicking on the screen > In between clicking on the BB/BBR screen, I would actively play one of the papa’s games, I don’t recall which > Seemed like an idle to me > Was I dong it wrong Really? Because last time I checked you actuallualy have to be on the game and actually play those games to earn progress, while idle games I can play for 5 mins, go to bed, wake up and noticed I’ve achieved a lot of progress in my sleep. I do that to burrito bison and I’ll still be at the same spot than when I was before I went to bed.

so whether or not it’s an idle depends on how long you sleep for

> *Originally posted by **[LouWeed](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=199#posts-10179305):*** > > so whether or not it’s an idle depends on how long you sleep for No. Idle games you can earn progress in many ways, including by not playing the game in general, while Burrito Bison you actually have to play in order to gain some sort of progress. If you stop playing, your progress will stop eventually as oppose to idle games where if you stop playing you earn progress no matter what. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Again, I haz no problems against idle gamez what so ever. I’m just extremely curious on why CotLI is getting a badge when other popular idle games have been shunned upon previously and have been given a silent “no”? I understand that there are an exception to gamez, but this still goes back to my question on why this game is getting badged and not the other ones.

I thought idles were moving towards requiring some kind of input from the user like, these badges that have been suggested: > **easy: complete area 5** > Area 5 takes a bit less than 10 minutes to do. In a game where the possible medium badge is quite long, the easy badge should be more inviting. > > > > **medium: have 1 trillion gold at once** > Somewhere approximately between starting the game and resetting for the first time. I think. Also, deliberately something else than ‘reach area X’. > > > > **medium: reset the world for the first time** > It is such a natural milestone in the game. It opens you to idols, jeweled chest purchases with red rubies, new objectives, events, talents… Even if it takes a bit longer than the usual medium badge, I’d highly suggest putting it in. Are we saying that earning these badges would not require any input from the user

> *Originally posted by **[LouWeed](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=199#posts-10179355):*** I think you’re missing the point….. Any time an idle game has been mentioned for getting badges, it never happened for various reasons as said by the Anti-idlers (Not the game). I don’t see how CotLI is getting a badge when there were others suggested before this one that never happened when this is basically the same idle game compared to other ones. Therefore for something in the game genre that’s been told “No” a bunch of times to get a “Yes” is highly questionable as to why. This game in particular though you don’t even need to be on Kongregate though to play and still get the badge for it (Ok, you have to be here to claim it but you don’t have to be on here to work on it) so what makes this stand out to get a badge and not games like, AdCap, Clicker Heroes, Trimps, Tangerine Tycoon, Swarm Simulator, & Realm Grinder to name a few.

Now that I think about it, many idle games can import/export data making it easy to share save files with badge hunters. Maybe Crusaders of the Lost Idol is a candidate since it’s saved server side, and you can’t just import another users data?

> *Originally posted by **[racefan12](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=199#posts-10177106):*** > > CotLI may technically be an idle game, but I believe Greg’s looking at it more as a game along the lines of, say, Dream World than an actual idle game. I want to clear up a bit of possible confusion here. I have a personal policy against selecting idle games to receive badges, but I don’t personally decide which multiplayer/virtual goods games receive badges. If I were to apply the same standards to these games as single-player games, there would be a lot more badges in MMOs/virtual goods games. The ratings for these games are generally very high, and they’re quite popular on the site. But it’s not realistic for me individually to have a good sense of which MMO games are best-suited for badges — it’s not really my direct area. Plus, it would take a ridiculous amount of time to actually play them all and work with the developers on API implementation practices (not to mention how much time it would take badge-hunters to earn them all). Instead, we have a whole team of very talented people at Kongregate who work exclusively with bringing new MMOs onto the site and optimizing their levels of promotion. They know way more about what’s hip and popular than I do, so I defer to them when planning badges in multiplayer/kreds games. They already know that I have a personal bias against idle games, and maybe that’s partly why we’ve gone so long without adding badges to one, but the industry is shifting, and this genre is becoming increasingly popular. So as much as I’d like to be that crotchety old man yelling about kids on my lawn and about how “back in my day, we actually _played_ video games!”, the truth is that idle games are probably here to stay, and CotLI probably won’t be the last idle game to receive badges. I will say, though, that the game design in idle games has come a long way in the past few years, and I don’t have quite such a viscerally negative reaction to them as I used to. CotLI in particular is probably the best idle game I’ve personally played — I like the sense of progression between zones, and there’s at least a bit of strategy with optimizing your formation. The art is also really good, and the active abilities make things a bit more interesting. If I had to add badges to any idle game on the site that I’ve ever played, at my own discretion, it would definitely be this one. > *Originally posted by **[Precarious](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=199#posts-10177203):*** > > Re: the Space Game easy badge, I just did mining mode on easy in anticipation of the badge, and it didn’t register to the API. No one has a score in that mode for the week, and my friends list (which has a lot of people who have played Space Game in the past, well before the topic of badges came up) has only one person ever who recorded a score in that mode. So I think it’s safe to conclude the API there is broken. > > Judging from the API, the main missions seem to be recording, but the side modes may have issues. I’ll try out Survival and see what happens. > > EDIT: I tried out both “Bring it on” and “No Hope” under Survival, and neither recorded my times. Thanks for pointing this out. I think this is actually a problem with the high scores and not the API implementation. I’m seeing API data submit to us successfully. The stat name is probably just wrong in the high scores. The distinction here is that I can very easily fix this problem myself if it’s just an issue with stat names and high scores rather than an issue with the data that the game is submitting to us. I’ll dig into this more tomorrow.

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up greg!

> The ratings for these games [MMOs/virtual goods] are generally very high[…] To be fair, that’s probably because of the differing rating system from single-player games.

Thank you for that info greg. I’m probably one of the few people on the forums who actually are glad that idle games could get a bit of badge love. Since the rules for badging idle games might or might not change I’d like to remember you of [reactor idle](http://www.kongregate.com/games/Baldurans/reactor-idle) . You had the prequel reactor incremental as a candidate for badges until someone mentioned it’s an idle game. It has a 4.3 rating and requires you to think. Unless you look things up it is really not that easy to build a setup which gives a great energy output and doesn’t blow your whole infrastructure up. And being able to look things up was never a factor in badging. Two other candidates would be Adventure Capitalist and Clicker Heroes. They also have a very high rating of 4.3 and 4.4. And to me those were the games which put idle games on a more professional level (if you ignore anti-idle). As far as I remember they were among the highest rated games in the year they were released. Maybe even the highest ones. Not badging them feels a bit like robbing a bit of Kongregate’s history. As far as I know all of those three games have “virtual goods”. * * * So if you and/ or your team are looking for additional options in this direction I think those three are a good start. But think twice before opening this box of Pandora. Idle games are that type of game which people either love or hate.

Opinions on idle games may be split, however I feel idle games won’t be a Pandora’s Box so long as they’re only released periodically and at a small ratio compared to the total badges released. Granted, in our current badge output rate, badging Crusaders, and the three games you mentioned may be overkill, but separating them and releasing two this year, and two next year might sound better. Clicker Hero does sound good, but the other two might be a bit more controversial. Since they’re both idle games as well as unity games, and there’s that Chrome and Unity issue as well as I believe announcements that other browsers are dropping it in the future.

Plays stick to just an easy badge Plays stick to just an easy badge Plays stick to just an easy badge

I like CotLI, and I play it “once in a while”. (read this as: way too much and I have all the extra crusaders). :P But my problem with CotLI badges is that its tutorial is too long for a medium badge. The tutorial basically consists of its entire first run, which can take more than a day. Now that we’re doing medium badges as BotD’s, and medium badges can become BotD one day, I’d prefer that “finishing the first run” isn’t a medium, if that’s going to be a badge. Also, CotLI is still very beta. It means the effectiveness of those badges can be changed in the future quite a lot. But I don’t mind it having easy badges or hard ones. Like, “have x achievements”, “open 5 chests”, “finish 5 daily quests”, or “finish the tutorial”.

lol I finished the tutorial in 5 minutes

After playing CotLI for 3 hours (admittedly not much, but I showed my maximum tolerance), I am forced to conclude: 1. CotLI is an idle game, please, don’t deny it. Burrito Bison is also an idle game, but that doesn’t make CotLI non-idle. 2. It has clear reference to Clicker Heroes. 3. Except the formation system, all game mechanics are copied either from Clicker Heroes or dull MMOs that plague this site. 4. It is this rare mix of idle and MMO that makes it so appealing to the herd and also the admins, for it makes Gamestop’s pockets bulge. And finally, if the badging of CotLI is a marketing strategy, tell rawismojo to do it, since it is his traditional duty. Given your past record of productivity, you may want to start looking at Learn to Fly 3 and perhaps the newest [Cube Escape](http://www.rustylake.com/room-escape-games/cube-escape-birthday.html).

> *Originally posted by **[rinky999](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=200#posts-10180811):*** > > But my problem with CotLI badges is that its tutorial is too long for a medium badge. > > The tutorial basically consists of its entire first run, which can take more than a day. Now that we’re doing medium badges as BotD’s, and medium badges can become BotD one day, I’d prefer that “finishing the first run” isn’t a medium, if that’s going to be a badge. I manually curate badge of the day. I’m not always 100% perfect at it, but there has never been a medium badge in an MMO as the badge of the day. These are the types of badges I permanently blacklist from the system (probably about half the badges on the site are blacklisted from being automatically selected as badge of the day, even before manual curation). That being said, I am leaning toward making the medium badge “recruit 20 crusaders.” > *Originally posted by **[Pulsaris](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=200#posts-10181002):*** > > Burrito Bison is also an idle game 

I still think that three badges would support the game better and make it possible to include a natural milestone badge as the latter medium.

Idle games with long term badges (more than a month at least) would be great :D

> *Originally posted by **[super0anoniem](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=200#posts-10181618):*** > > Idle games with long term badges (more than a month at least) would be great :D  I started playing CotLI for the badges. Now you MUST badge it ò.ó

> *Originally posted by **[super0anoniem](/forums/1/topics/380539?page=200#posts-10181618):*** > > Idle games with long term badges (more than a month at least) would be great :D no