Kongregate Needs Harder Badges!

Hi there. A few of you may know me from the forums, but probably not much.

I made this topic to put across the point of the increasing amount of ridiculously easy badges Greg is making. To me, badges are a challenge, a goal to set myself, and if I don’t achieve them, that’s fine. But, lately, all the ones I try to achieve, I do. Because they’re easy. There are so many games that deserve even just one difficult Hard Badge instead of an Easy and a Medium. Hards and Impossibles should be hard to achieve, they should require an extra something, like knowledge of the game’s mechanics, or skills ABOVE the average level, not equal to or below it.

Many badges are easy these days because they’re ‘Endurance Badges.’ These are long, yes, but you deal with it, take your time, and it’s no challenge. Many games COULD be given harder badges. For example, Exorbis 2 would have been well suited for an Impossible for acing all 110 levels. (I know a guide exists, but it’s besides the point.) Another example, more recently, is Clockwords: Prelude. The Medium badge was 100 points off a single word. If you do the first 15 or so levels without scoring A SINGLE hundred-point word, you’re not doing it right, and you won’t get far.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll agree and sign this iPetition

EDIT: If you don’t agree, all constructive criticism is fine by me; trolling is not; please don’t do it.

YOU may find them easy, but the badges are aimed at the average of the userbase, users with naff reflexes like me find badges a lot moar challenging, and so by pleasing you, it would discourage a lot more users, and Kong has to aim for the happy medium :)

JetLag, that’s the whole point of the Easy and Medium badges, IMHO. To please the average public. Hards and Impossibles should be aimed at the higher end of the scale. Also, I believe in Quality > Quantity, which doesn’t seem to be the case with the badges lately.

You don’t really have too many badges anyway, GHEZ. Keep on earning them, and THEN complain. :D

I saw that coming Snape. And the reason I don’t have many badges is the lack of my drive to get them. Many of the badges are on easy games like Agony or Clockwords, and it’s not something I particularly enjoy or would feel great having managed to do. It’s half term now; I’ll get a few more if it would please you ;P

A lot of people complained about the kongai badge which a lot of people said was harder than most hard badges (I disagree since all I had to do was log in, but w/e).

A harder challenge is not good if it’s on an easy or boring game, hard games like Raider should get hard badges, whereas games like YHTBTR should get impossible easy badges. Don’t “force” difficulty on a game.

Kongai is a badge that I would enjoy if I had the time for it.(Which I do now :D) It requires a knowledge of the game, a strategy of some sort. Hence; it’s not only hard, it requires you to learn, making it unavailable to those narrow-minded “badgewhores” who play a lot of shooters and things; but never really consider how to win something that doesn’t require reflexes or a walkthrough.

EDIT: SavageWolf, that’s the point I’m trying to make. Raider should have a Hard badge because it IS hard. Pixelvader shouldn’t have a Hard badge because it is NOT Hard. However, Pixelvader does have the criteria for a Hard badge, namely, all 11 (or just the first 10) levels without being hit. That IS hard. Merely completing all 11 levels isn’t.

Originally posted by GHEZ119:

I saw that coming Snape. And the reason I don’t have many badges is the lack of my drive to get them. Many of the badges are on easy games like Agony or Clockwords, and it’s not something I particularly enjoy or would feel great having managed to do. It’s half term now; I’ll get a few more if it would please you ;P

No no, it’s fine, I was just pointing that out. :)

i agree way to many easy badges on this site…

Originally posted by Snape007:

Originally posted by GHEZ119:

I saw that coming Snape. And the reason I don’t have many badges is the lack of my drive to get them. Many of the badges are on easy games like Agony or Clockwords, and it’s not something I particularly enjoy or would feel great having managed to do. It’s half term now; I’ll get a few more if it would please you ;P

No no, it’s fine, I was just pointing that out. :)

And that’s fine. But, with your extensive range of badges, would you say they’re too easy ? Or are you fine with it ?

Originally posted by GHEZ119:

Originally posted by Snape007:

Originally posted by GHEZ119:

I saw that coming Snape. And the reason I don’t have many badges is the lack of my drive to get them. Many of the badges are on easy games like Agony or Clockwords, and it’s not something I particularly enjoy or would feel great having managed to do. It’s half term now; I’ll get a few more if it would please you ;P

No no, it’s fine, I was just pointing that out. :)

And that’s fine. But, with your extensive range of badges, would you say they’re too easy ? Or are you fine with it ?

To be honest, the overall difficulty would have to be judged by the public.
But I personally thought they were a good balance. :D

Kongai hard is probably one badge that I’m never going to get. I am myself pretty good at card games, atleast I think so, I just don’t have the patience.

I think too (if it’s even part of your point) that endurance badges should not be associated as the same as hards.

Raider

its not that we should start ony adding harder badges. its that they should be more evenly mized.

I phrased that wrong xD I meant the badges in the last month or so.

And the problem with the overall’s public judging is that most people would either say they’re too hard because they never try or just generally suck, or say they’re too easy because they think they’re Gods at Flash Gaming.

Originally posted by Cirpacha:

Kongai hard is probably one badge that I’m never going to get. I am myself pretty good at card games, atleast I think so, I just don’t have the patience.

Raider

Cirpacha, you’re a good gamer. I’ve seen you around. How do you think the badges have been:
a) Overall?
b) In the past month or so ?

EDIT: Oops; please excuse my double post D:

Pretty much last couple of months and so on. Of course there are lots of older badges that are just ridiculous(ly stupid).
I was pretty irritated when I saw Sacred Seasons getting badges. The badges just don’t do anything with hards.

Anyway, the reason why there aren’t so much harder badges is that the overall hard games get rated low because the majority of gamers like casual and gets irritated by the hard_ness_. (That’s pretty obvious though and that’s what I have seen soo many times.)

Raiders
Spin the Black Circle (s)

And plenty of other games. Especially when watching games that I like or have favorited.

You intrigue me. Your favourites are like mine, just that you click more, and I prefer to mentally categorise them xD

Amberial Axis and Spin the Black Circle (I didn’t know number 2 was released. Guess what I’m doing tonight :P) are both great games, which are well deserving of hard/impossible badges. Greg Can Jump is so amazingly epic, I can’t begin to describe it, and MoneySeize was on my mental favourites list the day I played it, well before the badges.

I know exactly what you’re getting at though. Hard games are rated low because of the challenge, thus overlooked by Greg, and not given the badges they deserve :(

Sacred Seasons is fine for badges, IMHO. However, I think Level 100 would’ve been much better, to stop people leeching off their friends or have them walk them through. I managed Welcome to the Underworld as a group of 3, I was ~60, one was ~80 and one was ~95. I am yet to do A Hero Is Born, but Level 72 should get me there soon xD.

I look forward to seeing what other games you favourite and possibly having a discussion with you in Chat. ♥, GHEZ.

- Agree.

Originally posted by skeelful08:

- Agree.

Thank you. 2 people agreeing with me is more than I expected xD

Will check thread again later; gotta do stuff D:

I would be more sympathetic to your cause if you had more of the hardest (and best, in my opinion) badges that Kongregate has to offer. Zunderfury and Meat Boy Map Pack, specifically. If that’s not your style, there’s Tarnation and Max Mesiria as well.

The hardest badges are the ones that take the longest to earn, so I don’t mind if Greg gives us breathers between impossibles.

Meat Boy (Map Pack) is one I’m close to, but it lags a lot on my laptop S:
ZunderFury is going to be hard on a trackpad. And Max Mesiria and Tarnation require perseverance and time beyond that which I can manage whilst in school.

Well, I have the Meat Boy MP imp. And I have now pretty good strategy for Tarnation imp, I just haven’t played it recently.
I can’t just stand Zunderfury anymore, because my safe file has got already two times erased. Max Mesiria is another imp that is just mere randomness, and I’m not into getting it. (It’s highly luck-based too.)

Also hard badge does not mean that you have to play a lot of that certain game to get it.

@Snape, the number of badges earned by the topic starter isn’t something you can refer to and expect respect.
@Savage, it’s common sense that GHEZ won’t be making the actual badges, though I’m sure he would be good at it.

I wholly agree that most badges are now overly simplified and due to lack of effort put in making them, overuse improvisation like “endurance” goals. None of these are fun for me, I can predict what they are accurately by playing a few minutes of the game without reading the badge goals and then looking.
That just can’t be fun, woe already is upon anyone that gets satisfaction from such a thing; it’s a chore, not an achievement.
I want badges like “MED: destroy X amount of enemies with 1 rocket”, “HRD: achieve 20x headshot streak” “gain maximum 9001 jump distance” etc. “Achievement” is how great an accomplishment is, not how large a pile of tasks is.
Anyone here gone to Scouts? In Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and such, the members get badges. Those kids don’t get a badge for jogging a certain distance, because no one will bother watching them do that. Most don’t get a real badge for being a member for a year, nor for making the most food. They don’t get a badge for chopping the most logs, not for making the most campfires. What they do get badges for, is making the BEST food, the best food in succession, the cleanest log chop, the best campfire. The point I am trying to make here, is that most badges and achievements on Kong have lost their meaning, their purpose. Badges are trophies of mastery, not dedication. If you spend a week working on something and you still suck at it, the most you should get is a consolation prize, because you didn’t put in enough effort and ended up wasting your time by feeling left out because other users got the badge.
-These games are here not to get badges with, but to have fun getting badges with.
-The games that aren’t fun to the extreme majority do not deserve badges.
-The tasks that aren’t interesting enough to the extreme majority do not deserve badges.
-We come here to play the games we get satisfaction from playing,
not to inflate ego and/or self-esteem through acquisition of virtual squares with icons.
-Those who do come here thinking that the amount of badges and points makes gives them any form of superiority over even insects, have already been punished for their impudence by the depressing acts of playing games they don’t like. I’m not referring to just anyone with a high level, but describing how any incentive for a player to play a game they can’t have fun with is indirectly promoting elitism while corrupting the judgment of the player; sure, you can say “if you don’t like it, don’t play it” which may seem easy enough, but not when the game has badges for a lot of points. Difficulty does not apply to this concept, the most important factor is FUN.
Chat quote: Jay_Remie: “lol i love when kong makes badges for a game that ive already beat”
That is a thought and statement that the admins should strive to have as many players as possible think, and as often as possible.

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Yeah, I want harder badges too, I used to try and get them all, but I haven’t bothered much with the latest ones anymore like Agony and Clockwords.