Hmm, thinking. The C-team may not like this, and the rest of the congregation here may want to take a minute to wrap their heads around this:
I don't at all see the worth in doing the badges missions myself, if all I could get for it was the permission to buy some L items. I do missions which reward with skill points, or I'd do it for a very desirable unlimited item not available otherwise. This is fun and the spirit of playing a game. But if all I wanted from a task was some of these L things, I'd gladly buy them from Thanatos for a modest markup instead. Making use of his pioneering access to the source this way is much more economical than having everybody go through the same trouble again. For the same reason we buy items from crafters who have taken the route before us. Are we lambasting them for having invested to gain advantage over others in their field of specialization? No, of course not, the whole game is designed this way. I'm not sure if this was foreseen at the design of this badges mission though. It is not very attractive in itself, solely a means to get stuff. But only the first one was made to jump through all the hoops, anyone else doesn't really need to.
Edit: Of course I keep wondering if I missed something somewhere and got it all wrong. But if I did, wouldn't everybody else who came all the way for one set of armor and nothing else. (Can the epic mission rewards be spiced up with a few attribute tokens at every stage? I love it, just sometimes I wonder, if at the end I just have a gun I could get from auction for ~5k which is way less than what had to be put in... feel like giving up every time my peds run out. Similar with the badges. 200 badges = 1 ped skill of free choice? Non-repeatable, just once upon reaching level access. Then I'd do it regardless of what's in the vendor. Possibly so would others. Just another idea.)
