Earning Badges in Garmin Connect

True, that's so lame to limit badges only to special watches - and worse, they make it repeatable.

Current badges weren't the best, but it showed your level quite good. To get level 4 and 5 you needed to run marathons. (Well, except repeatable Challenge Champ badge which could be abused.)

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A badge system should works in 2 ways:

- Only few levels, which depend on difficulty (to get max level, you must complete long distances).

- Or there should be more levels, which show how much someone is active. Then there should be much more repeatable badges.

Or it could be combined showing: Rank (what hardest run you complete) and Activity (how often you exercise).

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Now, making badges only for selected watches, it's something like "pay to level", so after some time nobody will take seriously those levels.

GLBenson said:

Is this the new normal?  Are we now going to be limited to what we can earn based on the watch that we own? 

Looks like yes, they continue like that. There are next badges for limited watches.

High Ground Repeatable
2 pts Record an activity with 200 feet or more of elevation gain using your Darth Vader watch.

First Avenger Repeatable
4 pts Record three strength activities in a week (Monday - Sunday) using your First Avenger watch.

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This is going to be really unbalanced. Those new repeatable badges are too easy to get and give too much points compared to normal badges.

Even easy normal badges can be hard to get - like Toasty (2 pts), it needs 38° C, so you can get it only at summer and only during few hottest days and not every year (or must live in some hot country).

Don't see what's the point. Getting max level fast is no fun. And this makes levels not comparable for normal vs limited watches.

Appreciate that this is 4 months old, but I agree. Really frustrating that someone can get 2 points for every 90 min run, but I don't

I feel the same way! Those Badges are limited to only the audience who owns a specific type of Garmin. Not really fair

Ye i’m annoyed too; I’m trying to get to level 4 and if i had this capt marvel watch it would help; not happy!

Totally bummed they're limiting higher levels to people who want (or can even afford) the Marvel watches!

That's a way to make the premium watches even more valuable and desirable. The owners pay more, so they get more. Sounds fair to me. 

Completely agree! I really wish they implemented a solution that only badges you can get with the devices you have registered on your account are visible under "Available Badges".

In the web page you can remove the badges you don't want to see with a userscript or a browser extension (that doesn't exist today so someone has to code it). It could be really useful also for hiding other functionality at Garmin Connect, for example Golf in the side menu if you don't do any golf. I will not create that script now so anyone is free to use that idea.

I did a test with Adblock Plus selectors but you can't seem to block parents of a matched tag.

e7andy said:

a browser extension (that doesn't exist today so someone has to code it

It actually does exist. Not exactly as a plugin extension, but in the form of local overrides. I use it all the time, and never get to see the badges I do not wish -  have a look at the thread GCOverrides for the details.