New Ingame Destruction Based Badges [IDEA]
We drastically need more destruction based badges, and theres a few stats to chose from as you can see below (we could also have a mods destroyed stat)
But the problem with having lots of new badges is how it effects the early game, too many badges mean the badge lock requirements each level are no longer a real issue.
Now you could just having the starting tier for these badges be quite high, where it wouldn't affect the first 16 levels of play, but this also sucks for veteran players, as just getting a new pretty black badge (or multiple badges) is no fun.
Now, what I would love to see is all of the destruction based badges released at once, Portals Neutralized, Enemy Links Destroyed, Enemy Fields Destroyed, Drones Returned and also Mods Destroyed. We could even go into specifics for destroying portals of a certain level (not sure how to track this properly, maybe the game looks at what level the portal was in the last 60 seconds?), but the point is, ALL THE BADGES!
But instead of just having us veterans hit black right away, they get locked (you can't even see them on profile until the first tier is earnt) and we have to selectively choose one (1) stat badge we want to focus on, and we can only progress the counter of that badge while we have it active. You would need to be L16 (it shouldn't be locked behind Recursion) to even start to attempt these badges, and each badge would start at zero (0), so everyone is on equal footing. There can be a new button on our agent profile screen where we can select which badge we want to begin to unlock, and we could have some kind of visual marker on the main scanner screen which indicates what badge is currently active.
Thoughts?

Comments
It has been suggested a lot of times on the forum, I think it's a great idea
YES! Yes yes yes! We have the stats already. Builders get rewarded with a bunch of badges-- Liberator, Builder, Engineer, Connector, Mind Controller. It would be nice to have parallel badges for portals neutralized, links destroyed, and control fields destroyed. I'm less enamored of having a badge for drones returned because that would encourage sniping drones.
The last paragraph is way too complicated.
I think the reason why these badges don't exist is because there isn't a separate action for each stat. It's all just: go to a bunch of opposition portals and fire some bursters and see what happens - there's a count and a badge for Resonators Destroyed and then the other stats kind of come for free. You can get a dozen 'links destroyed' and 'fields destroyed' as well as one or more 'resonators destroyed' by firing a single burster.
There's a bit of an imbalance because Builder/Liberator is the same action (deploy a resonator) and Pioneer is almost the same action (deploy a resonator but on a portal that you hadn't captured before). Symmetry there might suggest adding a badge for portals destroyed. But destroying links and fields is really too easy (relative to building them) to deserve two separate badges in my opinion.
The problem you just explained is solved by being able to only chase 1 badge at a time.
I remember when badges used to be difficult. Now they give them out like political flyers. When the game was easier to play and had less badges we had more players. Now we have a more complicated game and more badges and very few players. Not sure adding more badges will do much for the game. I'd rather go back to the easier to understand game than keep adding things.
Who would like a badge (or at least a stat) for MU destroyed?
/me raises her hand for MU destroyed!
Also, an MU destroyed leaderboard that parallels MU created.
You're correlating things that aren't related. Badges were harder because we had less portals.
But that's not how Ingress works, and would be frustrating to most players. It would mess up the stats display because you'd need a second stat for each category (we already had that with Seer and it's not great).
Ingress works however the devs decide to make it work.
The core badges will always be the foundation of badges to look at. I'm more of a fan for "not every action requires a badge" mindset. I am more for analyzing the stats for any balance to appropriately make the badge tiers versus tiering the efforts from the start and shrugging at it if it's not balanced.
The big issue you'll have with MU destroyed is that it can't be retroactive. That's going to burn a lot of people.
It's actually pretty straight forward. Any portal approvals before OPR is Seer Points. Portals Discovered is Seer Points plus the current Wayfarer system of approvals. It provides room for Niantic to work with a redefined Seer badge if they ever want to pursue it.
I wouldn't mind a badge that combines link and fields destroyed and portals neutralized stats
I know what it means. I still think it's a nasty kludge.
@Breenzy writes:
The problem you just explained is solved by being able to only chase 1 badge at a time.
Badges are not specific goals that you chase as much as they are rewards for things that that you have accomplished as part of game play. Certainly people tend to focus more on a specific badge when they get close to it, and sometimes they pick out one badge that they want to target, but mostly badges are side effects of accomplishing things on the playfield.
I can't imagine having to choose whether I want to collect the stat for resos destroyed, portals neutralized, links destroyed, or fields destroyed when I blow up stuff.
Think of it as a long term challenge badge.
You can also just ignore the badges.
I think that the Cassandra Neutralizer event showed that adding a new medal for destructive actions could have an unintential side-effect: the factions denied each other the badge by not deplying resos (in that case). If there were new medals for the destruction of mods, links and fields, the consequence could be far less mods, links and fields to destroy, especially since lots of agents already have onyx in Engineer, Connector, Mind controller and Illuminator, and would not assist the "enemy" in gaining the new medals.
That was a time limited event though, people would literally need to quit to deny the badge.
That's what people have done in the past with the scoreboard. Play denial is really a thing in areas that are one-sided.