I'm just going to add a bit to what Shantom already said.
I think it's very important to remove some medals that are to hard to get. Example:
In this game we removed about 20 medals from it. It was pointed out that they were literally impossible to get, as some of them would take a 100 years to unlock.
Then there are games like this:
Beside the author, no one has gotten any of the high point medals, and it was published awhile ago. It's not that people haven't tried. I mean, two of the better NG gamers, who usually get high scores, were only able to get half the medals. But the game has such atrocious gameplay, it's hard for most people just to get a couple of points. If two of the better players weren't able to get some of those medals, then it begs the question of if they are possible to get.
For this particular game, I suspect the author didn't try to see if the challenges were possible or not. They most likely used some cheat to get all the medals at once. In previous cases, almost identical to this one, we would remove all the medals if anyone found the cheat - like a secret button, or password. But, since no one has found anything like that for this one, we will most likely remove all the medals that no one, besides the author, have unlocked.
The point here is that @DoctorStrongbad has a valid concern about certain medals that are hard to get. He wasn't referring to every hard to get medal, he was referring to certain ones that have been around for over a year, but no one has been able to get them. There are probably just a handful of them like that. And out of those, there may be a couple that are achievable (which no one has shown any interest in getting, if they are possible), but most of them are probably not achievable for one reason or other.
So, I fail to see how his post was self serving. He didn't demand that these medals be removed, he just said that they MAY need to be removed. He may not have been clear on the reason for their removal, other than they were hard, but it's clear from my experience , that there are valid reasons for why some of them need to be removed, which backs his opinion up.
Anyways... Yes, there are medals that should have higher values, but I think you rather appreciate those points than be given easy 500 points in half an hour - with a link to a walkthrough. I recently had to get after a well known author, who always gives medals in his art themed games, for throwing them out at players as if they were candy. All game authors are allowed to give out a maximum of 500 points in their games, but some think they should use it all up in one setting, ignoring the challenging ranking of medals. We let a lot of things slide, but this is clear abuse of the medal system, which only serves the purpose of devaluing the system.
Another common problem is that authors will often create redundant medals. For example:
You get 2 medals for beating the boss level, one for the child and one for the the gem. What is the point of that? And, conveniently, it all totals 500 points, for a very easy game you can probably beat in half an hour. SO, I'm thinking of removing the gem medals, because that is the only thing we can do to lower the total medal points of the game to better reflect the of type of challenge it offers.
And, "yes", we do announce our intentions to other mods when we plan to remove medals because of high point values not reflecting the challenge/s. If any of them object, well discuss it further, otherwise, we go through with it. But it's not something we do often, only in extreme cases, where the abuse is very clear.
