Population down?

[Abraxus]

41 minutes ago, Shred Monkey said:

Playing on Excelsior.   Been back about 1 month.  Frankly, I'm shocked at how easily I can get a team to do almost anything I want.  Frankly, I don't remember Live being this easy to gather TF groups and Radio teams.  So, if the population is down, it's not hurting anything yet.

 

And, I agree with the comment above about disliking the Holloween event. 

Well, the nice thing about the Halloween event is, like most things in the game, it's optional.  It's there for the folks that like it, and not compulsory for those who don't.

[quixoteprog]

2 hours ago, THEDarkTyger said:

One thing to remember is that those dots are server load, which does not necessarily directly correlate to population. It's dependent on what those people are doing at the time. Upgrades in server capacity and/or power can lower the server load with the same population. I'm not saying the population isn't down, just that the dots aren't an absolute indicator. It wouldn't be unexpected if it is, the initial flood is dying off. But that's not anything to panic over.

Yeah, whatever you do people    As long as you have your towel.

 

 

[Dahkness]

I don’t feel the population is down. I always find something to do right when I log in. 

[Troo]

7 hours ago, Herotu said:

I believe that text-oriented missions have had their time - it'd be great to have some kind of text-to-speech to bring the mission system more up-to-date. I do realise that'd be a lot of work so I don't expect anything to happen. :)

Many would love that, but we'd be talking millions in dev and production costs.

 

The original game "produced 400 hours of content for the first version of the game, largely constructed in 45-minute chunks subdivided into a formula of 75% fighting, 25% talking and helping people. "

[Apparition]

The population definitely feels down, for a variety of reasons.  The original rush from late April through the end of June or so is gone.  Most of the people that never played CoH before and came to check it out have moved on.  About half of my SG stopped playing in August, and now play Borderlands 3 and/or World of Warcraft Classic instead.  In addition, it's been much more difficult the past couple of weeks to find people for the non-Halloween content, because... well... it's Halloween.

 

In the end, City of Heroes is a fifteen year-old video game.  As much as I think it is currently the best MMOG available, most people can't get past the dated graphics and gameplay, and will opt for the new shiny instead.  It is what it is, but CoH will always have its core base.

[Doc_Scorpion]

It's funny...  back in the days of Live, we pored over the quarterly financials from Cryptic to tease out the numbers for CoX.  Almost invariably, the numbers were down from the previous quarter.  And each quarter, we'd say the same kind of things folks are saying here.  "It's the holidays, they'll be back."  "It's back to school after the holidays, they'll be back."  "It's summer vacation, they'll be back."  "It's back to school after summer vacation, they'll be back."

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer - but here's the thing. There'd be upswings now and again after a major Issue or a new retail box, but quarter piled on quarter the trend was clear.  (To those few of us who pulled back and looked at the pattern rather than immediate results.)  They never came back.

What this says about the future of Homecoming (which has very different funding and operations models), I can't say and won't speculate on. 

But I wouldn't bet the rent money on "they'll come back".

[Troo]

1 minute ago, Apparition said:

n the end, City of Heroes is a fifteen year-old video game.  As much as I think it is currently the best MMOG available, most people can't get past the dated graphics and gameplay, and will opt for the new shiny instead.  It is what it is, but CoH will always have its core base.

I'm confused by dated 'gameplay" comment. Would you mind expanding on that? Feel free to shoot it over in a message if you prefer.

You know we can modify the graphics quite a bit to get it to your liking?

[Apparition]

5 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

It's funny...  back in the days of Live, we pored over the quarterly financials from Cryptic to tease out the numbers for CoX.  Almost invariably, the numbers were down from the previous quarter.  And each quarter, we'd say the same kind of things folks are saying here.  "It's the holidays, they'll be back."  "It's back to school after the holidays, they'll be back."  "It's summer vacation, they'll be back."  "It's back to school after summer vacation, they'll be back."

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer - but here's the thing. There'd be upswings now and again after a major Issue or a new retail box, but quarter piled on quarter the trend was clear.  (To those few of us who pulled back and looked at the pattern rather than immediate results.)  They never came back.

What this says about the future of Homecoming (which has very different funding and operations models), I can't say and won't speculate on. 

But I wouldn't bet the rent money on "they'll come back".

 

Yep.  Prior to ED, my SG had over 25 people in it.  After ED, it had three, including myself.  One eventually came back a few years later for a couple of months before drifting away again.  The rest never came back.

 

1 minute ago, Troo said:

I'm confused by dated 'gameplay" comment. Would you mind expanding on that? Feel free to shoot it over in a message if you prefer.

You know we can modify the graphics quite a bit to get it to your liking?

 

I'm not talking about myself, I'm talking about others. 🙂 I'm talking about tab-target instead of action combat.  Many think that tab-target combat is "dated," and won't bother trying a MMOG that doesn't have action combat.

[Abraxus]

10 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

It's funny...  back in the days of Live, we pored over the quarterly financials from Cryptic to tease out the numbers for CoX.  Almost invariably, the numbers were down from the previous quarter.  And each quarter, we'd say the same kind of things folks are saying here.  "It's the holidays, they'll be back."  "It's back to school after the holidays, they'll be back."  "It's summer vacation, they'll be back."  "It's back to school after summer vacation, they'll be back."

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer - but here's the thing. There'd be upswings now and again after a major Issue or a new retail box, but quarter piled on quarter the trend was clear.  (To those few of us who pulled back and looked at the pattern rather than immediate results.)  They never came back.

What this says about the future of Homecoming (which has very different funding and operations models), I can't say and won't speculate on. 

But I wouldn't bet the rent money on "they'll come back".

To be fair, until the Devs are able to put out the word, far and wide, without concern for violating some term of the current legal situation, we really won't know what the current iteration is capable of attracting, player-wise.  Hardly a day goes by where I don't read something about folks who loved this game, only now finding out it has returned.  Imagine how many more of those might be out there, and could find out with a legitimate advertising effort.  I'm not naive enough to think we will ever get to Warcraft numbers, but I think the population would definitely increase following a campaign like that.  How much, and how long it's sustainable...anybody's guess.  But, there are those of us (granted, a smaller segment of the total population) who will be here until this ride ends.  Why?  Because this is the only game we want to play, even if we don't play it as often, due to a myriad of potential circumstances.

[Lockpick]

19 hours ago, Abraxus said:

I'm not playing quite as frequently, but I am playing.  Probably due to the fact that, at least for the time being, I feel pretty comfortable that when I want to play, it's here.  Those first few months, I think a lot of folks were playing like mad just in case it all ended suddenly.  Now, we are settling in for the longer haul.  As someone above mentioned, this is probably just the state of things until the results of the negotiations are announced, and are (hopefully) favorable.  Then, they can go out and advertise this game to the universe at large, at which time, I'm guessing we'd get a fresh influx of players.

Same with me.  The first few months I played like crazy because I was worried there would be another shutdown.  I am still playing, but nowhere near the hours I was playing initially.

[Troo]

3 minutes ago, Abraxus said:

Imagine how many more of those might be out there, and could find out with a legitimate advertising effort.  I'm not naive enough to think we will ever get to Warcraft numbers, but I think the population would definitely increase following a campaign like that.

Agreed, advertising would provide a boost. There is, as with most things, a honeymoon period followed by a tailing off over time (if lucky).

I would love to say give me $10M and I could turn that into $20M but I can't get the math to work.

There are significant to-dos or issues with the game that many may not realize. To-dos that add up to significant costs before being able to advertise (even if that was an option).

 

Example: Text Chat/etc. and complying with the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA)

[subbacultchas]

Yeah, I expect it will go down. I've been scarcely around for the past few weeks, there's just a lot of new stuff to play that I've really been itching for (currently Bloodstained: RotN, Fire Emblem Three Houses, and Archeage: UC). But CoH is comfort food honestly. I might try out new restaurants from time to time, but I'll always head back to CoH when I'm done.

[MTeague]

I won't say I don't ever play any other games.  there's days I just want to go for world domination and fire up Civilization.

There's days the sandbox itch hits me and I fire up one of the older Bethesda titles.

 

But you can count on seeing me on Excelsior 3-4 nights a week, and most every weekend.  

I don't care who comes and goes. I don't care who obsesses that the population is above or below a certain threshold. 

for SEVEN YEARS, I would have been perfectly fine and dandy with a SINGLE PLAYER version of CoH, just to have my fix back.

So long as Homecoming exists, *cough* <Ahnold voice on>  "I'll be back".

[Megajoule]

This was me, back when the game was live.  I maintained a continuous subscription from the date I started playing right up to the end (even after it went sub-optional).  Sometimes I'd go play other games for a while, but I always came back.

And now here I am, again.

[Techwright]

There's the matter of the other COH hosted sites as well.  I don't know the population counts on them, and I'm guessing Homecoming is by far the dominant one, but with some developing their own power sets and archetypes, there's bound to be at least some bleed-off of players wanting to try every shiny new thing.

[Abraxus]

11 hours ago, Techwright said:

There's the matter of the other COH hosted sites as well.  I don't know the population counts on them, and I'm guessing Homecoming is by far the dominant one, but with some developing their own power sets and archetypes, there's bound to be at least some bleed-off of players wanting to try every shiny new thing.

It might be odd, but I have no desire to go to any of the other servers to try any of these new "shiny" powers, or costume pieces.  It just doesn't appeal to me, probably because even with 20 alts, I still have not come anywhere near having tried all powersets, and archetypes.  As for costume pieces, with millions of combinations available, I've not come anywhere close to going through all of that either.  Still plenty of room to try new things right here on Homecoming, and there will, no doubt, be new stuff here to play with as well.  So, I'm good.