How small could CoX be and have you still play?

[Zep]

On 11/13/2019 at 11:31 AM, tafilr said:

In the case things go south here (certainly not saying I want them to), I have taken it upon myself to download the binaries to run out of my home on my own hardware if need be.  Nothing is going to steal my precious again.  

 

I see this as related to your topic.  In a way...

QTF

[Megajoule]

7 hours ago, roleki said:

When I first heard about CoH's return, I made the (innocent) mistake of navigating to a deserted server.  I played on a completely empty server for 6 hours, and that was all I could take, even while drowning in nostalgia and running amok seeing the sights.  

 

If HC etc went away, I would roll my own to tide me over while (hopefully) another team got a 'live' public server going.  

I, too, have done the low-pop server thing.  It's definitely missing something.  At times, I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was running (flying) around an Echo... a shadow of what once was, frozen in time, but with no life or future.

 

I much prefer the experience of playing on a server like Everlasting, even with the occasional bad PUG, troll on chat, and other issues.

[boggo2300]

3' cube :nod:

[Crysis]

There is a form of first person story in the way of content linkage in the game, so I could see myself playing the game solo for some time if necessary.

 

But the game world will suffer greatly if mine is the only voice heard in the streets.  The AI is so routine based and repetitive that much of it would become depressing very quickly.

 

I’ve hosted other private servers for dying games before, for my friends and I, and eventually we all notice the lack of a game world to talk about. “Did you see what that one player X was doing????” Or similar.  PUG’s are part of the fabric of the game world.  They die, and no matter what you try to do to keep it alive, the game becomes a shell of the experience it otherwise could have been.

 

Now having said all this....SCORE kept the game alive, in secret, with fairly low player populations.  So there’s that....

[Bopper]

7 hours ago, RialVestro said:

Maybe the internet has finally matured enough to where it doesn't need to make a dick joke every five minutes...

It hasn't. 

 

7 hours ago, RialVestro said:

But also it might be because there's absolutely no way to answer that question without someone else making a gay joke at your expense

Don't limit yourself. You could've made a self deprecating masturbatory joke. 

[wjrasmussen]

On 11/13/2019 at 11:31 AM, tafilr said:

In the case things go south here (certainly not saying I want them to), I have taken it upon myself to download the binaries to run out of my home on my own hardware if need be.  Nothing is going to steal my precious again.  

 

I see this as related to your topic.  In a way...

how and where did you get those?   do you have server side as well?

 

[Fan Mail]

Check your inbox.

[Troo]

On 11/17/2019 at 9:16 AM, wjrasmussen said:

do you have server side as well?

Yep, the whole thing is available.

[Aracknight]

Make it so i can reduce TF AV's to EB's and i would play it solo in its current form until the heat death of the universe.

[Megajoule]

On 11/17/2019 at 5:06 AM, Crysis said:

Now having said all this....SCORE kept the game alive, in secret, with fairly low player populations.  So there’s that....

They kept it on life support, IMO.  Not quite the same thing.

[Haijinx]

I assume there is a fair ways to go before we get to ghost town.  After all there's multiple servers yet.  

[Crysis]

5 hours ago, Megajoule said:

They kept it on life support, IMO.  Not quite the same thing.

I never played on SCORE server but from all the video clips and data released at the end, it looked like a pretty small active community.  Which sort of makes sense when you look at our explosion of population right when Homecoming opened up the servers relative to now.  That’s only been 6 months and we are substantially lower now than back in April/May.  So after SCORE had been operating for years in secret, they weren’t that populated either.  Nonetheless, I think even at an active player population of 100 players, against a weekend crowd of maybe 3X that, this game could still work.  Not financially but from a playability perspective.

 

I agree with the above poster who said the one thing that prevents total solo play are the AV’s.  I have built several toons that can solo AV’s, albeit some with great difficulty.  

[Abraxus]

Well, the SCORE server was low population due to the fact that it was a fairly well kept secret, with invites going only to the folks who knew someone already a member, and promised not to advertise the fact that there was a live CoH server still out there.  They crafted a few changes to allow the smaller population to thrive, despite that low population.  I'd imagine some of those things are being re-evaluated due to the increased population after Homecoming sprang into existence. 

 

You are correct when you note that the daily player numbers have fallen since April/May when all of this happened.  Some of that was expected, just due to the nostalgia factor wearing off for returning players, and the realization for new players that the game wasn't really their thing.  However, bear in mind that if the NCSoft deal actually happens, open/widespread advertisement would become possible (as in shouting from the rooftops of social media, etc.), which would likely bump up the numbers a bit.  Especially considering the number of folks coming our way (and to the other CoH servers as well) who say they only JUST found out that this was actually a thing, and loaded it up as soon as they could.  There are likely a lot more of them out there, along with a potential glut of folks who have played the other Super Hero games currently available, and found them...wanting.

[Shred Monkey]

You know... rethinking this question I remembered that at one point during live I transferred from Infinity to Freedom because I wanted a larger population.  I was tired of not being able to get a team together for TFs and having to solo all the time.  In fact, I essentially left the game before sunset was even announced, seeking a more team-friendly option.

 

Funny thing about that.... I've found that since coming back, it's actually FAR easier to find teams and TFs then I ever found it to be on live.  I really feel like the population is bigger and friendlier here now than before.  The player base is one of my favorite things about this game now.  It's certainly bigger and better some of those other games I played in the interim.

 

 

[InfamousBrad]

I find this question unpleasant to contemplate, but ...

 

How few players? HC is down to just a bit over 4k players at peak concurrency and it's already starting to feel too small to support 4.5 servers. With full server consolidation, maybe I could stand it as low as 1,000 peak concurrency, but honestly, even that's a bit low to find teams during off-peak hours.

 

How few sides? I would be perfectly fine with only having one side ... if it weren't the existing blue-side solo content, which uniformly sucks [expletive deleted]. I'm not inherently villainous or mercenary -- I just hate having every other mission be four zones away from where I just was, hunting for obscure spawns, or both. Also, right now, there are maps like Boomtown and Crey's Folly (and arguably Eden) that just plain no longer have any reason to exist, haven't had any reason to exist since somewhere around issue 5. (I can't shake the suspicion that, given enough time, all three of those zones would have gotten New Faultine style makeovers.)

 

Fewer modes? As long as we're keeping the existing game mechanics, then as far as I'm concerned, open-world PvP could and should go away. It makes zero sense to fight someone in a zone a mile on a side when most combat moves root the attacker and the target moves at 60 mi/hr. And I haven't been inside a single AE mission since relaunch. On the other hand, I'm also starting to get a little low on content I'm not bored with again already, which is what AE was meant to fix, so maybe in the long run I would miss it.

 

How few archetypes? I feel like I could make a pretty strong case for merging Scrappers and Brutes, and maybe even Tankers. I feel like I could make somewhat of a case for merging both Kheldian ATs into a single AT with multiple powersets and both Arachnos ATs the same way.  It wouldn't break my heart if they got rid of Dominators, although I'm sure some would complain. I could imagine a more-balanced AT about halfway between a Defender and a Corrupter replacing both of them.  On the other hand ... why would you?  Supporting extra ATs is the least programmer-intensive part of the game.