Server Merger Needed to Sustain Playerbase

[Vanden]

If the talks with NCSoft bear fruit and Homecoming becomes legit, there’s likely to be an influx of new players that will make the multiple shards we have quite valuable. If the talks fall through, well... server mergers aren’t going to solve that problem.

[SeraphimKensai]

Hypothetically if servers were to magically merge, it would be cool to have Everlasting absorb Indomitable.

 

I'm not saying to do it, just that if it magically was done, I'd get to play with my guild and have access to a more vibrant PvP community.

[Nericus]

On 1/15/2020 at 4:05 PM, Ukase said:

Yeah, I moved a character to indom for A DAY for some pvp. When I t'fer'd my character back - someone took my name! 

As soon as you transfer to another server, make an alt on the server you just transferred from with the character name so that it's still yours. Then transfer back, delete the secondary alt and rename your original alt back

[Nericus]

On 1/15/2020 at 3:28 PM, Saborwrath1 said:

The gist of this post is that Torchbearer and Excelsior and should be merged or at least thought about in the coming months.

The meat is I am an old CoX gamer much like yourselves and I can tell you that Solo'ing is not for me. Waiting and broadcasting for a team is tedious and loses players, while recruitment will likely not happen unless some youtube persona takes interest, we can boost available teams using simple maths. 

Currently, even on the weekend, Excelsior tops out near 800 to 900 players. Some saturdays see it in the low 700s. This means basically there can only be 112, 8 man teams. or 180 effective 5 man teams.
The problem is this pool is randomly split across archetypes so you could have a tanker pool under 50 players, and honestly all this low population discourages soft support characters that cant solo easily.

Ive seen this game die once. Id rather not lose it a second time. Merging these servers would put the weekday pop back over 700, and the weekend pop towards 1100. This is game saving. Thats a player pool i can pick a team out of at any given time. Because I and i know most others love the social aspect of this game. It would be a shame to lose it due to a disjointed population.



 

We have the number of servers that we currently use due to all the lag crashes and overloads that occurred when the game returned.

 

1. Some of the excitement has faded a bit but many people still play and have fun

 

2. Donations are met in hours of donations being turned on.

 

3. All servers have their peak times and finding teams isn't that difficult

 

4. Perhaps the admins should encourage one server as pvp, another as the role-playing server, one as a villain themed server, and there others as the general servers.

 

But server merging? No, we are no where near that point at all.

 

[Chris24601]

5 hours ago, Number Six said:

Actually not possible. [with technical explanation]

Cool beans.

 

In other words, even on live the big servers weren’t that much more populated than they are now (even Freedom only popped red the weekend of new content releases then dropped back to yellow).

 

Also, for real numbers, as of 4:40 pm EST on a Thursday (1:40 pm Pacific... the very definition of “off-peak” hours) every shard except Test has 250 - 550 players (average of 381 per shard).

 

That’s thirty full teams worth of players on the smallest populated server. That’s one full team in nearly every zone in the game during one of the deadest times you’d find in North America (i.e. work hours on a weekday).

 

That sounds like the opposite of underpopulated to me.

[Clave Dark 5]

14 hours ago, NNDeepdish said:

 unnecessary fearmongering without any evidence or accurate statistics, something I don't appreciate.

"Unnecessary" is indeed what I was pointing to with my post.  You don't have to appreciate anything, I was just hoping to point out it pays to play nicer.

[jubakumbi]

First thing I usually do in all MMOs is locate the lowest population server and make my home there.

If you want to play with a lot of poeple, that's great, transfer to the populated one.

There is no reason to force that hell on the rest of us, I remember 'Freedumb' on the live servers, no thanks, I don't need that level of useless drama in my life, much less in my playtime.

 

Not all of us are extroverts that need the influx of social interactions to be happy.

Not all of us think in terms of population being an indicator of Fun.

[Sailboat]

On 1/15/2020 at 4:33 PM, Rathulfr said:

Historically, Excelsior and Everlasting usually jostle with each other for the highest pops, while Torchbearer and Indomitable battle for the basement.  So I'd prefer to see Excelsior (1st) merged with Indomitable (4th), and Everlasting (2nd) with Torchbearer (3rd).  That should split the NA pop evenly between two shards.

Yeah if it HAS to happen, merging the two highest with each other seems weird.  Merge low into high.

 

that said, I find it weird that I was chased off of Torchbearer early on by lag that I attributed to its high pop, and fled to Excelsior.  Heh.

[Rathulfr]

Just now, Sailboat said:

Yeah if it HAS to happen, merging the two highest with each other seems weird.  Merge low into high.

 

that said, I find it weird that I was chased off of Torchbearer early on by lag that I attributed to its high pop, and fled to Excelsior.  Heh.

That's why my SG fled from TB to Indom, too.  But that was just before they figured out a better way for the servers to handle the load, which eventually eliminated the queuing problem that precipitated the addition of more shards.  Perhaps if we had toughed out the queues a bit longer, there wouldn't be 4 NA servers, and only 2, instead.

[Oubliette_Red]

If I recall correctly Torch was one of the first, if not the first server to come online so in the beginning it was the high pop server. Now it usually sits right in the middle.

[Rathulfr]

6 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

If I recall correctly Torch was one of the first, if not the first server to come online so in the beginning it was the high pop server. Now it usually sits right in the middle.

Yep, everyone shifted to Everlasting or Indomitable.

[Safehouse]

On 1/15/2020 at 5:16 PM, Snarky said:

Uh. I started on Liberty back on live. I did not even realize it was a dead server.  Redside to boot

 

i migrated to Freedumb and was invited to a neat community on Virtue named Brickhouse

 

i abandoned a huge base i had been working 6 months to build on Liberty

 

i spent a year on Freedumb. i left a smaller base there

 

look. Server transfers are free. If you dont like where you are i suggest you look at may e Everlasting

 

my main complaint about Everlasting is when i see a post for a team or TF if i dont jump FAST i will miss getting a spot!  Should the Devs step in and put in a mechanic to split pooulations or slow team building?  Or do we just figure out how to make it work?  (When i start badging in earnest i may even have to lead teams.  Grrrr)
 

 

Actually I spent the entire of my time on Liberty when CoH was live. It actually surprises me to hear it was a dead server!

[Dazl]

We surely don't need any server mergers. Playing on Excelsior I never have an issue finding teams just about anytime of day. Now what kind of teams are running can very depending on the time of day. In the evening when more people are on there might be more incarnate raids for examplle, but there is always seems to be people teaming. If you can't get a team for what you want you can create your own.

 

Since you can transfer to another server, try moving to a more populated one and see if it's a better experience.

 

If a deal can be made with NCsoft, then we are likely going to need more servers not less in the future.

[Corruption]

5 hours ago, jubakumbi said:

First thing I usually do in all MMOs is locate the lowest population server and make my home there.

If you want to play with a lot of poeple, that's great, transfer to the populated one.

There is no reason to force that hell on the rest of us, I remember 'Freedumb' on the live servers, no thanks, I don't need that level of useless drama in my life, much less in my playtime.

 

Not all of us are extroverts that need the influx of social interactions to be happy.

Not all of us think in terms of population being an indicator of Fun.

It's not always as simple as that. Besides, how does having more people on a server affect you as an introvert? You can decide not to participate in social interactions in the same exact way, the number of people doesn't matter.

[Display Name]

This sounds suspiciously like a Nemesis plot!

[jubakumbi]

1 hour ago, Corruption said:

It's not always as simple as that. Besides, how does having more people on a server affect you as an introvert? You can decide not to participate in social interactions in the same exact way, the number of people doesn't matter.

Never seen a situation where it's not as simple as that...I pick the smallest server and play there, typically encountering less useless drama, more focused play, with more relaxed players.

When the places you have to go in an MMO, central hubs, are chock full of players, that's hard to avoid on a popular server.

When the player base on a server if chock full of people 'looking to make friends' vs. just relax and play, that can be hard to avoid.

So the number of people has mattered multiple times for me and it has been as simple as playing on the lowest population servers.

 

Doing this since MUDs were first played, before they became MMOs, so decades of personal experience tells me the simple plan works great.

[Chris24601]

Speaking from experience; extroverts generally don’t get the introvert mindset. I’m a borderline introvert. I have a friend who is an EXTREME extravert to the point that spending even an hour by himself gives him fits and anxiety. He doesn’t care what you’re doing... he just wants to be around someone.

 

He is literally incapable of processing that someone like me can spend an entire day interacting with no one but my own thoughts and feel recharged by it.

 

The easiest way I’ve been able to explain it to him is in terms of energy;

 

Extroverts expend energy on solo tasks and recharge by spending time around others. Introverts recharge by spending time on solo times and expend energy when interacting with others.

 

Now I’m borderline. I generally prefer to solo, but I can group for tasks that require it. What I REALLY like with MMOs though is the chat channels. Reading and knowing I can chime in if it’s something I care about or have advice to give lets me participate with others at exactly the level I’m comfortable with.

[MunkiLord]

On 1/17/2020 at 11:29 AM, jubakumbi said:

First thing I usually do in all MMOs is locate the lowest population server and make my home there.

If you want to play with a lot of poeple, that's great, transfer to the populated one.

There is no reason to force that hell on the rest of us, I remember 'Freedumb' on the live servers, no thanks, I don't need that level of useless drama in my life, much less in my playtime.

 

Not all of us are extroverts that need the influx of social interactions to be happy.

Not all of us think in terms of population being an indicator of Fun.

I'm kinda the opposite. I was bored to tears on Victory, and then moved to Freedom and loved it. 

[Chirikiti]

Hardcore introvert here. Most of society doesn't understand and that's with 30% of the population being introverts. If a day boggles friend's mind imagine a month or say 3-years o_-.

 

The chat channels ARE great in this respect, you're connected and know what's going on and can chime in when you want. So one feels part of an MMO that one can actively participate in as one chooses. SWG was like this/ 90% of the time my character was solo, but it almost never felt like I was alone due to the chat channel (and seeing people around)...something those 'why play an mmo if you're going to be solo-types never seem to understand.

 

As to the issue at hand, I really don't see a need for server merges OR a problem with getting teams in general. I'm on Torchbearer. There are time periods where little is going on 11:00pm-1:00am pacific for example, but at 2-3 am this picks up again. Noon-10 pm never seems to be a problem.

 

There ARE times, regularly where there seems to be nothing available or interested in...HOWEVER, this is largely due to me not forming a team myself (I don't want the social/game obligations that come with it). Which brings me to another point. There are a ton of people in the same boat, when someone does form something in LFG chat it's filled pretty quickly. Soooo, and I am reluctant to suggest this 'cuz it can rankle, but try forming something one's self (I've been pushed to alllmost doing this a few time around midnight) . Guaranteed there are people out there who will team but for whom starting one isn't an option (for a variety of reasons).

 

Another reason comes to mind why groupage/teams may seem/be hard to come by...many people recruit in-house first. By in-house I mean, people in their global/SG/Coalition and then they LFG  it publicly. Nothing to be done about that really but be acquainted with people I guess

 

[Apparition]

On 1/17/2020 at 1:59 PM, Oubliette_Red said:

If I recall correctly Torch was one of the first, if not the first server to come online so in the beginning it was the high pop server. Now it usually sits right in the middle.

 

Torchbearer was indeed the first server.  I can't speak for the other before sunset servers, but when the additional servers went online, the Champion server players held a vote as to which server the Champion player community would play on.  Excelsior handily won the vote.  I haven't been on Torchbearer since.

[Oubliette_Red]

On 1/18/2020 at 2:59 PM, Apparition said:

 

Torchbearer was indeed the first server.  I can't speak for the other before sunset servers, but when the additional servers went online, the Champion server players held a vote as to which server the Champion player community would play on.  Excelsior handily won the vote.  I haven't been on Torchbearer since.

I play on whatever server my friends are on. That was true on Legacy, it's still true now. I had 50s on Protector, Justice, and Champ but my primary server was Protector.

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by Oubliette_Red

[Mystic_Cross]

On 1/17/2020 at 6:56 PM, Chris24601 said:

Speaking from experience; extroverts generally don’t get the introvert mindset. 

 

Extroverts expend energy on solo tasks and recharge by spending time around others. Introverts recharge by spending time on solo times and expend energy when interacting with others.

That's a pretty good explanation. Simple. Non-offensive.

 

I usually just say extroverts are like idiots... put them in a room with other idiots and they're happy doing idiot things with each other, but leave them alone to do a task that requires thinking and it drains them quickly. Introverts are usually more intelligent... they excel at doing tasks alone and requiring thought, but in a room full of idiots their mental energy wastes away because... idiocy.

 

I think I may use your explanation in the future, as I think it's more likely to be... received well. 

 

In regards to a server-merge: No.

 

As an alternative, you should be able to join grouping channels for other servers and monitor them in your chat window regardless of what server you're playing on. If you see something going on somewhere else you could just reply that you want in and transfer over. If it hasn't been said enough, server transfers are free. There are also 1,000 character slots per server... you could make new characters or transfer alts you already have. Lots of workarounds for a problem that not a lot of others seem to have... curious.

 

In any case, are you sure it's not just -you-? Not to self-project, but I rarely get teams either... nobody sends me invites... I also don't actively look to join any though, so there's that. I've only been back in-game for about a month and don't get a lot of playtime, so still reacclimating to the CoH playstyle from games like Warframe and Black Desert that I've become used to. I do see teams advertised all the time though... usually ones that I can't join due to level (most advertised is 50+, my highest is 24) or unwillingness (DFB, AE Farm) but that's irrelevant. There -are- lots of teams out there though. Mission teams not-so-much... but DFB, AE, Radios, TFs, Incarnates... I see lots of those pretty much any time of day (or night), and I'm mainly on Indomitable, one of the "low-pop" servers. 

 

The few times I've jumped over to Torchbearer or Excelsior there's been quite a few things going on too. Can't imagine having too much trouble grouping unless you're just sitting around waiting for random tells/invites... or using broadcast instead of LFG channel to recruit. 

 

[Force Redux]

On 1/15/2020 at 6:30 PM, MTeague said:

Same.  Although I will say, I get teams WAY FASTER, if I post in chat that I'm forming one, as opposed to waiting to see an LFG happening for what I want to do.

This right here. I can wait a long time waiting for a team or asking to join a team...

 

But the moment I take the lead and form one in LFG chat, I'm beating back a tide of requests to join, about 90% of the time.

 

Even when I form a great xp team and we have fun for an hour or two, the moment I step down to leave, no one wants the star and they willingly let the team disband for lack of a leader to step up.

 

The players are out there. The leaders are few.

 

FWIW I play on Everlasting on weird off hours, almost never on prime time.

 

[Grimmly]

On 1/15/2020 at 4:34 PM, Apparition said:

 

Yep.  I know that if I were to lose my name, I'd probably just leave.

I thought about transferring from Indom to a higher population server but decided against if for that very reason, more than 1/2 the names for my lvl 50's were already taken.

[Solarverse]

On 1/17/2020 at 12:29 PM, jubakumbi said:

First thing I usually do in all MMOs is locate the lowest population server and make my home there.

If you want to play with a lot of poeple, that's great, transfer to the populated one.

There is no reason to force that hell on the rest of us, I remember 'Freedumb' on the live servers, no thanks, I don't need that level of useless drama in my life, much less in my playtime.

 

Not all of us are extroverts that need the influx of social interactions to be happy.

Not all of us think in terms of population being an indicator of Fun.

You soooo need to rename yourself to Devil's Advocate.  😄