Merits: How to drum up redside activity

[Hew]

Redside is horribly underpopulated. Always has been, without intervention, probably always will be.

 

Why not set up a weekly event, where ever non-radio, non-paper mish redside gives 2 merits for completion, and double merits for arc completion?

 

It isnt enough to do any sort of crazy unbalancing of the market, but it is (I think) enough to drive people to play, at least during the weekly events...

[Ironblade]

I think it's underpopulated for one simple reason.  The villain content is newer than much of the blue content and has better mechanics and design.  It's just better content but it's less popular because a lot of people don't like playing the bad guy.

 

I don't think the devs should be trying to incentivize people to play content that they personally find distasteful.  The rewards should be balanced uniformly and people can decide on their own what content they prefer.  If that leaves redside a ghost town, then so be it.  We shouldn't be pressuring people to play content they would normally choose to avoid.

[golstat2003]

40 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

I think it's underpopulated for one simple reason.  The villain content is newer than much of the blue content and has better mechanics and design.  It's just better content but it's less popular because a lot of people don't like playing the bad guy.

 

I don't think the devs should be trying to incentivize people to play content that they personally find distasteful.  The rewards should be balanced uniformly and people can decide on their own what content they prefer.  If that leaves redside a ghost town, then so be it.  We shouldn't be pressuring people to play content they would normally choose to avoid.

 

With that said I would not mind a rotating (maybe daily) award of double of an extra 2 merits when a mission is completed in a target zone.

[MTeague]

I'm not a fan of bribing people to play content they don't want to do. 

 

If you want to see more people on redside, talk to some friends.  Maybe try to drum up some interest for a "Villainous Veekend" a couple times a month.  (or even get totally wacky and do a "Goldside Gameday"....).  Even a recurring group of 3-4 other people can make for a very fun time. 

 

But honestly, small bribes aren't going to work.  It's like when I see someone in Help chat offering 1 million influence to someone who helps them find a certain badge.  It's not enough to care about. I may decide to help the person because I feel bad for them looking for it. But a million inf?  Pfft.  Wouldn't get me to get up and go brew coffee.  A couple extra merits here and there?  They'll make more merits and faster rerunning the content they already know.  It'd have to be a Biiiiiig bribe to move any sizeable numbers of people and frankly, that's not a direction they should take. 

 

[ZemX]

1 hour ago, Ironblade said:

I don't think the devs should be trying to incentivize people to play content that they personally find distasteful. 

 

I don't know why people think this is a major factor.  Or even the somewhat greater difficulty I sometimes hear.

 

Redside has always been less populated.   It started with less content and it's always had less content.  The devs weren't going to spend more time bringing redside up to parity when most of their established players were blueside.   Going Rogue was them finally admitting, officially, that would always be the case so they just opened the gates to both playgrounds.

 

Blueside has more people because it has more people.  It's self-perpetuating.  Without some reason to move towards equilibrium, why would it happen?  So it makes sense to think of incentives, but I think it also runs afoul of the same reason the original devs didn't try to add exclusive perks or favor redside with more content updates.   It's going to upset a lot of people who already play the game and are fine playing blueside.  

 

I don't think this is the way.  I think the only thing you can do is continue what Going Rogue started by lowering barriers to cross-teaming where possible.   If there is a way not to be booted from a team just because you're from different factions, that would be nice.  It should all be sorted out anyway when the team tries to gather in one zone.  The game doesn't need to prevent the invites from working or boot people from the team because they went to the wrong zone.  I don't know about anyone else, but that alone would make it easier for be to home more of my characters redside without having to deal with the inconvenience of joining blue teams and then getting randomly booted for going to Ouro or my SG base.  Maybe just fixing those last two, if possible, would be enough.  It's not going to magically make redside as big as blueside.  Not saying that.  But it might help a little more.

[Hew]

You would be surprised how fast 2 merits per mish (double for arc completion) can add up. If you are rolling mishs in PO or Cap au dribble, its totally seeable to rack  up 10, 16 merits in an hour, just putzing in contact content.

 

At low level is where it REALLY shines, since there are a lot of arcs, they are easy to deal with (in mercy), and if you rotate leads on startup arcs, could definitely  net maybe 30 merits in an hour, which is _a lot_ for a brand new alt.

[tidge]

Maybe it's the lack of DFB grinding Redside, but in my experience the merits already pour in easier on the Red Side for low-level solo-ish content. This is all pretty easy to get to with a P2W flight/jump power. Just avoid Doc Graves.

 

I have observed another subtle bonus side-effect of not having 8-man DFB teams red side: A pair (or more) of new villains can team to quickly run through a lot of early content for both XP and merits. They can miss out on the DFB Boosters, but if folks are skipping other low-level content it isn't as if those boosts are making a big difference.

[siolfir]

2 hours ago, ZemX said:

Going Rogue was them finally admitting, officially, that would always be the case so they just opened the gates to both playgrounds.

Freedom was, really; for Going Rogue the "villain" ATs had to start in either Praetoria or Mercy until alignment missions at level 20+. It wasn't until Freedom that they just gave up entirely.

 

[dangeraaron10]

I'm also of the mind that you shouldn't bribe people to do content they don't want to do.  I started CoX with City if Villains but eventually went 70% Blue (15% Red and 15% Gold for variety).  That's not likely to change, even if Redside throws more merits at me.

 

The couple Reds I do have usually just street sweep and do occasional team missions.  

 

One thing that'd get me to play Red more is more options in mission arcs.  To have more "Rogue" options alongside the usual Villain outcomes.  Rogue is my second favorite alignment after Hero and would love to play my Rogues more like Rogues outside the handful of alignment tip missions.

[Hew]

2 hours ago, dangeraaron10 said:

One thing that'd get me to play Red more is more options in mission arcs.  To have more "Rogue" options alongside the usual Villain outcomes.  Rogue is my second favorite alignment after Hero and would love to play my Rogues more like Rogues outside the handful of alignment tip missions.

 

Piecemeal and company put together a red side arc that gives you  morality points. Given that people dont seem to run the blue side very often (its too hard syndrome), and the fact that I only seen ONE lfg listing for the red side arc, anything "not blue" seems like it will just be wasted effort.

 

That does not seem reasonable, to end up in a situation where new content lovingly crafted and created simply gets no play time because "not blue enough".

 

2 hours ago, dangeraaron10 said:

I'm also of the mind that you shouldn't bribe people to do content they don't want to do.

 

What about the people who want to do other content, but either end up soloing it, or not doing it all, because noone will join, short of bribing them to join you? Hint: not ez-mode.

[Apparition]

18 minutes ago, Hew said:

 

Piecemeal and company put together a red side arc that gives you  morality points. Given that people dont seem to run the blue side very often (its too hard syndrome), and the fact that I only seen ONE lfg listing for the red side arc, anything "not blue" seems like it will just be wasted effort.

 

That does not seem reasonable, to end up in a situation where new content lovingly crafted and created simply gets no play time because "not blue enough".

 

 

What about the people who want to do other content, but either end up soloing it, or not doing it all, because noone will join, short of bribing them to join you? Hint: not ez-mode.

 

 

I wouldn't use LFG as a metric for how often story arcs are played.  I never, ever team for story arcs unless either a friend needs help with something or it's being run via Ouroboros Flashback.  I prefer to solo story arcs so I can get to leisurely read everything, and because you don't get reward merits for doing story arcs on a team outside of Ouroboros Flashback.  I know that I'm not the only one that vastly prefers to run story arcs solo.

[MTeague]

48 minutes ago, Hew said:

What about the people who want to do other content, but either end up soloing it, or not doing it all, because noone will join, short of bribing them to join you? Hint: not ez-mode.

Life is hard.

 

I don't think there's a single story arc in the entire game that can't be solo'd, though some might require use of certain temp powers at certain levels. 

(and I'm not talking P2W, I'm talking Shivan Shard, HVAS, Ring of Peebles, etc)

 

If people don't want to join you, they don't want to join you. 

Be more personable and persuade them. 

Or accept that their choice is their choice and solo the darn thing. 

An appeal to the devs to hold out more prizes just so more people will be available to help you.... I can't get behind that. 

[Christopher Robin]

12 hours ago, Hew said:

Redside is horribly underpopulated. Always has been..................... probably always will be.

 

As it should be.

 

9 hours ago, Ironblade said:

it's less popular because a lot of people don't like playing the bad guy.

 

Yep. It's not because CoH came first and it doesn't really matter the incentive I just don't want to play Redside.

I play the game to be a hero, being the bad guy has no appeal whatsoever...  annnd cue the mass of down votes from Villains.

[ZemX]

10 hours ago, Christopher Robin said:

Yep. It's not because CoH came first and it doesn't really matter the incentive I just don't want to play Redside.

I play the game to be a hero, being the bad guy has no appeal whatsoever...  annnd cue the mass of down votes from Villains.

 

That might be your reason, but we're talking the whole playerbase here and it's ridiculous to ignore the elephant that has always been in the room: CoH has more content.  Always has had more content.  Always will have more content.  And yes, that is absolutely because it came first. 

 

Where was their entire customer base when CoV released?  Blueside.  How much content did CoV release with?  Less than blueside.  Were they going to spend each subsequent issue release adding MORE content to redside than blueside to bring them to parity on content all the while pissing off their existing customer base that was blueside?  Of course not.   This got talked to death on the original forums.  This is just how it was.  Redside wasn't doomed by people wanting to play heroes.  They still play heroes.  They were playing villains and anti-heroes blueside before CoV was even a thing.

 

Not going to down-vote you because I disagree, but c'mon.  You're going to ignore how much more content is Blueside and chalk up the population disparity to... heroism?  For most who play, and this goes for pretty much any MMO... content is king.

[Apparition]

I find it difficult to believe that people play blue side because it has more content, when most of it is terribly written and terribly designed.  The writing and design blue side only started getting good with The Hollows in Issue 2.  So that leaves The Hollows, Striga Isle, Croatoa, and Faultline.  Since then, blue and red side have had content parity.  For every contact added blue side, there has been one added red side.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Apparition

[drdread]

50 minutes ago, Apparition said:

The writing and design blue side only started getting good with The Hollows in Issue 2.  So that leaves The Hollows, Striga Isle, Croatoa, and Faultline.  Since then, blue and red side have had content parity.  For every contact added blue side, there has been one added red side.

 

I agree with that assessment. When I solo on blue side, I usually switch to redside at about level 30. Redside has better high level story arcs, IMO.

 

The biggest criticism I have with red side missions is Longbow (including Wyvern) has too much presence, making missions seem repetitive. It's unfortunate, because Red Side has interesting factions that never really get a chance to shine. Gold Brickers, Luddites, Slag monsters are present in some story arcs, but are never featured villains. (like the Sky Raiders, Trolls, Skulls, and Freakshow are on blue side).

[ZemX]

1 hour ago, Apparition said:

I find it difficult to believe that people play blue side because it has more content, when most of it is terribly written and terribly designed. 

 

I've read your other posts on red vs. blue.  You also said you think most people play blueside because they like facerolling easy content.   So it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense that you also think they care about the quality of writing.

 

If most people soloed as much as you do and cared as much as you do about the writing, they'd all start either gold or redside and then move redside.   But they don't.   That's pretty compelling evidence that most people don't share these priorities.   This is also a  feedback loop.  More people choose blueside because there are more people blueside.   If they primarily soloed the game, they wouldn't care where the most people are.   So most people team up for content, which also supports the idea they aren't reading the stories anymore.

 

Changing that would require some counter-balancing incentive LIKE more content or higher rewards or something.  If better writing were that counter-balance, it would have worked a long time ago.

[Ironblade]

4 hours ago, ZemX said:

That might be your reason, but we're talking the whole playerbase here and it's ridiculous to ignore the elephant that has always been in the room: CoH has more content.  Always has had more content.  Always will have more content.  And yes, that is absolutely because it came first.

That's right.  We're talking about the whole player base and MANY people don't like playing the bad guy.  Frankly, it's ridiculous to dismiss that reason.  It's a matter of personal preference and 100% valid.

 

And talking about the amount of content is nonsensical because everyone in the game can access all of the content.  Talking about amount of content makes sense when talking about two different games.  This is all one game.

[Christopher Robin]

4 hours ago, ZemX said:

That might be your reason, but we're talking the whole playerbase here and it's ridiculous to ignore the elephant that has always been in the room: CoH has more content.  Always has had more content.  Always will have more content.  And yes, that is absolutely because it came first. 

 

Where was their entire customer base when CoV released?  Blueside.  How much content did CoV release with?  Less than blueside.  Were they going to spend each subsequent issue release adding MORE content to redside than blueside to bring them to parity on content all the while pissing off their existing customer base that was blueside?  Of course not.   This got talked to death on the original forums.  This is just how it was.  Redside wasn't doomed by people wanting to play heroes.  They still play heroes.  They were playing villains and anti-heroes blueside before CoV was even a thing.

 

Not going to down-vote you because I disagree, but c'mon.  You're going to ignore how much more content is Blueside and chalk up the population disparity to... heroism?  For most who play, and this goes for pretty much any MMO... content is king.

 

 

Ummm yes? That would be why I stated it. It may not be yours but that doesn't mean a significant

segment of players don't agree with me. If you're implying that I alone am of the opinion that "more people

prefer playing the hero than the villain" I don't even have to leave the thread to point to examples disproving that.

Look no one speaks for the entire player base and we have no way to ask them as a whole but just using what we have

available what's the only post in this thread with more than 2 likes or thumbs up (currently 12)? That would be the

one from Ironblade that I quoted saying a very similar thing. I've heard this expressed dozens of different ways

by hundreds of people over the years since i6. I'm not ignoring your supposed pachyderm I am saying

it's irrelevant and would not change my opinion if the situation were reversed and Red came first.

 

Where were they the day CoV was released? Well anyone who had it was playing with the shiny new Redside

and my whole SG and I were among them. You know where many of them were a few days/weeks later? Blueside.

Maybe if it had been a free expansion or had released sooner or with content parity you could've kept more people

over there longer but the end result would've been the same. Once the new toy syndrome wears off you realize

you are playing for the wrong team and it's just not as fun. The only reason I didn't get rid of it (well I did sell

off my pricey early order & pick up a DVD Collector's Edition a few weeks later for $8) was that you needed

to have Villains in order to get access to Supergroup bases and porters (features people actually wanted).

 

Well that would make you more civil than some and I appreciate that but as an FYI you can't

really "down-vote" a post and subtract reputation in the same way that "up-voting" a post adds to it.

Honestly that bit at the end was something of an experiment to see if a rash of all in red-siders would strike

after I predicted that they would. Do they choose the new thumbs down thereby proving me right or

or do they resist the temptation to try and prove me wrong? So far it appears to be the latter.

 

I am ignoring nothing and yes perceived heroism is a far more significant factor than you seem to realize.

No, content that people enjoy playing is king. Content they have no interest in is more of a "red" headed step child.

 

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

If most people soloed as much as you do and cared as much as you do about the writing, they'd all start either gold or redside and then move redside.   But they don't.   That's pretty compelling evidence that most people don't share these priorities. 

 

Or it's compelling evidence that people don't share your priorities and actually just prefer playing Blueside.

Can you honestly think of no scenario where a product launches in a space and then later a significantly better one

launches in that same space and people abandon the original in time and adopt the newer better thing???

 

If the content was genuinely superior and/or more people enjoyed playing villainous characters

then over time people would migrate and there would end up being more people redside which would

then make the devs release more content to support the majority of the player base but it isn't and they don't.

 

Edited May 26, 2021 by Christopher Robin

[ZemX]

5 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

That's right.  We're talking about the whole player base and MANY people don't like playing the bad guy.  Frankly, it's ridiculous to dismiss that reason.  It's a matter of personal preference and 100% valid.

 

You have offered no evidence for the claim that "many" people don't like playing the bad guy.  Meanwhile, I can look over at SWTOR and see nobody having any problem whatsoever playing Imperials.  WoW players have no problem rolling up undead, orcs, and dark elves.  Now, I'm sure having said this people will come running to inform me that their Imperials or Horde are actually not evil, but c'mon.  These are both classically "bad guy" factions and no, the vast majority have no problems playing them.  Lightside Sith in SWTOR are not "good guys".  Still no trouble playing them.  Why?  Because those games have balanced content.

 

Meanwhile the content disparity in this game is fact, not opinion.  You think that people care about the good vs evil but you can't show that's the case.

 

9 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

And talking about the amount of content is nonsensical because everyone in the game can access all of the content.  Talking about amount of content makes sense when talking about two different games.  This is all one game.

 

There are hardly zero restrictions.  It is simply easier to team blueside if you are natively a blueside alignment.  If you prefer to hop into the far more abundant blueside DFBs or low level TFs to level, it's just plain simpler to start blueside than it is to go villain and then rogue.  So why would you?

[Christopher Robin]

18 minutes ago, ZemX said:

You have offered no evidence for the claim that "many" people don't like playing the bad guy.

 

You mean other than multiple people here saying the same thing, each of

those people knowing the minds of many others & having the post with more than

6x the approval of any other here? You mean other than that evidence he has no evidence?

 

18 minutes ago, ZemX said:

Meanwhile, I can look over at SWTOR

 

Apples and Oranges comparison. Doesn't apply.

 

18 minutes ago, ZemX said:

Meanwhile the content disparity in this game is fact, not opinion. 

 

Has anyone disputed this??? Of course it's true, it's also irrelevant to many. People play what they like.

 

Edited May 26, 2021 by Christopher Robin

[Fade]

A few people here have had opinions along the lines of "I don't want to be incentivized to do content I don't like". I can understand the desire to have the most optimal play also be the most enjoyable one.

However, the game already incentivizes doing unpopular content. Players aren't (often) doing Dr. Quarterfield TFs for the sheer joy of it - they're doing it for the tall stack of merits at the end. A lot of players choose not to participate in that TF except for during its time in the weekly rotation, and many also don't touch it at all. All of those choices are completely valid, and each individual has to make that calculation for themselves. But the entire Weekly Strike Target system is based around the idea of getting players to explore the less commonly played content, and the easiest way to do so is through rewards.

And more rewards means more people giving the content a chance when they otherwise wouldn't have. And more people redside means that people who would like to play redside but can never find a team can finally have one. And so on and so forth.

I also dig the idea of more rewarding redside content for a thematic reason: Villains do their villainy for selfish personal gain. It makes sense that the most efficient way to gain resources would be to take them from others. More rewards on the redside lets bad guys be bad guys, and lets blueside-only players actually make the choice to be a "good" guy for selfless reasons.

Now, the exact method of reward might be tricky - 2 merits per mission seems like a lot, but does 1 merit per mission feel like enough of a reward to get people interested? The specifics might need some tweaking, but the idea is good enough to consider.

Also, let's do this for goldside as well. A lot of missions on goldside have interesting stories that feel like they're meant to be experienced solo, but punishing mechanics that feel like you're supposed to bring a full team.

[ZemX]

1 minute ago, Christopher Robin said:

 

You mean other than having the post with more than 6x the approval of any other?  

 

This is not what anyone would call a representative sample of a population.  So yes, you would need more than that.   I would too so I am not saying I am proven correct either.  But I am putting down arguments to support my case.   All you and anyone else agreeing with you have been doing is saying "Blue is good, Red is bad.  Blue has more people.  It's because people like playing Good."  I can provide precisely the same line of reasoning substituting "has more content" for good and "has less content" for bad.   Both are correlations only.

 

5 minutes ago, Christopher Robin said:

Apples and Oranges comparison. Doesn't apply.

 

Dismissing without reasoning doesn't make your case.   These are both sci-fantasy MMOs with factions, swords, sorcery, guns, and superpowers.  Attempting to claim there is a fundamentally different kind of MMO player between the two is stretching it.  You'd basically have to claim that somehow the type of gamer who plays SWTOR doesn't care about the morality of their avatars' chosen faction but CoH players do.  Meanwhile all I am saying is... they have balanced content and balanced (mostly) factions.  We have unbalanced content and unbalanced population. 

 

Which one of us is really stretching farther to make their case?

[Clawdebt]

I don't like playing as a villain sorry.

[Wavicle]

I like the idea, but it has to be recognized that despite what the original devs may have intended, Red and Gold sides are in fact effectively side content/increased challenge and alternative starting areas, NOT separate but equal factions.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Wavicle