The Trouble with Indom

[cfarevival]

I have been playing since 2019.  I chose the Indomitable server at total random, but once I got in there, I never left.  Nowadays, it seems, aside from a few players (Monk and team, Killshot, and those on my SG) there are very few people.

 

In fact, it seems like Hami Raids, MSR, and iTrials are about all that goes on there.  Not that I am complaining, those things are great, but there is so much more to be done.

 

What can be done about it?  I would love to see Indom carrying the numbers Excelsior carries, but that might be a pipe dream.  Is there a way to attact more people to the server?

 

Just throwing this out there as a discussion.  Thanks!

[Jaxman100]

You pretty much named all the level 50 league content and those things happen pretty much daily.  In the Looking for Group channel you see call outs for the WST fairly regularly, more so towards the beginning of the week. 

Fact of the matter is, not a lot of the rest of the content in the game requires a large team anymore if you aren't running +4/x8. 

 

I notice other TFs forming daily, not as regularly as Excelsior but they are out there.  They even form 3-5 hours that the level 50 content is being done nightly.

 

I find that I tend to join other's far more often than I 'start' a group. But most of the time if I am looking for something specific to do, I can find others to join in. Just have to put it out there. 

 

Been badge hunting recently, and I've gotten help with every GM I've taken on the last few weeks.  

[cfarevival]

Oh, I understand that there are people there.  And generally, I have experienced the same thing as you.  But something else I have experienced is what appears to be a mass exodus from Indom to the other servers.  I have asked the question:  where is so-and-so, and MOST of the time the response is that they left for Everlasting.  Seems strange to me.  I am pretty loyal, so I am sticking with Indom, but just trying to figure out why many are leaving.

[Spectre7878]

This has me a bit worried too. Indomitable is my home to all my characters. I would hate to try and move them. So many names are gone. I like the ones I have. Plus my bases I made. I hope they keep indomitable open. 

[Turric]

On 7/18/2021 at 12:31 AM, Spectre7878 said:

This has me a bit worried too. Indomitable is my home to all my characters. I would hate to try and move them. So many names are gone. I like the ones I have. Plus my bases I made. I hope they keep indomitable open. 

 

I am the same. Early 2020 I contemplated moving some of my characters. I have 42 lvl 50s, so I thought just a few of them might be a good start. Most of them came back. Yes the population is a little light, and we could stand for a little boost. One of the issues, from my perspective, is that there are tons of new players that are completely new to COX. There are a handful of veteran players who were strong in 2019 but faded out late late year. 

 

I like Indom. I like that it has a smaller population because I know / recognize many of the regular players. I think if we could get over 200 - 250 people on the weekends reliably, that would be ok. This past Sunday night for all the raids, we had 180 ish on. Another 50 - 75 regular players would be a good injection.

[JasperStone]

Sadly I am at this point.

Indom has been my home since rejoining .... basically a Ghost Town

 

[Saikochoro]

I also chose Indom at random to begin with in 2019. Due to my time zone though I can never fill teams on indom.  I used to be able to fill teams decently, but in the past few months it’s been pretty deserted when I am able to play. Even calling for an ITF might take 20 minutes to get 3 bites, but usually none. 
 

So I have taken to transferring toons over to excelsior if I can’t get a single bite within 10 minutes on indom.  I load into cimemora on excelsior and see probably 20 player characters floating around. Send out a call and within seconds get about 20 tells. 

Edited February 11, 2022 by Saikochoro

[Marbing]

Is there anything that can be done from a Dev's perspective to entice more people over to Indom to help it out a bit? Despite a ton of effort from a handful of people to keep Indom going it does seem to be slowly but surely fading away. I am certain this can be reversed, but the question remains what can be done? Does anyone have any ideas?

 

To be clear, no one is asking for Indom to become the most populace server, but it would be nice to get a few new faces over there. 

 

[Jaxman100]

Consistent scheduled happenings, that offer something the other server does.  A nightly or weekly ITF isn't going to entice players to Indom. Perhaps a weekly TFs/SFs of a harder nature geared towards players learning mechanics of the battles or enemies. 

 

But anything really comes down to someone committing the time to be the organizer.  I don't think Dev's can really do much to differentiate one server from another beyond physical location in the world ( Reunion). 

 

For just casual play, hard to see what would make someone pick Indom, or now move off of another server. I play less and less all the time, but still try and appear for scheduled Theme Teams and Wicked Sunday's on the weekends. 

[macskull]

It's a self-defeating cycle that's only going to get worse as the number of players continues to stagnate and/or slowly shrink (and let's not pretend that isn't happening). HC spun up additional servers at the very beginning because the hardware for a single server couldn't support the demand, but fast forward a few months with much smaller player counts and more beefy server hardware and five servers were no longer necessary. The same thing happened during the game's live run especially once server transfers were introduced - players largely consolidated onto one or two high-population servers and everything else was pretty quiet aside from niche playstyles.

 

I'm not sure it's possible to "spread out" the playerbase again similar to what happened in the spring/summer of 2019. The developers offered incentives for players to move to other servers then (double XP, mostly) but once that went away people slowly consolidated back to where the majority of other players were, and future attempts to do the same would likely end up with similar results.

[Apparition]

It really didn't help that Indomitable was declared the "unofficial PvP server" a few days after it was brought online, with all of the baggage that brings, (rightly or wrongly).  When Indomitable was first brought online, I briefly checked it out, and was trying to convince my friends to move there... but then it was declared the "unofficial PvP server" and my friends stopped even considering it and I noped out.  Then it really didn't help when many PvPers moved to Excelsior about a year ago.  From what I understand, PvP is now dead on Indomitable, but it still has the declaration (and stigma) of being the "unofficial PvP server" when in reality, that's pretty much Excelsior at this point.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Apparition

[Glacier Peak]

I'd wager the decline in population is a global occurrence tied more to the folks who get their fix and move on without returning more so than folks transferring servers as others have alluded to. I also have no evidence to support this speculation, so who knows.

[Apparition]

4 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

I'd wager the decline in population is a global occurrence tied more to the folks who get their fix and move on without returning more so than folks transferring servers as others have alluded to. I also have no evidence to support this speculation, so who knows.

 

 

It's definitely both.  I've been told (on fairly good authority), that many PvPers on Indomitable left for Excelsior from late 2020 through mid 2021.  Not Indomitable, but on Torchbearer, one of the larger, more active SGs left Torchbearer a few months ago for Excelsior.  The leader of one of the other larger, more active SGs on Torchbearer noticed that, and moved his SG to Excelsior shortly after as well.  I would be extremely surprised if something similar hasn't occurred on Indomitable as well.

 

It's not all bad news for Torchbearer and Indomitable though.  Back on live, I intentionally avoided Freedom, Virtue, Justice, and Infinity because they were the four large servers.  Now on Homecoming, I avoid Excelsior and Everlasting because they're the two large servers.  I imagine that I'm not the only one, although rare as we may be.  I may want to play with people, but in a more rural setting compared to the big city. 

[Glacier Peak]

25 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

 

It's definitely both.  I've been told (on fairly good authority), that many PvPers on Indomitable left for Excelsior from late 2020 through mid 2021.  Not Indomitable, but on Torchbearer, one of the larger, more active SGs left Torchbearer a few months ago for Excelsior.  The leader of one of the other larger, more active SGs on Torchbearer noticed that, and moved his SG to Excelsior shortly after as well.  I would be extremely surprised if something similar hasn't occurred on Indomitable as well.

 

It's not all bad news for Torchbearer and Indomitable though.  Back on live, I intentionally avoided Freedom, Virtue, Justice, and Infinity because they were the four large servers.  Now on Homecoming, I avoid Excelsior and Everlasting because they're the two large servers.  I imagine that I'm not the only one, although rare as we may be.  I may want to play with people, but in a more rural setting compared to the big city. 

Even with the designation as the unofficial pvp shard, there was never a level of population in that gameplay area seen on the live shards, where pvp was already relegated to essentially niche status outside of farming pvp io sets.

 

It was great though in 2019 - lots of community ran pvp, teams, scrims, prizes, gold titles, zone and arena was open to new and returning players to learn, fail, win, and have a good time. While it's not at that level anymore (that I've observed), it would just take some folks with enough interest and passion to start it back up again on this shard. Considering that, and what you've said, coupled with the overall population decline of Homecoming, I see it as a normal progression.

 

At least it's all there still to play and pick up should anyone want to try it out. 

 

As for your last point, totally hear ya. I've been on Indom since June 2019 and it's been grand. Then again I've got RL friends to pull in to stuff and don't really have to rely on ingame numbers to get after any content. I suppose results vary by perspective. 

[cfarevival]

I personally blame @th0ughtGun for all of the indominatable troubles.  If he wasn't so good of a player, others might feel like they had a chance to shine, but alas....

 

😛

 

But in all reality, I think COVID-19 probably helped with server populations in a tremendous way, and now we are seeing the decline as people go back to their normal, boring lives.

[Marbing]

10 hours ago, cfarevival said:

I personally blame @th0ughtGun for all of the indominatable troubles.  If he wasn't so good of a player, others might feel like they had a chance to shine, but alas....

This argument makes the most sense.

[Turric]

I feel like things have picked up lately. Just a smidge, but I have noticed a very faint uptick in activity.

[BZRKR]

On 5/24/2022 at 12:24 AM, Turric said:

I feel like things have picked up lately. Just a smidge, but I have noticed a very faint uptick in activity.

Agreed. We usually make a big deal in voice chat when we see someone who isn't on our team. This past memorial Day weekend, I noticed an increase in "Whoah Hey Look, Someone Who Isn't Us!!" callouts.

 

Good times 🙂

[Paragon Vanguard]

Indom was my main since CoH was live, so I agree it is sad to see so few. It doesn't effect me near as much, as I have toons on all servers. I look for people starting teams, so if there are SGs that dont mind non-members please shout out, I would be happy to run with anyone (though not looking to join any). With that said Indom has become one of the servers I go to when I am not looking for a big pop. 

To me it isn't so much that people do not wish to be on Indom, as much as Homecoming doesn't have the population to fill servers. So people naturally migrate to the heavier servers. 

[Mike Morbid]

I have my own universe of super characters that came from many years of playing/reffing Villains & Vigilantes and Heroes Unlimited, and I think I'll make Indomitable their home as soon as this new name policy comes into effect.

[Turric]

Unfortunately, I have moved most of my toons to Excelsior now. The MSR raids were what was keeping me here and now they are gone as well. It makes me sad, especially since some of my names had to be altered.

[Astralock]

1 hour ago, Turric said:

Unfortunately, I have moved most of my toons to Excelsior now. The MSR raids were what was keeping me here and now they are gone as well. It makes me sad, especially since some of my names had to be altered.

 

Sorry to hear.  It should have never been declared the unofficial PvP server, as PvP is anathema to 99.5% of the player base.  Alas.

[Mike Morbid]

1 hour ago, Astralock said:

 

Sorry to hear.  It should have never been declared the unofficial PvP server, as PvP is anathema to 99.5% of the player base.  Alas.

People seem to like rppvp servers, though. Perhaps it can be re-designated as that.

[Glacier Peak]

5 hours ago, Astralock said:

Sorry to hear.  It should have never been declared the unofficial PvP server, as PvP is anathema to 99.5% of the player base.  Alas.

That's a wild percentage! Are you being sarcastic or do you have some sort of data or at least reference to show this as factual?

[Mike Morbid]

On 10/4/2022 at 3:40 PM, Glacier Peak said:

That's a wild percentage! Are you being sarcastic or do you have some sort of data or at least reference to show this as factual?

We got it straight from this guy: