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What makes for a healthy game community?


Glacier Peak

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Consistency? Passion? Fun?

 

Is it just one thing? Any examples from other games are welcome. We've made it more than two years here, hoping to keep the ball rolling for many years to come. 

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Keeping real world politics, religion, and sports arguments out of it.

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Σαυτὸν ἀρίθμησον πρότερον καὶ γνῶθι σεαυτόν,

      καὶ τότ᾽ ἀριθμήσεις γαῖαν ἀπειρεσίην.

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1 minute ago, Glacier Peak said:

Yeah that makes sense on the forums, official discord, and in game. What about player behaviors? Content generation? Volunteer expectations? 

Willingness to support your game is a must, be it by advertising it, encouraging other players, helping newcomers, spearheading activities, collaborating in events, testing changes, etc, if players are just there for the grind and to be entirely self absorbed in their characters, everyone becomes stranded. Some games that used to be great but degraded awfully over time, are solely sustained by that sort of communities, so if the game itself is good, it explodes.

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Σαυτὸν ἀρίθμησον πρότερον καὶ γνῶθι σεαυτόν,

      καὶ τότ᾽ ἀριθμήσεις γαῖαν ἀπειρεσίην.

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Well it might be good to be part of the community. If all you do is alt and never establish some kind of main character that is your representative to the community, how would people even get to know who you are?

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25 minutes ago, Albion said:

Keeping real world politics, religion, and sports arguments out of it.

  

  The thing is, if the game is good than people will want to talk about the game instead of talking about those things (and I'd add real world economics), at least on the game forums.  I wonder if people know there are forums specifically for politics, economics and the like.

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12 minutes ago, Dazl said:

Well it might be good to be part of the community. If all you do is alt and never establish some kind of main character that is your representative to the community, how would people even get to know who you are?

As someone that doesn't actually have a main, just a high level of playing standard and my weird nuisances about optimization, my identity has been guessed by groups of ppl based on how I play various characters.

 

So people can get to know who you are based on that, although it takes time and intuitive people. That said discord helps tremendously.

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Communication and education. 

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I would say population is the most important factor, but it needs to be a population with a significant percentage of experienced players.  If the game just keeps bringing in new players who lose interest quickly all you have is a bunch of newbs trying to figure the game out.  So the key to population is retention.  This can come from a large amount of content, enjoyable end-game activity - anything that keeps people around.

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1 hour ago, Dazl said:

how would people even get to know who you are?

 

I'm superhero. I always wear a mask.

It doesn't just protect me, but it protects others around me.

 

I /gfriend those that I think are good players even if I have just teamed with them one time.

If people want to /gfriend me in game, I'm pretty much always welcome to it, but you're not going to find me if you go looking for me. (I went ahead and set-up a game account as a mask in-game so someone won't try to impersonate me in-game, but my forum name is not my global name in-game)

I'm superhero. I always wear a mask.

 

I don't need to stand out in the crowd. I'm everywhere and nowhere.

When someone needs help, I appear out of nowhere.

 

I don't need to have a "main" to help people in the /help channel, to join a team, or to recruit a team.

People don't need to have a "main". Most of the long time players don't seem to have a "main" as far as I can tell; as they all seem to like making alts.

That is to say, most of the players that I interact with don't have "mains" because I see them on various alts when I check my /gfriend list.

 

 

1 hour ago, SeraphimKensai said:

As someone that doesn't actually have a main,

 

Thanks!

 

 

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If someone posts a reply quoting me and I don't reply, they may be on ignore.

(It seems I'm involved with so much at this point that I may not be able to easily retrieve access to all the notifications)

Some players know that I have them on ignore and are likely to make posts knowing that is the case.

But the fact that I have them on ignore won't stop some of them from bullying and harassing people, because some of them love to do it. There is a group that have banded together to target forum posters they don't like. They think that this behavior is acceptable.

Ignore (in the forums) and /ignore (in-game) are tools to improve your gaming experience. Don't feel bad about using them.

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3 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

I'm superhero. I always wear a mask.

 

Batman wears a mask, but people know who he is.

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2 hours ago, Dazl said:

Well it might be good to be part of the community. If all you do is alt and never establish some kind of main character that is your representative to the community, how would people even get to know who you are?

They right click on your avatar and check your global. 

Or, if they see something you wrote in chat that was funny, or mean, or intelligent or stupid, they might also check in a similar fashion. 

 

There's /getglobalname localName which will tell folks what your global is from your character's name. 

 

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Just now, Ukase said:

They right click on your avatar and check your global. 

Or, if they see something you wrote in chat that was funny, or mean, or intelligent or stupid, they might also check in a similar fashion. 

 

There's /getglobalname localName which will tell folks what your global is from your character's name. 

 

Yep. This is why I only shitpost on my second account. 

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19 minutes ago, Dazl said:

Batman wears a mask, but people know who he is.

 

Really?

The readers do.

 

I come from a world before radical retconning.

"People" didn't know Batman's secret identity.

 

It isn't much of secret identity if "people" know who you are.

If someone posts a reply quoting me and I don't reply, they may be on ignore.

(It seems I'm involved with so much at this point that I may not be able to easily retrieve access to all the notifications)

Some players know that I have them on ignore and are likely to make posts knowing that is the case.

But the fact that I have them on ignore won't stop some of them from bullying and harassing people, because some of them love to do it. There is a group that have banded together to target forum posters they don't like. They think that this behavior is acceptable.

Ignore (in the forums) and /ignore (in-game) are tools to improve your gaming experience. Don't feel bad about using them.

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13 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Anyone have their thoughts to share on what HC is doing right to keep the game going strong?

 

They are doing it.

 

13 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Anything they could improve? 

 

No. They are doing great.

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If someone posts a reply quoting me and I don't reply, they may be on ignore.

(It seems I'm involved with so much at this point that I may not be able to easily retrieve access to all the notifications)

Some players know that I have them on ignore and are likely to make posts knowing that is the case.

But the fact that I have them on ignore won't stop some of them from bullying and harassing people, because some of them love to do it. There is a group that have banded together to target forum posters they don't like. They think that this behavior is acceptable.

Ignore (in the forums) and /ignore (in-game) are tools to improve your gaming experience. Don't feel bad about using them.

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2 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

 

Really?

The readers do.

 

I come from a world before radical retconning.

"People" didn't know Batman's secret identity.

 

It isn't much of secret identity if "people" know who you are.

Not talking about your secret identity, talking out your identity as a hero or villian.

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1 minute ago, Glacier Peak said:

Let's stay on topic folks! 

 

Anything they could improve? 


They could definitely improve how long things are on beta. As I understand it, they have a large number of volunteers that test things before they even get to Beta. And then, the rest of us have maybe a month to check things out. 

That's just not enough time for a number of us. Certainly not me, unless I forgo playing on the standard server. The Beta server has a great option to insta-level to 50, and slot your character however you choose, even randomly if that suits you. But, what about the levels in between? 

While you can choose to any level you want to be, which is quite excellent, it still takes time to assess how the new powerset plays on a blaster, versus a corruptor, versus a defender at roughly levels 10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45 and finally 50 and incarnated. Run a mission or two at this level. Take a note or two on how it compares to other powersets, other ATs with the same powerset in secondary or primary, etc. 

I could say more about why I'd like more time, but I think I've said enough. This last patch hit the servers so fast, I truly believe the time I spent on Beta was wasted. And what sucks is I felt that way before I went to Beta. I was convinced by someone in game I had a responsibility to test things out. But three weekends isn't nearly enough time. (I wasn't gonna spend time during the week, I'm afk most of the time mid-week. Weekends are about the only time I can give full focus of my attention.) 

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6 minutes ago, Dazl said:

Not talking about your secret identity, talking out your identity as a hero or villian.

 

Oh. I guess my answer is "yes".

 

The DEVs have been doing a great job.

Keep up the great work, Homecoming DEV team and Happy Winter Event to you all!

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If someone posts a reply quoting me and I don't reply, they may be on ignore.

(It seems I'm involved with so much at this point that I may not be able to easily retrieve access to all the notifications)

Some players know that I have them on ignore and are likely to make posts knowing that is the case.

But the fact that I have them on ignore won't stop some of them from bullying and harassing people, because some of them love to do it. There is a group that have banded together to target forum posters they don't like. They think that this behavior is acceptable.

Ignore (in the forums) and /ignore (in-game) are tools to improve your gaming experience. Don't feel bad about using them.

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The topic is vague to me. I'm not sure exactly what you're after.

 

If the question is about what the Homecoming team can do, then I think it's actually "what makes for a healthy playerbase?"

The answers are going to involve things like content updates, events, promotion, etc.

 

"What makes for a healthy game community?"

 

1. What community are you talking about?

2. What is your criteria for saying it's healthy?

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