Indomitable Needs Your Help

[Ukase]

There's a lot of reasons for a drop in game population. Most of them are things to be excited about. As far as a new game goes, never heard of it. 

The nasty covid business "Seems" to have waned. The news is showing less and less of it. I could elaborate, but it's not my intention to derail the thread about masks/no masks, vaccine, no vaccine, etc. 

Because of that, though, more folks are getting back to work. As in - driving to work in the office. And, it's Spring! In my area, it's a beautiful sunny 70 degrees. I have played precisely three missions, lasting about 30 minutes total today. It's just too damn nice to play a game when I could be outside walking, & listening to podcasts of Kristen Bell on Alec Baldwin's "Here's the Thing". 

I think it was this past weekend, maybe the one before - the donation notice went out, and it closed pretty quickly. I don't see the game going anywhere any time soon. 

But, as far as indom goes, I like it there. I have two farmers there. I put them there because it's not so populated. I see the calls for MSR and iTrials, but I don't go because there's really no reason to go. Merits? Don't need 'em. XP? Don't need that either. Fun is where you make it. If the mood strikes, I'll go, but the mood rarely strikes. I much prefer lower level stuff, leveling organically and playing various arcs I haven't played in a long time. And because of my work schedule, I am likely to go afk at any time, so I seldom team, except on weekends. Folks don't like it when you join a team and stop mid-mission and then the leaders wanting to go the next mission and my character's still idle. They'd have to kick me, and who wants to be kicked? 

Over time, I expect more will be leaving the other shards and joining Excelsior and Everlasting. It's just easier (I imagine) to get teamed up. If that's your cup of tea, why not? It's not like the servers look different. I dunno, but maybe there's a way to save an SG file and just port the thing over, contents & inventory and all and just transfer it.  (I doubt it, but seems like it should be doable. We can save a costume, why not an sg base?) 

[macskull]

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

(I doubt it, but seems like it should be doable. We can save a costume, why not an sg base?) 

There is, but it involves stripping all the item data out to prevent people from duplicating items and/or manually editing the demorecord file to give themselves a bunch of stuff they didn't have before. The import process also isn't automated and from my understanding can cause some stability issues when run on a populated server.

[Troo]

I would support combining the two lowest population servers.

 

End the name squatting. (one reason to go to another server)

 

Name the combined server something new and drop the not-to-be-mentioned-unoffical title.

 

[Ukase]

I feel like I should ask this: On your MSRs on Indomitable, do you allow any level, or just 35 and up? 

[UltraAlt]

On 3/25/2022 at 3:45 PM, Turric said:

Maybe there are a ton of new players here who do not understand it. I really do not know.

 

What are players not understanding?

Are you indicating that you really don't know?

 

My guess is at this point that the most new players are going to play on Excelsior or Everlasting if they look at the server population before making a character. If they are looking at bubbles on the log-in screen alone, they are most likely to make a character on Excelsior.

If you don't understand why that is going on ...

 

If you are a new player and trying to explore the game, you aren't going to be farming to 50.

 

I play on all the servers.

I don't play level 50 content (well, hardly at all) and I don't do raids (they are just a light-show and no fun for me).

 

That being said.

When I'm on Indomitable, no one is in the LFG looking to team up ... ever unless it is me. I think I managed to get some DFBs and Posi TFs going during the early days of COVID, but no one else was recruiting for low level stuff. No one was even recruiting for farming to power-level up the players that want to go that route.

 

If you are only actively recruiting for end-game activities then you are not fostering new players on the server.

 

I don't want to kill a server, but server transfers are free and you can always move back and forth between servers.

There is no real reason to stay on Indomitable if there aren't people to game with. It isn't like Reunion where the server is more beneficial for Europeans over the other servers due to its location.

 

[Apparition]

39 minutes ago, Ukase said:

I feel like I should ask this: On your MSRs on Indomitable, do you allow any level, or just 35 and up? 

 

 

Last I checked, the mothership raids on Indomitable are instanced only, so 35+.  No zone MSRs.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Apparition

[Ukase]

As much as I think the Instanced MSRs are better, if you're wanting more folks, that's not the best path. Even though I avoid MSRs with my sub-35 characters, a LOT of players think any level 1 can show up (I've seen 'em!) and contribute. (I haven't seen the contribution, they're defeated fairly often)
Still, it adds to the numbers, and if they're a buff/debuff character, scaled to level 49, if they have some of the key powers, they can be useful. 

[Apparition]

13 minutes ago, Ukase said:

As much as I think the Instanced MSRs are better, if you're wanting more folks, that's not the best path. Even though I avoid MSRs with my sub-35 characters, a LOT of players think any level 1 can show up (I've seen 'em!) and contribute. (I haven't seen the contribution, they're defeated fairly often)
Still, it adds to the numbers, and if they're a buff/debuff character, scaled to level 49, if they have some of the key powers, they can be useful. 

 

 

Yeah.  IIRC, Indomitable had zone MSRs for years, but too many people kept coming on lowbies trying to leech and use the MSR to get power leveled, so they switched to instanced.

 

Lowbies don't really contribute to MSRs.  The more lowbies you have, the greater chance of a raid wipe.  If you have a bunch of lowbies, you need many more healers and buffers in the league to keep the lowbies up and at 'em, compared to an instanced MSR.  Those many healers and buffers are busy trying to keep lowbies alive, which means less people defeating Rikti.  The fewer people defeating Rikti, the fewer Vanguard merits for everyone.  That's not even getting into the issue with Brutes and Tankers getting the short end of the stick on zone MSRs by doing the work pulling and getting substantially fewer Vanguard merits compared to the rest of the league.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Apparition

[arcane]

8 hours ago, Troo said:

I would support combining the two lowest population servers.

 

End the name squatting. (one reason to go to another server)

 

Name the combined server something new and drop the not-to-be-mentioned-unoffical title.

 

If two servers have characters with the same name, who gets it?

[Without_Pause]

If duplicate names were allowed, I would honestly have a single character with the same name as someone else and that's only because I transferred the character from a different server where the name was unique.

[kelika2]

34 minutes ago, Apparition said:

Yeah.  IIRC, Indomitable had zone MSRs for years, but too many people kept coming on lowbies trying to leech and use the MSR to get power leveled, so they switched to instanced.

This is some depressing catch22 tier stuff.

Not only when newcomers first login they see Excelsior with 2 dots, they come to a lower pop server and get denied a spot in a raid and think about going elsewhere.

[Without_Pause]

On 3/27/2022 at 9:29 PM, Glacier Peak said:

No new updates on "the talks" since last year (per my signature thread):

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/31053-a-history-of-the-talks-a-consolidation-of-the-hc-team-legal-discussion/

I can't imagine with the player base winding down HC getting more leverage.

[kelika2]

6 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

If duplicate names were allowed, I would honestly have a single character with the same name as someone else and that's only because I transferred the character from a different server where the name was unique.

Just have names tied to @Handles, and give players the option to toggle off the @name displayed over characters heads.

I ran like 6 posis last night and I cannot recall any of my teammates names, i highly doubt im going to give a damn if two or more Purple Nurples are running around

Go the extra mile and use @Handles for chat purposes

[Glacier Peak]

7 hours ago, kelika2 said:

Just have names tied to @Handles, and give players the option to toggle off the @name displayed over characters heads.

I ran like 6 posis last night and I cannot recall any of my teammates names, i highly doubt im going to give a damn if two or more Purple Nurples are running around

Go the extra mile and use @Handles for chat purposes

What about my unique gold title I earned from a Homecoming contest? 

[Bionic_Flea]

I submit for consideration the use of one or more global channels to recruit for raids/events and/or use your global friends list to politely ask your buddies if they would be willing to temporarily transfer a character over to help out now and then.

 

I don't think you'll get a giant wave of people doing that, but if you got 5 to 10 good players that's more than enough to make or break a raid.

 

Personally, I wouldn't want to merge servers unless they got to single digits worth of players on concurrently.

[Lorraine of Pinnacle]

8 hours ago, Apparition said:

Yeah.  IIRC, Indomitable had zone MSRs for years, but too many people kept coming on lowbies trying to leech and use the MSR to get power leveled, so they switched to instanced.

I started on Indom.  Learned to how to MSR on my tank thanks to Eda's twice nightly MSR's for over a year.  Eda's runs were amazing.  Dedicated Stormies to push Rikti down into the bowl. Tanks had set areas to pull. I remember coming away with 1800 merits per run.  Can't say that for other servers for multiple reason.

Personally I prefer the instanced version over open zone for several reasons but it does restrict the numbers that show up.

Also, Hey Apparition!  **HUG HUG HUG** 

Lastly, stop destroying the (BLEEPing) grates.  Taunt them.  It acts as a PB Wide AoE taunt , pulling the Rikti down from the upper ledges.  Blowing the grates will lower your VG merit count.

[macskull]

9 hours ago, Ukase said:

(I haven't seen the contribution, they're defeated fairly often)\

Veng bait is still contribution!

[Turric]

18 hours ago, kelika2 said:

Just have names tied to @Handles, and give players the option to toggle off the @name displayed over characters heads.

I ran like 6 posis last night and I cannot recall any of my teammates names, i highly doubt im going to give a damn if two or more Purple Nurples are running around

Go the extra mile and use @Handles for chat purposes

 

Absolutely!

[Troo]

On 3/29/2022 at 7:03 AM, arcane said:

If two servers have characters with the same name, who gets it?

 

First one to log in.. that's my initial knee jerk.

 

It's a great question which would need to be explored and well thought out.

 

Does anyone really wanna see dozens of troos running around?.. it could happen. 'Santa' certainly would be more likely.

[roleki]

1 hour ago, Krimson said:

I know if I woke up one day and my Base was gone, along with my SG, and a few billion worth of Winter Enhancements, I would probably just uninstall and once again forget the game ever existed. But hey, good luck with that. 

 

Annnd that's why I said the devs should consider consolidating the shards while they still have enough bandwidth to attempt it.  Any idiot can shut off a server, or, log onto one for that matter.

Edited March 31, 2022 by roleki

[Troo]

1 hour ago, Krimson said:

I know if I woke up one day and my Base was gone, along with my SG, and a few billion worth of Winter Enhancements, I would probably just uninstall and once again forget the game ever existed. But hey, good luck with that. 

 

is someone suggesting taking your stuff? did I miss something?

[kelika2]

2 hours ago, Troo said:

 

is someone suggesting taking your stuff? did I miss something?

the theoretical idea of a probable server merge would wipe SG bases and all the hoarders are pre-worried

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, kelika2 said:

the theoretical idea of a probable server merge would wipe SG bases and all the hoarders are pre-worried

 

I guess they should start moving their stuff ... I guess I should get on that.

 

On 3/29/2022 at 5:41 PM, Glacier Peak said:

What about my unique gold title I earned from a Homecoming contest? 

 

I'm assuming a PM to the DEVs could remedy that.

 

 

[arcane]

11 hours ago, Troo said:

 

First one to log in.. that's my initial knee jerk.

 

It's a great question which would need to be explored and well thought out.

 

Does anyone really wanna see dozens of troos running around?.. it could happen. 'Santa' certainly would be more likely.

Good enough for me. I only have a few scraps left on Indomitable because I refused to change their names on the trip to Excelsior. Camping out and waiting to log them in on merging day sounds fair enough.

[TheZag]

Screw the talks.  Take out a 30 second SuperBowl ad and the server population issues will be solved.  Then the servers will be overpopulated so i guess it wont be solved.  But we dont have a few million dollars to buy superbowl ad space with so it probably doesnt matter.

 

What we can do is get the word out ourselves.  Tell our friends or make some youtube videos since the ban was lifted.  People wont come if they dont know CoH is back.  Yes its an old game,  but its probably the best that is supported by donation only and still getting updated.