Indomitable Needs Your Help

[JasperStone]

My crazy schedule ends this weekend and I can return to nightly play 🙂

 

[Bananiac]

15 hours ago, Without_Pause said:

The issue is why are people making alts on a server which actively seems to not support playing said alt....

 

Well, my homeserver is actually Reunion, but I move my toons freely between servers if I think that helps with progression. I usually schedule my game time to take part in regluar events run by people on each server. It doesn't feel too difficult. But I agree, if you want to stick on Indom, you may have a harder time to find groups than elsewhere.

[Without_Pause]

1 hour ago, Bananiac said:

 

Well, my homeserver is actually Reunion, but I move my toons freely between servers if I think that helps with progression. I usually schedule my game time to take part in regluar events run by people on each server. It doesn't feel too difficult. But I agree, if you want to stick on Indom, you may have a harder time to find groups than elsewhere.

I'm the opposite. More so with names being taken on other servers. I stick characters on a server and keep them there. I like having a base for my guys so switching back and forth from a server means having a second character. If I start switch back and forth between servers to get levels on a guy, I will likely just move from the lower pop server.

[JasperStone]

Here is what has started my thought on moving ....

 

I moved cross country during the pandemic for a new job. I know nobody out here. No Family ...nothing.

Indom helped filled that gap.

Job is great, but I still don't know anyone here,  two years of near solitude. Been hard to make new friends for obvious reasons.

 

Now my Indom is a ghost town, chat is dead. The time I can be on there is nobody. It hurts.

 

If I could transport my base I would have moved a while ago. Yes, I know it can be rebuilt .... 

 

[Glacier Peak]

2 hours ago, JasperStone said:

Here is what has started my thought on moving ....

 

I moved cross country during the pandemic for a new job. I know nobody out here. No Family ...nothing.

Indom helped filled that gap.

Job is great, but I still don't know anyone here,  two years of near solitude. Been hard to make new friends for obvious reasons.

 

Now my Indom is a ghost town, chat is dead. The time I can be on there is nobody. It hurts.

 

If I could transport my base I would have moved a while ago. Yes, I know it can be rebuilt .... 

Damn that's sad as hell! Wish I could play on a regular schedule and team with you, but real life tends to get in the way. If you're ever on, add me and if I see you on at the same time I'll send a tell to do anything. 

 

@Glacier Peak

@Glacier Peak 1

@Glacier Peak 2

etc, etc, you get the idea 😆 

[Without_Pause]

If when I get off my butt, I might put on thread in the server forum for it, but just reminding people of 10am Saturday morning for some blue side teams.

[Ukase]

I managed to suffer through the hami last night on indom. 
Had to leave after the first round because I had a standing prior commitment at 9pm Eastern. 

I don't know what happened at 820pm when it seemed like 10 players suddenly showed up, but I'm glad they did. 

I do think a firm start time and a firm cut-off time is what's best so folks know not to squeeze in one more mission/tf, etc. and keep folks waiting. 

On an aside, someone said "pat pat pat Maiden. Some of these folks are lippy"

And then Maiden said "And they're not from Excel?" 

Maybe it's a fair point. Not desired no required, but maybe a fair point. 

I still think you all would fare better just trying these types of things on Everlasting or Excelsior. 

 

[Without_Pause]

Saturday morning gaming pounded out a Synapse. Mike had to leave early as he had real life interference. We had a team of 5 to start so the four of us finished it in so not record breaking time. Babbage did not spawn. I dinged 22. Getting close to having the Merits I need for the build. Now I just need the market to play nice.

[BurtHutt]

I do feel a lot of players are taking a break from the game. It has become stagnant and the new stuff doesn't feel too new to me. It's just a continuation of what we had on Live. This has killed a lot of the joy and momentum for me in the game.

 

I feel people might be getting out more now that there is some solid Covid protection. I know I am. It has also impacted my gaming time.

 

The players here provide a lot of good info and suggestions but it all can't be implemented. I would ask the Devs to maybe put down some polls etc. An easy opinion poll for some quick feedback. I know the HC team has done a ton of work and I thank them for it - I just have not really enjoyed the new content. The powers have been cool but the actually missions and SF ... not so much. It's way too much like Live. Again, not a bad thing but the player fatigue came rushing in.

 

I think players will come back but who knows for sure. I really do appreciate the HC team. They're doing a great job and run things on par with the Live crew IMO. I just don't know about the direction of the game and content being added...

[oedipus_tex]

RE: Red Side.

 

The reason I've never liked it is a villain seems like they should be doing most of their villainous things on the blue side. 

 

The Rogue Isles are fine as a home-base concept. I don't like them conceptually for the majority of missions. 

 

I know the reasons we ended up with separate "sides" but wish villains had more opportunities to cause problems in Paragon. It doesn't need to be a full PVP scenario, just some kind of way for villains to do actual villainous things versus hanging out in their club house. I feel like in the current implementation the real villains are the Vigilantes and Rogues.  

 

 

[Cancrusher]

34 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

RE: Red Side.

 

The reason I've never liked it is a villain seems like they should be doing most of their villainous things on the blue side. 

 

The Rogue Isles are fine as a home-base concept. I don't like them conceptually for the majority of missions. 

 

I know the reasons we ended up with separate "sides" but wish villains had more opportunities to cause problems in Paragon. It doesn't need to be a full PVP scenario, just some kind of way for villains to do actual villainous things versus hanging out in their club house. I feel like in the current implementation the real villains are the Vigilantes and Rogues.  

 

 

 

Yeah, I get where you're coming from here.  There are a few missions that send you to PC via the submarine and such (and, of course, we have Lord Schweitzer or whatever his name is) but some more story arcs for villains that take place in PC would be cool.  Maybe something to drop in the suggestion thread for the Devs for some point down the road.

[macskull]

On 4/12/2022 at 9:29 AM, Ukase said:

But the only reason is this: 

Nah. There are people who don't want to lose their villain alignment power so switching sides is a non-starter.

[Gunrunner]

On 4/7/2022 at 6:59 PM, Krimson said:

That's great, but how many level 50 pure villains are out there? I have one, my Dominator, and that's because of Frenzy.

I have about 20 of them, myself.  Try to keep that Hero privilege crap at bay, hmm?

[Without_Pause]

I see red side happening fairly often on Excel, but that's my home server.

[Crysis]

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/

My guess is “the talks” was basically “Look, show us you can build up a paying population worth our time to sponsor this and we will do a royalty deal with you to legitimize this.  Otherwise admit we were right in killing it initially back in 2013 because we saw what you are going to see….player pop just isn’t there.”

 

And guess what…..they were right.  Again.

[Crysis]

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

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by Crysis
Double post

[Without_Pause]

55 minutes ago, Crysis said:

My guess is “the talks” was basically “Look, show us you can build up a paying population worth our time to sponsor this and we will do a royalty deal with you to legitimize this.  Otherwise admit we were right in killing it initially back in 2013 because we saw what you are going to see….player pop just isn’t there.”

 

And guess what…..they were right.  Again.

While there is some truth in that, the population was there and by all accounts the game was making profit. It might not have been enough profit to make them happy, but it certainly wasn't tanking. I also don't know of rogue servers ever really becoming legit or being run by the people who took it over in an official way. I just highly doubt there are any games with a rogue server who stumble upon a fan base that big. Lets be honest, CoH is an after thought in the land of today's gaming where most of its player base doesn't even realize a rogue server even exists. It hardly makes NC Soft right.

[Crysis]

@Without_Pause

 

At the end of the day, all business plans must include a measure of growth.  If you aren't growing, you don't have much of a viable business plan. 

 

This very thread is here because one of our shards isn't seeing any growth.  From what data we have to work off of, it appears -none- of the shards are on the rise for player populations.  And Homecoming is likely the highest population of any of the existing servers out there (Rebirth, etc).  So if we aren't growing, nobody in COH land is growing.

 

We hit our peak population likely in the first year of Homecoming.  And that was significantly smaller than anything experienced during Live.  Our player population continues to decline, forum participation (always a subset of player pop) continues to decline.  And yes, I run into people frequently who didn't realize HC was even available.  

 

We will continue to shrink until we look like one of the other server communities.  And then....just fade to nothing.  Honestly, I don't have any ill will towards NC Soft like a great many others do here.  They realized the peak money making years for the IP were behind them and made a business choice (likely a sound one) to kill it rather than continuing to invest in something that didn't show growth promise.  Here we are, the game is free to play entirely now almost a decade later....and I'm not so sure I disagree with their evaluation of the facts.  The facts say....they were right to cease investment in it.  You and I may not like having our home sunsetted and our playtime taken away from us, but there just weren't enough of us then, nor now, to make a viable business case for continuation.  So yes....NC Soft made a sound business decision.  And this thread proves it.

 

[Without_Pause]

What an odd take to think Indom being such a low pop server means NC Soft was right to kill a game making money. Considering CO still exists I think there still was space for CoH even back in the day.

[Crysis]

27 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

What an odd take to think Indom being such a low pop server means NC Soft was right to kill a game making money. Considering CO still exists I think there still was space for CoH even back in the day.

 

I think this argument has been hashed and re-hashed for over a decade.  Whether it was or wasn't, it wasn't your nor my business property.  I'm a business person.  I have bought properties and although I never had a hard time renting them out, at some point, it's worth more to me to sell it to another property investor than it is to keep throwing money into it just to earn enough rental fees to pay for the upkeep.  Heck, if you are watching the housing market right now, for many 'corporate' property owners, they buy homes so they can take the depreciating asset write-down to offset profits elsewhere in their portfolio.  But for a game that was subscriber-driven for revenue, the metaphor is appropriate.  They owned it.  They evaluated their options.  Looking at where we are today, I'm pretty confident they pursued the right option.  Glad we have THIS as OUR option today (free to play), but highly doubtful that the view out the front of the windshield is ever going to show me more promise than what I'm seeing distantly in the rear view mirror.  We were young once, and full of hope.  We are old now and well....old.  And dying.  Get busy living with what we have or get busy dying.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Crysis

[UltraAlt]

3 hours ago, Crysis said:

My guess is “the talks” was basically “Look, show us you can build up a paying population worth our time to sponsor this and we will do a royalty deal with you to legitimize this.  Otherwise admit we were right in killing it initially back in 2013 because we saw what you are going to see….player pop just isn’t there.”

 

And guess what…..they were right.  Again.

 

City of Heroes wasn't making enough money for NCSoft even with all the microtransactions.

I was one of the players driven away from City of Heroes because of the microtransactions.

They lost my subscription that I bought by the year.

 

City of Heroes was still profitable. It just wasn't as profitable as their other games.

City of Heroes also was a total flop in South Korea. They tried to rework it to draw in more Koreans, but it didn't happen. You can even see the trailer for it. It looks like they might have been working on an area with more ancient-Korean-looking buildings in it (which would have been cool),.

But NCSoft already had other games they were pushing.

 

* disclaimer. I did not create this. I downloaded this from the old COH forums before they were destroyed.

 

If the Western audience didn't want to support their games that were popular in South Korea, why bother with a bunch of upstarts that want to tell them what will sell to an audience that wants superheroes in a game.

I kind of think that NCSoft thought that the Praetorian content was the correct way to go. For a dystopian future where superheroes exist, it was okay in concept, horrible in execution, and no fun to play.

 

Setting up alignment shifting was a way to give the small villain player base others to game with, but it kind of break the genre. Sure the comics explore this kind of behavior, but it is a rare case that anyone is trusted after flip-flopping sides even once. 

 

I'm kind of glad that NCSoft sunset City of Heroes.

Homecoming is a much better take on the game because the people in control of it love the game. NCSoft did not even like City of Heroes.

[Ukase]

So, I'm a bit disappointed in myself. I said I wanted to be helpful, but after a couple of times helping, I noticed that it isn't all that helpful. 
And, when I think about it, any player taken from one server to assist on another server is kind of like whack-a-mole, isn't it? 

Even on Excelsior, while the leagues do fill more quickly, they still take some time to do so. Even if I had the influence to sway a dozen folks or so to join me on indom ( I have the influence, but not the desire to spend it in that fashion)  that would be at the expense of Excelsior. Then, instead of one league filling in 5-10 minutes and the other filling in 20-30 minutes, both would be waiting 15-20 minutes. That doesn't really resolve the problem. And really, as I look at my own behavior and inclinations, it's more a lack of patience problem on my end than anything else. That and a real lack of the block of time required when the wait to fill is longer than I'm accustomed to. 

My best advice is to simply forgo your wonderful bases and transfer. (Beyond SG bases, I see no reason why that's not a feasible solution...other than maybe alt names) 
Alternatively - consider a routine team up over on Excelsior or Everlasting, and entice players to join your group on Indom for various activities. And, over time, seduce them into joining you routinely. 

Because the shards are identical, other than players, it's a small matter to get folks in the habit of creating new characters on Indom in lieu of other servers. It would take some investment of time, of course. And you'd have to be somewhat friendly and fun consistently. But, if you build the relationships, no reason why that wouldn't be contagious. 

[Apparition]

4 minutes ago, Ukase said:

My best advice is to simply forgo your wonderful bases and transfer. (Beyond SG bases, I see no reason why that's not a feasible solution...other than maybe alt names) 

 

 

Excelsior has a... reputation among the people that play on other shards.  A not entirely undeserved one.  Mainly that PUGs will just up and quit in the middle of TFs, SFs, and trials for no apparent reason and without warning.  It's honestly one of the main reasons why I moved from Excelsior to Torchbearer thirteen months ago as it happened to me when I PUGed way too often.  I made a thread ranting about it a couple of years ago.  A few Torchbearer shard players that moved to Excelsior within the past several months have moved back to Torchbearer, saying the exact same thing.  Sure, you'll be able to fill TFs, SFs, and trials, and at a quicker pace, but by the end of it you may have only five players.

 

The reason being that people have reputations on the smaller shard and can't get away with doing stuff like that too often.  On Excelsior, it's like the big city where no one knows anyone else, so you can get away with doing stuff like that.  So some people are preferring to stay on the smaller shards and not deal with that.  YMMV.

[Glacier Peak]

I think folks who play cross-server and don't necessarily consider one server to be their 'home,' are absolutely welcome and I encourage their continued ambassadorship in our community. Want to change the opinions of other player's impressions on servers? Be the hero, villain, rogue, or vigilante that you want to see in the game. I like playing across all servers, though I can't say I've created anything on Reunion before. As long as the game and this community is still active, I'll keep logging in to save the day, steal a bank full of infamy, support the tyrannical behavior of our great Emperor, and brood back and forth as a vigilante or rogue. 

[Without_Pause]

1 hour ago, Apparition said:

 

 

Excelsior has a... reputation among the people that play on other shards.  A not entirely undeserved one.  Mainly that PUGs will just up and quit in the middle of TFs, SFs, and trials for no apparent reason and without warning.  It's honestly one of the main reasons why I moved from Excelsior to Torchbearer thirteen months ago as it happened to me when I PUGed way too often.  I made a thread ranting about it a couple of years ago.  A few Torchbearer shard players that moved to Excelsior within the past several months have moved back to Torchbearer, saying the exact same thing.  Sure, you'll be able to fill TFs, SFs, and trials, and at a quicker pace, but by the end of it you may have only five players.

This has never happened to me on Excel. I think I had maybe one TF break up, but that feels like quite the maybe. There was one TF where it was stuck in a loop for giving us the same mission. We broke up, reformed, and completed it. Yes, some people left and didn't come back for round two, but round two finished with 8 people.

 

Speaking of Indom, last Saturday we started with 5 on a Synapse. One had to leave so we finished with 4. It was a very non-speed version as we clocked in around 2 hours. Maybe those wouldn't really happen on Excel. I know it simply isn't difficult to find a speed TF and even speed Synapse on Excel so odds are lower. I do know I have fairly routinely had longer TFs on Excel and rarely find where even a single person drops.

 

Popular servers magnify the good and bad. Some people just like to focus on the bad. If anything, Excel knows it can create certain expectations when trying to form teams. Other servers are far more low key in terms of expectations.