What Can Be Done to Recruit Players?

[Zhym]

1 hour ago, Ravenprince said:

I want to go back to before Enhancement Diversification, perhaps all the way back to original release.  Just have TO's, DO's, and SO's and stack them however you'd like.  No set bonuses, you just maximized the powers that your primary and secondary had.  No AE missions.  Game was more fun in it's simplest form.

Oh, man.  I remember when City of Heroes was like this (and only City of Heroes, because Villains hadn't even been released yet).  No AE, no market, and you had to wait until level 14 to get a travel power that was faster than hovering.  It was the age of Taxibots!  It was a simpler time, before the Arena.  Before...ED.

 

I'd probably enjoy the nostalgia value of playing an "Issue 0" version of CoH.  At least, for the first hour or so.  Then I'd probably be begging for the "modern" Homecoming again.

 

---

 

I agree that many of the additions to CoX over the years weren't fully thought out in terms of game balance, and that characters filled with IO sets in every slot probably aren't what the original designers had in mind when they introduced them.  The relative cheapness of IO sets (or the ease of making money in the market and AE—take your pick) created game balance issues and blurred the lines between ATs (the fact that I have multiple softcapped blasters, of all ATs, is evidence for this).  I believe that someone with no history with the game would look at it and say that it's completely out of balance at the moment.  

 

But it's still fun despite all that.  Is it easy to make an overpowered character?  Sure is.  Fortunately, we're playing superheroes!  Being overpowered is on theme. 

 

Anyway, there's no way back to the days of Issue 0.  That's probably a good thing, all considered.

[Nemu]

1 hour ago, actiontvstar said:

Also just going to throw it out there that a game being repetitive isn't going to stop people from playing it. I spent probably 6 or 8 months logging at least an hour or two a day on Animal Crossing in 2020.

 

However, as a new player, I do want it to be easy to find a group, find a super group, and play in groups of 4-8 to run missions.

 

I don't know how possible this would be, or how much it would fuck stuff up for players, but if it's about finding groups, what if there were a way to reach out to the active players on the two least used shards and try to gauge their interest in merging the two to make one with twice as many players?

 

Additionally, what if next month during the donation drive to pay for the servers - or for the next few months - there were also a donation drive to pay for some advertising? People can't play if they don't know it exists.

Are you having a hard time finding groups because of low population or because people don't take the initiative to form groups but they are always waiting for others to form a group so they can ask to join?

 

I can definitely see the former being an issue on low population servers. I play mostly on Excelsior nowadays and I'll often see the latter. A dozen people asking for group in LFG over a relatively long period of time not one of those asking taking the initiative to form one and just start inviting. I also see people afraid to ask to join teams when there are obviously teams recruiting in LFG. One guys was adding an offer to pay with his request to join teams. Long story short I got him invited to our coalition and now he has an easier time getting on teams within that circle, without the need to offer pay to team.

 

I've also invited all the people LFG but don't want to form their own teams, offer mission arcs they can run in their level range, and run those missions. Over a few missions I'll ask the mission holders if they are comfortable taking the star, and transition team lead to that person after they agree. I stay around, help them with setting rep/mission and teaching them how to recruit, and hang around for a few missions before I leave. They end up actually doing it! It's not terribly hard to start a team and now they know.

 

The thing about a community is that sometimes you need to reach out, sometimes you need to coax people to participate. That's the other observation I have about this game. There are less people that are willing to reach out and engage, or they have their own inner cliques and choose to isolate themselves within those circles. I know that within my coalition, a lot of the vets that got back are a solitary bunch that only hang out with people within the coalition which are mostly refugees from the CoH SNAP. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people remark "I don't join Pick up Groups or invite people outside my circle because various reasons usually centered around PuG horror stories." How do you foster a community and attract new people if you shut yourselves in?

[biostem]

2 hours ago, Nemu said:

Are you having a hard time finding groups because of low population or because people don't take the initiative to form groups but they are always waiting for others to form a group so they can ask to join?

 

This is so true!  I can hop on one of my 50s, start broadcasting that I'm forming a team, and get it filled up in short order.  If I hop onto a lower-level character, with hopes of joining someone else's team, it can be hours before I find a team.  I wonder if offering a little "bump", either in the form of extra XP or INF, could encourage people to lead teams...

Edited April 25, 2022 by biostem

[Spaghetti Betty]

You can definitely dump me into the "grumpy isolated hermit" crowd. Now, in saying that, a lot of my views on this topic are gonna come off as real pessimistic, but I also say it with the experience of opting to teach a newbie or two the game proper.

 

This is an old game with old mechanics. It's a fun game, but it's covered in old. It's just not going to be for everyone. On top of that, players that do get their foot in the door and give HC a shot are met with a ton of confusion. And that isn't really on them. This is a private server for a really old grind-based RPG that has been given a lot of shortcuts to appease long time vets. That is both a good and a bad thing.

 

Perfect example, switching alignment. New player asks, "is it possible for my Hero to become a Villain?" In this situation, I would rather them learn the long way first. Yes, tip missions will start dropping at lvl 20, and you can do those to change your alignment. However, that question is quickly answered with, "Just go to Pocket D and talk to Null the Gull." Content avoided. IMO, that answer didn't really teach the player anything. It just taught them a shortcut.

 

That's prevalent everywhere. It's no one's fault. But stuff like this contributes to people leaving more quickly. Ease of access ends up mentally cutting out a lot of the content available, because players are just not being directed there. And that's what eventually culminates the "grind to 50, do 50 stuff, move on" mindset.

 

I know I sound like a hypocrite for saying this, since I fly solo, but more effort needs to be made to make new players aware and understand what's really available here, without shortcuts, in order to improve retention. If we can retain the new players by allowing them to fully grasp the concept that is City of Heroes: Homecoming and enjoy it, those same players would be more inclined to teach people they know about the game.

 

And I do understand that that is not an easy process, and it's super easy to teach the shortcuts, but to me, that is not what City of Heroes is.

 

But we can keep Montague Castanella's arc in the trash where it belongs.

[biostem]

43 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

I know I sound like a hypocrite for saying this, since I fly solo, but more effort needs to be made to make new players aware and understand what's really available here, without shortcuts, in order to improve retention.

This game is from a time when you had to learn as you go or ask other players in-game.  You aren't spoon-fed things like in more modern games.  In some ways that's good, but for new players, it can be quite the hurdle to get over...

[Spaghetti Betty]

19 minutes ago, biostem said:

This game is from a time when you had to learn as you go or ask other players in-game.  You aren't spoon-fed things like in more modern games.  In some ways that's good, but for new players, it can be quite the hurdle to get over...

I could say the recent success of something like Elden Ring could argue that as a non-issue. For those unaware, that game tells you absolutely nothing about how to play, except how to attack and dodge. Then tells you to go kill god (metaphorically). It's very punishing in the ways it teaches you, but that's what keeps players invested.

 

Those that want to learn will reach out. The problem (IMO) lies in teaching them the cheap way that bypasses all of the challenge. It lessens the impact of the experience.

[actiontvstar]

5 hours ago, Nemu said:

Are you having a hard time finding groups because of low population or because people don't take the initiative to form groups but they are always waiting for others to form a group so they can ask to join?

 

I can definitely see the former being an issue on low population servers. I play mostly on Excelsior nowadays and I'll often see the latter. A dozen people asking for group in LFG over a relatively long period of time not one of those asking taking the initiative to form one and just start inviting. I also see people afraid to ask to join teams when there are obviously teams recruiting in LFG. One guys was adding an offer to pay with his request to join teams. Long story short I got him invited to our coalition and now he has an easier time getting on teams within that circle, without the need to offer pay to team.

 

I've also invited all the people LFG but don't want to form their own teams, offer mission arcs they can run in their level range, and run those missions. Over a few missions I'll ask the mission holders if they are comfortable taking the star, and transition team lead to that person after they agree. I stay around, help them with setting rep/mission and teaching them how to recruit, and hang around for a few missions before I leave. They end up actually doing it! It's not terribly hard to start a team and now they know.

 

The thing about a community is that sometimes you need to reach out, sometimes you need to coax people to participate. That's the other observation I have about this game. There are less people that are willing to reach out and engage, or they have their own inner cliques and choose to isolate themselves within those circles. I know that within my coalition, a lot of the vets that got back are a solitary bunch that only hang out with people within the coalition which are mostly refugees from the CoH SNAP. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people remark "I don't join Pick up Groups or invite people outside my circle because various reasons usually centered around PuG horror stories." How do you foster a community and attract new people if you shut yourselves in?

 

I was only soloing for the first week or two of play - when I decided to jump on a team, I found one quickly. Played with the same folks a couple days in a row. Today I couldn't find a group but I think I only saw 4 other players total the whole time I was on, chat was dead. I've been playing on Torchbearer because I read it was the most vanilla server.

 

Maybe I'll switch to Excelsior, maybe I'll keep mostly soloing. I don't know; I'm having fun still either way.

 

 

[biostem]

1 hour ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

I could say the recent success of something like Elden Ring could argue that as a non-issue. For those unaware, that game tells you absolutely nothing about how to play, except how to attack and dodge. Then tells you to go kill god (metaphorically). It's very punishing in the ways it teaches you, but that's what keeps players invested.

 

Those that want to learn will reach out. The problem (IMO) lies in teaching them the cheap way that bypasses all of the challenge. It lessens the impact of the experience.

 

I absolutely agree that those that want to learn will power through those hurdles.  The question is to what degree do we want to "soften" things just to get bodies in the door, so to speak.  I've tried teaching a few console-only players CoH, and it seemed the concept of having basically the entire keyboard at your disposal was rather daunting.  Similarly, things like not being able to hit ESC to bring up a general in-game menu was rather frustrating for some...

[Apparition]

7 hours ago, Nemu said:

Are you having a hard time finding groups because of low population or because people don't take the initiative to form groups but they are always waiting for others to form a group so they can ask to join?

 

I can definitely see the former being an issue on low population servers. I play mostly on Excelsior nowadays and I'll often see the latter. A dozen people asking for group in LFG over a relatively long period of time not one of those asking taking the initiative to form one and just start inviting. I also see people afraid to ask to join teams when there are obviously teams recruiting in LFG. One guys was adding an offer to pay with his request to join teams. Long story short I got him invited to our coalition and now he has an easier time getting on teams within that circle, without the need to offer pay to team.

 

I've also invited all the people LFG but don't want to form their own teams, offer mission arcs they can run in their level range, and run those missions. Over a few missions I'll ask the mission holders if they are comfortable taking the star, and transition team lead to that person after they agree. I stay around, help them with setting rep/mission and teaching them how to recruit, and hang around for a few missions before I leave. They end up actually doing it! It's not terribly hard to start a team and now they know.

 

The thing about a community is that sometimes you need to reach out, sometimes you need to coax people to participate. That's the other observation I have about this game. There are less people that are willing to reach out and engage, or they have their own inner cliques and choose to isolate themselves within those circles. I know that within my coalition, a lot of the vets that got back are a solitary bunch that only hang out with people within the coalition which are mostly refugees from the CoH SNAP. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people remark "I don't join Pick up Groups or invite people outside my circle because various reasons usually centered around PuG horror stories." How do you foster a community and attract new people if you shut yourselves in?

 

 

I occasionally half-AFK farm on Torchbearer during the day (sue me), and I have lately repeatedly seen a few hours of LFG chat just be one or two people repeatedly ask for a team every ten minutes.  Not announcing that they're forming a team, announcing that they're looking for a team.  It's counter-productive.  Now, I'm not saying that they'll get a full team if they announce something in LFG on Torchbearer (or Indomitable or Reunion), during the workday.  That's just not going to happen.  But if you announce that you're forming something, I bet that you'll get a couple.  Enough maybe for a team of four after a bit of recruiting.  Instead they just keep asking for a team for hours.  It's actually depressing.

 

Agreed on inner cliques and isolation within those cliques.  They're a real problem, especially on smaller shards.  Those shards are dying, and people still insist on only playing and recruiting within their cliques.  Then they wonder why no one outside of their cliques are on the shard, and why people even within their cliques are slowly disappearing...

[kiramon]

I farm solely on torch bearer and it is usually pretty dead. The ae is usually empty too.

 

I move all my characters to excelsior and it's more active, but it's full of SITTER LF FARM spam

Edited April 26, 2022 by kiramon

[wjrasmussen]

9 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

That's crazy talk!

 

Just meant that we had a covid situation that may have accounted for our population and now that we have opened up, the population would naturally dropped.

I don't think elden ring is to blame.

[Nemu]

10 hours ago, actiontvstar said:

 

I was only soloing for the first week or two of play - when I decided to jump on a team, I found one quickly. Played with the same folks a couple days in a row. Today I couldn't find a group but I think I only saw 4 other players total the whole time I was on, chat was dead. I've been playing on Torchbearer because I read it was the most vanilla server.

 

Maybe I'll switch to Excelsior, maybe I'll keep mostly soloing. I don't know; I'm having fun still either way.

 

 

I started on Torchbearer too because of the name is symbolic to CoH's history. But then I found my old SG/Coalition on Excelsior.

 

It'll be a bit of a cultural shock if you do test the waters over at Excelsior. Watch out for Pandas, they are all over that shard.

[Bionic_Flea]

35 minutes ago, Nemu said:

Watch out for Pandas, they are all over that shard

And fleas.  That server is buggy!

[ShardWarrior]

8 hours ago, kiramon said:

but it's full of SITTER LF FARM spam

 

9 hours ago, Apparition said:

I occasionally half-AFK farm on Torchbearer during the day (sue me)

 

Something to consider here that @Neiska mentioned earlier in the thread.  Potential new players reading these forums are going to see comments like these.  Ascribing a negative connotation to farming and the sheer intolerance to those who might enjoy that as an activity is toxic.  It does not help to foster a sense of community.  Just my 2 inf.

[Loc]

I've just finish reading through this topic and would like to add some of my thoughts.

 

On advertising/streaming

I lumped these together because the way to advertise the game is certainly streaming. There's a reason streamers get huge sponsorships these days and that's because streaming is the new TV, certainly for gaming related stuff. I don't think HC or anyone should shell out big money to get a big streamer to play it though. It's probably a legal liability and it wouldn't be very effective to have one streamer play it a week or so. Instead I would be in favor of highlighting a random streamer on the homepage/launcher so the streamer has an incentive to stream. As for the streamers, I would advise to try and have a set schedule; even if it's just once a week. Not having that and keeping at it will kill your growth.

 

Having an active streaming section on Twitch is the key here. Cause if a bigger streamer (even with just a couple of 100 viewers) would play it, his/her viewers would then check out other streams when they go offline and be more inclined to play/be part of the community.

 

On farming/powerleveling

Farming is a really difficult issue. There is no doubt that a new player getting PLed is a problem. While this game is not so hard, being PLed to 50 and then attempting endgame content without even understanding enhancement slotting means you're gonna have a bad time. I see and understand the argument that you should be able to play how you want. I agree with this to an extend. The issue is that people will take the easy way most of the time if it's there--that's just human nature.

 

On the flipside, removing farming is both impossible and bad for longtime players. Someone who's on his 20th 50 has no real advantage to leveling his character normally unless they personally enjoy doing so. And even if you remove AE farming you can simply farm certain missions with similar success.

 

The only thing I can think of is leaving AE as it is but maybe disabling it for accounts with no level 50 on it. This means that farms will continue to stay in AE as farmers are not new players and new players will have to level their first character learning the fundamentals and enjoying the early and midgame at least once.

 

On new content to attract new players/retaining players

I'll address the "attracting new players with fresh content" first; this is mostly irrelevant if you ask me. If they aren't attracted by the current content they won't be attracted by the new either. New content is all about keeping the current playerbase and getting back people who quit. In that respect I think that the system Aeon did is pretty good. Have different tiers of difficulty with better rewards for higher difficulty. So the way Aeon was structured was good for the most part. The problems it has in my opinion are:
- It's redside and for some reason people seem to avoid something just because of that
- It's long which discourages kill alls. This is bad because on a whole most people probably prefer kill all. On top of that, having to learn speed without having first done a slower kill all is considerably harder and Aeon is probably the hardest speedy to learn.

- The rewards are both good and bad. Good is the DOs which give you a good reason to speed it but bad since higher difficulties only add more emp/astral merits and incarnate rewards. This is not worth the effort since people who can complete that can also farm which is an easier way to get a reward of similar value. This means there is little incentive to do it other than novelty (hence why you almost never see relentless ran anymore). And yes, there's the dummy but most players don't care about that--let's be real.

 

Adding unique stuff on higher difficulties is a good idea for rewards but will live and die on how easy it is to obtain. If it's too easy and the market gets flooded so you can just farm a little to buy it, it'll die just as fast as relentless Aeon.

 

On the new player experience

I only have two small points on this:

- Have a banner on the homepage that says something like "Install city of heroes: homecoming edition" in big letters that you can click on to download the launcher. If a registration on the forum is required first, that's fine but have that registration link straight back to a download of the launcher with a form to make your game account. Or even better, have that part in the initial registration form. The game right now is way too hard to get going and I'm quite sure this has made people quit before beginning.

- If I'm not mistaken there are some beginner arcs that teach you about this game. Throw those in the face of new players so anyone who doesn't know the game already will certainly do those first. Most players want to have their hand held a little bit before they start exploring the different parts of the game themselves. Maybe even add just a few missions that explain LFG (both the system and the channel).

Edited April 26, 2022 by Loc

[Apparition]

55 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

 

Something to consider here that @Neiska mentioned earlier in the thread.  Potential new players reading these forums are going to see comments like these.  Ascribing a negative connotation to farming and the sheer intolerance to those who might enjoy that as an activity is toxic.  It does not help to foster a sense of community.  Just my 2 inf.

 

 

Oh, I don't farm because I like it.  I farm to give away hundreds of millions of INF per week on top of funding my builds, (which average around a billion INF).  I just dislike marketeering even more than I do farming.

[DarionLeonidas]

I donm't think the Admins -- now Devs -- can do what needs to be done to attract new players.

 

I think one way to get new players is to make the game challenging, again.

 

Everything, especially levelling up, is too easy. Incarnates are common as dirt and able to solo Task and Strike Forces. Why encourage friends to come into the game if you don't need a team to play?Eliminate Null the Gull's ability to freely change alignments. 

 

I think another way to get new players is to make players part of the game equation.

 

Make good story AE missions part of the canon and put the contacts on the streets. Let good AE mission creators add to the tapestry of the game.

 

And finally, whatever might be wrong with PvP, live with it and make PvP battles epic. Make them League versus League trials with the stakes being control of actual in-game Zones, or buffs which apply to an entire alignment class.

 

I know that a lot of people dismiss PvP because they don't like it. I don't like it. But I have friends who won't play a game without it. The people saying they're glad we don't have more PvP are missing the point; PvP brings in players. I'm fine with a low game population if it means I don't have to deal with PvP, but I also realize that the game population will always be low without it.

 

Those are just my opinions thrown into the stew. I could be wrong.

 

Dasher

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, DarionLeonidas said:

I know that a lot of people dismiss PvP because they don't like it. I don't like it. But I have friends who won't play a game without it. The people saying they're glad we don't have more PvP are missing the point; PvP brings in players. I'm fine with a low game population if it means I don't have to deal with PvP, but I also realize that the game population will always be low without it.

 

Those are just my opinions thrown into the stew. I could be wrong.

 

I can't say you're wrong. But I can't say you're right. 

I do know that just anecdotally, many pvp-ers I've come across have been unpleasant. When they get clobbered, they whine and insult. When they win, they gloat and insult. 
It could be a great part of a game, but it really doesn't belong in CoH - at least, not the way it is now. 

I think a villain doing a mayhem should only happen when a hero is doing a safeguard. That is what pvp should be about, only instead of an npc, another player. How to do that? or something like that? No idea. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

16 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

I know I sound like a hypocrite for saying this, since I fly solo, but more effort needs to be made to make new players aware and understand what's really available here, without shortcuts, in order to improve retention.

You know who needs to do this? YOU.

 

You and me and all of us. The devs do not have the time to be going out and talking to thousands of people and trying to get them to join us in Paragon City. You know who does have the time to do that? The thousands of people who already play the game.

 

Internet peoples are funny. In a thread awhile back I kept seeing people post "I wouldn't pay a sub fee", but those same people would turn around and post "the devs deserve to get paid." No self-awareness whatsoever.

 

If the players want more people to play this game then the players need to recruit more people to play this game. The players need to spend more time teaming with other people, instead of soloing all the time, and teaching the n00bs how to play. But instead you all keep posting "someone else needs to do it, not me!" No one else is going to do it. You do it or it isn't going to happen.

 

Sorry Betty. None of this post is directed at you specifically, but to everyone on the forum as a whole. Your post was just perfect for me to quote in this situation.

[actiontvstar]

5 hours ago, Nemu said:

I started on Torchbearer too because of the name is symbolic to CoH's history. But then I found my old SG/Coalition on Excelsior.

 

It'll be a bit of a cultural shock if you do test the waters over at Excelsior. Watch out for Pandas, they are all over that shard.

Pandas?

[actiontvstar]

2 hours ago, DarionLeonidas said:

 

Make good story AE missions part of the canon and put the contacts on the streets. Let good AE mission creators add to the tapestry of the game.

 

 

Love this idea

[Darmian]

3 hours ago, DarionLeonidas said:

Make good story AE missions part of the canon and put the contacts on the streets. Let good AE mission creators add to the tapestry of the game.

Of course I'm going to like this!  I'm one of those people who love to make AE stories.  Getting anyone to play the damn things....sheesh.

[Nemu]

2 minutes ago, actiontvstar said:

Pandas?

 

Don't let the totally supa dupa awesome disguise fool you. That's a panda. And there are many more roaming around on Excel.

 

There are some penguins, pixies and fleas too from what I've seen. But those are not as cool as pandas. FACTS!

[Ghost]

3 hours ago, Darmian said:

Of course I'm going to like this!  I'm one of those people who love to make AE stories.  Getting anyone to play the damn things....sheesh.

Tell me how/where to find them - I’ll gladly put a team together to check them out

[Darmian]

11 minutes ago, Ghost said:

Tell me how/where to find them - I’ll gladly put a team together to check them out

In my signature! The Meteors and the Dark Deeds stuff all work together in the order they're listed.  Then there's a set of Pre War Gold side Loyalist (Levels 20-25) and a set of Pre War Gold side Resistance (levels 20-25).  Those two sets are built to fit in between the end of Neutropolis and the start of First Ward and each tells a story in three parts, so again in the order they're listed in. After that there's two Cimeroran ones.  One's an experiment to see what a Cimerora arc would feel like if was a bit more "real life Roman", kinda, and the last one is set around the Cimerora Mot era.

 

Five of them have been Dev Choice/Hall of Fame.  They're in italics.  At the moment this means they'll give you full XP/drops.

Edited April 26, 2022 by Darmian