What Can Be Done to Recruit Players?

[Greldek]

Regardless of how old and cranky positron acted back in the day, they never removed AE farming they just tuned it down. AE farming was a thing all the way to server shut down.

 

I prefer farming to be done in places like AE, so that you can enjoy the rest of the game without running into farm teams monopolizing areas. And farming / power leveling will never go away. It is a staple of gameplay in literally every MMO I've ever played. And havi g it tucked away in private instances is the best way to have it.

 

But yes I agree those assholes who make a new lvl 1, and then just sit in Atlas spamming for hours to find an AE farm need to STFU and build their own farmer on a 2nd account or something.

 

But anyway farming v no farming will not do anything to increase population.  if you want more population start streaming it on twitch, start uploading videos to YouTube and mention the server you're on. Post that shit to general gaming subs on reddit instead of COH only subs.

 

If you want new players, just go to wow forums or something. Find a post bitching about how dumb the newer expansion is, then make a post "yeah this really bummed me out too. I havent played wow in months now. Been playing in city of heroes for awhile until blizzard gets its shit together" or whatever, obviously dont be spammy w/ it and dropping links everywhere. But getting the word out that it's back and still fun is how you'll get new players.

 

I was actually playing a lot of gw2 before homecoming came around, and when coh came back I was thrilled. But just because I was bored of gw2. It's a fine game but I was over it. Thered a lot of gamers out there who might like to play this game but dont even know of it, but just nerfing shit and talking about it within the community isnt going to be a catalyst to them finding the game.

[Doomguide2005]

22 hours ago, macskull said:

"First one out the gate" is hugely important in situations like this. When tens of thousands of people have had three weeks to start over playing a game most hadn't seen in at least seven years, and they've used those three weeks to reform old friendships, level old characters, and otherwise get established, it's a hard sell to get them to move anywhere else. Homecoming players can move at-will between the HC shards because server transfers are free and they don't really have to start over, but the same isn't true for moving from, say, Homecoming to Rebirth or Thunderspy.

 

Once player momentum like that is established it's next to impossible to stop barring any cataclysmic events.

 

EDIT: Also, man. I would kill for Guardians, but instead we're stuck with... Sentinels. Yay.

Interesting human behavior as someone with very minimal tech savvy and no knowledge do to dead computer I'm guessing that once you've created an account on each server (HC, Rebirth, Thunderspy, Cake) that it's probably about as difficult and time consuming to go from Everlasting to Excelsior as it would be to go from Everlasting to Rebirth.   *shrug*    Making it at least a bit of a 'Brand loyalty' thing if true.

[Bionic_Flea]

6 minutes ago, Krimson said:

The odds of someone accepting one of my suggestions is on par with being struck by lightning. Twice. 

[macskull]

12 hours ago, Kal5 said:

Nah, I'm gonna disagree with that.

...
Also, Homecoming was not first, and was not the only option when HC did start. Bree came first. Then others, then Bree closed, then HC started.

First point: if tens of thousands of players had weeks to establish themselves on a server and another server came along that server would need to have some absolutely knock-your-socks-off features to get a significant number of those players to move. Unfortunately no other server even had the chance to do that since the codebase was in the hands of a single group of people. Most players started on Homecoming because they found it first and then either didn't know or didn't care that other servers existed.

 

Second point: you are correct in that Bree came before Homecoming, but the same people behind HC were the ones behind Bree (for the most part). The individual hosting it may have been different, which is why it shut down when they got spooked by a fake DMCA takedown notice. Here's a rough timeline of how the first month of things went down, for those following along at home.

• April 15, 2019: news comes out that a "secret" private server exists.
• April 18: the "I25" code gets dumped into the wild.
• April 20: the first publicly accessible server (Bree, or "the test server") launches.
• April 22: Bree is shut down due to fear of a DMCA takedown which turned out to be fake (at this point Bree was the only publicly accessible server).
• April 24: a new "temporary" server is launched and no characters or accounts from Bree are kept. That "temporary" server's name is... Torchbearer. The server's URL (http://score.savecoh.com) now redirects to the Homecoming forums.
• Also April 24: the Reddit Discord mentions they are working on releasing an I24 server but as it was not packaged in a ready-to-use format like the I25 files, they haven't been able to launch a server yet.
• April 26: the team behind Torchbearer renames themselves Homecoming.
• April 28: Homecoming launches its own Discord server.
• May 3: the first I24-based test server starts up but is only for private OuroDev testing.
• May 4: /coxg/ (Thunderspy) launches its I25-based server, with the intention to roll back to an I24-based version once it is ready. Unity also launches an I25-based server around this time, with a maximum capacity of 300 players.
• May 7: Victory launches as an I25-based server.
• May 15: the first public I24-based test server launches.
• May 18: Rebirth launches as the first stable non-I25-based public server.

TL;DR: After Bree shut down there were no publicly-accessible servers until Torchbearer, and the next independent server didn't show up until over a week after that.

 

3 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

that it's probably about as difficult and time consuming to go from Everlasting to Excelsior as it would be to go from Everlasting to Rebirth

No, I can transfer characters between Everlasting and Excelsior pretty much at will, and I can pull on the resources I've already gained (inf, recipes, enhancements, salvage, etc.) to give me a leg up with any new characters I create on either of those servers. Not only can I not transfer characters between a Homecoming shard and any of the other servers, but none of my resources can be transferred either and I'm starting over from square one.

[macskull]

3 minutes ago, Krimson said:

It's sure looking like Homecoming got a leg up because the competition chose the hard way.

The first "competition" (which is an odd way to put it since it's not like the servers are competing against each other at all) used an I25 code base as well, but can you in good faith fault anyone for looking at the huge list of post-shutdown changes and going "woah wait a minute that is very different than what the game used to be and I don't like that?"

 

EDIT: I also did not include in my previous post a discussion on the queue server kerfuffle, which prevented teams from running high-capacity servers unless they had specific configuration information. Since Homecoming basically had that delivered in a gift box it's not hard to see why they might have been at some advantage to begin with, even if someone else had managed to pony up the resources to run a server.

Edited May 18, 2022 by macskull

[macskull]

3 hours ago, Krimson said:

As much as I appreciate your advocating for the other servers, you are here on Homecoming too, so I am guessing it is good enough for you as well.

Sure is. I'm here for the same reason everyone else is - this is where the people are - though I do use Rebirth as a "vacation home" so to speak since every time I log on my Guardian over there I cry inside because Homecoming is stuck with Sentinels. As to why this is where the people are, that topic's been discussed at length.

[Glacier Peak]

14 hours ago, macskull said:

Sure is. I'm here for the same reason everyone else is - this is where the people are - though I do use Rebirth as a "vacation home" so to speak since every time I log on my Guardian over there I cry inside because Homecoming is stuck with Sentinels. As to why this is where the people are, that topic's been discussed at length.

Any other servers have a pvp population?

[PeregrineFalcon]

15 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Any other servers have a pvp population?

 

TRANSLATION:

 

[Glacier Peak]

17 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

 

TRANSLATION:

 

If you don't stir the pot, the contents will burn 🔥 lol

[Apparition]

On 5/17/2022 at 11:55 AM, Krimson said:

At this precise moment, Rebirth has 25 players online. I can't find data for the other servers. I have a hard time believing that after having bled 3/4 of concurrent players since May 2019, that other servers are completely paralyzed in regard to growth due to the existence of Homecoming. I think that the vocal minority who prefers a more restricted experience vastly overestimates how many players want the same. 

 

 

To be fair, the current population on Rebirth is 52 players.  I've seen Torchbearer, Indomitable, and Reunion each have smaller numbers than that in the American Eastern time mornings and early afternoons.

[macskull]

4 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

Any other servers have a pvp population?

Rebirth has weekly PvP events which usually have a dozen or so players attend.

16 minutes ago, Krimson said:

But... I'm starting to think that Rebirth isn't really a server where people go to play. Rather, I see posts about it here, focusing on the features that they have. So what I am perceiving is that the player base is also here, and that Rebirth itself seems to be more of a Proof of Concept server that exists to show off features that the overlapping population wants here. Ie. The Guardian and costume bits.

It is entirely possible for someone to play on more than one server (raises hand).

 

Rebirth exists because a group of players wanted an experience that was more true to the progression system on the live servers than what I25-based servers have. They're doing their own independent development with that principle in mind, though they've taken steps to reduce the "grind" compared to what it used to be.

[cranebump]

I play on Excel and Torch. The former for teaming and some of the TFs. Latter for solo. Feel like maybe others do the same as, couple days ago, got on a Hess team on torch. There was my imported Excel blaster, a brute, a Def...and 5 Sentinels. 🙂 (Fun run, btw).

 

Took a look at the Guardian AT over there (almost an a la carte menu there). Tempted to play a couple combos, but not sure how lonely I want to be. Even soloing on Torch, I can chat with friends. Smaller player pool might make that tough. 

 

Speaking of above: wouldn’t mind seeing shuriken proliferated to other ATs. Maybe Sents? 

Edited May 19, 2022 by cranebump

[LocalJoe]

On 5/16/2022 at 11:11 AM, arcane said:

Sounds like typical twitch streamer behavior. Watched the video and meh.

those are skills