What Can Be Done to Recruit Players?

[UltraAlt]

On 5/14/2022 at 11:21 AM, Krimson said:

Okay, so now I am seeing the problem here.

 

I'm seeing it now too.

It was taking time to read your post.

[UltraAlt]

On 5/14/2022 at 5:32 PM, macskull said:

The only way you will get a non-trivial number of new players is advertising, which Homecoming is not doing.

 

Which has been my point.

It isn't on Homecoming to do it.

 

If players want to recruit more players, they have to do it on their own.

 

My other posts are about player retention, which I put hand-in-hand with recruiting.

 

This isn't a subscription based game any more.

F2P players jump from game to game because they have nothing invested in sticking with something.

Pay for a month or two and decide it's cheaper to pay for a year, and you are suddenly invested.

 

I was invested in City of Heroes before I even had a computer that could play it because I had been playing Champions (the RPG ... before RPGs were called "tabletop" games) for years and using other systems to play super-heroes before Champions was around. I already had prepared more than 10 characters to create before I even logged into the game.

 

When it's all "oooh, shiney", it jump over here and then over there.

 

I guess it is wrong to want to explore games and find the depth of different game play within each game?

 

I don't know. We each play the game different ways.

I find running content that turns into a light show no fun at all. I certainly wouldn't want to show up to do with with the same 30-60 people everyday.

Running around with different people, helping new players explore the game, helping people in help chat? Seems pretty heroic and enjoyable to me, and I kind of think making it fun for them gives them a reason to enjoy playing the game.

 

On 5/14/2022 at 5:32 PM, macskull said:

Everyone's allowed to have their own opinions, of course, but when you present your opinion as fact that's where your argument starts to break down.

 

But there too is the problem.

If you can't understand the difference between the "game" and what is obviously the "end-game" and don't understand that the DEVs did not create the AE to be a farming tool, then maybe you just don't want facts to be facts. Perhaps your alternate truths fit better with your narrative so the facts can't be true to you.

I don't think there is any nice way to put that.

 

Because you are correct. Facts are facts and opinions are opinions.

I'm willing to give people the grace of believing in their opinions even if they refuse to accept the facts.

 

You may very well have paid for gaming products that I have produced. Many people here probably have. I have run into some that have. 

I don't feel like I need to talk about that. I'm here to wear a mask.

But maybe I have some idea about game design and others are just playing a game and talking about why other people should make the effort to recruit when they just want fodder to fill the gameplay that they enjoy and aren't willing to invest their time into recruiting or retaining players. 

 

I'm pretty much over this but I think it's respectful to respond to people until they have pushed me to put them on ignore. 

 

When it comes down to making personal attacks to try to make a point, that is where it has gone too far for me.

I'm not trying to personally attack anyone.

I'm willing to accept other people have different opinions.

 

But the "end-game" is the "end-game" and the DEVs did not design the AE to be used as a farming tool.

Homecoming has been mitigating power-leveling and influence gained through farming.

If you don't want to recognize a fact, it doesn't mean that it isn't a fact.

[arcane]

Being so dogmatic that parts of the game are not “the game” is a super weird vibe

[macskull]

1 hour ago, Krimson said:

I'm starting to wonder if there is a population problem at all, or if the problem is player perception?

I think it's partly a forum thing. Player population is down from the end of last year (hitting 2500 on weekend peaks was routine in November/December and now 2100 on weekends is a high number) but there are still enough players to easily find teams for what you want - on one or two servers. According to my data roughly 3/4 of the entire player base is on Excelsior and Everlasting and none of the other servers peak at much more than 200 players at a time. So there isn't a population problem but the player base is so stratified you get entirely different experiences depending on which server you pick.

[Excraft]

To the folks out there who want to dictate to others what is or isn't "the game" and how new players should or shouldn't play, I'll just leave this here.

 

 

Some people have shared stories in this thread on how others wanted to dictate to them how to play and what that experience was like for them.  Give that video a watch and listen to what his experience was and what it led him to do.  Where there's smoke, there's fire and I'm sure this guy isn't the only one.

 

If you're one of those who just can't help themselves and want to dictate to everyone what they should do with their time here in game, I encourage you to take a long hard look at yourselves and how your poor attitudes are definitely playing a part in a declining population.   Your attitude is a detriment to the game you're trying to promote. 

 

Let people have options to play how they want.  New players can find something in this wonderful game that suits what they are into.  Let them do it and don't dictate to them.

[Luminara]

28 minutes ago, Excraft said:

To the folks out there who want to dictate to others what is or isn't "the game" and how new players should or shouldn't play, I'll just leave this here.

 

 

You're six months late posting that.  It was also debunked.  He dug his own hole and wallowed in it for sympathy.

 

Actually, you posted in that thread.

 

 

[arcane]

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

[Neiska]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

You're six months late posting that.  It was also debunked.  He dug his own hole and wallowed in it for sympathy.

 

Actually, you posted in that thread.

 

I agree with your take on that specific incident in the video. But I also agree with the point @Excraft as trying to make. People who try to control the way other people play, regardless of reasons, are part of the problem, not the solution. Except of course, if one is a staff member which I doubt any of us are. But a fellow player? Zero right to dictate/lecture/control fellow players, especially when there are zero rules being broken.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Neiska
Clarification

[Neiska]

3 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

But the "end-game" is the "end-game" and the DEVs did not design the AE to be used as a farming tool.

Homecoming has been mitigating power-leveling and influence gained through farming.

If you don't want to recognize a fact, it doesn't mean that it isn't a fact.

 

Two thoughts.

1. The first, citation needed. Do you have a source or data on record that is verifiable that specifically states precisely that in no uncertain terms? Or is it murky "way back when on live they said" - AKA - If you don't have a source, this is simply more of "you think's"

2. Even if your statement is true, what bearing do the Live Dev's have on Homecoming? What authority/bearing do they have, on how the HC staff run things?

 

"But back on Live..." Well, HC isn't Live. It's a different staff. A different game. A different community. Stop trying to make HC "Live." It isn't "Live," and was never meant to be. And how they did things "on live" has zero bearing on HC here and now. 

[Excraft]

45 minutes ago, Luminara said:

You're six months late posting that.  It was also debunked.  He dug his own hole and wallowed in it for sympathy.

 

I'm not six months late for anything.  I remembered the video which is why I posted it here since it's relevant.  Nice try though.  😉  Maybe you think it's all been debunked and good for you.  I still see there's a few grains of truth in there.  The self-professed gatekeepers and developer white knights here love to try and dictate to others what to do and how to do it.  I can totally see how that kind of behaviour is driving away players.

 

46 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Actually, you posted in that thread.

 

Yes, I remember.  Did you actually read what I wrote?  Let me refresh your memory -

 

"Sounds like most of his issues are his own doing.  There are quite a few bad seeds here though and I can see how they'd be pricks harassing someone over stupid stuff.  The rest is his own fault really. "

 

So yeah, there are people here being douches to their fellow players and driving people off the game.  Is that too difficult for you to understand?  Like I said, nice try though.  🙂

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

21 minutes ago, Neiska said:

1. The first, citation needed. Do you have a source or data on record that is verifiable that specifically states precisely that in no uncertain terms? Or is it murky "way back when on live they said" - AKA - If you don't have a source, this is simply more of "you think's"

Yes, this is very much true.

 

I remember the Paragon devs posting about it on the forums. In fact, I remember Positron's post about AE farming, which read like the rant of an drunk, angry step-father screaming at the kids who'd ruined his plans.

 

So yeah, it was stated in no uncertain terms.

 

 

24 minutes ago, Neiska said:

2. Even if your statement is true, what bearing do the Live Dev's have on Homecoming? What authority/bearing do they have, on how the HC staff run things?

You do have a point here. None. And since none of us want the game filled with more microtransactions, or have raids be the only way to access Incarnate powers, that's probably a good thing.

[ShardWarrior]

4 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

You can go back and do all the lower level content at 50, but how many level 50 players actually do that?

 

Quite a lot of us actually.  Are you honestly suggesting you never see level 50s running lower level TFs/SFs for the WST or any of the story arcs for badges and such?  If so, that strains credibility. 

[Neiska]

3 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Yes, this is very much true.

 

I remember the Paragon devs posting about it on the forums. In fact, I remember Positron's post about AE farming, which read like the rant of an drunk, angry step-father screaming at the kids who'd ruined his plans.

 

So yeah, it was stated in no uncertain terms.

 

I would genuinely be interested in seeing the original source for that, but I stand by my point that it's largely irrelevant either way. But thank you for affirming.

 

3 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

 

You do have a point here. None. And since none of us want the game filled with more microtransactions, or have raids be the only way to access Incarnate powers, that's probably a good thing.

 

Thats kind of my point. Homecoming isn't Live, which I see as a good thing. From where I sit, it's better in some ways, worse in others. But that is my personal take on it, others won't see it the same, obviously. (and rightly so.) Ultimately, it's up to the HC staff to decide policy. Not what they did on Live. 

 

[Apparition]

41 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Honestly, I cannot think of any reason to recommend a Shard other than Excelsior or Everlasting to new players. 

 

 

A lot of people don't want to deal with Excelsior's heavily prevalent farming culture (not only the absolutely obnoxious LFG farm spam, but also that a large part of the Excelsior player base treats absolutely all content in the game as a farm - which is why I left Excelsior fourteen months ago), and don't want to deal with RPers on Everlasting because of the various horror stories (including some posted on these forums).  So they play on the smaller shards.

 

At least for Torchbearer, the problem is that two of the largest SGs on Torchbearer simultaneously up and decided to move to Excelsior back in November.  What was a small shard back in October immediately lost about a third of its population.  Since then, it's been steadily draining to Excelsior to the point that we've now lost about half the population we had several months ago.  And on top of that, some of the Torchbearer population are tired of not finding teams, but find the idea of moving to Excelsior so horrid that they've either mostly stopped playing altogether, or are now playing on non-Homecoming CoH servers, (which I don't understand at all, but c'est la vie).

[macskull]

40 minutes ago, Neiska said:

Except of course, you are a staff member which I doubt any of us are.

If @Luminara is a staff member they're either doing a great job of keeping it secret or I'm just really dense.

33 minutes ago, Neiska said:

 

Two thoughts.

1. The first, citation needed. Do you have a source or data on record that is verifiable that specifically states precisely that in no uncertain terms? Or is it murky "way back when on live they said" - AKA - If you don't have a source, this is simply more of "you think's"

2. Even if your statement is true, what bearing do the Live Dev's have on Homecoming? What authority/bearing do they have, on how the HC staff run things?

 

"But back on Live..." Well, HC isn't Live. It's a different staff. A different game. A different community. Stop trying to make HC "Live." It isn't "Live," and was never meant to be. And how they did things "on live" has zero bearing on HC here and now. 

1. Here's your citation. I'll even quote the relevant bit so you don't have to click it: 

   We really didn’t want the Mission Architect to be an environment that encourages farming for XP, Rewards or Badges

   That took me all of five minutes to find. Even if I couldn't find an explicit statement to that fact, it's implicitly acknowledged by simply looking through the patch notes between I14 and I15 when the vast majority were AE fixes to address various exploits or "get lots of XP at low risk" strategies. If your argument against this is "well that's a dev from live, not Homecoming's stance" here are a couple more sources for you.

2. The Homecoming dev team takes a very "pick and choose" attitude toward the live devs when it comes to changes the HC team wants to make.

[PeregrineFalcon]

7 minutes ago, Krimson said:

I found this.

Yeah. That was not the first post that Postron made about the subject. The one I'm referring to wasn't up on the forums for very long. A couple of hours maybe. I don't remember that exactly. That's a quote from the second post that he did later.

 

In any case, I think the request for a citation has been satisfied.

[Luminara]

3 minutes ago, Excraft said:

Maybe you think it's all been debunked and good for you.  I still see there's a few grains of truth in there.  The self-professed gatekeepers and developer white knights here love to try and dictate to others what to do and how to do it.  I can totally see how that kind of behaviour is driving away players.

 

 

Yes, I remember.  Did you actually read what I wrote?  Let me refresh your memory -

 

"Sounds like most of his issues are his own doing.  There are quite a few bad seeds here though and I can see how they'd be pricks harassing someone over stupid stuff.  The rest is his own fault really. "

 

So yeah, there are people here being douches to their fellow players and driving people off the game.  Is that too difficult for you to understand?  Like I said, nice try though.  🙂

 

Dude pre-empted a scheduled raid, told everyone there they could do it his way or leave, and cried about it when the backlash hit.  That's your example of other players being dicks to someone.  The same person you previously stated to be the cause of his own problem, who behaved in exactly the manner you're accusing others of in this thread.  The other people are now the ones at fault, not the guy who started the drama by telling people to play his way.

 

You don't see the contradiction there?

 

Never mind, even if you did, the fact that I pointed it out ensures that you'll defend your reversal with your dying breath.

 

*plonk*

[Neiska]

3 minutes ago, macskull said:

If @Luminara is a staff member they're either doing a great job of keeping it secret or I'm just really dense.

1. Here's your citation. I'll even quote the relevant bit so you don't have to click it: 

   We really didn’t want the Mission Architect to be an environment that encourages farming for XP, Rewards or Badges

   That took me all of five minutes to find. Even if I couldn't find an explicit statement to that fact, it's implicitly acknowledged by simply looking through the patch notes between I14 and I15 when the vast majority were AE fixes to address various exploits or "get lots of XP at low risk" strategies. If your argument against this is "well that's a dev from live, not Homecoming's stance" here are a couple more sources for you.

2. The Homecoming dev team takes a very "pick and choose" attitude toward the live devs when it comes to changes the HC team wants to make.

 

1. Thank you for your source. Though it is from 2009, from a person who does not make any rules or judgements on HC as far as I am aware. Though there is a chance they are present under another name. But this leads me to #2 -

2. Certainly. And they are free to pick and choose, add and change, so on. I mean, they have made several changes/updates to powersets and ATs, Seismic Powersets, Electrical Affinity, changes to MMs like pet AI and how their hitboxes interact with players, and so on. So why is all that "fine" to some people, but not how they choose to allow folks to use AE?

3. At this point, removing AE will do more harm than good, which is likely why they haven't done so. But that is just me guessing.

 

I still say that the HC should use Live as a rough draft, but not a do or die guidebook on how to run things on HC. This applies to AE, as well as any other changes they add/change/implement. 

[Luminara]

8 minutes ago, macskull said:

If @Luminara is a staff member they're either doing a great job of keeping it secret or I'm just really dense.

 

I'm not a developer, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

[macskull]

Just now, Neiska said:

 

1. Thank you for your source. Though it is from 2009, from a person who does not make any rules or judgements on HC as far as I am aware. Though there is a chance they are present under another name.

...which is why I also addressed that concern and included citations from the Homecoming team.

[Neiska]

1 minute ago, macskull said:

...which is why I also addressed that concern and included citations from the Homecoming team.

 

Yes, and I am well aware of their posts you linked, and the changes to AE since HC change. So... not seeing your additional point, if there is one. They have already changed it. I would say that makes their stance pretty clear. Which to me is they want it to remain an option, just not the "superior" option for exp/inf gain, which I think is fair.

[Excraft]

4 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Dude pre-empted a scheduled raid,

 

So what?  Was anyone precluded from attending either raid?  Was there never another Hami raid run ever again?  Get over yourselves.  You're proving the point the guy was trying to make about others being pricks and harassing others. 

 

5 minutes ago, Luminara said:

The same person you previously stated to be the cause of his own problem, who behaved in exactly the manner you're accusing others of in this thread. 

 

Seriously, your reading comprehension skills are just awful.  Let me refresh your memory again...

 

"Sounds like most of his issues are his own doing.  There are quite a few bad seeds here though and I can see how they'd be pricks harassing someone over stupid stuff.  The rest is his own fault really. "

 

First sentence, pay attention to the word "most".  Most does not mean "all".

Second sentence should be self-explanatory.  Or are you suggesting the guy harassed himself?

Last sentence should be self-explanatory. 

 

Never once did I say the guy is a saint.  As I said, clearly some of his problems are his own doing, but not all of them.  Given the behaviour of people in this very thread, I can totally see how people like him are harassed to the point of leaving the game.  That's the point. 

 

Do you understand it now?  Happy to clarify more if you need it.

 

 

 

[Apparition]

1 minute ago, Krimson said:

Time for another one of my dumb ideas...

 

What if we removed Architect Entertainment from ONE Shard, like Torchbearer, and then advertised said Shard as being a Farm Free Zone. Do you think Torch would see an uptick in players from the Big Two?

 

 

IMO, I don't want AE removed.  I would, however, like to see it curbed.  Either by cutting XP to 25%, and/or somehow requiring having two level 50 characters on an account before acquiring XP in AE, and/or removing it from the starter zones.

 

Maybe a little, but IIRC the Homecoming developers will not make nor maintain separate code for the various shards, so this is a non-starter anyhoo.

[macskull]

6 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Time for another one of my dumb ideas...

 

What if we removed Architect Entertainment from ONE Shard, like Torchbearer, and then advertised said Shard as being a Farm Free Zone. Do you think Torch would see an uptick in players from the Big Two?

Would likely have the opposite effect.

[Luminara]

8 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Time for another one of my dumb ideas...

 

What if we removed Architect Entertainment from ONE Shard, like Torchbearer, and then advertised said Shard as being a Farm Free Zone. Do you think Torch would see an uptick in players from the Big Two?

 

How would it be "Farm Free" if scanner/paper missions, tips, story arcs and *Fs remained in the game and farmable?