Homecoming player count: a year in review

[Marine X]

5 hours ago, Wavicle said:

I have almost fifty level 50 characters.

Point taken. It would be nice if it just looked at the Account activity instead of each Toon. Perhaps, if they ever actually move forward with the Renaming Policy, it could have a different qualifier before it is applied.

 

If an Account has been inactive for a prolonged period it could become Flagged for Name release, ( If you haven't even logged into the account in 2 or 3 Years it's likely you have moved on as a lot of people from the initial surge of players did. ) This is essentially a free game, even if you choose to donate. Games you subscribe to will only hold your account in stasis for so long if you stop paying, so for a free game to exceed that is not something you should expect. So maybe it would be more reasonable to having the flags attached at an account level instead of Character level. It would also serve those who have returned after a lengthy absence and can't remember their account/password and wish to recreate their toons.

 

What do other games do? I have never seen a Renaming Policy discussed in other games other than if the name violated Copyright or was Offensive. When I got to homecoming there were 3 of my old characters names someone had already grabbed, not that big a deal. I have no expectation of going MIA for years and returning to find everything as I left it.

 

 

 

Edited August 5, 2023 by Marine X

[macskull]

12 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Attachment to a character has nothing to do with the level of the character.

I'm sure you didn't intend it, but your entire post is a great argument for doing away with the name release policy altogether.

 

You say I am "part of the problem" (but conveniently ignored the part of my post where I said I'd let someone have a name if they asked for it) but no one's been able to demonstrate that there is even a problem in the first place. The name release policy was announced in May 2019 with the intention of being implemented within a few weeks of that announcement, but here we are over four years later and we've only recently implemented the "warning" phase. Why? The team wanted to make absolutely sure they did it right so no one lost names accidentally. That should tell you how attached players are to their character names or, at least, how attached the HC team presumes them to be.

 

I don't think a character-based login timer is the right way to go. I could have a low level character that I only play rarely because the group I play with only gets together one or two nights every few months. I could primarily focus my attention on two or three characters while having a much larger number that I play less often, but that doesn't mean I want the names of those other characters to suddenly get snatched up by someone else.

 

7 hours ago, Marine X said:

Point taken. It would be nice if it just looked at the Account activity instead of each Toon. Perhaps, if they ever actually move forward with the Renaming Policy, it could have a different qualifier before it is applied.

 

If an Account has been inactive for a prolonged period it could become Flagged for Name release, ( If you haven't even logged into the account in 2 or 3 Years it's likely you have moved on as a lot of people from the initial surge of players did. ) This is essentially a free game, even if you choose to donate. Games you subscribe to will only hold your account in stasis for so long if you stop paying, so for a free game to exceed that is not something you should expect. So maybe it would be more reasonable to having the flags attached at an account level instead of Character level. It would also serve those who have returned after a lengthy absence and can't remember their account/password and wish to recreate their toons.

 

What do other games do? I have never seen a Renaming Policy discussed in other games other than if the name violated Copyright or was Offensive. When I got to homecoming there were 3 of my old characters names someone had already grabbed, not that big a deal. I have no expectation of going MIA for years and returning to find everything as I left it.

Account activity is probably the way to go, if the policy is actually implemented in the first place. Now that being said (and this is anecdotal evidence, so take it how you will) I occasionally see posts on the forum or on Discord about how someone is returning to Homecoming after not having played in years. I know if I was someone who'd played for a while, left for whatever reason, and came back a couple years down the line to find all my characters had had their names taken, I probably wouldn't bother continuing to play. I haven't really seen a good argument for a name release policy other than "I want a name someone else already has." You can't really make an argument from a cost or database size perspective, since that character occupies what is basically a single entry in a database which ends up being essentially meaningless in the grand scale of the entire game.

 

As far as how other games have handled name release for inactivity, I'll present two examples: City of Heroes during its original run and WoW.

 

City of Heroes:

• The original version of the policy came out about a year and a half after launch in late 2005. Players with inactive accounts, where "inactive" was considered "unpaid for at least 90 days," had names released (among other things like removing SG membership) if the character was under level 35. Maintaining a paid subscription, even if you didn't log in, prevented this from happening.
• The original policy lasted about six months before it was stopped.
• The policy was brought back in late 2007, but only affected characters level 5 and under.
• Both versions of the policy were enforced via a script manually run during server maintenance, but this was an infrequent occurrence.
• The aforementioned script was only ever run twice, because the development team decided the policy didn't free up an appreciable number of names.
• While the name release policy technically continued to exist even after the game went F2P, it was never enforced for the reasons I mentioned above.

WoW:

• I don't know what the original policy was, or if there even was one, but as of 2018 if your account hadn't been active for two expansions or four years, whichever came sooner, names were released for all your characters.
• At some point between 2018 and 2022 that policy changed and now only requires your account to be inactive for two years before releasing all character names.

[Sanguinesun]

15 hours ago, macskull said:

City of Heroes:

• The original version of the policy came out about a year and a half after launch in late 2005. Players with inactive accounts, where "inactive" was considered "unpaid for at least 90 days," had names released (among other things like removing SG membership) if the character was under level 35. Maintaining a paid subscription, even if you didn't log in, prevented this from happening.
• The original policy lasted about six months before it was stopped.
• The policy was brought back in late 2007, but only affected characters level 5 and under.
• Both versions of the policy were enforced via a script manually run during server maintenance, but this was an infrequent occurrence.
• The aforementioned script was only ever run twice, because the development team decided the policy didn't free up an appreciable number of names.
• While the name release policy technically continued to exist even after the game went F2P, it was never enforced for the reasons I mentioned above.

 

 

If the live devs only ever ran the script twice because it never did make any meaningful name reduction situation   AND  if  HC has but a mere fraction of the player base that live once had(ie meaning the volume of names taken is much less), this pretty much should make for compelling evidence that this name purge debate raising its seasonal head yet again is really moot.  

 

While sure there are names that I may have at times wanted for my characters, I just simply shrugged and made another name that ended up being just as good or later after consideration, better.

 

It isnt hard.

 

 If ever there became a situation where our little infinitesimally small community exploded and became some major dominant mmo force once again....(ie never), Im quite sure the current dev team can be more creative at presenting a solution that would not potentially alienate past/present members of the community nor dishearten any future ones by playing a kansas city name shuffle.

 

This whole thing is just silly.

Edited August 6, 2023 by Sanguinesun

[Ironblade]

On 8/5/2023 at 7:56 AM, Marine X said:

Point taken. It would be nice if it just looked at the Account activity instead of each Toon. Perhaps, if they ever actually move forward with the Renaming Policy, it could have a different qualifier before it is applied.

 

If an Account has been inactive for a prolonged period it could become Flagged for Name release,

 

One of the devs explained that would be a MAJOR job since it's two separate databases.  CAN it be done?  Sure, but it would be way more work so they're not considering it.

[Marine X]

On 8/5/2023 at 4:48 PM, Sanguinesun said:

HC has but a mere fraction of the player base that live once had(ie meaning the volume of names taken is much less)

Not Necessarily, Free accounts could only have 2 Characters without purchasing more slots from the Paragon Market, VIP and Premium Accounts could have more but there was still a limit before you had to purchase slots. HC allows a 1000 per account and many players have multiple accounts. Altitis on HC has no real limit placed on it as the Live game did. VIP status was required to play anything beyond the original 8 archetypes, Going Rogue, Incarnate content, etc. There was a huge surge in accounts and Characters when the game initially returned that are all still all there with many of them inactive. Do we need a name release? Probably not. I have always been able to find an available name, it just takes more thought now.

[Sanguinesun]

1 hour ago, Marine X said:

Not Necessarily, Free accounts could only have 2 Characters without purchasing more slots from the Paragon Market, VIP and Premium Accounts could have more but there was still a limit before you had to purchase slots. HC allows a 1000 per account and many players have multiple accounts. Altitis on HC has no real limit placed on it as the Live game did. VIP status was required to play anything beyond the original 8 archetypes, Going Rogue, Incarnate content, etc. There was a huge surge in accounts and Characters when the game initially returned that are all still all there with many of them inactive. Do we need a name release? Probably not. I have always been able to find an available name, it just takes more thought now.

 

In 2006 CoH had 189,000 or so subs during one of the financial reports listed that year. In 2008, it had 124k subs.  Keep in mind that was active accounts that year and data in years before and up through 2012 before it shuttered obviously people joined, subbed, make multiple toons, and left.  Not every sub filled their character slots mind you but could have 8 per server and 40 total while subbed not counting paid slots in later rmts.

 

If you want to play the numbers game and just say that a sub had 8 characters made on a server in 2008(remember that's after the name clearing if level 5 and under), thats just shy of 1 million characters just in that snap shot of active accounts between the active servers then.  Again given that there were years before and after that folks had subs and characters but inactive, the numbers would be much much higher of course.

 

Then you can factor your freebie accounts from there in the later years.  

 

Then factor yes the 2 times they did the scrubs out of the entire existence of the game for the lower level names as mentioned before(which again last happened well before f2p happened.

 

The point is, the likelihood that the most populous servers had well over 1-2 million names in their database over the course of 8 years that were reserved is rather plausible.

 

So the likelihood that we've more than few million named characters in our data base on say for example excelsior( the most populous server) I'm rather skeptical of.  And again, even if we do and it was comparable to that of the data bases of the live servers (as again only below 35 at one point and below 5 at another were purged), if live devs in that scenario didnt feel the need to purge more times/amounts than they did, I still dont see any compelling evidence that its warranted here.  We're very much a fraction of the activity they had even with the ability to have multiple accounts and 1k per server per account in terms of characters.

[UltraAlt]

On 8/5/2023 at 3:48 PM, macskull said:

I'm sure you didn't intend it, but your entire post is a great argument for doing away with the name release policy altogether.

 

If you are sure of that, you are quite wrong.

If it doesn't apply to 50s as well, then I am for doing away with the name release policy altogether. 

[Without_Pause]

Have it where level 50s can lose their names after a number of years. Give the players the ability to select one or more characters as an 'Icon' so that name stays. Maybe even do it to where people can pay for it, and use the money as a way to pay for the monthly cost of running the game. There's very few names I would be disappointed to lose, and even fewer of them would I even think others would want. 

[lemming]

That is an interesting question:  How many characters per account do people have? 

Live, I had around 50 characters near the end. (multi-server)

Here, I have 100 over two accounts. (the alt account has eight)  and that's after I trimmed down.

So, I can see there being more names claimed on HC, though that's just a thought.

 

I do think 50s shouldn't be immune, but I like Without_Pause's idea of one saved name (per server maybe?).  Though that would mean one more check in the DB, and some people might then do more accounts, just for that.  I would really prefer global tied to the char name, then it wouldn't matter as much, but coding...

 

[Neiska]

My take on it -

 

Personally, I don't want anyone to loose their names, 50 or not. If it were up to me, it would be "first come, first serve." And I wonder what brought this change about in the first place. Is there suddenly a shortage of names or adjectives in multiple languages on Earth? Aside from that - life happens. People take breaks. I myself only just started playing regularly again after being gone about 9 or so months. And when I think about returning to play a game again, the last thing I want to do is scroll through 100+ characters on multiple accounts just to "log in" to keep something I have already had for years. People have multiple characters. Some build specific characters for specific tasks. Others simply have characters to act as bankers or storage. Other players still have a bunch of characters simply used as visual props and use assorted powers for roleplay, and the list goes on. 

 

To me this entire think stinks, to 50s and non-50s alike. And for nearly all contexts, I usually take a dim view on making people take extra steps or jump through hoops to keep something they already had.

 

My two cents on it.

[Without_Pause]

On my second account I have currently 5 characters. I have 37 on my main account. Many of these builds aren't 50. Some likely will never be. Some will be deleted. I would be fine saving one per account. There are still so many great names to be had. Most of my cherished names are honestly on the more recent side. 

[Seed22]

While I doubt my names would be swiped up, if they were I'd probably continue taking my hiatus and maybe shift to permanent hiatus. Not even because I'm mad over the name loss, I just can't be bothered coming up with a new name for ~90 50's. Too much work.

 

I like the idea of years for names per account. People have lives(okay, MOST people here have lives) outside of CoH, and take breaks for a number of reasons. I honestly don't have to worry about this being an issue though. I doubt 50s will ever be on the chopping block for names.

[High_Beam]

I have 30 on my main account on Excelsior (15 of which are 50s) and 5 on Everlasting plus 7 on my alt account.  I play all of the ones on Excelsior at least a few hours a month while others are more often.  Everlasting is dumping/full retirement so I only log to refresh the basics, generate Inspiration and sell and play when Excel is acting cranky.  And while I would love to get my namesake character name back on Excel, I do not expect to so I honestly don't pay attention to the name release thingy; the rules by which they would be possible released are too . . . stringent; no level 50 inactivity release would likely be what it took.

[Raikao]

All I'll say is: I took a break since 2019 before remembering I like playing this game actually (lol).

 

If my char had been renamed I'm not sure I would have played again. It differs from person to person for sure.

 

You're basically putting a "hard quit moment" into your game with a policy like this. And I just don't see the need for it, expect for cases where someone just made 50+ characters to "take names" and then never played those and logged off for 2+ years.

 

I don't know how prevalent that is on a small private server.

 

I don't think level 50 chars should have their name stripped at all.

 

I don't think forcing people to "roulette login" their chars once every x months is anything but dumb as well.

Edited August 8, 2023 by Raikao

[Wavicle]

This is 100% just people who feel entitled to a certain name. Well, you’re not. 

[Luminara]

How in the name of pickled fish nipples did this go from "Here's what the average player population looks like over time" to bickering about names?

 

Y'all motherfuckers crazy.

[ZemX]

45 minutes ago, Luminara said:

How in the name of pickled fish nipples did this go from "Here's what the average player population looks like over time" to bickering about names?

 

Y'all motherfuckers crazy.

 

No, listen... this time someone is going to win the argument.  I just know it.

[A Cat]

47 minutes ago, Luminara said:

How in the name of pickled fish nipples did this go from "Here's what the average player population looks like over time" to bickering about names?

 

Y'all motherfuckers crazy.

Our only choice now is to bring up wedge issues in contemporary politics. 

[Neiska]

25 minutes ago, ZemX said:

 

No, listen... this time someone is going to win the argument.  I just know it.

 

Blasters: "I drink Coke."

Corruptors: "I drink Pepsi."

Tankers: "I drink Beer."

Brutes: "I drink Protein Shakes."

Controllers: "I drink Decaf."

Dominators: "I drink Tea."

Masterminds: "I drink Chocolate Milk."

Sentinels: "I drink Tang."

Scrapper: "I drink Monster Energy."

Stalkers: "I drink Whiskey."

Defender: "I drink Water."

Arachnos Soldiers: "I drink Gatorade."

Arachnos Widows: "I drink Starbucks."

Peacebringers: "I drink Milk."

Warshades: "I drink Purple Mountain Dew."

Snarky: "You already know what I drink."

DMs: *looks into cup, sips Coffee.*

 

Edited August 8, 2023 by Neiska

[macskull]

12 hours ago, Luminara said:

How in the name of pickled fish nipples did this go from "Here's what the average player population looks like over time" to bickering about names?

 

Y'all motherfuckers crazy.

Me being bored and people being wrong on the internet go together like chocolate and peanut butter.

[kelika2]

Whups.

 

[Without_Pause]

Back on topic, I just wished the Homecoming Stats thread was done once a year. This way we can look if changes to sets mattered and changes in what is getting played is happing. Is the new unicorn the same as the old one?

[Without_Pause]

I should add, there was some wonkiness with the polls as T1 powers were listed as under 100% when they were still mandatory, but the thread talking about what percentage of the player base taking powers within a powerset was a gold mine for figuring out what to pick at least on the initial go of playing a new powerset. This would be all the more interesting now that players aren't forced into taking T1 secondary powers.

[Herotu]

On 8/5/2023 at 7:26 AM, Wavicle said:

Stop trying to control people and stop griping because they are using the game systems in a way you disapprove of.

"Stop trying to control people" - Have you ever heard anything so ridiculously daft? 

 

Talk about trying to dominate a narrative. The "freedom at all costs" nonsense comes straight out of the neoconservative playbook. We need high standards to keep things in a sensible place. Otherwise we get extremist nonsense.

[Without_Pause]

1 hour ago, Herotu said:

"Stop trying to control people" - Have you ever heard anything so ridiculously daft? 

 

Talk about trying to dominate a narrative. The "freedom at all costs" nonsense comes straight out of the neoconservative playbook. We need high standards to keep things in a sensible place. Otherwise we get extremist nonsense.

Read the room. You're quoting something from 6 days ago.