Rikti Invasions & Shard-Specific XP Boosts! (Update: Jan 16th)

[UltraAlt]

On 1/7/2024 at 8:26 AM, Jimmy said:

This isn't really about trying to make the quiet servers not-quiet, it's about saving Excelsior from itself 🙂

 

Let the monster eat it's own tail.

 

 

It shouldn't be any shock.

Excelsior has been Homecoming's "Freedom" pretty much since I started playing on Homecoming.

 

14 hours ago, Jimmy said:

The invasions aren't exactly meant to be a celebration. They (and the 2xp) are meant to be an incentive to play on Indom, Reunion and Torchbearer 🙂

 

By making it easier to outlevel content? I'll just have to turn my xp off more often.

 

I'm just foreseeing some people leveling up characters on the less populated servers before moving them back to the Excelsior.

[Injunuity]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

I'm just foreseeing some people leveling up characters on the less populated servers before moving them back to the Excelsior.

tbh, i'd move back to torch, but it's so many alts to do so with lol.  i enjoy the game, and the good gamers on Excelsior (ie not the trolls) but i'd rather be able to just play w/o much hassle,

[Seed22]

On 1/6/2024 at 4:39 PM, LittleRitch said:

From doing some testing, it's 3x XP. So, the double is only applying to base xp. You essentially have double XP 2 times.

Level 1 minion gives 10 xp normally. With P2W vendor 2x buff, you get 20 XP. With both P2W vendor 2x buff and server double xp, you get 30 xp.

 

If you don't grab the P2W xp buff, you will get influence. 

Makes sense. I was wondering what the deal was. Was able to PL a Stone/Regen scrapper to 50 in 2 hours on Torch. Will probably come back for some rikti action to get elusive mind

[JusticeBringer]

7 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Is part of the problem one of nomenclature?

 

I'm talking here about the shard's names and how evocative they are. Excelsior! We know and love that word but most of us probably first encountered it through the musings of the late, great, Stan Lee who would use it to sign off his Bullpen Bulletins.

 

From personal experience, I would definitely attribute it to the naming. When I landed on Homecoming, Excelsior was nearly my first server. It seemed like it'd be the obvious designation for an unofficial RP server (I exclusively played on Virtue during Live). However, I opted to check the forums first and discovered Everlasting filled that role instead.

[Digirium]

I think it's nothing to do with names but instead taking part in the action i.e. LFG.

 

I left Reunion years ago because there was no activity and headed to Excelsior. Returned this past weekend to Reunion to play see how things were Saturday and Sunday were great. However today despite the 200+ number online no action at all in LFG. Plenty of players appeared teamed-up without a word in LFG conclusion: farming and power-leveling.

 

Once again I moved back to Excelsior the "we were there!" crowd has mostly vanished.

[Dryfter]

I VERY much support this. I started on HC on the TB server, as did my old SG, because we thought the name would cause it to be the most populated server. We failed to take into account the "Power of Stan". That SG is still on TB, as are many of my toons, but I have about 3 times (I have terrible Alt-Itis) as many, as well as my personal SG and base, on Excelsior. This will even em out a bit with the new and returning players coming in with the recent GREAT news, and hopefully it will stay somewhat evened out in the future. Good idea dev peeps!

Edited January 9 by Dryfter

[Display Name]

Double/triple the inf also.

[drgantz]

When I game, I prefer grouping for  TFs because they give good exp and RM.  I like Excelsior because there are plenty of groups for that.  I would assume that the low pop servers don't have many groups.  I'm sure that the Rikti invasions are fun, but they don't appear to offer much. 

I think that a good idea would be to have some Rikti missions that give RM or give some good loot drops from Rikti

[Jimmy]

Update - January 16th, 2024

Everlasting & Torchbearer are now have +50% XP. Reunion and Indomitable will remain at +100% XP.

 

Additionally, Rikti Invasions are now live on all shards and will continue until maintenance next week (January 23rd). Enjoy!

[Bionic_Flea]

But Jimmy, why can't I have maximum XP all the time, everywhere, for free?

[Blackbird71]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

Update - January 16th, 2024

Everlasting & Torchbearer are now have +50% XP. Reunion and Indomitable will remain at +100% XP.

 

Additionally, Rikti Invasions are now live on all shards and will continue until maintenance next week (January 23rd). Enjoy!

 

Is there a reason why Everlasting and Torchbearer are getting less of a boost than Reunion and Indomitable?  It seems kind of like a raw deal for those who play on those two servers.

[Parabola]

14 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

 

Is there a reason why Everlasting and Torchbearer are getting less of a boost than Reunion and Indomitable?  It seems kind of like a raw deal for those who play on those two servers.

Because this is an incentive to balance the load on the shards and everlasting and torchbearer are presumably more popular than reunion or indomitable.

[Blackbird71]

Still stinks if you play on those shards.

 

Everlasting even got cut out completely of the first round of boosts.  Feels very anti-RPers.

 

I assume these boosts are targeted towards new players rather than the existing players, as established players generally aren't going to swap shards just for an XP boost when they have their SGs, friends, etc. on their home shard.  If that's the case, why not just give the patrol XP power charges to new characters on those servers?  It would be more targeted and less of a finger in the eye to players on certain shards.

Edited January 16 by Blackbird71

[Judasace]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

Update - January 16th, 2024

Everlasting & Torchbearer are now have +50% XP. Reunion and Indomitable will remain at +100% XP.

 

Additionally, Rikti Invasions are now live on all shards and will continue until maintenance next week (January 23rd). Enjoy!

 

 

24 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

 

Is there a reason why Everlasting and Torchbearer are getting less of a boost than Reunion and Indomitable?  It seems kind of like a raw deal for those who play on those two servers.

 

I guess they think enough load is being taken off of Excelsior, but the XP isn't really going to solve the issue, because it's about the community and not the XP. Sure, some farmers may hop around, but the real issue is that the type of people that really enjoy leading group content already migrated to Excelsior long ago and aren't likely to move.

 

While I'm sure I didn't see everything, playing for the last week on TB I've seen so much less activity (other than DFB's) compared to Ex. I rarely saw farms advertised, saw exactly 1 MSR, saw a moderate number of Synapses last week, but last night saw  only a couple of ITF's, and rarely saw any other TF's besides some Posi 1 and 2's. And I saw maybe two ITF's last night ...pretty bad for it being the first day of the new WST.

 

While people may be on the servers, the community of people to lead events just isn't there, and in the long term, more and more people are going to want to move to Ex because they want to do group content but don't want to lead, and Ex is going to end up unplayable.

 

They should probably pull the plug on server transfers, and maybe figure out a way to incentivize leading group content before they have no choice but to forcible split Excelsior into two different servers.

Edited January 16 by Judasace

[Jimmy]

35 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

Is there a reason why Everlasting and Torchbearer are getting less of a boost than Reunion and Indomitable?  It seems kind of like a raw deal for those who play on those two servers.

 

Yep:

 

The same reason why Excelsior has no XP boost.

 

15 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

Still stinks if you play on those shards.

 

Everlasting even got cut out completely of the first round of boosts.  Feels very anti-RPers.

 

I assume these boosts are targeted towards new players rather than the existing players, as established players generally aren't going to swap shards just for an XP boost when they have their SGs, friends, etc. on their home shard.  If that's the case, why not just give the patrol XP power charges to new characters on those servers?  It would be more targeted and less of a finger in the eye to players on certain shards.

 

It's targeted at both new and old players. Patrol XP wouldn't work because you can simply transfer after gaining it.

 

This method works. We can see the stats.

 

See also my post on page 2:

 

On 1/7/2024 at 1:26 PM, Jimmy said:

 

This isn't really about trying to make the quiet servers not-quiet, it's about saving Excelsior from itself 🙂

 

Excelsior frequently (possibly always, can't say for sure) had more players online than all the other shards combined. This was just about manageable before the license announcement, but we still had occasional hiccups as mentioned in this thread. Obviously we've had quite a bump in activity due to the announcement, and Excelsior was really struggling on Thursday and Friday evening. Everlasting wasn't included as it's already in a very healthy spot population wise, we didn't want it to suddenly have the same issues that Excelsior is having.

 

And it's working. Last night Excelsior was around 40% of total population, and right now it's hovering around 45%:

 

 

Much better compared to Excelsior being nearly 60% of our total online players on Thursday!

 

While overall our infrastructure can easily handle this number of players (and many, many more), each individual shard can only support so many players before things start to hit a bottleneck. Something to keep in mind is that Excelsior is quite busy compared to most shards from the retail version of the game as free server transfers have resulted in so many players coalescing there. On live, players were generally stuck to the shards they started on - and there were 16 shards in total at that point. Now we have 5.

 

[drgantz]

I've been keep track of the Server Pop over the last few days. 

Reunion and Indomitable have usually been around 500, Torchbearer and Everlasting have usually been around 900 and Excelsior has usually been 1200+.

At the beginning, I believe Everlasting was higher than Torchbearer, but after the XP bonus, Torch became a little higher than Ever.

I tried Indom for part of a day, but found it dull.  People rarely chatted or started groups.  Once in a while I would seen an announcement for DFB or Posi, but it was pretty rare.

Another problem was that I wanted to try the Rikti invasions.  SInce I started a new toon, I was too low.  I would need to level up to go to the zones that had Rikti, but since there weren't many groups forming, levelling would be difficult.

[Lunar Ronin]

The communities on the smaller shards have become rather insular over the past few years as only the die hards remained.  There's definite activity on all of the shards, but generally within set groups and not for PUGs.  The key to this is for you to start groups.  If you want to do a TF or SF, start one.  If you want to do a mothership raid, start one.  If you want to do an iTrial, start one.  It may take a little bit, but "if you build it, they will come."

[Jimmy]

42 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

The communities on the smaller shards have become rather insular over the past few years as only the die hards remained.  There's definite activity on all of the shards, but generally within set groups and not for PUGs.  The key to this is for you to start groups.  If you want to do a TF or SF, start one.  If you want to do a mothership raid, start one.  If you want to do an iTrial, start one.  It may take a little bit, but "if you build it, they will come."

This has been my experience too. I generally play on Excelsior, but have mostly been on other shards since the announcement. You're right that there's not always a whole lot going on in LFG, but it's really easy to recruit people if you start something yourself 🙂

[Judasace]

1 hour ago, Lunar Ronin said:

The communities on the smaller shards have become rather insular over the past few years as only the die hards remained.  There's definite activity on all of the shards, but generally within set groups and not for PUGs.  The key to this is for you to start groups.  If you want to do a TF or SF, start one.  If you want to do a mothership raid, start one.  If you want to do an iTrial, start one.  It may take a little bit, but "if you build it, they will come."

 

Problem is, it's not a "Form your own groups or don't do the content" issue. It's "Form your own group or move to where the leaders already are." issue.

 

And if one thing's been clear since 2004, it's that most people simply will not lead groups, they just won't. I've run tons of these things myself, but the fact is that the ratio of people even willing to lead groups vs those not so inclines is like 100:1. People will simply move to where the leaders are. Ex was getting borderline unplayable at times before the announcement, and I don't imagine this will improve. Once the XP increase stops or people feel they have enough 50s people will migrate to Ex en masse  and the server will collapse under the strain.

 

All people have to do is log into the servers and watch the LFG for 10 minutes to know where the people are forming groups are at, and the vast, vast majority of people would rather switch than move out of their comfort zones and lead.

[Triumphant]

1 hour ago, Judasace said:

 

Problem is, it's not a "Form your own groups or don't do the content" issue. It's "Form your own group or move to where the leaders already are." issue.

 

And if one thing's been clear since 2004, it's that most people simply will not lead groups, they just won't. I've run tons of these things myself, but the fact is that the ratio of people even willing to lead groups vs those not so inclines is like 100:1. People will simply move to where the leaders are. Ex was getting borderline unplayable at times before the announcement, and I don't imagine this will improve. Once the XP increase stops or people feel they have enough 50s people will migrate to Ex en masse  and the server will collapse under the strain.

 

All people have to do is log into the servers and watch the LFG for 10 minutes to know where the people are forming groups are at, and the vast, vast majority of people would rather switch than move out of their comfort zones and lead.

 

I'm primarily an RP'er who hangs out on Everlasting, so I guess this doesn't apply to me so much (considering that it seems the trouble is mostly with Excelsior, atm?).  Your analysis of the problem does feel correct to me, though (or, at the least, very plausible).  The real question is, having identified the problem, what do you do about it?

You can't rely on the solution of people changing their nature, I can tell you that much.  In real life, most people don't want to be the one in charge, running the show, and so on (except for middle managers, who can enjoy that stuff without actually doing any work 😄).  They just want to enjoy themselves.  If you don't like to be in charge of running content, nothing is going to convince you to do that. 

Realistically, I'm not sure what can be done about this.  🤷‍♂️

[Lunar Ronin]

2 minutes ago, Triumphant said:

Realistically, I'm not sure what can be done about this.  🤷‍♂️

 

Disable both new character creation on Excelsior and character transfers to Excelsior.  But that's a rather drastic option that I'm sure the Homecoming team would much rather avoid. 

[Shoguninsact]

OR...give a a slight xp or other reward bonus to a group leader. Nothing drastic, so that the problem inverts, and everyone wants to lead, no one wants to join. Just a slight increase, maybe 5% or so. Many more people will be willing to lead groups, I have no doubt.

[GM Impervium]

2 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

Disable both new character creation on Excelsior and character transfers to Excelsior.  But that's a rather drastic option that I'm sure the Homecoming team would much rather avoid. 

 

It's a somewhat self-correcting issue. At 1,500 players, the queue starts up. If people don't want to wait, they'll head to other shards. Hopefully.

[UltraAlt]

9 hours ago, Judasace said:

I guess they think enough load is being taken off of Excelsior, but the XP isn't really going to solve the issue, because it's about the community and not the XP. Sure, some farmers may hop around, but the real issue is that the type of people that really enjoy leading group content already migrated to Excelsior long ago and aren't likely to move.

 

This is more targeting the people that are more interested in power-leveling and soloing than those playing on a team.

 

It isn't a punishment to experience game play there the way you have normally.

No one is forcing to you move and stop playing with the group of people you play with on Excelsior.

In fact, this move helps make sure that there is enough room on Excelsior so that you CAN log on and run with the people you want to team with.

 

As for myself, I already have characters on all the servers. I have only ever moved one character from one server to another.

In addition, I already often turn my XP off so that I don't outlevel content.

 

4 hours ago, Judasace said:

And if one thing's been clear since 2004, it's that most people simply will not lead groups, they just won't.

 

I can agree with this.

I would suggest that you always stand up and recruit because 1) you know it is an issue, 2) because it allows you to play the game the way that you want to play it, and 3) you have enough experience with the game to be able to lead teams.

I would even add, since you are on the most populated server, you should alway recruit instead of joining teams because you know other people don't want to recruit but they want to join teams.

 

4 hours ago, Judasace said:

Ex was getting borderline unplayable at times before the announcement, and I don't imagine this will improve. Once the XP increase stops or people feel they have enough 50s people will migrate to Ex en masse  and the server will collapse under the strain.

 

You complain about the solution, admit that there is a problem, and yet you don't offer your own solution.

So I ask you, what would you do to solve the issue over overpopulation on Excelsior?

 

Obviously, it isn't offering the same XP bonus on Excelsior!

 

4 hours ago, Judasace said:

All people have to do is log into the servers and watch the LFG for 10 minutes to know where the people are forming groups are at, and the vast, vast majority of people would rather switch than move out of their comfort zones and lead.

 

Are you guilty of not wanting to "move out of" your "comfort zones and lead"?

Is somehow the small decrease in population of Excelsior harming your ability to get on teams? (HINT: there are more characters on Excelsior now than before the Announcement.)

 

Current Stats:

North America

 Torchbearer    789 online

 Excelsior       1370 online

 Everlasting      895 online

 Indomitable    609 online

Europe

 Reunion           501 online

 

It looks like there are plenty of people online to game with on Excelsior. More than any other server.

So are you complaining that all the players that are recruiters are moving to other servers?

 

It appears that are mainly trying to make some kind of complaint that the other servers shouldn't get extra XP in order to take the load off of Excelsior while complaining that there are too many players on Excelsior while saying that you need more players on Excelsior in order to insure that there are enough players willing to run teams because you know that there is a shortage (at this point) of the number of players that are willing to run team, but you are unwilling to lead teams -or- switch to another server which are more populated than they have been in order to get the additional xp and experience the same amount of community participation/population that was happening on Excelsior before the announcement.

At least that seems to sum it up.

 

Edited January 17 by UltraAlt

[UltraAlt]

1 hour ago, Shoguninsact said:

OR...give a a slight xp or other reward bonus to a group leader. Nothing drastic, so that the problem inverts, and everyone wants to lead, no one wants to join. Just a slight increase, maybe 5% or so.

 

I'm not sure how hard this would be to program.

I kind of think that it was already going on at some point.

 

I would suggest adding 1% for each additional player on the team for normal mission content (contact missions), 1/2% per additional teammate for taskforce/trial/event content and police scanner/newspaper missions, and no change to Ouroboros or AE teams.

 

Why?

It seems generally easier to fill a taskforce/trial/event and police scanner/newspaper missions, than it does to fill a mission arc team. (from my experience recruiting).

Most of the police scanner teams I see LFM are Peregrine Island teams that are used for power-leveling, and I don't think that needs to be promoted any more than it already is. (yeah, I want to team up with other players that actually want to experience the game instead of zipping past it to the end-game.)

 

The reasoning to leave AE the way that it is should be obvious.

 

The reasoning not to give any bonus for leading Ouroboros teams is that they are not going to be a PuG. It only benefits those that would generally already group with each other in a majority of the cases.

 

1 hour ago, Shoguninsact said:

Many more people will be willing to lead groups, I have no doubt.

 

I doubt it, but it is worth a shot.

 

The real bonus of recruiting and leading a team is insuring that you are on a team.

There are generally many more people that are looking for a team than those that are willing to recruit and lead a team.

You are almost always going to get at least a couple of players to join you if you recruit for a team.

 

The negative side of recruiting for a task force is that - once you do the recruiting for it - some 50 wants to take the star away from you - once you have done the hard work. Then you don't have the "boot" and they are going to run the task force as they see fit regardless of how you planned to lead it.

(Giving the star to a player at the top level of a task force or higher all the powers to that level + 5 levels. At the same time, running task force at max level means that it is at its most dangerous setting -more powers for the enemies - and characters below the highest level for the taskforce can be potentially missing powers that will allow them to contend with the higher level enemies.)

 

The negative sides of recruiting in general is

1) Some players won't treat you like you are the team lead once you are in a mission.

a) Level 50's

b) Tanks

c) Brutes

d) Scrappers, if there are no tanks or brutes on the team

2) Some players won't stay with the team an intentionally run off to do what they want to do - generally, level 50's.

3) Some player on the team decides that they are going to make everything a speed run - generally, level 50's

4) Some players on the team gang up against you for one reason or another.

5) Some player decides that they want you do their missions instead - generally a higher level character.

6) Some players do things that endanger the entire party and you - being leader - have to decide if you are going to give them the "boot" or not.

7) The content can be done at the level set, but some of the players won't cooperate in a way to insure success even if you offer them a solution to the problem - because "they know how to play".

... I'm sure there are more, but I'll stop there.

 

One would think that being a team leader should be respected, but, in many cases, it isn't - and that is one of the main reasons why there are so fewer number of people recruiting.

 

At any rate, this really has nothing to do with why all the servers are except for Excelsior are getting bonus xp.

Maybe the bonus leadership XP should be based on how low the server population is. AKA you would virtually never get it on Excelsior.