PSA: Bonus XP on Lower Populated Shards Coming to an End

[Lunar Ronin]

Just thought that I'd post this here since it was announced on Discord a few hours ago but hasn't been announced here.  Bonus XP on Torchbearer, Indomitable, and Reunion comes to an end Tuesday, November 5th.

 

 

[Troo]

 

Odd that this is the first I have heard of this. Seems like it would be communicated well in advance rather than a surprise for anyone.

 

[arcane]

Don’t understand why they refuse to communicate with the forums over their precious discord. Thanks.

[lemming]

16 minutes ago, Troo said:

Odd that this is the first I have heard of this. Seems like it would be communicated well in advance rather than a surprise for anyone.

Disconnect on announcements since the gmotd mentions the extra XP on those servers with no mention of the end is nigh.

 

Irony in that I was mentioning too many announcements in a different thread. 😄

[lemming]

2 minutes ago, arcane said:

Don’t understand why they refuse to communicate with the forums over their precious discord. Thanks.

I think it's a symptom of different roles.   iirc, they didn't mention when they cut the XP bonus on a couple of the servers.

[Troo]

Even with too many announcements we could at least point to something and say "hey, we did share that information". (I hear what you are saying @lemming)

 

Question: What would the goal of ending small shard bonus experience be?

 

Is there some pressing reason to do so?

 

 

 

[Ukase]

4 minutes ago, Troo said:

Even with too many announcements we could at least point to something and say "hey, we did share that information". (I hear what you are saying @lemming)

 

Question: What would the goal of ending small shard bonus experience be?

 

Is there some pressing reason to do so?

Here's a snippet from Discord: 

 

Hope that helps. 

 

[lemming]

7 minutes ago, Troo said:

Even with too many announcements we could at least point to something and say "hey, we did share that information". (I hear what you are saying @lemming)

 

Question: What would the goal of ending small shard bonus experience be?

 

Is there some pressing reason to do so?

Yea, I'd rather too many than too little (up to a point), but right now I can say it's too little.

 

On goal, it's probably done all it's going to do in getting people to other shards for regular play. (And Ukase's snippet says so!)

 

Edited October 30 by lemming
new info from Ukase

[Without_Pause]

So Reunion went from being more than a retirement place for my characters to simply being that. I had started soloing on Reunion and had more plans to do so. The 2x XP was a nice option for my lower level characters. Alas. 

[Troo]

..soooo there is no goal.

 

We get that it is very difficult to please most and nearly impossible to please everyone.

Folks are gonna have a number of beefs with how this is handled.

 

Even in-the-loop discorders appear to be reacting a bit neutral to poorly.

 

 

[Techwright]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

Here's a snippet from Discord: 

 

Hope that helps. 

 

 

I've no character I've buffed using this, so I've no real dog in the fight.  Still, for those who've been utilizing it, I wonder if a parallel S.T.A.R.T. system could be created, or the current one modified, so that the XP bonus selection had another entry.  One that only showed on designated low-pop servers.  So theoretically, I could get my usual 2xp bonus (at the sacrifice of INF) but then also select the server XP bonus, or later turn it off through the START vendor.  To my thinking that would solve the Praetoria XP issue.

[Riverdusk]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

Don’t understand why they refuse to communicate with the forums over their precious discord. Thanks.

 

Agreed.  Then again, it could be worse.  At least it isn't Twitter.

[Ukase]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

Don’t understand why they refuse to communicate with the forums over their precious discord. Thanks.

Just conjecture, but it's probably a familiarity thing. I'm closing in on 60 faster than I'd like. Before HC opened the doors, there are two things I'd never heard of before. Reddit and Discord. 
If they were using Discord before, stands to reason they might just see Discord as a practical tool that solves a couple of problems. Fast notifications (that can be disabled) and who knows what else. I barely can get my mike and headphones to work on it. Not an expert in all the facets of it. 

[Digirium]

Good while it lasted, the news is however outrun in terms of gold from the entertainment value delivered by the emoji responses -- which we "total avoidance of Discord" people would never have known without this PSA and thread. Good players probably never needed the +100% XP anyway, they moved their 1-50 + incarnate slot farms to low population servers without the need of persuasion due to being considerate.

[Spaghetti Betty]

Just my opinion, but all the bonus XP did was compel farmers to take their business to the lower pop servers. It missed the mark a little bit in moving permanent traffic from the two giants. It was a temporary bonus anyways, so I'm not really upset by its departure.

[Seed22]

45 minutes ago, Digirium said:

Good while it lasted, the news is however outrun in terms of gold from the entertainment value delivered by the emoji responses -- which we "total avoidance of Discord" people would never have known without this PSA and thread. Good players probably never needed the +100% XP anyway, they moved their 1-50 + incarnate slot farms to low population servers without the need of persuasion due to being considerate.

Good players moved over farmed then left. Thats just basic efficiency, which is what good players actually do.

 

But now it’ll be what it always was; a preference, instead of an incentive. If you like low pop servers well there’s indom and reunion for you. And torch.

[Sanguinesun]

It was an amateur decision to implement it really because this sort of thinking with other games tended to never work out either.  People who want to play a game that has a stronger incentive to play group content are going to gravitate towards the server(s) with the most players.  What it ended up being is a method to return to the pleveling methods that were diminished years ago with changes to xp gains with then people transfering those toons back to the populated servers.  I'd say more than anything else, that's the primary reason for their stopping it.

 

I suspect there may be server closures in the coming months too since outside of forced pushing of players from Excelsior out of congestion concerns, I dont ever see those low pop servers ever becoming decently populated ones.

 

Right now the combined numbers of people concurrently playing on torch reunion and indom are just a sliver below the concurrent players on Everlasting. And everlasting is around a third of the players numbers currently on Excelsior.

 

As for the lack of transparent communication on the forums here regarding the change coming,  well, that's just par for the course.

 

 

Edited October 30 by Sanguinesun

[High_Beam]

Hope all your parked 50s on those low population servers names are still available when you transfer! 🙂

Edited October 30 by High_Beam

[Lunar Ronin]

1 hour ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Just my opinion, but all the bonus XP did was compel farmers to take their business to the lower pop servers. It missed the mark a little bit in moving permanent traffic from the two giants. It was a temporary bonus anyways, so I'm not really upset by its departure.

 

Bingo.  I understand why it was done, Excelsior was being completely overloaded back in January through March.  However, the end result for Indomitable and Reunion is all that happened was that people shifted their power leveling and farming from Excelsior and Everlasting to Indomitable and Reunion, and did not engage with the shards' community at all.  They never left Pocket D or whichever zone they farmed in.  If Homecoming actually really wanted people to permanently move to the lower populated shards, they'd have to increase rewards on the lower populated shards - Infamy, reward merits, or both.  However, I definitely understand why Homecoming wouldn't want to do that.

 

 

28 minutes ago, Sanguinesun said:

I suspect there may be server closures in the coming months too since outside of forced pushing of players from Excelsior out of congestion concerns, I dont ever see those low pop servers ever becoming decently populated ones.

 

Right now the combined numbers of people concurrently playing on torch reunion and indom are just a sliver below the concurrent players on Everlasting. And everlasting is around a third of the players numbers currently on Excelsior.

 

As for the lack of transparent communication on the forums here regarding the change coming,  well, that's just par for the course.

 

 

 

It's been stated time and time again over the years that Homecoming will not close nor merge any shards.  All four North American shards share the same hardware, so there would be no cost savings.  In addition, some people prefer to play on lower populated shards.  I played on Excelsior from 2019 until 2022.  I'd rather give myself a root canal than to play on Excelsior again.

[Sanguinesun]

54 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

It's been stated time and time again over the years that Homecoming will not close nor merge any shards.  All four North American shards share the same hardware, so there would be no cost savings.  In addition, some people prefer to play on lower populated shards.  I played on Excelsior from 2019 until 2022.  I'd rather give myself a root canal than to play on Excelsior again.

 

Never stated it they would be shuttered out of financial concerns....

[Lunar Ronin]

1 minute ago, Sanguinesun said:

 

Never stated it they would be shuttered out of financial concerns....

 

Then there would be no reason to do it.  You'd have conflicting character names, conflicting supergroup names, the loss of supergroups and supergroup bases, and again, some people don't want to play on high population shards.  If people want to play on high population shards, they already have the means to do so, via new character creation and character transfers.

 

All a shard merge would do is push those who intentionally play on lower populated shards to leave Homecoming entirely.

[Snarky]

It is blatantly political…

[biostem]

9 minutes ago, Snarky said:

It is blatantly political…

I hear the anti-vamp party is gaining ground...

[High_Beam]

I blame Bernardo Gui.

[ivanhedgehog]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

It is blatantly political…

I am a man of science. I blame witches!