Can we go back to 1,500 players for the no multiboxing limit?

[kelika2]

1,100 is too low and easily hit on excelsior, i can understand this limit being temporary whenever homecoming does one of its twitch adverts to get the word out but thats over

there is another thread here about a guy who lost a name moving servers temporarily so thats not an option

we had a 1,500 limit for years with no issues

 

so, can we go back?

[Lunar Ronin]

It's almost like the developers are trying to encourage people to play on shards other than Excelsior.  Huh.

[kelika2]

55 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

It's almost like the developers are trying to encourage people to play on shards other than Excelsior.  Huh.

if bonus exp wont do it nothing will

[Lunar Ronin]

24 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

if bonus exp wont do it nothing will

 

Sure there is.  Bonus XP simply isn't enough of a carrot.  Seems to be a bit more of a stick approach ATM, between lowering the no multiboxing limit to 1,100 accounts and, from what I hear, queues are now starting at 1,200 accounts.

 

Failing that, disable character creation on and character transfers to Excelsior.  Increase rewards on other shards, whether that be reward merits, INF, prismatic aethers, or some combination.

[kelika2]

30 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

Sure there is.  Bonus XP simply isn't enough of a carrot.  Seems to be a bit more of a stick approach ATM, between lowering the no multiboxing limit to 1,100 accounts and, from what I hear, queues are now starting at 1,200 accounts.

 

Failing that, disable character creation on and character transfers to Excelsior.  Increase rewards on other shards, whether that be reward merits, INF, prismatic aethers, or some combination.

whatever the way this is not the way, feels like musical chairs for whenever i can play now

[lemming]

I don't think it's strickly numbers, it's if the server goes red.

 

I think the carrots on the other servers just made it so people did X on the other servers, but then went back to their other servers.   I tend to play my solo chars on the other servers for the most part.

[DrRocket]

The strength of CoH is the community, and CoH has several communities - One per server. I am not saying any given server has a better community than the other for it is not the case. My community is Everlasting and I am well known and appreciated there, as a result putting a double exp or whatever on another server, may be tempting when I am leveling an alt, but ultimately the alt is coming home to Everlasting in my case. I am pretty sure it is true for Torchbearer and what not.

 

Not sure, how to really accomplish server population balance, because in this case the core strength of CoH is also its weakness.

 

In the case of Excelsior bursting at the seems, it just tough, the benefit, of such a high population is that the server can absorb huge events such as MSR and Hami and still have sufficient population to handle many other TFs/SFs and what not, so why would you want to walk away from that?

 

I lament in Everlasting once the Hami or the never ending MSRs kick in, the population left to do TFs/SFs or whatever is minimal and forming teams is a pain. I can imagine how much worse it would be for lesser populated servers.

 

I think perhaps customizing the servers in a permanent manner based on play style and preferences, for example I love making alts and leveling them to at least vet level 115, so a server that lets me make double exp even after I made 50 would be very tempting, while perhaps another server may be the crafter/farmers server and AE has no exp/inf penalties and materials/recipes have higher chances to drop, another server could specialize in events with certain zones having perennial events such as Christmas, Zombies, Rikti raids, Trick or treat, etc. Only a thought...

 

This is a tough one, indeed

[Laucianna]

Tbf, it is much easier to see when you log on if the server is red letting you know not to multibox, rather then having to check the forums or discord

[kelika2]

6 hours ago, DrRocket said:

The strength of CoH is the community

the person behind the keyboard can be amazing and cool but the characters they play can suck donkey ass.  i can list off all the annoying group member things imaginable but my point being i love the game and multiboxing gave new life.  like i can play the game and not be brought down by someone who thinks its ok to leave hurricane on all the time.  i can play the game and not group with someone who spams aoe immobilize.  hell, it does not have to be 3 boxes all the time but general 10 day maintenance on some characters and fast firefarms with 2 accounts.

 

now all that happiness and joy has blackout dates and times that i cannot control

[Troo]

32 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

now all that happiness and joy has blackout dates and times that i cannot control

 

If not playing with other players, why would being on the most populated server matter?

 

[kelika2]

1 hour ago, Troo said:

If not playing with other players, why would being on the most populated server matter?

global chats

not feeling alone

etc

 

sure i 3 box my way through synapes but if its good shitposting season why not talk about how to get gum out of a cats whiskers with others

[Lunar Ronin]

10 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

global chats

not feeling alone

etc

 

sure i 3 box my way through synapes but if its good shitposting season why not talk about how to get gum out of a cats whiskers with others

 

That's what global channels and Discord are for.

 

Not everyone can be on the most populated Homecoming shard.  It's just not technologically possible due to the way that City of Heroes was developed, and Excelsior has been under incredible strain the past four years or so with the Homecoming player base conglomerating on one shard. 

 

I'm just surprised that the Homecoming developers didn't lower the thresholds for the Excelsior player population limit earlier.  The carrot of trying to get people to move to lower populated shards with double XP obviously failed as it wasn't a strong enough incentive.

Edited Sunday at 08:28 PM by Lunar Ronin

[Rudra]

15 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

global chats

Global chats cross servers. I chat with a friend on Torchbearer from Everlasting routinely.

 

15 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

not feeling alone

And yet you multi-box specifically to play alone.

 

16 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

sure i 3 box my way through synapes but if its good shitposting season why not talk about how to get gum out of a cats whiskers with others

Uhm... yeah... I'm going to leave this one alone....

[kelika2]

1 hour ago, Lunar Ronin said:

Not everyone can be on the most populated Homecoming shard.  It's just not technologically possible due to the way that City of Heroes was developed, and Excelsior has been under incredible strain the past four years

I play this game a lot and never once seen anything like that.  stability for years

and with all the variables of someones personal ISP, world location and other stuff like devices or programs randomly updating its hard to pinpoint what the problem is

 

1 hour ago, Lunar Ronin said:

The carrot of trying to get people to move to lower populated shards with double XP obviously failed as it wasn't a strong enough incentive.

harassing people off the server isnt a carrot.  and if too many people online is a problem then its probably time to stop TF mode from autologging people out.  that would be a decent flush for ouro, pd and atlas

[golstat2003]

No. I'm fine with whatever the devs need to do to protect the servers. There are other servers to paly on and the chats are cross server.

 

Not seeing an issue here.

[Lazarillo]

I've got no particular beef with it, though I don't log in multiple simultaneous characters particularly frequently.  It'd be nice if the launcher better reflected what the current in-game status was.  Excelsior's showing up as two dots right now, then you log into the game and it's at three.

[Troo]

 

On 7/13/2025 at 6:16 PM, Lazarillo said:

Excelsior's showing up as two dots right now, then you log into the game and it's at three.

 

Would you mind expanding?

 

Is the difference between 2 & 3 dots lag related?

Is it the case that two dots is playable and three puts it over?

[tidge]

If multi-boxing is mostly behind instanced doors and 'one player"... why wouldn't you multibox on a different server and just migrate?

[Laucianna]

Also just as a heads up if you do swap server I believe there is a 10 minute window where that name is still reserved to your account on that server, which is plenty of time to make a placeholder toon to hold onto the name for up to 6 days I believe, I know I do on the rare occasion I have moved Goddess Laucianna from Excelsior 😄

[Oklahoman]

37 minutes ago, Laucianna said:

Also just as a heads up if you do swap server I believe there is a 10 minute window where that name is still reserved to your account on that server, which is plenty of time to make a placeholder toon to hold onto the name for up to 6 days I believe, I know I do on the rare occasion I have moved Goddess Laucianna from Excelsior 😄

 

And I know on at least one occassion I tried to snipe your name after you moved and hold it for ransom, unsuccessfully.