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Where Did The CoH Community Go?!
MysteryB
Member UncommonPosts: 355
Hey guys, I am writing this to explain my disapointment with CoH lately, not the game itself but the community. Back in the day (issue 1-6) I used to log on City of Heroes and have multiple team invites no matter who I was on, I never had to wait for something to do because everyone was doing something, leveling was fun back than and teams were fun to join with, but now I have been logging on, on 3 servers, Freedom (the most players) Champion and Triumph and for the last 2 weeks I have been trying to find teams and get task force's together and the only teams I have been on are the ones I make! I logged on a freakin' Empathy Healer and stood around for an hour looking for a team, writing every high lvl I saw trying to get one (lvl 43 healer) and never got a response from ANYONE! That is just sad guys. I used to love this game but if the community has gotten that crappy I am going to say screw it, forever. I have kept my account running, I have been playing for 5 years and I have never seen the game this bad. Noone wants to talk to anyone, or interact, I remember people used to just hang around together in Atlas Park and do nothing but talk and have fun and now Atlas is just a make a new character and leave area. The Villains' side is no better, I am disapointed with what the community has become, City of Heroes/Villains wont be around much longer and I finally see why that is, all of the good players are gone and the game has become a game where people stay with their clicks and friends or solo and thats it, noone interacts, noone plans task force's or giant monster raids or Hammidon raids, noone cares to do much of anything anymore.
Mystery Bounty
Comments
I've been playing my mastermind on the Infinity server, and have been offered groups several times. Just the other day in Cap Au Diable a 'Deadly Apocalypse' event got triggered, everyone in the zone pretty much got formed up in about 10 seconds to defeat it.
I will say this though, there really isn't much idle chatter going on. I assume its because the population is top-heavy and doesn't hang out in the low/mid level zones very much, but we'll see once I hit my 40's. I will say that those I have spoken to were very polite & mature.
This is all on the villain side. My heroes are still in the single-digit levels, so I can't really make a call regarding that side of things.
If I were you I'd post this on their forums; that's where it should be anyway. It'll at least let folk know you're there.
The advent of Mission Architect pulled just about everybody away from the usual courseways of level progression. Like you, I remember a time when there were people everywhere, of all ranges, in all zones, and getting a group together was little more than a 5 minute exercise.
With Mission Architect people just maximize missions for xp gains. Everyone is in the virtual building. Tis is all with the caveat that I haven't played in the last 6 months or so, but those were my experiences when I was alst subbed and playing.
-tal
I don't necessarily disagree that the community has gone downhill somewhat in recent times, Mission Architect a part of that, but perhaps you are looking in the wrong spots?
My main characters are on Virtue and I never have trouble getting a team together(RP or no RP) and 9 times out of 10 its a great get together and we all have a blast. Just last night I was showing a player returning to the game the ropes again.
Atlas may not be crowded as it once was but there are still plenty of great people and experiences to be had in the game. Once Going Rogue releases I'm sure we will see an increase in population as well.
The game is currently at an all-time low in population (anywhere from 40K to 80K players depending who does the math; the 80K figure is probably closer to the truth, though).
Freedom and Virtue are the only servers with a reasonable population. All others are relative ghost towns. If you want to team, go to Freedom and Virtue (even these servers rarely go into yellow load these days, though, unfortunately).
Mission Architect is no longer a factor. It's been nerfed very very hard at this point and the vast majority of the player base is back to doing normal dev-created content. (IMO AE turned out to be a huge waste of development resources).
Expect an upswing in population when Going Rogue hits. How much of an upswing remains to be seen, and if anyone sticks around for long afterwards remains to be seen as well but all indications are GR is just the shot in the arm the game needs. If GR fails to sell well, the game is going to be in big trouble, but heck, even Asheron's Call is still running so there's no reason to believe CoH won't still be running five years from now even if GR flops.
Also, a big problem is that NCSoft just does not put any kind of resources into marketing and promoting the game. It's a wonder anyone knows it exists, and it's no surprise at all that the gaming audience in general remain largely ignorant of it.
The decision to work on systems as opposed to content for the last year and a half has also impacted the game's population negatively. Sure you can color your Fireball now, but you're tossing it in the same, tired content from 2 years ago. People didn't care for that, unsurprisingly. People like things to do. GR gives them things to do. GR will be good for the game.
tl;dr: after Going Rogue, the population will be back to it's usual self.
I wouldnt count on NC soft keeping the game going if population falls more look at tablua rasa 100 mil spent 1 year later closed down. NC soft is a poor company Coh is good i like it alot but i hate nc soft.
The only thing I would add to this is to possibly join more public channels so you can hear what is going on and possibly hook up with a supergroup. I play in primetime when I manage to play as of late (might get on this weekend for a bit) so I don't see the downswing as much but it doesn't suprise me that people feel this way. Allegedly, content will be focus for the coming year per the State of the Game address and for the good of all, it better be.
Ah, Global Channels! Those do little more than make new players think your game has no population. They can be kinda handy, but they segregate experienced players who know about them from new/uninitiated players, causing a rift in the player base that is bad for the community. That's too high a price, IMHO.
I have gotten a mixed reception on Global Channels. Some were helpful and others I found too cliquish so were useless if you were not part of the 'in' crowd(just my experience, can't say whether this is the norm or not). Too bad on a per server basis, there are few to choose from when you obviously want to choose the ones with the most members. But yes OSF8759, I agree they can make your game look even more deserted. I used to have to put Broadcast on its own tab but it is so barren now as not to matter where I place it. I have no trouble getting teams on Virtue and Freedom and to some extent Infinity but when I want to find a team around 5-9 PST, the servers Liberty, Protector, Pinnacle and Triumph can appear barren. It is a bad sign when you get surprised by seeing another player in the zone.
Yeah I recently made a new toon on Virtue, and to my surprise (coming from freedom) it has been really easy to find teams. Atlas Park is really alive again with people hanging out like they used to on Champion and Freedom, can find a team anytime.
Mystery Bounty
I played CoH for years. From beta till about just before Architect came out. I thought Architect would just be used by folk to lvl up quick. The community in CoH was the best I've found. That's my opinion obviously, but finding a team was always easy and SGs were willin' to take on new people. All of this nostalgia makes me want to sign up once more. I think I will...see, now there's one more person to team with. Thanks for the inspiration.