What happened to COH?

Eh.

Keep in mind that you're on Freedom Server, which is generally regarded as the Pod Six of CoH servers.

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Currently listening to Violent Femmes' Violent Femmes

Not only that but the "Merge the servers" crowd also always feel they shouldn't have to do more than throw up their LFT flag and invites should fly in. Like the universe revolves around their concieted little arses and players should be fighting for the chance to team with them.

Those people need to get over their sense of entitlement and realize they ain't the unique snowflake they built themselves up to be in their imaginations. There isn't an MMO out there that guaruntees you a team whenever you log on to play.

This is true. But CoH did used to as close as you'd get to it in fairness. It was one of the chief reasons I hated WoW. There was just none of the "Log on, get random PuG, play for 2 hours with people coming and going" you can get with CoH.

That said I don't want to merge the servers. I just want to stick em all on one list, so if my Red Side Unionite is having trouble getting a PuG I can switch to Virtue to some alt and try my luck there instead.

*Whaps MB*

Subscriptions != Population

Subscriptions can be up without people actually playing on a server.

For example, I have both my accounts subscribed for a year, but I didn't play for a good month or more, therefore, I was not contributing to any servers population, but I was still a subscriber.

With that out of the way, I'll echo what others have said. This time of the year tends to slow down, people have less time to play or have to change what time they play. There are quite a few things that contribute to a server feeling more empty than usual.

1. Hidden players
2. People in school/people with kids in school no longer being able to play as much
3. Time of day/night you play

While I can't say I have been experiencing any lack of population, I also tend to play at peak times.

The best things you can do to help yourself out with being able to find teams are to join global channels for the server(s) you play on, and if you don't already have one, get into a nice active SG, or just find yourself a group that you can play with on a regular basis.

Actually, that's really simple and we've already seen it in action. Just add _EU or _NA to the end of the name. The key factor here is that is has ZERO IMPACT on most of the population. It would only affect people who CHOOSE to visit the other set of servers. So someone on the NA servers, playing on the NA servers, has no change. But, if they want to play on the EU servers, they get _NA tacked on to their global. This would not be done only if there was a conflict, it would be automatic. This way there is no doubt - "Oh, I wonder if there's a conflict that will change my friends global - I'll have to guess." Someone heroing 'across the pond' is automatically flagged so that the 'domestic' owner of that global name is unaffected.

<ahem>
I before E, except after C or when pronounced like A, as in neighbor and weigh.

Apart from weir, but that's just weird.

... 'cause that went perfectly smoothly and didn't cause any problems at all.

by definition more people choose to play where players exist. Hence population.

Hey if I get called out for inappropriateness when using the term "entitlement" displayed by people saying they have a right to play in sparse populations then I'm going to call you out on this comment.

Keep the conversation civil or don't bother with it. Thanks

Edit: you are right that there isn't an MMO out there making that promise, but CoH used to be about as close as you could get to fulfilling it.

Am I reading that right. SWG is merging servers (check), tell players to chose a new server (check).

If you are not active right now say, and re-up not only do you find you server gone, but then you have to pay $50 to transfer to a single character server that is actually there.

You know I have seen bad business decisions before, but wow that one is right up there if they have any hope of getting former players back into the fold.

1. I play on a 6 year old comp, if you can't run this game I'm not sure what to say. A steam powered comp can handle all but the busiest spots baring actual bugs.

2. No it doesn't, this is flat out wrong. There ARE options to make it quiet at the drop of a hat no matter how busy simply by moving to one of the 30 other zones, or a more secluded corner and hitting the /hide switch. There is no similar analog for increasing players other than paying or re rolling on a new server. I originally started on Infinity because I like the name, I had no idea about population counts, nor should I have. So I either would have two options, pay $10 a toon (had 5 at the time) or reroll. Finding quiet and finding population aren't even in the same category of ease of use. You know that is true, I'm not sure why you are suggesting otherwise.

3. Already addressed in two, except if we make the assumption that freedom/virtue is a high population target are you honestly telling me you couldn't find quiet space or utilize the options that are free and instant that the programmers have put in place to achieve that. I get that you guys are pretty set about this, that is understandable, but making up things isn't necessary.

Look there is obviously a sense of entitlement on both sides. One fits into the business model, the genre, and the advertising that has been put out. The other is just an anomaly.

I find it frustrating that you guys honestly think that finding population in an MMO should be anything other than extremely easy. It is an elitist attitude, which isn't necessarily bad, but it is clouding your judgment. This game has been marketed as the casual friendly game experience from day 1. If someone has to work harder than throwing up their lft flag and a few quick BC's then something is wrong with the core of the game design. The second M in MMO indicates that team construction should be well facilitated and effortless add that in with the approach this game has taken and it should be really really really easy.

By definition the second I have to join a non-default communication channel to participate in default activities something is out of line.

-Suggesting that someone learn what the extra community channels are and then join them, or actively send tells hoping to get invited is straying pretty far from casual. Like I said earlier I'm a member of all those channels, but I'm trying to not let my 39 months get in the way of logic.

You seem to be taking the view here that "casual" is equivalent to "all but unintentional" - as if expecting someone to go to any trouble at all to form a team, rather than just having one magically fall together, is somehow going beyond the pale. I find this bemusing, not to say completely baffling. Nobody's saying you need a Ph.D. in social dynamics and a nationwide polling organization to get a team. So it's not quite as easy as turning on a faucet. Oooh. Someone call Geraldo.

But it IS extremely easy. It is NOT with no effort at all.

Note your example, the person shouldn't have to do anything but inform people they want to be on a team by lft flag and broadcast.

Missions are instanced so broadcast is only going to work if people are standing around hoping someone will broadcast they need a team. How long should everyone stand around hoping that they will be blessed with someone asking to be on their team before they get on to entering instanced missions?

How often should the team leader check the search to see if anyone is lft?

You have to unwrap the plastic, put the microwave popcorn into the microwave and push the buttons.

Not sit down and wait for it to appear before you.

Your right, but it's just as fair to say that the effort you put into participating in the community gets paid back a hundred fold.

I think that would be great for this game myself. Even if they told the EU players that the EU servers were being shut down and they would have to transfer their characters to their pick of the NA servers, it wouldn't be a "merger" because they would be going from 4 servers to 11 servers.

Some of my favorite pug experiences were when I found myself on teams with mixed nationalities.

Thanks Iron. 42 years and I still screw up that damn spelling rule. Sometimes I get it right and other times I don't. <sigh>

And in my opinion they make that choice because they are inherently lazy and want to make as little effort as possible playing the game, but feel free to disagree with me.

Except of course for those who choose to play on servers with a lighter population.

Note that not everyone plays on Freedom. Some of us actually avoid it whenever possible.

People choose to play by various criteria. Some play where their friends are. Some play where it's the "RP" server. Some play elsewhere because the "drunk" server sounds fun. Some play on a certain server because it matches their character's "theme." Or just because they like the name. Or because it was the one they picked randomly.

High population is only one possible factor. And sometimes it's a factor in avoidance.

See my Guides and Tutorials

No, it can't. There have been several graphical updates to the game since it came out. My comp could handle most things fine when I first got it. But since then, Wentworths was horrible, any Arachnos maps were horrible. Grandville I couldn't even move around in when it first came out. Even if those places were empty, I got bad lag. So please don't try to tell me that I didn't experience that. Some computers can't handle a large population.

Okay, going on /hide on a large server does NOT do the same thing as being on a small server, and you know it. I'm not just talking about getting team invites. I'm talking about EVERYTHING that comes with it. The inane broadcast chat that I might not want to deal with. Larger crowds in certain areas. More people standing around chatting in local when I'm trying to train. More people hunting in the same areas I am for the same type of mobs (or even just low-level mobs in general, when starting a new toon). And more. /hide doesn't take care of any of that.

Finding quiet is not what I'm talking about. If I actually wanted to run missions on my old computer on Virtue, I was always the last one there, because of the lag I got just traveling through the zones. On Pinnacle, I never had that problem. So Pinnacle was a better play experience for me. That's what kept me in the game. If I only had the choice of Virtue-like servers, I would have quit, and that would have been less subscriptions. That's bad, right?

Neither is it for you. We're not trying to find 'quiet space.' We like quieter servers. You may not, but it's a personal preference thing. You saying that we need to live with your preference, because you can't live with ours is not a good way to go for this. You will hurt people with older computers by doing a server merge. It's inevitable. But saying that they can just go to Boomtown or Perez to play isn't a solution, when they will need to move out of there eventually, and good luck getting your contacts (you know, part of the game) to only send you to missions in sparse areas. And since you can't start out there, that's a problem in and of itself.

No, the other is not an anomaly. Quit trying to say that your personal preference in a game is somehow better than others.

Your sense of entitlement does NOT fit into the business model, which is to get as many subscriptions as possible. Offering a VARIETY of experiences is what gets those.

Your sense of entitlement does NOT fit the genre, where only very rarely do superheroes appear en masse in a comic book. Most of the time they are alone or with a very small team. If you're talking about the MMO genre, then you have to see that CoH broke many molds when it came out, and attracted a lot of people to it BECAUSE it broke those molds.

Your sense of entitlement does NOT fit all of the advertising. Every video I have seen Cryptic, NCSoft, or Paragon put out features both group and solo aspects to it. Sure, many of the pictures and videos have large group shots, but most of them also feature shots of a single character doing things. So please don't think that only masses of people fit into the advertising scheme here.

[quote]I find it frustrating that you guys honestly think that finding population in an MMO should be anything other than extremely easy. It is an elitist attitude, which isn't necessarily bad, but it is clouding your judgment. This game has been marketed as the casual friendly game experience from day 1. If someone has to work harder than throwing up their lft flag and a few quick BC's then something is wrong with the core of the game design. The second M in MMO indicates that team construction should be well facilitated and effortless add that in with the approach this game has taken and it should be really really really easy.[quote]

Okay, here's where we're having the disconnect. I do NOT need to do any more than broadcast lft or set my flag to "looking for any" to get invited to a team. And that's on Pinnacle! Monday night I got invited to a great team when I wasn't even looking for it. When I do send out a broadcast, I usually get a team pretty quickly. If I set my flag to "looking for any," I can usually get a team by the time I'm done doing whatever I was doing before I set it.

But if you want to be ensured a great team all of the time, why it it against all logic to assume that you might have to put in even a modicum of effort to do so? I've never seen any MMO not feature things like Guilds or SGs. Why do you think that is? It's there so that you can make a modest effort, and have a group of people to play with. Before I was even on a global channel, I had found some very friendly people to play with, and joined their SG, which I'm still part of to this day. I found them through doing NOTHING but playing the game normally. We just kept ending up on the same teams, and eventually they started looking for me.

So please, get off your horse that a team should just be handed to you all of the freakin time for no effort on your part. The casual gamer knows that even a little effort can go a long way, and NOTHING that this game has done has made it hard for the casual gamer to find a team (and they do NOT need to go to any ridiculous lengths to find them).

Also, MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Massively comes from a time when most multiplayer games were limited to a handful of players at a time, maybe 20 total. Massively MOs increased this dramatically. When you can do a search and find 200 people on at the same time, that is pretty massive compared to 20.

Multiplayer, in no way means that it should be easy to find teams. Only that there are other people playing. It does not mean that teaming should be easy, or even allowed. By definition, Multiplayer only means that there are other people in the game with you. By definition, it has no impact on teaming at all. This game could be an MMO even if you were not allowed to talk to other people.

[quote] By definition the second I have to join a non-default communication channel to participate in default activities something is out of line.[quote]

But you DO NOT HAVE TO. It just makes it easier. And if your definition of casual is "never having to do any work," then yes, this is broken. But that's not the definition I think even most casual gamers would use. Asking people that if they want to team EASIER, to take steps to make it so, is NOT out of line.

No, it's not straying. Because, here's the thing: if they found the forums, and are asking a question on how to team better, then giving them an answer that takes all of 5 minutes max to accomplish isn't going to impact their play most of the time. They can be just as casual once they do the simple step as they were before.

No you're reading that right. I quoted that right off their site. Anyone that misses the deadline will have to cough up $50. per character. I won't be surprised if I hear they start hemorrhaging subs as people return, get pissed and cancel their accounts.

Of course I don't know how long in advance they have been telling their players that those servers would be shutting down. Given enough advanced warning it's possible there aren't many people left that need to move.

I will. Online worlds have a lot in common with real societies. I don't think people that live in the country are inherently harder working or better people. Not in the least.

Nor do I think it is right that if you pay to live in a city you end up with services better fit for the remote areas of the world.

This game is an MMO, we have all subscribed to be part of a city. It is great that you can find quiet corners, but it is not to be expected.

If I thought this particular comment you just made had any merit I'd just counter it by saying CoX = marketed as a casual friendly experience. Having to work != not casual friendly experience.

Edit: they have added elements to cater to people that want to put in more efforts: pvp, IO's, TF's. Teaming and finding copious amounts of people in an MMO should not be one of those aspects. I'll never agree otherwise.

Anyway, if you can't handle seeing a handful of people at the market, or training at the same time as you then imo MMO's are the wrong genre for you. These are hub/congregation points. The fact that the game is 95% instanced gives us all our own virtual world to play in. Asking for it to extend to the open world aspect just seems greedy to me. But agree to disagree.

Take care everyone, thanks for the discussion and have fun out there.

So we should all just be handed level 50s, completely purpled out? Because playing the game takes some amount of work.

Being casual friendly does NOT mean that extremely casual players are going to get all of the things that somebody who puts a little work into it will get.