Server Populations


Aett_Thorn

 

Posted

I recently reactivated and made a character on a server differnt than my main (who is on Justice) and i found the server to be... well dead. I believe it was protector? but anyways, my question is... Are there any servers with a high population? I know it's not like it used to be, but I really don't like lvling and would love to get my blaster to 50 and group with people doing TF and all the new stuff. (i have found a particular liking for the architect stuff) Any help would be appreciated.


 

Posted

Freedom and Virtue are the two servers with the highest populations. So you might want to check those out. However, depending on your play time, they might not be the best option.

However, if all you're looking to do is PL and then play top-end content, you're probably going to be disappointed anyways, IMO.


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Posted

I've migrated from Liberty, which is still a great server, though a much smaller crowd, to Freedom. Freedom has some great people and about 3% broadcast-spamming idiots, earning it the nickname Freedumb. I really like it there. And there are plenty of power levelling SGs there. You can take a one to Perigrine Island and say "lev 1 blaster lff will pay" and probably get into the twenties within the hour.

I think farming sewers, caves, Astoria, etc, is a more honest pl than Battle Maiden 20x.

I've never clicked with Virtue. I'm not a hip, cool kid and I think they can tell.

I've been told that, for a friendly backwater server, Pennacle is good. Though the two minutes I was there once someone acted like a jerk to me. First impressions are rough. I deleted what was going to be my soloing PB.

And while we're talking about it. Which server is the most east coast? I put a toon on Champion because that was my original server around i5 [or whenever CoV came out]. It seemed to peak around 8pm CST and taper off around midnight.

Freedom, red side, in Mercy when I did a /whoall, only had 20 people. Is red side sparsely populated everywhere?


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phantasum View Post
I recently reactivated and made a character on a server differnt than my main (who is on Justice) and i found the server to be... well dead. I believe it was protector? but anyways, my question is... Are there any servers with a high population? I know it's not like it used to be, but I really don't like lvling and would love to get my blaster to 50 and group with people doing TF and all the new stuff. (i have found a particular liking for the architect stuff) Any help would be appreciated.
There is plenty of population and activity on Protector, especially when it comes to TF's. Are you using any of the global channels, such as Protector Watch or Jello Shooters?


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Postagulous View Post
I've been told that, for a friendly backwater server, Pinnacle is good. Though the two minutes I was there once someone acted like a jerk to me. First impressions are rough. I deleted what was going to be my soloing PB.
I would like to apologize on behalf of my server for someone being a jerk. We're really not all like that at all. You probably ran across one of our 1% complement of jackholes that exist everywhere. I'm 100% certain it was not me being a jerk, as I'm only rude to people who are rude to me first, and am much more likely to just ignore them, rather than stoop to their level.

I like Pinnacle enough that it is the only server I play on at all anymore. The community there is great, and if you join PinnBadges you should be able to find plenty to do most of the time. Joining is as easy as typing the channel name into the Join Channel window. You will have to ask an OP to be unsilenced, unfortunately a RMT spammer found the channel a while back and spammed ads for close to an hour straight before an OP logged in to kick him. So now everyone is silenced upon joining to prevent that from happening again.

I'm a little odd in that I LIKE less populated servers. I enjoy being able to do my own thing without being deluged with team invites and tells constantly, but knowing that there are teams available if I feel so inclined. If you want to be beating off team invites with a stick, you are better off on Freedom or Virtue.

I agree with Aett though, if you just want to level as fast as you can to play high end stuff, you will not enjoy yourself as much as you probably think. CoH is more about the journey, rather than the destination. There is not as much endgame stuff to do than you might think, since the journey to 50 IS the game, rather than the stuff you do to get to the game.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Postagulous View Post
Freedom, red side, in Mercy when I did a /whoall, only had 20 people. Is red side sparsely populated everywhere?
No, not at all. Is it less populated than the hero side on any given server? Almost certainly. /Whoall and search are not good ways to judge the population that is online. (I'll admit that there's little other recourse for players save for joining global channels commonly used on that server)

Some things to keep in mind:

You only found people who wanted to be found. Many players play on hide. You didn't see them.

With /whoall you didn't see anyone who was in a mission at the time. People spend most of their time in missions while leveling.

More villain players have solo tendancies than heroes, simply because the ATs are more self sufficient. This reinforces the first two items, since they are running missions and not looking for a team.

Mercy is not a popular place to hang out. Unlike Atlas Park you won't typically find people of all levels just sitting around. Key differences it has from Atlas include the lack of connections to other zones and it's "dirty, low rent" feel. Few people spend more time there then they have too.


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Posted

Freedom is great for finding teams, and for farming. Every zone you go to, chances are you'll find a team doing a bank farm, tv farm, etc.

Pinnacle is my other server when I don't want blind invites every 2 minutes. Very cool people, I've lol'd at the antics I get into with teams there.

Primetime for Freedom is usually around the "after supper" time. And I find there's actually a lot going on on Pinnacle late at night.

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Like Post, I would also like to know which server would be more east coast, I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy over on the east edge of Canada.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Postagulous View Post
I've migrated from Liberty, which is still a great server, though a much smaller crowd, to Freedom. Freedom has some great people and about 3% broadcast-spamming idiots, earning it the nickname Freedumb. I really like it there. And there are plenty of power levelling SGs there. You can take a one to Perigrine Island and say "lev 1 blaster lff will pay" and probably get into the twenties within the hour.

I think farming sewers, caves, Astoria, etc, is a more honest pl than Battle Maiden 20x.

I've never clicked with Virtue. I'm not a hip, cool kid and I think they can tell.

I've been told that, for a friendly backwater server, Pennacle is good. Though the two minutes I was there once someone acted like a jerk to me. First impressions are rough. I deleted what was going to be my soloing PB.

And while we're talking about it. Which server is the most east coast? I put a toon on Champion because that was my original server around i5 [or whenever CoV came out]. It seemed to peak around 8pm CST and taper off around midnight.

Freedom, red side, in Mercy when I did a /whoall, only had 20 people. Is red side sparsely populated everywhere?

I really LOLd at that.


 

Posted

Quote:
/Whoall and search are not good ways to judge the population that is online.
As you said yourself, the only people you see are people who want to be seen. For someone who's looking for other players to play with, anyone on /hide might not even be playing, it makes no difference.

As always, I'll also question the "many players are on /hide" comment, by nature it's an unverifiable number from players and everytime I hear that it sounds like the usual "I'm going to use my social circles as a metric". Granted, "many" is subjective and you could argue 10% is many. I know at the public spots with relatively large amount of players (Atlas statue during CCs, Cap market, AEs during I14), the amount of people on /hide were constantly below that number. Of course, you could argue people on /hide also physically hide from crowded public places like AEs or markets, sitting in missions all the time... Could be true to an extent, but claiming there's "many" doing this is still stretching it IMO, as it's unverifiable.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nihilii View Post
As you said yourself, the only people you see are people who want to be seen. For someone who's looking for other players to play with, anyone on /hide might not even be playing, it makes no difference.
I disagree. I am nearly always on hide, yet regularly join or form teams on my server's global channels, as well as form random PUG teams. Just because someone is on hide does not automatically make them into an anti-social misfit that only wants to solo.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen View Post
I disagree. I am nearly always on hide, yet regularly join or form teams on my server's global channels, as well as form random PUG teams. Just because someone is on hide does not automatically make them into an anti-social misfit that only wants to solo.
Same here. I watch for TF teams coming on global channels. Actually, I have global channels for more than one server up, so I can switch over if someone starts up a TF I want elsewhere, which makes me available for TFs on a server I'm not even logged into. But I'm usually hidden from searches because I don't like getting random invites.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldeb View Post
Mercy is not a popular place to hang out. Unlike Atlas Park you won't typically find people of all levels just sitting around. Key differences it has from Atlas include the lack of connections to other zones and it's "dirty, low rent" feel. Few people spend more time there then they have too.
You saying this is reassuring as the only place I've seen on the red side is Mercy. And unlike Atlas, you also have to run nearly a mile, as a lev 1, to get to where you can lev.

I've been meaning to look into the, I dunno, geography/lifestyle of CoV. I need to make me a mastermind...woot.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Postagulous View Post
You saying this is reassuring as the only place I've seen on the red side is Mercy. And unlike Atlas, you also have to run nearly a mile, as a lev 1, to get to where you can lev.
What. What.

There is a leveling Arbiter (Arbiter Diaz) in the fort that you spawn at (Fort Darwin), above the hospital and to the side of Kalinda.


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Posted


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn View Post
Freedom and Virtue are the two servers with the highest populations. So you might want to check those out. However, depending on your play time, they might not be the best option.

However, if all you're looking to do is PL and then play top-end content, you're probably going to be disappointed anyways, IMO.
Is the recent population collapse only because you can no longer PL, or are there other subtler contributing factors. I know PLing was big, but was it really half the population???


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonslay View Post
Is the recent population collapse only because you can no longer PL, or are there other subtler contributing factors. I know PLing was big, but was it really half the population???

I've seen nothing to indicate a 'population collapse.' I doubt such a thing happened. I have noticed a decrease in broadcast spam, but that is hardly proof of a population change. In all other aspects the game seems as busy, or busier, than it has in a long while.

Last I heard, subscriptions were about level. But, people may be on a little less, or for shorter periods, with the holidays. People get fairly busy this time of year.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Madadh View Post
I've seen nothing to indicate a 'population collapse.' I doubt such a thing happened. I have noticed a decrease in broadcast spam, but that is hardly proof of a population change. In all other aspects the game seems as busy, or busier, than it has in a long while.

Last I heard, subscriptions were about level. But, people may be on a little less, or for shorter periods, with the holidays. People get fairly busy this time of year.

Clearly you are mistaken. Since the change to SK/team lvl/cannot be five levels below the starman change, the population is half what it used to be. Maybe less than half. I know a lot of people are hidden, but a search now yields half (or less than half) as many players as it did before the change. Assuming that the same percentage of people are hidden this means the pop has halved. Talking to people has given me the impression that fewer people are hidden than before because they were hiding from tells to PL. Now they can unhide. A general search on Virtue, prime time on saturday night, last two weekends has yielded a pop of 550-650, used to be 990-1100 in the past. Also, I have not seen ANY server go two dots (moderate load) at any time any day since the change. Even if you put aside all that, all you have to do is fly around and look at the city, it is deserted. WW in Talos primetime on saturday night this past weekend had about ten people total ! Used to be about 20-25. Stand under atlas for a few minutes and watch the new characters appearing, less than half as many.

I was just curious if the population collapse was solely due to the no PL thing, or were some of the other changes to the game a contributing factor ?? It would seem to me that that is the only reason it could be, but I'm out of the loop a little because I only play about 5 hours a week nowadays and I solo a lot. Power colorization couldn't have driven anyone away, could it? I mean if you dont like it, just dont change your colors, although honestly I teamed with someone who had bright yellow colors for all their powers and I had to quit (just too annoying) and then I've seen a lot of blue fire (stupid IMO).
Maybe Aett-Thorn has some insights??

Aett-Thorn ??

Aett-Thorn !!!


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonslay View Post
Clearly you are mistaken. Since the change to SK/team lvl/cannot be five levels below the starman change, the population is half what it used to be.
No, it's not.

Quote:
Even if you put aside all that, all you have to do is fly around and look at the city, it is deserted. WW in Talos primetime on saturday night this past weekend had about ten people total ! Used to be about 20-25. Stand under atlas for a few minutes and watch the new characters appearing, less than half as many.
So... half the people who loitered around under Atlas doing basically nothing left because the SK system changed?

Quote:
I was just curious if the population collapse was solely due to the no PL thing, or were some of the other changes to the game a contributing factor
How about...
  • 10% unemployment rate in the USA.
  • The opening of several new MMOs.
  • The start of a new school year.
  • Comparing things to the madhouse of publicly visible activity we had when AE farming was the public rage.
I don't argue against the idea that population is down. I just don't think it's down anything like you're saying, at least not across all the servers.

By the way, red or yellow dots by server names are load indicators, not population indicators. The devs have upgraded several servers to deal with high populations, and so it takes more players to make them go yellow or red. You can't look at lack of red dots as a clear indicator of what population is doing.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonslay View Post
Is the recent population collapse only because you can no longer PL, or are there other subtler contributing factors. I know PLing was big, but was it really half the population???
Logic issues. Population collapse? What collapse? You need to prove that before throwing it out like it's a given, which it isn't. It's a little slower now than in August, but nothing major.

And negatory on the half of population thing. Please.


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Posted

Obviously I don't know exactly what the numbers are. I only say half because general searches at random times and many different days on both Virtue and Freedom are yielding me half as many searches. Number of people at WW is half what it used to be.
I am very aware that the servers have been upgraded on several occasions to accomdate more players, but I would doubt that has happened SINCE the PL change thing.

Now the high unemployment rate and the fact that several new MMOs have recently come out are definitely contributing factors. thanks for that.


 

Posted

Re: "population collapse", those 400+ extra people that were on Freedom during the AE farming are inconsequential to actual teaming. They did not want to join a team, they wanted to farm. Nerfing AE farms means people whose only interest was farming the AE are gone; this is true. However, those are players that I did *not* want to team with in the first place, so it's no loss.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dragonslay View Post
Assuming that the same percentage of people are hidden this means the pop has halved. Talking to people has given me the impression that fewer people are hidden than before because they were hiding from tells to PL.
This is your invalid assumption.



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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Catwhoorg View Post
This is your invalid assumption.
Sorry Cat, but in this case I'm going to side with the assumption. The AE farming frenzy was bad enough that a lot of my globals were hiding to avoid getting constantly invited to farm teams, and relied on globals/coalition/global channel to get a team. Now that the farmers are gone, those people are now searchable again.

Like I said on my previous post -- I'll admit the population has gone down. But the people who left are not people you could invite to a team in the first place (unless you were farming) so they're very inconsequential when it comes to measuring population you actually are going to interact with.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen View Post
I disagree. I am nearly always on hide, yet regularly join or form teams on my server's global channels, as well as form random PUG teams. Just because someone is on hide does not automatically make them into an anti-social misfit that only wants to solo.
But you're still irrelevant to that person. Because you're on hide and are only forming with friends and globals, you're inaccessible to them. Someone looking to form a group with strangers still can't team with you. You may as well be offline to that person.


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