Is CoH gonna be okay?

Suggestion 1: I'm sorry but I must disagree with you on this. We don't have enough servers. In fact we need to combine the EU and NA server lists so everyone has 15 servers.

CO doesn't have multiple servers. Everyone there is on the same server. What they actually have is multiple shards. Just like we have when zones get overpopulated during a special event.

Here you'll occasionally see Atlas Park 1 and Atlas Park 2. In CO you'll see that all the time. They also keep the shard population cap a lot lower than we do. I think it's 100 per shard.

Suggestion 2: Despite the fact that we've been asking for this for 5 years the devs have remained firm about not putting it into the game. We can only hope that our constant requests for it will one day change their minds.

BTW an 'email' system as has been requested was mentioned as being "in the pipe/in the works" by Posi at HeroCon. As to it's exact iteration and what can be moved; nothing firm that I remember. Wait and see.

When I trade inf across servers, I use Wentworths.
I tend to have each of my characters make their own loot and leave some insp, enhances (training, DO, SO, IO, IO set), IO salvage, and event salvage in a base for other less fortunate characters to sell or use.
I give more inf away to sg mates and other players than I think I have ever traded between my characters, but I can understand why someone might like this mechanic especially gold farmers.
That's just an observation as to why it may be unnecessary and might not be a good idea.

The game is built on teaming, so hopefully you have some team mates that you can trust.

From a sg stand point, it could make sense to have a mutual inf depository in their base - even if it was only a pool that inf could be put into, not taken out of, and could only be used to increase sg prestige and/or crafting (and anything else that cost inf in regards to a base <- disclaimer in case I forgot something).
That shouldn't muck with the economy too much, it fosters use of the crafting system.
(HINT :: this is pretty much already in effect as you can craft enhances and put them in base storage for other characters use.)

If you want to set up a sg-group with all your characters on a server (and I strongly suggest doing so) many people in game will probably be more than willing to help if you give out a yell on the /hc channel aka [Help]. Even a one man/woman/robot/plant/alien/etc. sg can generate a enough prestige to get basic storage tables that don't cost power (the storage tables will cost base rent, but they are well worth the cost.) Once you get a one-player sg rolling, you can coalition with another sg that is more fleshed out and have access to tp'rs until you can get your own rolling.

You probably thought of these things before though. If so, I apologize if this came off wrong.

I think you found the answer, even if you didn't know it

Actually, the Dev's stated that Praetoria would not have war wall between their zones, and that Paragon City war walls will not be going away.

Angel Red
"We're heroes. Fighting injustice is the thing we do." ~Rebel Scum

Hmm... you state that we might not have enough "servers" but what I see on a regular basis is that on some "servers", there are very little players and teaming is not easy. You know that there are "servers" which are teaming with players while others are sparsely populated. I started over 63 months ago on Guardian. Since then, I have toons on more populous servers (Freedom, etc.). I would like to move my toons from Guardian but at $9.99/toon it's not worth it (after all, it is just a game).

So "if" we are short on "servers", then perhaps some load balancing is in order? Time will tell if it's the best way to go, but CO's approach makes it super easy to move from one "server" to another.

Neither I nor the poster I was quoting said anything about war walls specifically -- he referred to "zone walls" (which may or may not have meant "war walls"), which I took to mean moving to a "zoneless" environment (a rumor I've heard a few times over the years, and one that seems to have been resurrected with the announcement of GR), and that philosophy was what my comment was directed toward.

I'm not saying your experiences are incorrect but there are a lot of forum members stating that their experiences are quite different when looking for teams. They come out of the woodwork every time someone drags out the server merge dead horse.

Westley even has a thread down in General Discussions where he stated he is willing to make himself available to anyone that asks and help them form teams on any server. Strangely very few if any of the people that claim they can't find teams have taken him up on his offer.

Also please don't make the mistake of assuming a dip in the number of players online means there is a coinciding dip in subscriptions. As a 63 month vet you have seen that every year at this time there is an annual dip as players reschedule their lives around the start of the school year. We see the same fluxuation at the beginning of the summer vacations.

Then there's what I call the "seasonal" players. They are the ones that only activate their accounts when a new issue, or new game is released. They only stick around until the new wears off and then they go back to their main games, so we see a burst of activity for a bit that slowly dies down.

These players also work for us in the reverse. Many of us went to CO to check it out when it was released in September and as the free time expired we came back here. We also went to check out Aion, and we'll be going to check out STO when it comes out. At no time did we cancel our subscriptions here tho.

Then there are the players that take occasional breaks from the game to play other games because they want to prevent burnout, or they share various gaming interests with their real life friends. I myself have accounts in 5 different games. If STO is any good and they offer lifetime subs, I'll have an account there as well.



Now as to the "Load Balancing", I'm assuming you mean forcing transfers onto people to equalize the number of players on each server. Well here's why that won't work. (thanks to Memphis Bill from whom I am stealing this)

1. Just because one player likes living in New York City doesn't mean others can't like Kansas. That means some players prefer to play on low pop servers while others like crowded servers. Best case scenario will be that the players moved will simply say screw the devs and either pay to transfer their characters back, or they will simply start brand new characters on the servers they were forced off of. Worst case scenario and most likely, they will say screw NCSoft and cancel their accounts.

2. Each server has it's own personality and communities. Aussies/NZ have a server they prefer, There are Brazilians/spanish speaking players that have their own home server etc. Splitting them up will have the same results. Players will either go back to their preferred server or cancel their subs.

3. Supergroups are also small communities. breaking them up and causing many of them to lose their bases they worked so hard to build will cause a lot of cancellations.

4. Unique names. Forcing people to move to other servers will cause a huge problem with names. No one is going to be willing to give up their characters name or their SG name just because they were forced to play on another server. Bill isn't going to give up his names because he didn't want to be moved in the first place, and Ted isn't going to give up his names because he was on that server first. There will be even more cancellations over naming issues.

5. Then there's the issue of character slots. What happens to a players characters when there are no slots left on the server they are being forced onto? Now you are forcing them to buy extra slots on a server they didn't want to be on in the first place. Even more cancellations if that happens.



Now don't get me wrong, I'm sorry you can't afford to pay to have your characters transferred but "load balancing" isn't the answer.




And again I remind you that Champions only has one server.

Correction: NONE. Not one single person has taken the challenge yet. Just stating the challenge must make them rethink their position. That's what I'm going with right now at least.

just wante to respond to this, again, i suspect we are going to have to break aside on the idea of wanting to see other players in the zone that we are, but spreading out a modestly sized population over an increasing number of zones only extends the perception that the servers are dead,furthermore, do players currently have a lack of zones to explore? we already have twice as many zones accessable redside, the smaller side, than co has, comparing blueside just makes the comparison more ludicrous.

But heres the issue, the blueside hazard zones, which are what people are usually talking about when we discuss redos, lack any real purpose. outside of silly hunt missions or the occasional missions that throw you in there, when is the last time you have been to boomtown? outside of farming for magic salvage, when is the last time you went to dark astoria? these zones have the feel of being half finished.

Now redside could use new zones, no argument there, and we know we are getting more zones with going rogue, but it just seems like the hazard zones are going to continue looking that much more dated and neglected over time. those same new players who stumble into boomtown and see nothing to do outside of hunting , are they going to be impressed, or are they going to take away the impression that coh is a shoddily put together game with junk zones? I'm not against adding new zones if they have a reason to be, but new zones to just be new zones is a mindset that seems wasteful, especially since most of those zones do carry an interesting story that has been utterly forgotten.

Thanks for chiming in. I didn't want to say no one accepted the challenge because I'm not privy to your private messages, and it was possible someone contacted you that way.

I had been talking about smoothing out the population between servers but I see your point about having too many zones. One question tho, how many zones is too many? If there are too few, like redside, then players will get the impression that the game is too linear. Too many and a server can seem empty.

Completely agree. I think all hazard zones should be co-op. It'd be nice. I am sure the zones like the Hollows etc would get some new energy and interest.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Why do you assume that the villains would be forced to do heroic things? They could just as easily make it so that heroes are forced/tricked to do some villainy in order to accomplish what they think is some greater good.

Because the devs hate villains?

Because the devs have a very heavy leaning toward heroic content, even on the villain side story arcs.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Ok, that's fair reasoning.

LOL

Beat me to it.

Boomtown and Dark Astoria are located in the United States. Wouldn't turning those into "contested" zones mean war between two nations? I'm not too sure how Arachnos gets away with being in Faultline, either...

Perhaps in the same way that Longbow get away with being all over the Rogue Isles?

Longbow is a private or mercenary army/militia, and not the responsibility of the USA, I think Manticore mentioned. It's been mentioned that concerns of the Geneva convention has been brought up over their choice of weapons (like the flamethrower) to which their leader (Ms. Lib) states that supervillains are an escalation of force which makes Longbow's weapon choices acceptable/not a violation.

If caught, and not an actual rogue element, Arachnos forces violating the sovereignty of another nation are disavowed as rogue element. This is a punishment for failure - getting caught in an undeniable fashion.

Crey does the same thing, almost all of the missions where you fight Crey forces have a debriefing that basically consists of "Countess Crey sends her thanks for rooting out the corruption in her company"