What is the general consensus on server emptyness?

I ran into this same situation, same server and side yesterday. Someone was broadcasting BRUTE LFT! over and over, so I invited him to my team and we took down the Vindicators.

He was really happy...he thought no one was playing the game anymore.

This game really needs an auto-team feature, that makes a pug so that new players aren't stranded and discouraged when they're alone.

no it doesn't need any forced teaming. and i am from infinity. i see plenty of people running around. anyone that has been on for any length of time can tell you that, and i don't believe i have to say this every time this stupid subject comes up, it is the summer. people doing things with their families and everything. just like every god damn time a holiday comes up or people go back to school, the servers will look like no one is on because people are doing their own thing before getting back into the game.

seriously, i have ******* had it with these types of threads poping up. do you guys even realize that every time you post these types of threads, and no you do not have to join the forums to read them, you are discouraging new players from even joining the game? enough is enough already.

yo dude chill out and go have a shot or something you read that completely wrong, It's not forced teaming its called an auto team feature cause teams put them selfs on it maybe say in a description what they could use AT wise and anyone could auto join themselfs without needing a invite.

They have this in DDO and I think maybe WOW(never played not 100%) but its a great feature.

I've gone through many server mergers in other games as a player and as a dev. I totally agree with all of this.

why thank you.

While this is fine, it does seem to me that someone makes their first character and chooses a server. If they login and don't find the population to their liking that should become apparent somewhat quickly and they really don't have much vested in that character and can start over on Freedom or Virtue if that is what they want from the game.

What happens if somebody plays on two different servers? How would they be presented to the real login numbers. Would they be counted as two different players? Would their last login session only be counted?

Ignoring everything else, any kind of tracking system for this many people play on this server would be inherently broken BECAUSE PLAYERS CAN PLAY ON MULTIPLE SERVERS. This isn't Final Fantasy XI in it's early days when you only had one server to choose from unless you had a World Pass.

You don't have to say it every time. No one died and made you arbiter of all things relating to low population servers(unless that happened when my back was turned).

Even assuming that this is true, what consolation is that to a new player who doesn't have a long list of global friends to draw on for a team when they want to play?

So then you'll stop posting in them and reading them?

So it is better to let new players be discouraged by thinking that no one is playing the game, rather than by having people who may or may not ever play maybe read a thread like this on the forums?

At the very least, a thread like this would actually let someone reading it know that people are playing and that there may be a reason for them not seeing a highly populated server if they did play the game.

I'm terribly sorry, Oh Master of the Forums. I'm sure we will all try our hardest never to anger you again in our lifetimes on pain of death.

Perhaps if you knew how to read it wouldn't be the imaginary problem you are making it out to be.


You play on multiple servers? Which one are you on NOW. That is one column. That is what 'online' means in English.

What was the max population of the previous day/week? The would again be tied to online at the same time. We used to get max concurrent users for all servers in the quarterly reports. I suspect people with a grain of literacy will understand my suggestion.

Didn't mean to get your soup boiling.

Basically, what I'd like is a feature where if you're new or alone you can get assigned to a team. So the new player that's having fun but not really aware of the teaming ropes can find more people ingame without having to go through global channels, forums, etc etc.

Exactly this. Anything that can make teaming easier for newer players or new server arrivals would be great.

You wouldn't have to turn auto-team on or anything, Devs have been great with opt outs...but it would be great to have, given the disparity between indoors and outdoors teaming.

Do you think if you asked an NCSoft exec if the EU servers have a "healthy population" they would say yes?

Really?

They might say that the game has paid for itself multiple times over and lacks the current projected interest for them to invest in a reformatting of the servers. In other words, they are just going to let the game ride. But that is a very different statement than you or I are making.

A longer explanation to avoid further confusion: It would cost them money to merge the servers. It would cost marketing to put a positive spin on it. It would cost to merge the databases. It would cost developing ways to ensure we keep our names and sg's. etc. While none of these are particularly large hurdles on their own and every single one of them can be overcome it is far more likely that they just don't see them getting an acceptable return on that investment to proceed with it.

They could merge, but the game isn't generating new players and it already has a very low attrition rate. So there is no financial reason to proceed with it because the costs associated with it likely won't be made back. So they would be merging to satisfy people like me, but I've stayed for 4+years and haven't been happy with the population for much of that time, so if my own satisfaction in that area is not a determinant of why I keep playing why would NCsoft consider it important enough to do me that favor?

But Decorum, a "healthy population" is not what we have, but it isn't that important anymore.

No. I read you correctly. I also called you, correctly, on just ONE aspect of how bad your idea was. If you had bothered reading what I had said you would have noticed something. Let me spell it out for you. Here, I'll even bold, underline, and italicize the line you did not read for you.

I just gave one example of why this was a bad idea. I did not say this was the only reason that your idea was bad. I just gave an immediate case-in-point, an example, something that is already in the game, that your suggestion did not account for. ... I also botched my grammar. Spall Cheque please.

Now if you'd like, I could continue to rip apart your suggestion point by point.

Okay. So now you do what another player on the forum does and outright put words into my mouth that I didn't say. Congrats, you have successfully passed Trolling 101.

Let me go ahead and just destroy whatever point you thought you had here with one question: Why go through all the trouble of making a system that deliberately makes the number of players directly online vague?

I'm going to go ahead and spell this out too. Big Servers stay big because they are big.

The case in point here is Freedom and Virtue. These servers maintain large populations because they are large to begin with. New players login on weekends, note these two servers are in a yellow condition, and promptly join these visibly active servers.

Listing precise numbers of whose online at any time would make this I need to find the most active server issue even worse on spreading out the player-base. Listing active players numbers is fine for small scale MMO's like Phantasy Star Online or Monster Hunter Tri, where there is only a limited amount of players per each instanced server. In an MMO like CoH where hundreds of players could be online at once, it's a lousy indicator of actual activity.

Let me give you a flip case example of just why this is a bad idea by describing a possible griefing technique. I happen to know that Triumph Server is pretty much dead from around 2~3am EST to the server reboot. If I wanted to prove that Triumph Server was completely dead, all I would need to do is just report the numbers during these hours and I would have statistical numbers to indicate that Triumph Server has no player-base.

There's also another empirical problem at hand, one that relates to now and will become even easier in the future. As of right now I can switch to any server I want to, at any time. I monitor several badge channels, and if I'm not doing anything important on one server, and somebody does something interesting on another server, I'll switch.

Poof, just like that, I'm online on a different server. This type of switching happens... all the time. In addition, the developers are working on a system where you can switch characters.. without logging off.

These are just three examples off the top of my head that wreak havoc with a system that displays number of players online:

• Discourages players from trying other servers
• Can be used for griefing
• Doesn't account for players switching servers

There is a difference between max concurrent users and max pop of the previous day.

One of the reasons NCSoft stopped reporting max concurrent users... Is that it was not accurate. Which means you still miss the critical problem with your idea. It's based on the concept that a single player is only on one server. Max Concurrent users don't know how to handle players that switch servers.

Again, fine for FFXI where you were pretty much limited to one server.

Not so great for a game where you can switch servers pretty much on the fly.

Look deary, if you are going to try to participate in a game of witticisms, you need to do better than showing up without any ammunition.

Trying to keep my tongue out of my cheek, don't go trolling somebody who has a better grasp on the game mechanics and system then you do. It's only going to end poorly for you, as it just has.

Now if you'd like to continue going the rounds on what, quite frankly is something... actually.

Power_NA. I need to extend my apologies to you. You are not the holder of the worst ideas put forth on this forum. That award now goes to: Swell_Guy.

Ditto. I really enjoyed this feature in WoW. Since I was on a PvP server and a mage, I really didn't like exploring and doing missions much so being transported to and from a dungeon was a great way to keep leveling my character.

Also, weren't their rumors of cross-server team invites or was that just a bug on the Training server?

Even jaded lurkers like me can still learn something sometimes.


Ye gods, I hate cleaning spit-out soda off my screen and keyboard.


I quoted all of Catwhoorg's post because people who play the game have no idea of the server farms, data centers, operations monitoring, and cost analysis that modern online game providers use. The systems development time alone for "merging a server" would be a major undertaking on the back-end. Since these capital expenditures are already paid for, it's actually cheaper for NCSoft to let "servers" wither, while they develop new front-end game content, rather than merge and replace them.


And, as far as informational text on the server selection screen, many new users simply choose a server based on its name and what it says to them. I know I did.

--NT

The game as a whole does, or they wouldn't still be there. As has been noted, NCSoft's not shy about such things.

Hmmm...point taken.

I guess my point is that you've taken it into your own head to decide what a "healthy population" is, and extrapolated scenarios in which that seems to be the most important part of whether people stay with the game. While you may have points, I don't see any evidence that either of those points are accurate, more in a matter of degree than of truth.

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

They aren't shy if they think the venture won't turn a profit or continue to turn a profit. We know CoX has fulfilled that first requirement and it is safe to assume that it has low enough overhead to fulfill the second for some time. That has little to do with population as we are discussing it, or the relative health of it.

Well of course I have. So has every single person that has ever thought about population. It's all just a matter of opinion and there is no absolute line that says "this is healthy" and "this isn't". There are however lines of profitability, which again have little to do with population as we see it. Even the person doing the accounting for the game commenting on population would be a matter of opinion because their analysis is more dependent upon revenue which is derived from multiple sources in this game and as we all know subs != population (though it is a solid indicator).

My point is; every comment you've ever seen about the population of this game whether stating it is awesome, fine, or dead is a matter of opinion. Even when we had more accurate numbers from the company comments about the "health" of it were opinion.

My opinion is generated almost solely by my ability to log in and quickly do the things that I like to do in this game. For me there are only two servers that can satisfy those desires consistently. At the same time I know that for others there could be no one else in this game and they could do all the things they like to do.

My opinion on the population is no less valid than a person that would say the EU servers are great. And just like they will argue it I'll argue it because these forums would be incredibly boring without such arguments (imo). The only difference is I try to avoid fear mongering, or picking and choosing facts when talking about it (I'm far from perfect, my soup de jour is insults judging by the number of pm's sitting in my inbox from mod12 ). But we all do what we feel is necessary I suppose.

edit: As for me extrapolating my opinion to whether people stay with the game or not all I can say is that people go where people are. If you need evidence to support the accuracy of that claim you needn't look far.

Hey! I may be old, but I'm sure somebody cares about me. Somewhere...

If that happened, you'd have a new Claws and Effect, and I would be gone.

The day I'm forced to change anything about the way I play for someone else's convenience is the day I no longer play. They can play the way they choose to, and I can play the way I choose to. Don't make me change the way I choose to play so the way they choose to play can be made easier.

There are a significant number of people that feel the same as me. Merging servers would be a bad business move for NCSoft. The remaining servers would be more populous, but the game as a whole would have fewer subscribers.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

As evidenced by...? You threatening to quit?

I'm not completely sold on server merges myself...but to make a statement like that implies that you absolutely know what a majority of subscribers will do in any given situation. As even the developers have demonstrated on several occasions, even they have a hard time determining what actions a majority of players will take in response to a change.

Also, if, as you said, it resulted in more populous servers across the board, then might that not mean that the game would be come more attractive to new players and thus increase our numbers in the long run?

If you're going to play the 'I know what will happen' game, then play it right out to the end.

I think you completely misinterpreted Claws post.

He wrote
So first they merge some servers. Let's say it goes from 11 to 4 in NA and 4 to 1 in EU as someone posted somewhere in this thread.

Immediately the remaining servers are in fact more populous. Some number of people quit over losing their SG, their character name, etc. The game as a whole now has fewer subscribers. The remaining servers are still more populous unless enough people quit to drive the population of those servers to the current levels or lower.

Now as to the bad business move part. They have lost some number of subscribers and incurred the cost of server merger. Unless they recoup enough subscribers to make up for the lost ones and the cost of the merging they have lost money. That would be a bad business move.

Now would it be more attractive to new players? Perhaps but why aren't they playing on Freedom and Virtue already? Unless you merge all the servers to one server or just down to those 2 to get populations greater than those two currently have then why aren't those two currently sufficient to attract new players?

I played almost exclusively on Infinity for about two years. I have almost completely left the server years ago due to the people I played with having left the game, and due to concurrently finding new friends on other servers. While of course any one player's perception does not create a reality out of whole cloth, it also seems to me that Infinity's population is a fraction of what it was. When I do a /search I see very few people on the server as a whole. Is everyone on Infinity /hiding, thereby creating an illusion of an empty server? Maybe so.

However the server I am on now has, if anything a lower population than Infinity does - so there you go. Next time we get free server transfers my last few active characters there will be migrating from Infinity to where the fun is.

Speaking in general, I couold perhaps think up a WORSE idea than forcibly moving players to other servers, thereby fracturing SGs, prestige totals and friend-lists, not to mention alienating loyal players. It would take me a while though.

Not all of us love Virtue, thanks. I for one enjoy being able to log on during zone events.