Hands Across the Water - European Community

City of Heroes is a vibrant, lively and global community. The challenges we face in engaging players from across the globe, as a Community, are pretty straightforward.

I'd like to start things off by asking our players from Europe a few questions. Your answers in this matter are much appreciated and will help us to more effectively make decisions to benefit us all.

• What time of day do you find yourself positing/reading the forums the most?
• What's more important to you? Having someone able to engage you and watch the forums during what would be considered "peak" posting hours or having someone who may be several hours behind, but has greater access to the development team?

I read the forums at all times of day generally, since I have an unusual work pattern day to day, week to week is entirely different, so generally I accept that forum communication with us wouldn't be that great... except it fairly is, we win at this a bit more than our American counterparts imo.

At the start of your normal office hours is when we (generally) start getting home from work, so thats when you guys will start posting, some players like myself on the outside of normality (i'm just getting ready to go to work now) won't hit that, but forum communicaiton isn't supposed to be instant.

When we had Bridger, All his posting would be done by the time we are starting to pick up. Having a community rep to be around for us 9am to 5pm would probably increase your costs, and I dont think anybody wants someone to have to work unsociable hours just to post for us...


I think the main problem that some of us have been quite vocal about is the lack of events like the Special Baf preview being aimed at us, it would be nice from time to time if we got things first (talking about bridger, when I read both forums, it was clear that sometimes we recieved some info first, which was, I admit, nice)

Also the Character Copy Tool never (ok rarely) working is kind of annoying when some of us would love to test things. Generally looking at the forum the "high end masterminds who are willing to test" are few and far between, myself and Master Zap i'm sure would love to make the tests for making new stuff include MMs easier. I know thats only 2 people, but still its one of my concerns.

If theres one thing to take from this thread on my opinion on things (which I think echoes to voice of the EU community) Server List Merge. There we go. Its what I want, its what I think most of us want. I know its hard to sort out, maybe impossible but it would go a long way for us all.

Anyway, thanks for creating this thread to get us chatting

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

Do u bring Kerensky back, else who cares.
Our small community from Germany is used to that situation since kere left.

Wow I'm really glad you're taking an interest in our opinions.

TBH i don't mind that our forum interactivity is limited to several hours behind us. no one expects immediate forum moderation and since we moved to the US boards i think you'll find most of us are happy with the forum the way it is. Peak time for us is the start of your working day so it works out well. No one expects Avatea to start at 4am just so we can have someone who may or may not be required to moderate for us.

As has been said, i think we expect parity. if a special event is available for the US players, we should get the same offer, adjusted for times. That's the main bone of contention I think. us not getting treated the same. I think everyone would like a list merge (although I am worried about dozens of EU players leaving for other servers making Union and Defiant ghost towns, ripe for removal and free server transfers being given out) but I'm sure there's legal and financial challenges resulting from that now that the physical challenges have been solved.

I read the boards at about 7:20am while I'm having my breakfast, then not again until about 7pm or later, since I can't read them at work any more.

And I'll take someone able to communicate directly to the dev team, thank you very much. Immediate interaction was nice with Bridger et al, but nowadays, I think it's much less of a concern, with the servers being US based anyway.

Oh, and try and get someone who can give the French and German communitioes (such as are left) some significant attention. I may not play on those servers, or even speak the language, but that doesn't mean they deserve to be left out in the cold, regardless of the efforts Avatea puts in.

You're a brave man making this thread and I thank you. Bravo!

There are plenty of issues to be addressed, most covered by previous posters but be prepared for a download of disparity issues between server clusters. However, as to your questions:

1) Most of the time, between 8pm and 12am GMT. I do, however, browse the forums throughout the day.

2) I'd say the latter is more important. As much as I like a good forum chinwag, I'd rather that our issues were escalated to those who can do something about them. For years, we had an infestation problem of Supatrolls in Skyway. They would spawn and then not despawn leading to a huge lag issue and making SS a no-go zone. Despite numerous requests and petitions and PMs, it was only when War Witch herself saw the problem on one of her visits to us that something happened.

So latency isn't an issue, but getting things resolved is.

Your next question?


EDIT:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Canine Oh, and try and get someone who can give the French and German communitioes (such as are left) some significant attention. I may not play on those servers, or even speak the language, but that doesn't mean they deserve to be left out in the cold, regardless of the efforts Avatea puts in.

And most definitely this!

Jumping in between meetings/calls...

Parity in service is one thing that's extremely important to me, on a personal level, and as such is something I try to consider when making recommendations regarding Community events.

Because the dev team is so vocal with the Community at large, I'm sure you understand the day to day rigors of developing for an MMORPG, but sufficed to say, scheduling is something that remains a constant challenge. When we're involving say, only the Community Team, it's much easier for us to drop everything and jump into game for events such as the upcoming code giveaways. Where we run into logistical nightmares is cutting into the day to day development and work of the Designers and Production folks.

Knowing those kind of restraints, and that we're working with a 8-9 hour difference, what kind of things do you, as players, feel are reasonable expectations from the developers?

Another vote to merge the server lists.

There is a sizable community of Euro players on the US servers who would love to play with our brethren on the Euro servers. A load of us started before the Euro servers existed, and had way too many toons to wish to transfer over at Euro startup.

A merged server list and some free transfers, and I suspect the Euro servers would get a welcome shot in the arm population wise.

Would also allow me to free up some of the 36 used slots on my main US server (Victory where a lot of the Euros hang) and give me somewhere else to play and create new toons.

Merged List...

Browsing Forum Time: 11am - 3pm / 6pm - 9pm / 12am - 3am

Importance of Responses: Parity of Events/Escalation of issues of the EU Players over Peak Time Interaction.

Also, a merged server list would be nice.

(As fair as parity of events go, I remember a few years back the Americans getting access to an issue beta for testing, with no access for us. That's the kind of thing that tends to stick in people's craws, as it can sometimes get across the impression of a second tier playerbase, not needed for feedback. During the i19 Beta, however, Avatea arranged a testing (I think during a lunch break, actually) of some of the Praetoria Zone events which really worked. Some better display of notice of EU events would be nice though, like on the patch server. I tend to stick to General/European/Suggestions/Roleplay, which meant that I sometimes miss events if they're brought up in say, Union or Defiant. Now that I read the Dev/Community Digest, this isn't such an issue, but just getting it out there.)

Well I play the game from anywhere between 12:00pm to 12:00am, after this I know their are not many people online and so I browse he forums for while, between 12:00am to 3:00am.

I think it would be great for the servers to be merged, much more of an active environment then.