Is COH: Freedom Putting the Cart Before the Horse?

Before I get into this, let me state something very clearly. First, I do not think Freedom, or the players it will hopefully bring are a bad thing. I posted quite some time ago pondering the question of whether this may be something that we'd be seeing. Furthermore, I like most of what I have seen about how this is all being implemented.

I do however, wonder if the timing may be off given the current state of the player-base. In most MMOs where there are two or more factions, the players are, at least somewhat, evenly distributed between the two sides. In CoH, this is far from true. The discrepancy between the two sides is quite large.

Why is this a problem? Because first impressions are going to go a very long way in determining whether or not a new free player will turn into a VIP subscriber. Let's take our new player, who will name John. John logs into the tutorial, goes through and chooses to become a Villain. He exits into the Rogue Isles and sees one of two things:

1. A mostly deserted zone where he feels like he's playing a single player RPG.
   
2. A reasonable number of players, but most of whom are new, like him, and therefore can't form a team.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

You do realize more than new players will be playing this game right? Or that starter zones, ie Atlas, tend to have a number of people in them?

This is a good point. I don't know much about other servers, but Victory redside can sometimes feel deathly quiet.

Is it a potential concern? Yes, to some degree it is. Is it something the devs can fix? Probably not. In some ways the new tutorial IS a work around for this problem, allowing people to start any (non-EAT) AT on either side eliminates the need to spend 20 levels on the "wrong" side and allows a player to choose which side to start in independent of desired AT.

Now the issue you bring up is the observable discrepancy in population between Redside and Blueside. While this is unfortunate I'm not sure it's something the devs can/should fix. The problem is that the split is somewhat inherent to the theme of the game. It's the nature of the Superhero genre that more people dream about being Batman than dream about being the Joker and this reflects itself in game.

In MMOs that do manage to maintain balanced population it's normally because the devs make sure to present both sides as having their good points and their bad points so it doesn't feel like one side is the "good guys" and the other is the "bad guys" (there is an exception to this which is when the game is based on a license where the bad guys already have a strong fan following and can afford to be deliciously evil without losing players). Now, the devs did attempt to do something like this with the Praetorian arcs, there are "good guys" and "bad guys" on both sides of the Resistance/Loyalist split which helps keep things in balance. However the CoH primal universe is based on Golden Age superhero morality so Statesman will always be the hero and Recluse is always the villain.

edit: was a multipost by accident

When I was on trial accnt 1 yr ago, I made a hero and a villain. On hero side, I did the lvl 1-5 missions and died multiple times getting to where I needed to go. Frustrated, I hung around liberty and asked for a team. This got me into a sewer team. I leveled to 10 and decided to play vill.
Villside lvl 1-5 missions were nice and close by and I eventually got into my first bank mish ala Mongoose. The team I was with was very nice and told me how to make wakies from insp. I also discovered that leaders like healers so I made a healer and got invited to a lot of teams.
I played my hero again and got invited to a couple of teams whose members rage quit after a wipe or 2. I went back to villside and made it my home when I subbed.
Basically, if nobody leads the low level teams or invites toons lvl 1-30, then the F2P folks are limited to soloing. It really isn't up to the devs to 'balance' who plays which side. I made the choice to go vill because of the people I teamed with. If the new player values good social interaction, it will be because of the teams s/he plays with.

Anecdotaly speaking...

I've experienced a situation where a development team tried through various methods to encourage players to play one faction vs another faction, for the purpose of balance. Now in the situation I've experienced, it was key to the way the game worked, crucial in fact, on a level that does not apply to CoH.

What was said about players playing what players want to play usually rings true. Inflated incentive can only do so much to entice people to do something they would otherwise not do.

Of course we will always continue to develop compelling content for both factions to play in addition to our continued development of co-op content. We do anticipate that many of the new players will be very interested in the experience of playing a nefarious villain rather than a sappy do-gooder .

There's no Tol Barad in CoH...

Obligatory; FPAARN

Interesting.

It would depend on the server, but the early villain zones like Mercy and Oakes don't have much traffic in them. Cap is the Villain version of Atlas. At least its much easier to get there now.

These days, I only play Hero-side. I'm just not interested in playing a Villain. I have some Villain characters, but they're just collecting dust. Incentives wouldn't do anything to change that fact - I just don't want to spend my free time that way.