Double XP

Thank you Nihilii. You bring up good points.

Back to the question. Holiday bonus play, yes or no, and why?

I am in agreement with the squirrel that this is the main reason I would not want to see al or even most holiday weekends be Double XP weekends.

Shoot -wasn't is just last Thursday that we had extra downtime because the servers crashed? Didn't you see all the raging and gnashing of teeth that accompanied that? Just imagine if that had been during a Double XP weekend - I shudder to think of it.

And the poor PS people who would then miss the holiday weekends with family and friends, just so they can stay on-call for fixing any such server crashes. What's that you say? That's what they get paid to do? Just like Bob Cratchit got paid to work on Christmas Day? Bah, humbug!

Plus - although today is a holiday on the US calendar, this game is certainly not just a US-played game. Thanksgiving, for example, is the fourth Thursday in November in the US, but in Canada it's in mid-October and in Europe, isn't a holiday weekend at all. Which one would CoH celebrate with a Double XP weekend? Both US & Canadian holiday weekends? But it isn't a holiday in Europe, Asia, or Oceania - so those folks are working their regular workhours.

Maybe having a couple additional Double XP weekends would be nice -but not every US holiday weekend.

It wasn't that long ago we regularly had servers grayed out during Double XP weekends and the "One Server, all else is Sin" fanatics spent their weekends raging on the forums because they couldn't log on to a particular server and refused to simply play on another. And god forbid they get put in a queue and wait to get on.

My one worry about having more DblXP periods would be that if they are TOO common, it would make playing between them much harder because folks wouldn't bother until the next DblXP. Of course, I have confidence that the Devs wouldn't stick them THAT close together, it would have to be more than once a month I would think to have that effect, but I may be wrong, perhaps once a month is just enough to have that happen... making 27ish days of gaming a chore.

This is true. If you look up the post tree, I mention that I do not know the country demographics of the game. If the majority of players reside in Britain, for example, US holidays might not be the best choice. Side note: Being an American my life is centered around things American. As far as I know, the last DxP weekend WAS on a major UK holiday.

Regarding the multiple posts regarding server failures due to load, I am not convinced. True, I wasn't here for the "greyed out" periods. I was here for the extended (ok way extended) maintenance period the other day. I (like most of you I'm sure, attempted to log in all day). I have this illusion that NCSoft is beefing up the load aspects of their servers to handle "the rush" when Freedom comes out. If they don't, I fear we will all see servers crashing left and right. Bonus weekends will be the least of everyone's worry.

As far as folks having to work the holidays, I guess thats anyone's guess. I do not know, and you don't either unless you work for NCSoft, what their personnel schedules are. I do know, at least in my "perfect" world, that servers should handle peak load periods. Noticing last night at least 2 servers were "maxed". Also, the last DxP weekend we had 3 weeks ago, the servers seemed just fine.

I guess it all comes down to money, as usual. I assume a game population drives the hardware, software, tech support, and ultimately the future of a game. Since they are changing the pay format, this solidifies my beliefs. Again, I state that bonus weekends will be the least of our issues if the servers can't handle the load.

Again, I retreat into my past experience that bonus holiday weekends are a "positive" for a mmo. I share folks concerns for server downtime, but feel that NCSoft is being "proactive" on this issue. I feel they do a good job. This game crashes way less, have fewer bugs, has more stable servers by far than the last game I left after 11 yrs of playing and "gritting my teeth". A server down a day on CoH is bad, can you imagine what a month down on the "other" game just a few months ago felt like?

A major difference in the support teams I've noticed between my "old" game and CoH. The only folks who got tech support reply within 2 days were ones with multiple accounts. If you were a loyal player, submitted several tickets for the same issue, you "may" receive tech support. If you were a casual player...forget it. We are talking about major (can't log in, lost toons, cleared items out of inventory/banks, etc) issues.

I degress. Holiday bonus weekends? yes or no and why.

Thank you so much for the replies. Things are learned with every post.

Most people are usually busy doing stuff with their families. Double XP on Christmas wouldn't help me one lick if I'm at my parents' house with no way to play. The few people that would be on would likely find themselves struggling to find teams.

You haven't quantified it correctly. It's not 7 days out of 365, it's 7 weekends out of 52. To put it in perspective, that works out to an average of Double XP once every 7 weeks. Yes, that is too much.

No, you can't please everyone, but it's generally considered nice to satisfy at least the majority of your playerbase, and the majority won't be playing on holidays. I know because in the past I have had the occasion to log on during holidays and it was a ghost town. Double XP might increase this by some amount but I doubt it would be by very much.

Even just more frequent Double XP weekends (not on national holidays) would make more sense than putting them on actual holidays (but it would still cheapen them).

Gob, Thank you for you input. Please read on.

If you reread my post, I say if 7 weekends are too much, just do the holidays. The reason why is at the end of this post. I listed all the holidays, but in fact not ALL are weekends. Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years comes to mind.

As far as the site being a ghost town, this weekend my wife has been playing EQ2. She has been in full teams 17 hours a day (with a few breaks for meals) and has been in 4-24 toon raids. Its true she took the actual holiday off today, to pick up her family from the airport and to take a break from the computer which she was playing pretty much nonstop. By the way, EQ2 has been doing DxP weekends on holidays as long as I can remember...about 3 years with my brain being half dead from a stroke.

As a personal note, my bride does play CoH with me as much as she can. The graphics of this game makes her physically sick to the point of vomiting. I am the one who asks her not to play because it tears me up to see her this way.

I can tell you that working 90% of all holidays in the Navy 20 years has given me perspective. I used to take my shipmates duty days on holidays (until I got married) because a vast majority of businesses (my focus was food) were closed. I bring this up to illustrate that many folks who may miss bonus weekends normally, MAY have a day off to play. The time off issue is my response to your majority viewpoint concerning holidays. If a player can't play due to holiday issues, why penalize those who can play?

Thats why I contend the holiday weekend is still best. It allows "the majority" to play, but still have the holiday. The "minority" may miss a regular DxP weekend, but have the choice to play if they have the time off.

I feel like a broken record.

1) As stated, I do not know the country demographics of the game. If CoH has 3 players in another country, CoH has a DxP weekend that awards them extra experiece. How does this hurt them? As I said, Britain may have more players than the US (I keep saying Britain, because the CoH T-Shirt I bought is being sent from England) and it might make a more positive impact. Shocking <gasp> that an American would concede that their is other countries on the planet.

2) I said that 3 holidays, namely Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years Day, are not weekends at all. That, with my advanced math skills is 7-3 = 4. If the current formula for CoH weekends is 2, then 4 - 2 = 2. We are talking 2 weekends a year added.

3) I have played more than 1 mmorpg with holidays as a standard xp bonus weekend. In a word, it works.

To summarize. I don't see how bonus xp hurts anyone if it isn't too often and is scheduled to allow more people to enjoy it (or at least know when they are scheduled).

1. If you feel like a broken record then you need to ask yourself what it is in your posts that makes people respond that way.

2. DXP weekends ARE NOT ONE DAY EVENTS.

Double XP Weekend have occurred on the following dates:

1. July 21, 2006 (ended 07/23/2006)
2. January 26, 2007 (ended 01/28/2007)
3. June 15, 2007 (ended 06/17/2007)
4. February 08, 2008 (ended 02/10/2008)
5. July 18, 2008 (ended 07/20/2008)
6. January 23, 2009 (ended 01/25/2009)
7. July 31, 2009 (ended 08/02/2009)
8. October 8, 2009 (ended 10/12/2009)
9. March 4, 2010 (ended 3/7/2010)
10. January 27, 2011 (ended 1/30/2011)
11. August 11, 2011 (scheduled end 8/14/2011)

You seem quite determined to ignore how long DXP events last.

3. No one cares what happens in other MMO's and you should be careful about constantly making comparison/contrasts because they're against the forum rules and get moderated.

4. DXP weekends are intended to be used as floating events the devs can activate whenever they want. They don't want them fixed to any particular date.

5. Our fixed events are designed to cover multiple holidays because the specific holidays aren't always celebrated at the same time by all the customers. The only season not covered is Summer.

You'd probably have better luck asking for a single permanent DXP event somewhere in the summer months cuz your not going to get half a dozen DXP's added to american holidays.

And yet you are coming off as having your mind already made up and nothing anyone says is going to change it even tho you asked for their input.

What other games do isn't relevant on these forums. We regularly get modsmacked for just mentioning their names. We have even gotten in trouble for talking about other games owned by this company.

The players didn't make these rules.

Actually the one I like goes "If the devs gave everyone solid gold bricks there would be players complaining that they weren't given a wheel barrow to carry them in."

Yes everyone is just a bunch of negative nellies. There's no possibility that the suggestion is flawed and/or isn't suitable for this particular game.

Funny you should say that when you specifically asked for people to provide that exact feedback.


And now your irritated at us for giving you exactly what were asking for. You know just because you don't like the answers doesn't mean they are wrong.

Anyway don't get discouraged just because people don't support one idea. I look forward to your next suggestion.

Lotsa personal details here that I don't especially care about, but this game isn't EQ2, and I doubt it has the population that game does.