How to Get More Players

Does it not say "this list has been truncated" anymore? His screenies don't say that. It used to say that if there were more than one page of 50 characters online. If it didn't say that, then that list was all that there were.

I don't remember that ever being a documented change (but would not surprise me in the least to find out ANOTHER undocumented change).

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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.

I've been playing City of Heroes without interruption in my subscription since shortly before Issue 1. I go through some occasional periods of relative inactivity, but I feel I get excellent value out of my annual-rate subscription.

In fact, the only thing that would likely make me take a break or quit the game altogether is precisely what has been suggested in this thread. I know I'm late to the party and these arguments have already been made and made well by others upthread, so I'll just add my personal anecdotal support.

In a highly instanced game with a well-established community that is now used to global channels as a default communication medium, you cannot use /search or the number of players you visually happen across as an indicator of population. Now, while that perception issue could be a problem for new players that get the wrong idea, it nevertheless remains the wrong idea. Changes to a non-problem to correct a false perception of a problem where there isn't one is, well... dumb.

Though a server merge would help concentrate the population, I suspect it may not be possible from a technical standpoint. Just a suspicion, though. And people like their low-population servers for whatever reason. It's one of the oddities of this game's culture.

I will say the addition of yet another server with the launch of Freedom was one of the more facepalming decisions made with the model. Another server was the last thing this game needed.

WARNING: I bold names.

I hate to say it but I was right they are ending CoX at the end of the year. If everyone wasn't a bunch of stubborn babies CoX would still be here.

Server traffic had nothing to do with the closure. If the game was unprofitable the devs would not have been able to produce everything you can see on beta right now.

Here's the thing. Shutting down servers doesn't really save a lot of money. It saves some but the main recurring cost for servers is Bandwidth and that pretty much scales per player regardless of how many servers you have.

The reason to consolidate servers is to concentrate players. Now in some games that does make sense. For example any game with a focus on PvP or an important server-based economy needs a certain concentration of players on each server to work.

City of Heroes isn't such a game. Yes, teams are important but they aren't essential and the market is cross-server. Add in the fact that CoH is heavily instanced and the basic in-game experience is pretty much the same on a low-pop server as a high-pop one. The only real differences are how easy it is to find a team and the general community feel of a server (small-town versus city) which for the most part that is self-regulating. People who want a high-pop server with lots of fast and quick teams moved to Virtue and Freedom and were happy while those who preferred the small-town feel of the other servers went there.

That being said at the end of the day what really matters is not what we as players think but what the devs think. I'm sure that if server merges would have made an appreciable difference then the devs would have done that. But at the end of the day I think it would have cost them more players than it gained.

CoX is not shutting down because the community is shrinking. It's dying because NCSoft doesn't see a point to having a MMO that only the US and EU play.

Give us kitties free catnip and balls of yarn!
Banish all the werewolves to the Rouge islands!
Make windowsills wide so we can take naps on them.

How to get more players: tell literally anyone that this game exists. I'm pretty sure NCSoft hasn't done that since CoV launched.

@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian

Bah...


All they had to do was give people a way to play to a certain point and get a free VIP for 30 days....ie they had to do things in game to get it.

Then they also only had to make it possible albeit in a very slow fashion..a way to get points or NC coin or whatever in small increments with out having to pay cash....
Thus they will start a group of players who constantly play to try and get the free stuff.

Thats all they had to do to reel them in like Fish and make them play and pay forever.

And of course if they wanted to get more players faster and make more cash faster like say Perfect World or say some of the other cash shop guru groups....
They simply would have to make the level required experience points greater...
And then start selling items that are cheap that work like a health batteries...ie every time you click it it puts your health up to full...but subtracts whatever it healed from its total point value.

That would get people to start doing unreasonable risks to level faster...ergo....as others do it....by spending a paltry 25 cents....or what ever....others would do the same....thus creating a group of players who literaly claim you have to pay to win and there is no other way....and creating a group of players who will spend tons of cash on this junk.

They also could have made it so when a player reaches maximum level they could switch alignments....by becoming level 1...but starting on the other side....and also having some extra buff they get to have for doing so...with expereince points needed being even more then what a normal player would need(like 10 times more).....thus they would start getting players leveling and playing for long long periods just to get to that maximum...with a special buff.

And they always should have sold point cards or nc coin cards....from the get go....

But now...nc soft cant seam to understand those finite things or how to get people to play forever or spend millions of dollars....so they instead discontinue games when not even trying to make a real profit.

Its funny....i still recall in a differing game....this one player....might have been a GM actualy or company person....they would brag to everyone how good they where at pvp.....in the game they even had a ranking showed him on top.....his bragging got so many players trying to take him down....they spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars just to beat him....then they would brag....this started a huge trend of players spending lots of cash just to be number one.....
And to this day they still do it.....but not just as players but as groups and guilds and everything.....
The designers figured out people like to compete....but not everyone likes to compete the same way...thus they have tons of things in game for you to compete with others with...
And to add weight to make people feel they want to do this....they give in game rewards to the people inthe top 100....better stuff to the top 10 and the number 1 gets the best...

oh well long post....i made these suggestions alot over the years......
and well...guess htey hsould have listened to the Kitty.