TheJazMan

Originally Posted by TonyV

Here's the thing. If they announced tomorrow that every single one of these things has been implemented, I guarantee you that by middle of January at the latest, people would be complaining yet more about how there's no new content, and the devs need to [insert more ideas here].

It's a never-ending cycle. The devs do add new content, for 50s and for other levels as well.

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

Boomtown and Dark Astoria could both become co-op, perhaps, as they're both on the edge of the city - it'd combine a revamp with more places for Villains to go too.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project

You can believe whatever you want it's not going to change the facts.



1. Because it is impossible for any dev to keep up with the players voracious appetite for new content.

2. Because this isn't fantasyland or Sci-Fi land where we can wave a wand or tell the holodeck computer that we never want to repeat anything. No MMO has an infinite number of maps, opponents, and objectives.



Which is why all successful games add new issues/expansions



Welcome to the computer gaming industry. All game graphics are repetitive and redundant. See above for why.



Yeah cuz it would be so much more "fun" to have to scour 40 frickin floors of an office building looking for a handful of opponents or a single glowie, and what if the devs put bad guys on every floor? Nothing would attract players faster than having to clear every floor of an entire skyscraper during a "kill all" mission. The average mission would only take several hours to finish and a TF several days.

Yeah let's have maps that are accurate to the buildings floorplan.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project

Don't know if you've noticed but all missions in every MMO are the same.

"Go there, do that, get reward."

They just change up the graphics to give you the illusion that the missions are different.

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project

It isn't a decrease in numbers. Every year in September peoples schedules change as they start college, return to school, end summer vacation. They haven't canceled their subs they just have to reschedule their play time as real life issues take priority.




I don't know what game you've been playing, but I've seen 16 issues of innovation added to the game over the past five years which has kept the game fresh and exciting.

Originally Posted by rian_frostdrake

we have been over this a few times, and not to derail, but could you post me a link to the sub numbers of any mmo? And i dont mean mmocharts,if they still update, i mean any mmo, warcraft, eq2, conan, warhammer,Aion, guildwars, champs, just gimmie a link to any one where the publisher gives exact numbers, not just the wow hype machine 11 million number stuff. heck, ryzom or istaria if you can find it, but im looking for any other mmo that publishes its sub numbers. thanks in advance for your effort.

Originally Posted by Dolphin

Yeah... bout the same here. I figure they've got a lot of them that fell into limbo... Plus since it's the weekend, it'll probably be Monday before they continue on.

I'm not worried.

Originally Posted by Dave_67

Ultimo, the biggest problem with the new event, as far as I can tell, is that the devs were hoping to see tons of players on dozens of teams all working together to take down the banners - just like it was in the old days.

Devs, it is no longer the 'old days'. We do not have the player base we had 3-4 years ago, when we could see plenty of that base on at roughly the same time. We no longer have plenty of players who willingly pile on to an event at the drop of a hat.

One thing that Ultimo pointed out rings true, that spawning the event in too many zones at the same time can only be detrimental to the enjoyment of said event. (And yes, I knoticed this even before the patch to increase the spawn rate.)

I was in Mercy Island for about two hours this morning. The team I was on broke up just as the banner event started. I asked the level 45 toon if he was going to be forming a team, to which he replied that he was just going to chill and hang with his friend. (I could only see the three of us at the time.) Then about an hour later, the zombie event started up, and there was no call-out in the broadcast channel of a zombie team forming, let along call-outs to join teams.

Not to say that it doesn't ever happen. I was online Saturday night with one toon, and got all the zombie and banner event badges within about 40 minutes. However, this happened blueside.

Maybe with Going Rouge we'll see a meaningful uptick, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Yes, the new graphics engine will be a plus, but if all former players (some of whom are now over at "That other superhero MMO") hear is how poor things are now, do you really think that will make any difference.

Originally Posted by ShadowsBetween

According to you. Based on what real evidence, exactly? (Note: "I never see anyone in game" is not evidence, it's an anecdote. I still sometimes play WoW, on a server that is routinely listed as High population. I rarely see any players outside the cities. I *know* they're in there somewhere, just not in the areas I can access. I'll have to assume they're all in instanced dungeons, or in an area where I can't go, or rarely visit. Like Northrend.)

Fact: By I 16, the AE had resulted in a large number of players being visibly concentrated in a very small number of zones. With the changes made in I 16, those players no longer had any reason to be there. The changes to AE make it counterproductive to run MA missions at all if your only goal is XP per minute, since all but the most challenging enemy groups yield somewhat less XP than their standard game equivalents.
Assumption: Some of them almost certainly quit once their "Easy" button was revoked.
Assumption: The remainder (whatever percentage that may be) have split up and gone to other zones, since that is the only way to find content in their level range that yields "excellent" XP per minute.

Fact: The changes to the difficulty system allow the Fire/Kins and other uber-builds to go quietly run massive farms for hours, with no need for other players at all.
Assumption: Some of the farm leaders have probably switched to this mode, and have effectively removed themselves from normal gameplay. They're still in the game, but they have no reason to come out unless they need to vendor/market all their loot.
Assumption: Some of them probably still include friends or other players in their farms for various reasons. (I've been invited along by a farming friend just so they'd have someone to talk to. And since I don't doorsit, they find my attempts to fight level 53 Battlemaiden henchmen with my level 26-but-sidekicked Peacebringer amusing. Especially since when I manage an epic faceplant, I don't whine about it.)

Fact: During the height of the AE craze, some players that *didn't* want to be constantly bothered by AE farm teams looking for fillers switched themselves to hide from searches.

Fact: Some players were set to be hidden from searches before this, either because they wanted to hide from spammers or just prefered to solo.

Fact: Using the Team Search tool to get number of players in-game is *wildly* unreliable, since it *only* returns the number of characters that match the search parameters. Anyone hidden automatically fails to match any search parameters and is excluded. Characters from the opposing faction are also excluded, except possibly in Co-op or PvP zones (I've never checked so I have no idea how it functions in these areas.) If you search by zone, anyone inside missions is excluded. If the list is truncated, it only returns the number of characters that were actually shown, and anyone not on the list is excluded.

Fact: All the servers have been upgraded substantially. An in-game population that might have locked a server when the game first launched could very likely still register as "green" at this time. (Only the devs know what the approximate population cap is for each server. I'm not aware that they have felt it necessary to share this information with the player base at this time.) In any case, the server load indicators are also not a reliable way to gauge the number of people playing the game.

Fact: In North America, the school year just recently started for many students that don't attend school year-round.
Assumption: Some of the people you aren't seeing are indeed, not in the game. But these people would still consider themselves active players if asked. They just consider "not flunking" to be a higher priority than teaming with you at this time.



Query: Coming to the forums and shouting "The game is dying, the sky is falling, DOOOMMMM!!!" is meant to accomplish what, exactly? If you have a suggestion that you're certain would increase the size of the playerbase, the Suggestions forum is over that way. <--> Otherwise, I'm not certain what you intend to accomplish, other than to mildly annoy some people. (I'm assuming here that mildly annoying people is not actually your primary goal.)

Originally Posted by Golden Girl

Saying something is a fact is not quite the same as it being a fact

Originally Posted by Hyperstrike

People have been leaving the game FOR YEARS.
Some come back.
Some don't.
New blood is ALSO coming in and taking up the slack.

Simply stating "people are leaving the game" with no qualifiers is just unsupported *DOOOOOOOM*. If you can SHOW that significantly more people are leaving the game than coming in, then you have something to worry about. But, you cannot show that. Your observations of server population are somewhat meaningless. Why? Because you're not everywhere on the server and you don't have access to some mysterious panopticon giving you hard numbers on who's actually on the server and who's hidden.



The devs can. They have access to the aforementioned hard numbers.
They say that subs are up.



Yes they should. They need to stop *DOOOOOOOM*ing and just play the fricking game. It's easier to get on teams that way. Standing around whining "thus sucks", "there's nobody on", "there's no teams", "nobody will team with me" accomplishes exactly JACK *BLEEP* SQUAT.

Wait. That's not QUITE true. It makes people go out of their way to AVOID YOU.

In short, lighten up a bit brother...



Currently? Sure. It does the same thing this time every year.
Unfortunately, you can't say whether this is part of a past trend (that'll rectify itself), or a new trend (that won't).

Why?

Because you don't know.



Weak updates.

*Sigh*

See CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.

Simply flaming what's come before as "weak" helps NOTHING.

If you're going to ragequit, please do so SILENTLY. The attention-******* is just ever so slightly nauseating.

Originally Posted by FatElvis

I have been away for about nine months, and this 2xp weekend really seemed like a regular weekend on Freedom about a year ago. When it is (relatively) tough to get a sewer team together on 2xp weekend due to inactivity in AP, then the game has changed dramatically over time. Sure, PI had 3 instances, but that used to be the case on a fairly regular basis. It just seems like there is no new blood in the game, and without that new blood/interest this game will simply wither and die. I know I got bored and quit playing after about 45 minutes. I don't know what they did to the whole sidekick mechanics, but I really don't like it now. It was sad for me because I used to really like to play this game (far too much).

Have fun doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Fat E

Originally Posted by Hyperstrike

Actually no. Remember, the servers are MUCH beefier now than some of the previous DXPWs. Stuff that'd have locked out a server now show as red or even yellow.

Virtue was showing yellow for a while this weekend and had several instances of PI.

Freedom wasn't showing yellow but it was also showing multiple zone instances.

Protector was seeing a large increase in population as a bunch of old players came back for the reactivation.