The state of the community

[Goddangit]

Those that were always ready to share "you're doing it wrong", "that costume sucks", and of course the kill-stealer were always present, although the majority of the community were decent people and would speak strongly against such actions.  It has been my recent experience that is no longer the case.  Was my experience an isolated thing or has the CoH community, and indeed all of the gaming community become that bad?  Are the kill-stealer, the rude, the self-entitled now the norm?  I'm coming to the conclusion things have changed.  (And I take comfort in the fact there is no longer one single place; I can choose who I associate with.)  I departed SecondLife and formed an Open Simulator grid with friends I value for similar reasons.  What is your experience?  What is your opinion?

[Castegyre]

MMOs in general have become more rude and selfish, yeah. There are a ton of reasons for this and I doubt it's going to change much for any larger title any time in the foreseeable future. This isn't new, it's just more convenient for people to behave that way now. That's not to say there aren't a ton of good people out there playing these games or that all of the other players who seem to be snubbing you are actually bad, but the genre is what is.

[Tahquitz]

The groups I ran in tended to be more insular and less "open to the public" (not that "in with the in crowd" sense, but the "our group's drama is enough, pick-up groups don't need to add to it" sense).  I've dealt with (and at times been the source of) plenty of it myself when the game was live, over things that ultimately didn't matter compared with the shutdown.  It's easier to dismiss bad behavior when it happens, as "it's just a game" is a far lighter admission to me now than it was 10 years ago.

That's made me less of a curmudgeon in this new era, as when I run with people in the larger community through a mission...  If they're immature, I finish the run, and say farewell.  If they're mature and seem cool, I engage further. 

[Vee]

kill stealers? that's not been a problem in coh since i don't even know what issue.

that said it seems about the same as it was once ftp hit to me, though i've not been able to team much lately and when i do it's with my group of friends. help chan seems about the same. a couple trolls i've /ignored. more racist names than on live but it's volunteer modded and it's a different world than 2012 too. and it's still leagues short of swtor hubchat levels of racism. still seems to be overall the friendliest community i've come across.

[Tahquitz]

kill stealers? that's not been a problem in coh since i don't even know what issue.

Not in the WOW sense, as loot drops aren't a thing in COH.  But in places where the mobs are in short supply like Atlas Park, and someone who is clearly well past Level 5 starts sweeping the streets leaving nothing for the new characters. (Hard to arrest five skulls when there aren't none, and when they respawn, he's back wiping them out again.)

Things like that.

[Goddangit]

Not in the WOW sense, as loot drops aren't a thing in COH.  But in places where the mobs are in short supply like Atlas Park, and someone who is clearly well past Level 5 starts sweeping the streets leaving nothing for the new characters. (Hard to arrest five skulls when there aren't none, and when they respawn, he's back wiping them out again.)

Things like that.

Precisely.  This latest incident involves a specific mission to hunt fifty Carnies in PI.  At level 45 most I see are purple; I can only handle one purple at a time and the Ring Mistress red or worse is out.  I had been culling Malta and Nemesis in spots I know they spawn for a good twenty minutes before I finally got a nice group and jumped into the middle of them, grabbing the attention of the bunch with a foot stomp.  I had two down when this fellow drops in on my action.  It was another half hour before I could get more to spawn.

Had a similar and worse incident a week before.  My level 15 controller (Yes, I'm an altaholic.) had locked down three council and was slowly taking them out.  Suddenly a brave scrapper swoops in and takes them like a cat scooping a still live mouse off a glue trap. Easy kill for him at my expense.

I've come to the conclusion I'm out of step and simply a dinosaur.  From now on I'm going to either solo on a public server, build a home server or simply go play something else.  Steam is probably wondering if I'm okay since I haven't played Skyrim in almost three months and there's a lot of scripting in Open Simulator I could be doing.  Sometimes you can't go back home.  Thanks, everyone.

[WanderingAries]

Not in the WOW sense, as loot drops aren't a thing in COH.  But in places where the mobs are in short supply like Atlas Park, and someone who is clearly well past Level 5 starts sweeping the streets leaving nothing for the new characters. (Hard to arrest five skulls when there aren't none, and when they respawn, he's back wiping them out again.)

Things like that.

And it's not just upper level, it's that so many people are running similar content solo and it's drying up the spawns quickly. I've noticed some are teaming up (allowing you to share kills), but not everyone wants to team.

[WanderingAries]

As for the main point? Those who've played in the past and Maybe stayed away from other MMOs don't seem to be this way as much as those who have Or those who are more into MMOs than say console/solo games. Hence why I stay away from said communities. *coughs*XBL*coughs*

[Victoria Victrix]

The drama that opened the servers also brought the game to the attention of trolls and 4chaners, who are still swarming all the servers and haven't gotten tired of the novelty yet.

Maybe in 6 month to a year they will....or then again, they're getting such glee out of pwning everyone else they'll stick around.

[Ultimate15]

I mean, I don't think the community was ever - at any point - completely void of your typical, run-of-the-mill troll / kill-stealer / nube. They've always been around, and they'll rear their ugly heads from time to time.

But I think you'd be doing yourself a disservice by getting so frustrated with them that you'd want to stop playing all together. Nor do I think that just because you had a couple bad experiences, that means something has 'changed' about the community and it's not what it once was. It was always great (and it still is) but it's never been perfect.

So don't let them get you this upset, is what I'm saying. It's not worth it.

[Castegyre]

Since the server opened the vast majority of people I've met or experienced on Everlasting (Homecoming server) have been nice, chill, and helpful.

Of course, that's been true of most of the people I've met on most of the servers I've played on in most of the online games I've played in the last 20 years.

A healthy mix of a positive outlook and a thick skin helps. If you want to have a good community it starts with being a good community member.

[Ultimate15]

A healthy mix of a positive outlook and a thick skin helps.

+1

[Dev7on]

The drama that opened the servers also brought the game to the attention of trolls and 4chaners, who are still swarming all the servers and haven't gotten tired of the novelty yet.

Maybe in 6 month to a year they will....or then again, they're getting such glee out of pwning everyone else they'll stick around.

I'm going to echo what Victoria said. Since the CoH server is "free to play" and open to the public where EVERYONE in the world can play. There are people/players that are from Overwatch, WoW, Elders Scrolls, etc. If the players are salty from Overwatch then they're going to be salty in CoH. I've encountered 2 trolls while playing the game so far. The first troll I encountered, someone was forming an Apex TF. I told him I was interested in joining just let me get to RWZ for an invite which he agreed to wait for me because I was a villain. When I got there he invited someone else when he agreed to wait. I told him to never do that again and he got an attitude. I'm not going to tell you the other troll I experienced.

Player Tip: When you form a group and someone pm's you saying to save a spot PLEASE WAIT FOR THAT PERSON AND DON'T BE A DICK BY INVITING SOMEONE ELSE!!!!!!!! If the player takes too long then invite someone else.

[Shenanigunner]

Gotta say... I've pretty consistently defended the community as being 99% heroes with the occasional jerk, who is usually squelched pretty quickly.

Then today (in Help) I dropped a mild comment about the keyboard and good binds being an asset, at least, far more efficient than 100% hunting and clicking icons - since that's the way the game was designed - and caught 15 minutes of abuse and shit for being 'l33t' and so forth. Even those who came in on my side caught BS from what seemed to be a group of teenies who had never played anything but controller games.

And then it devolved/sidetracked into a stupid "what's your favorite flavor of ice cream" exchange that went on and on... until an effing GM joined in.

The @sshole quotient is rising as word of the game spreads. Sigh.

[Ohioknight]

Gotta say... I've pretty consistently defended the community as being 99% heroes with the occasional jerk, who is usually squelched pretty quickly.

Then today...
The @sshole quotient is rising as word of the game spreads. Sigh.

If you ever thought the community was 99% heroes, you were wearing very tinted blinders.  The community AFTER THE GAME WAS GONE, and even during the post-shutdown announcement period, was 85%-90% heroes -- but you were forgetting the live servers.  While AE chased a lot of the trollier jerks out of the main game play, there was ALWAYS quite a percentage of @ssholes -- it's just that CoH has a lot of ways of avoiding them -- you can always turn off a channel that gets bogged with annoying chatter.
 

[WanderingAries]

If you ever thought the community was 99% heroes, you were wearing very tinted blinders...

We could quibble over the percentages, but either way the game is Mostly the best of what can be and there'll always be Somebody that has to be "that guy" in the game. Luckily we can generally ignore them or report as needed. Maybe once we get back to being a "real boy" server group, then the enforcement will have more teeth.

[LadyShin]

Despite percentages, when starting in Praetoria I never saw another soul. It was a perpetual ghost town.

[Vee]

Despite percentages, when starting in Praetoria I never saw another soul. It was a perpetual ghost town.

It was mostly like that on live too after the first rush. At least on HC you can run the arcs through ouro at your leisure without getting stuck there.

[Dev7on]

Is it safe to say that the trolls from 4chan have vanished or it's still too early to say? It's been quite lately now.

[Felderburg]

Is it safe to say that the trolls from 4chan have vanished or it's still too early to say? It's been quite lately now.

They have their own server, so... sort of?

Although they've had it since pretty much day 1 of private servers going public.

[Abraxus]

There is an degree of toxicity in almost any endeavor, belief, or pursuit one can think of these days.  There were always difference of opinion, but now with the anonymity provided by the web, closet a-holes felt empowered to become on-line a-holes in whatever way amused them.  Trolls take many forms, and sadly, our community is not immune to them.  But, I still think this is the best community overall, that one could reasonably hope for, especially in this era.

[Marine X]

There are always going to be " those guys ", but for the most part I think we are slowly getting back to the Original Core Community. It's almost every day I see someone posting how happy they are to be back or asking how things have changed in Help. It was a long wait to get back here, and a little Toxic in the beginning, but I think we are going to be OK.

As a sub-note on hunting out of Level Range, I have done this a bit lately to acquire Badges etc. but always tried to do it in a way that didn't affect others as much as possible. The hardest was UnVeiler as there are only a few places to Hunt Fake Nemesis with any success, but If someone showed up in the area, I would just do something else for a bit. Plenty room for everyone. Plenty other badges to work on.

I will confess I am a little frustrated with a handful of persons on the Homecoming Forums, who seem to delight, although they deny it, in turning almost every post into a Battleground. I have only ran into a few People from Live or PC there or in-game since it's been back, which is a little Sad since PC had such a great group of people,. Probably just on a different Server or Shard, but I would enjoy hanging out with some of the Titan People, they kept the community going as much as anyone else.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Just going to add that on the Homecoming servers at least things have stabilized into a reasonable facsimile of the original community. Help chat is generally helpful and the large group events like Mothership Raids and Hami Raids are relatively free of griefers and trolls. The forums and Discord communities are also pretty friendly.

[Dev7on]

Ok I'm gonna go on a rant and to get this off my chest. Players on Excelsior do daily Hamidon Raids every night at 10 pm EST. Since the GMs have change the population cap to 50 now players have been going to the zone early. For some reason players don't announce it on the LFG anymore. They only announce it until AFTER The Hive is full and people can't get in. It's like people are doing Hamidon raids incognito style without people even realizing there's a raid on going and a lot of players end up missing out on it. Sure the Excelsior channel MOTD says "10 pm" on it but, it's not "really" 10 pm it's earlier than that. It's very inconsistent. I'm also aware of the Excelsior Discord but NOT EVERYONE uses Discord. It would be very nice if someone would announce the Hamidon raid early to encourage players to come to The Hive early due to the population cap. There are a lot of players that are getting frustrated including myself of what's going on now. Since players are constantly doing this now it take away the City of Heroes experience. This is not how it used to be back in the day and I miss it. This is my honest opinion and this is how I feel about it. If you guys don't agree with me or don't like my rant that's fine. I just want the community to at least understand where I come from.

[Tahquitz]

It's been a problem.   I agree.

[PhiloticKnight]

Is the Hive completely locked after 50 are in? I thought all zones opened up a new instance after they were full... is the Hive an exception to that? If not, couldn't someone just form a second raid? If so, yeah, that sucks.

[Tahquitz]

Moving an entire league there at once isn't feasible.  And with a 50 user cap with a full 48 person league, it takes three in the new zone to make someone miss out.

[MaidMercury]

Those that were always ready to share "you're doing it wrong", "that costume sucks", and of course the kill-stealer were always present, although the majority of the community were decent people and would speak strongly against such actions.  It has been my recent experience that is no longer the case.  Was my experience an isolated thing or has the CoH community, and indeed all of the gaming community become that bad?  Are the kill-stealer, the rude, the self-entitled now the norm?  I'm coming to the conclusion things have changed.  (And I take comfort in the fact there is no longer one single place; I can choose who I associate with.)  I departed SecondLife and formed an Open Simulator grid with friends I value for similar reasons.  What is your experience?  What is your opinion?

There are always bad apples, but my experience, far and few. If they spam, use foul language or whatnot- report obstinent ones to a GM.
Most of my players I met have been positive. I cherish all of the friends I met in the game.
Don't leave CoH because of an idiot's comment....We're family.