Wyldkard

I was often amazed at how well pick-up teaming worked in early CoH compared to other games (where it's often hard to get a team together at all). My brother and I often used to just roll into a zone, yell "LFM for <whatever>" and boom, requests to join would pop in. No character seemed irrelevant (though of course some were more useful than others) and the weird combos we ended up with made up a lot of the fun. As for "keep character X alive", I'd have to say that sometimes the situation became "X is gonna die no matter what, what can we do to make it as amusing as possible?". (More than a few screencaps of hilarious faceplants were made.) It's true that as builds and ATs become more streamlined and focused on their primary function, players seemed to start to pay more attention to "balanced" or "strong" teams. Even so, CoX is still the best game I've ever played for just grabbing some people together on the fly and bamfing them all to the next content, just being a big ball of mayhem on the way. (Edit: as you pointed out, the (mostly) lack of inventory to manage and loot to worry about just meant we could get on with playing the game and having fun - I thought it was a genius move on Cryptic's part.)

Two-tongue Khamun, the Dual-Blade(Khopesh) scrapper: "I want my mummy!"

I think the hilarious part is that you wrote the leader/TF off as unacceptable because you sent him a mildly snarky poke and he sent you back a mildly snarky reply. Clearly, your snark is worse than your fight.

Yeah I got served as well, and although Excelsior isn't showing as "down" right now, the game just hangs when I try to log in to it. Will give it a while before trying again.

As someone who recently found out about Homecoming and started up, I can safely say one of the first things I thought of was "crap, what was it I used to do to make money? I know I'm going to need some Inf to get enhancements..." Then a guy running past me dropped a million inf on me, without a word. Then I went to the Freedom Corps salesgirl and noticed Level 5 SO's for sale. Then I went to Wentworth's and noticed there was 10 million+ of everything in stock. If somebody new isn't noticing "this ain't your grandpa's CoH", it's not because the clues aren't there. (Which doesn't invalidate your hypothesis of course, but makes it less likely or confined to only the truly un-observant.)

This is a pretty good example actually. You're trying to do something here, I take an example of your observed behavior, I suggest that perhaps that behavior isn't in line with the results you say you want to achieve... and you take that as "disparagement". No disparagement was intended or implied, simply pointing out that your advice, however well intentioned, may not be perceived by others as "tactfully delivered". The implication being that perhaps you need to work on your tact. And you responded by assuming it was some sort of personal attack, and then dismissing the feedback you received. That's a pretty fair example of how anyone you make suggestions to will respond. Particularly if you do it in such a manner as to suggest they're responsible for the last team wipe. I said that's a poor time to make suggestions, not to observe their behavior. Again, when the team has just wiped, missed a goal, or someone's died and the team is waiting for them to return... may not be the best time to tell someone "We could have avoided this if only you'd used your X power properly".

Well played, sir, well played indeed. Possibly a bit too subtle for some readers, judging by the responses. @biostem, I'm sure you're a fine upstanding fellow. However, being new to the forums, the only place I've seen you offer a reply to someone asking if there's a better way to do something, is in this thread: If your replies there are typical of your "tactful" approach, well, I do not think that word means what you think it means. Personally I find that mid-mission is an unproductive time to suggest changes to another person's playstyle, unless they've made it clear they're looking for tips and improvement. I'd either ask them if they wanted some tips on getting the most out of their powers, and follow up when appropriate, or maybe send them an email afterwards with some pointers. (Assuming I thought they were educable.) One thing I've noticed is that coming from the direction of "you're doing OK but could get a lot more benefit from..." is generally better received than starting out with a "you know those powers you have are meant to be used, right?" or similarly negative/"you're doing it wrong" framework.