I started a mission team - and I lived

[Lines]

I don't like leading very quiet teams, that's a big thing for me. I chat a lot when I'm teaming, and if I'm leading the team and nobody chats with me my brain shortcuts to "well clearly everyone on Earth hates me."

 

I find I have an easier time chatting when I'm soloing.

[EmmySky]

1 hour ago, Lines said:

I find I have an easier time chatting when I'm soloing.

Sometimes, talking to myself is the most intelligent conversation I can find 😝

[Coyotedancer]

26 minutes ago, EmmySky said:

Sometimes, talking to myself is the most intelligent conversation I can find 😝

 

I have a habit of talking to my characters. XD

 

"Oh, come ON Dorian! I told you to target_next_nearest. That guy WAY OVER THERE is *not* the nearest goon... He's on the far side of nowhere. And... Yeah. Look at that. Way out of range. Go figure.  And now instead of chasing him you're stuck on a crate. Brilliant dude. Juust brilliant."

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, Lines said:

I find I have an easier time chatting when I'm soloing.

I find my chat frequency is in direct correlation to the amount of booze I've imbibed.

[0th Power]

I enjoy running a team, not necessarily for the control, but I can usually fill a team before i can find a team to join.  Especially if I want to run a non WST TF.

[JnEricsonx]

If I haven't gotten onto a team within 15 minutes, I usually make my own.

[Nemu]

I can totally see the skills and the stress involved with leading iTrials and raids and kudos to those that do, but we are not talking about that here.

 

I find it amusing if a team leader drops/disconnects during a TF and the next person gets in a panic over what to do.

 

I don't get this aversion to the star. On normal teams in today's teaming climate the lead is just a person who sets difficulty and picks missions and does some LFG recruiting from time to time. THAT...IS...IT. You don't need to socialize, you don't need to instruct tactics, no one expect anything of you other than to pick the mission and be reasonably quick about it. Very seldom does the opportunity to exert true leadership in the face of difficult content present itself.

 

I do agree with @Omega-202 though, psychologically it's far easier to lead a team when you know you can carry the entire team. Then you don't need to worry about expectations. If your teammates suck you carry them, if they suck less then you carry them less. If they die VENG for you, if they quit they don't deserve to be on YOUR team and there are ALWAYS more people LFT.

 

Also pro tip - if you are going to be a eager beaver and enter the mission first make sure the team lead is in the SAME ZONE as you when you enter the mission. Otherwise mission difficulty defaults to +0.

[Hew]

I like to lead friendly teams, with lots of chat, and a difficulty set according to the general function of the team. This means during the course of some play time, difficulty is moved up or down based on the changing team dynamic and capabilities. If people aren't having fun, switch mishs, lower difficulty, or try a different set of enemies. Some people prefer to utterly smash white cons over slowly whittling away at purples or reds. Moreover, some people just arent slotted/ready for high difficulty teams, and can feel depressed when the other members slotted out with IOs of DOOM + INCARNATES IN A TACO walk in and obliterate before they even have time to land _1 attack_. Gotta get everyone having fun!

[Lusiphur Malache]

I usually don't lead, but I have a reason.  I have the worst sense of direction COX has ever seen and I get too many escort missions in caves for my liking.

 

I did do some ppl wrong a couple times.  Announced a PI pug filled it up in a heartbeat, picked a radio mission, passed the star and told the new leader the name of #9 tell and quit.  I heard later that things went remarkable well before they broke up. 

[Hew]

25 minutes ago, Darkesyde said:

I usually don't lead, but I have a reason.  I have the worst sense of direction COX has ever seen and I get too many escort missions in caves for my liking.

 

I did do some ppl wrong a couple times.  Announced a PI pug filled it up in a heartbeat, picked a radio mission, passed the star and told the new leader the name of #9 tell and quit.  I heard later that things went remarkable well before they broke up. 

Don't do radios! I really don't understand the prevalence of people running radios in PI. 

Tips in Atlas are short commutes, almost never have escorts (there are 2? debutantes and the crazy spy lady), generally have small maps, and generate merits after 10. They drop continuously, so running mishs is constant without stopping to run to get the bank mish or whatever.

 

Excluding tips, regular mishs are a great way to go. Incarnates can get incarnate parts for eeeeveryone just running repeatable arcs. Those do tend to be a little tougher though.

[Andreah]

2 hours ago, Hew said:

Don't do radios! I really don't understand the prevalence of people running radios in PI. 

Tips in Atlas are short commutes, almost never have escorts (there are 2? debutantes and the crazy spy lady), generally have small maps, and generate merits after 10. They drop continuously, so running mishs is constant without stopping to run to get the bank mish or whatever.

 

Excluding tips, regular mishs are a great way to go. Incarnates can get incarnate parts for eeeeveryone just running repeatable arcs. Those do tend to be a little tougher though.

People running council radios in PI want simple basic fun, with decent leveling and drops. They aren't hard, the maps are never caves, and even a sucky team can usually get by okay. It's for people who would farm, but don't have the build for it or don't feel right door sitting. While the incarnates are wrecking the map, there's usually some straggler in a council uniform even your crappy level 1 can slug in the face!

[jubakumbi]

3 hours ago, Hew said:

Don't do radios! I really don't understand the prevalence of people running radios in PI. 

I don't understand why people think the object of the game is to get rewards rapidly, but I don't go telling them not to play the game they way they like...

I love Radios because they allow me to create the story of my characters my way in my head, while feeling like I am fighting crime in real-time.

I can run Radio missions all day long and have a blast doing it.

The objective of playing games for many is not just rewards per minute, it's not a job based on hourly profits.

[Omega-202]

3 hours ago, Hew said:

Don't do radios! I really don't understand the prevalence of people running radios in PI. 

Tips in Atlas are short commutes, almost never have escorts (there are 2? debutantes and the crazy spy lady), generally have small maps, and generate merits after 10. They drop continuously, so running mishs is constant without stopping to run to get the bank mish or whatever.

 

Excluding tips, regular mishs are a great way to go. Incarnates can get incarnate parts for eeeeveryone just running repeatable arcs. Those do tend to be a little tougher though.

Part tradition and part ease.  

 

Like others said above, its good "shut off your brain" teaming.  And there's definitely something special about getting those office maps full of lvl54 Council tucked away in neat tiny alcoves and conference rooms and racing your teammates to see who can nuke them to dust first.  

[Andreah]

35 minutes ago, Omega-202 said:

Part tradition and part ease.  

 

Like others said above, its good "shut off your brain" teaming.  And there's definitely something special about getting those office maps full of lvl54 Council tucked away in neat tiny alcoves and conference rooms and racing your teammates to see who can nuke them to dust first.  

When I'm on my tank, I like to see if I can drag four or more groups together on top of my team. Sometimes they really like that! ... and sometimes we discover quantity has a quality all its own.

[CFIndustries]

On 9/17/2020 at 11:58 AM, Nemu said:

I don't get this aversion to the star. On normal teams in today's teaming climate the lead is just a person who sets difficulty and picks missions and does some LFG recruiting from time to time. THAT...IS...IT. You don't need to socialize, you don't need to instruct tactics, no one expect anything of you other than to pick the mission and be reasonably quick about it. Very seldom does the opportunity to exert true leadership in the face of difficult content present itself.

It's not about "leadership" as much as complainers: up the diff, only pick Council, get here quicker, the one who enters the mission and starts playing without the rest of us, and I could go on and on. I am a manager at work, I prefer to be passive when playing CoX. Let someone else call the shots, get the mission, pick the diff, decide whether the outlier is being an *sshat and to kick them (if they don't, then who am I to complain...maybe it's a buddy of theirs...). I can solely concentrate on doing the best I can for the team in the mission, then enjoy the little breaks between missions.

 

Things that irk me about other player's "style" when I am "leader" don't bug me when I'm just tagging along. Maybe it's an over-active sense of "responsibility" or maybe it's analysis paralysis. I just know it lessens my enjoyment.

 

Someone in this thread mentioned people not chatting on teams. What's that all about? On Live, people had fun, cracked jokes, and bantered. Teams now are quiet as a graveyard. That silence really sucks the fun out of teaming sometimes and really makes leadership feel like a job that requires maximum efficiency and minimum downtime.

[jubakumbi]

19 hours ago, CFIndustries said:

Someone in this thread mentioned people not chatting on teams. What's that all about? On Live, people had fun, cracked jokes, and bantered. Teams now are quiet as a graveyard. That silence really sucks the fun out of teaming sometimes and really makes leadership feel like a job that requires maximum efficiency and minimum downtime.

What I have noticed now for a while in MMOs is that a large portion of the populations are only interested in rewards per minute, because they are spending an hour or less on each and every MMO per day trying to stay max level in all of them to feel like they are accomplishing something.

 

Chatting, bantering, mentoring, relaxing, etc. all flew out the window, it's all about how fast the games can be beaten to get the rewards people won't use and don't need just feel the dopamine hits.

Been seeing this doubled-down in the pandemic.

 

Having known multiple gamer geeks that only know how to focus on tasks and finish them, who by their own admission simply don't know how to just 'relax', these people can become very loud in MMOs in my experience.

 

So, if you are not on-board with the rewards per minute clan, then they rip you a new one for not jacking up the diff and steam-rolling and are no fun to play with, star or no star, IMO.

[Bill Z Bubba]

23 hours ago, CFIndustries said:

Someone in this thread mentioned people not chatting on teams. What's that all about? On Live, people had fun, cracked jokes, and bantered. Teams now are quiet as a graveyard. That silence really sucks the fun out of teaming sometimes and really makes leadership feel like a job that requires maximum efficiency and minimum downtime.

I haven't really noticed this. BUT I run with an SG and when I'm not with them I'm running max diff stuff which brings its own level of crazy.

[fitzsimmons]

17 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I haven't really noticed this. BUT I run with an SG and when I'm not with them I'm running max diff stuff which brings its own level of crazy.

I joined one of your ITFs.  Can confirm, I'm crazy.

 

Regards,

Dave

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, fitzsimmons said:

I joined one of your ITFs.  Can confirm, I'm crazy.

 

Regards,

Dave

Full disclosure: I am also a Dave.

[DougGraves]

On 9/18/2020 at 5:09 AM, Hew said:

Don't do radios! I really don't understand the prevalence of people running radios in PI.

 

I won't do radios in PI, too boring.  But radios are good at lower levels because the arcs send you all around the city and that can be a pain on teams.   And they don't throw in street sweeping or other mission types.

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Full disclosure: I am also a Dave.

 

[Sir Myshkin]

On 9/17/2020 at 8:39 AM, Lines said:

I find I have an easier time chatting when I'm soloing.

Fun story about this comment and the idea of internal monologue, I made a character that portrays this idea in the game as both a joke on the idea, and... in generally it's kind of fun to RP it out (made a bunch of macros to it and everything).

 

Scientist/Chemist type character who's slowly loosing his mind (dementia/alzheimers kind of thing crossed with schizophrenia) and in the attempt to counteract it experiments on himself. As all comic stories like this go, ends up with unnatural abilities revolving around electricity pumping between his cells and giving him super speed. What he doesn't realize is that his body in conjunction with his warped mind, in an attempt to stabilize itself and not burst apart, is constantly multiplying itself; think Flash's speed clones that are like functional independent selves, but this guy isn't reverting through time, but rather moving so stupidly fast that his own after image is real-time. He creates one image/clone for each of his dominant personalities and they move about together like a personal squadron (portrayed in the game as Demons/Electrical Affinity MM, haha, own personal demons... jokes abound).

 

I quite literally go around talking to myself.