A fun thing happened to me last night...

[Nafsmar]

I had some time to play so I logged in with my level 29 energy blaster. A level 25 team was looking for more and normally I don’t join random teams unless it’s a TF or an SBB but I said what the hell I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. I did tell the team when I joined that I would be doing knockback but nobody seem to mind. I did about five missions total and while people came and went there was no drama just a bunch of heroes doing hero things. The main point is that it was fun . So I guess you get out what you put in. I will be more open to Radio/tip team invites In the future. Hopefully they all go this way. I do have my doubts but we will see. 

[Aeroprism]

Three nights ago, someone on Excelsior was broadcasting for Radio teams in Steel Canyon. I joined with my water blaster. The first mission was a Bank protect: close quarter mess, two wipes.  We laughed about it, no one complained. We got our groove and then proceed to run 6-7 missions in a row without a hitch.  Every mission, someone left, someone new came in, didn't matter: fun was had.  When I left, I was 4 levels higher and the group was still going strong.

 

This is CoH. It's meant for groups.

[Johnny]

A long time ago, it was actually more challenging to recruit people for a PUG because you didn't have the auto-exemplaring. Instead, you needed to manage a minimum of half the team being at roughly the mission level, so they could sidekick/exemplar the others to that level (when needed). It was literally a situation of, "Hey X, can you please sidekick Y, and then we'll all be on-level."

 

Preferences vary, but I feel more comfortable when I can recruit a tank for aggro management (masterminds are good, too). In one case, no tanks were available, but we had two scrappers. So I asked whether the scappers could work together, both taking point, and spreading the aggro between them. It worked well. Funny thing was, through the process of people dropping and joining, we ended up with three tanks (they'd each asked to join), and we carried on to a solid story arc ending.

 

In another case, I had recruited a couple people, and a tank (currently in a solo mission) was going to join us later. So I kept the mission difficulty normal because we didn't have anyone that could take an alpha at a higher difficulty. To my surprise, the tank joined us fairly quickly, then got angry with me because the mission difficulty didn't warrant them being needed. Despite being diplomatic, they left the team, and couldn't quite understand that I was building a PUG, and that I'd be increasing the mission difficulty when the team was more well-rounded. Ultimately, more people joined the team for a good time; the misunderstanding with the tank was just a little frustrating, but there you go.

[nightroarer]

2 hours ago, Aeroprism said:

This is CoH. It's meant for groups.

It's also meant for soloers. And duo/trio. And a variety of other playstyles. I've played and enjoyed many of them. I've had a lot of positive experiences with other players in CoH, whether we were running together or just had a quick random chat in passing.

 

Nowadays, I mostly solo or run with my wife and/or daughter. CoH is meant for that as well. That is one of the fantastic things about this game: it supports a variety of playstyles, and all of them are fun.

 

It is great to hear about good group experiences. The more ways to enjoy the game, the better for all of us. Excellent thread. 🙂

[Aeroprism]

Oh yeah I solo my fair share as well, but I would be lying if I said it was any fun compared to the complete mayhem you get with a 8-man group swinging Tsoo all over the place in a warehouse-rave.

 

CoH is ok to solo players.

CoH is fine to duos and trios.

But 8 people madness?  CoH is just king. No comparable experience in any other online games I have ever played.

 

 

[Hexquisite]

31 minutes ago, Aeroprism said:

Oh yeah I solo my fair share as well, but I would be lying if I said it was any fun compared to the complete mayhem you get with a 8-man group swinging Tsoo all over the place in a warehouse-rave.

 

CoH is ok to solo players.

CoH is fine to duos and trios.

But 8 people madness?  CoH is just king. No comparable experience in any other online games I have ever played.

 

 

 

As a primarily solo player in every MMO I've ever played, one of my favorite things about CoH is that for the vast majority of things, you don't need a team. It may be harder, yes, and may require more strategy and forethought, but nearly everything can be soloed. That's definitely not the case with most other MMOs.

 

Also unlike other games, while you may not need a team, it's just as fun with one. Unlike many other games, it feels different being on a team. Because of the vast amount of viable powersets and ATs, you can run 100 PUGs, and see a completely different team makeup every single time, because every AT is useful and viable. No Holy Trinity locking anyone into a single playstyle.

 

Point being, while I don't entirely agree that the game was made for teams, it's the only one I've found where teaming is it's own brand of fun equal to solo play.

[Aeroprism]

I just want to clarify:  "Made for team" doesn't mean "Not made for everyone else".  What I meant was, "If you like teaming, this game does it exceedingly well.@

 

As for solo, yes, quite doable.  But personally, and that is just an opinion, I find it super slow and boring, bordering tedious.  Just by duoing, you increase the fun well over a factor of two.

 

Again: opinion.

[nightroarer]

11 minutes ago, Aeroprism said:

I just want to clarify:  "Made for team" doesn't mean "Not made for everyone else".  What I meant was, "If you like teaming, this game does it exceedingly well.@

 

As for solo, yes, quite doable.  But personally, and that is just an opinion, I find it super slow and boring, bordering tedious.  Just by duoing, you increase the fun well over a factor of two.

 

Again: opinion.

Understood. Please don't take my comment as a swipe at yours; that wasn't the intention. We all have favorite playstyles--and opinions as to which is the most fun. 🙂

 

I will say this when it comes to full teams: CoH is a lot more fun than other games I've played.

[Hew]

5 hours ago, Johnny said:

A long time ago, it was actually more challenging to recruit people for a PUG because you didn't have the auto-exemplaring. Instead, you needed to manage a minimum of half the team being at roughly the mission level, so they could sidekick/exemplar the others to that level (when needed). It was literally a situation of, "Hey X, can you please sidekick Y, and then we'll all be on-level."

 

 

Ah yes, those were the days. And bridges. You guys remember bridges?

 

[Aeroprism]

1 hour ago, nightroarer said:

Understood. Please don't take my comment as a swipe at yours; that wasn't the intention. We all have favorite playstyles--and opinions as to which is the most fun. 🙂

 

I will say this when it comes to full teams: CoH is a lot more fun than other games I've played.

 

Unfortunately, the only way to clear the water between us is for us to duo a task force, compare our number of kills (exaggeration is allowed) and find new and creative way to send Family mobsters flying as far as possible from the top of the Independence Port bridges.

 

Nothing else will do.

[Mister Mass]

20 hours ago, Hew said:

Ah yes, those were the days. And bridges. You guys remember bridges?

 

Don’t remind me!  I recall getting absolutely inundated with tells in PI asking my main to be a bridge when he hit the magic level.  Was it 43?  I don’t recall.  Apparently I have purged that from my memory. 😛

[DougGraves]

Mission teams are much more casual than TF teams.  If you want a team for fun and maybe some chat, join mission teams.  TFs are usually just about getting done as fast as possible. 

 

The lower level the team the more casual it is.  Hollows, KR, Steel, and Faultline teams are people who want to have fun.

[Hew]

1 hour ago, DougGraves said:

Mission teams are much more casual than TF teams.  If you want a team for fun and maybe some chat, join mission teams.  TFs are usually just about getting done as fast as possible. 

 

The lower level the team the more casual it is.  Hollows, KR, Steel, and Faultline teams are people who want to have fun.

Well, maybe? But I see people interviewing people wanting to join teams (what level, what at? r u dps? r u healz? (100% serious)), and I just don't run that way, no matter what. We actually dragged an alpha-unlocked but not alpha-slotted through an apex two mornings ago so she could get bits to slot; the same happened this morning, but the guy got enough bits midway through the apex to slot his first alpha. 🙂

 

That is not generally how I run tm/apex combos, but with a full team of incarnates, a straggler is no big deal. 😄

 

Low level mishs can be tough if you are doing an arc with EBs though, that can trounce a team under 20 sometimes. Think KR skulls arc EBs. Otherwise, I agree with this observation. 🙂

[Ironblade]

On 9/21/2020 at 5:50 PM, Hew said:

Ah yes, those were the days. And bridges. You guys remember bridges?

And before we had a team size setting, farmers had to get 8 people on the team and then 'paint the map' to spawn all the mobs, then the padders could leave the team.

[Hew]

6 hours ago, Ironblade said:

And before we had a team size setting, farmers had to get 8 people on the team and then 'paint the map' to spawn all the mobs, then the padders could leave the team.

We have reverse padding now too, where you enter a mish with no-bosses set, paint the map, then invite team! I've done it a few times, so I am sure someone else has too!

 

[Johnny]

On 9/21/2020 at 5:50 PM, Hew said:

Ah yes, those were the days. And bridges. You guys remember bridges?

 

I didn't get involved with bridges and PL'ing. I was more interested in playing with people that wanted to play content.

 

17 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Mission teams are much more casual than TF teams.  If you want a team for fun and maybe some chat, join mission teams.  TFs are usually just about getting done as fast as possible. 

 

The lower level the team the more casual it is.  Hollows, KR, Steel, and Faultline teams are people who want to have fun.

Actually, and Ironblade can vouch for this, we had a weekly forum signup for doing task forces, sometimes up to three groups at a time, and the runs were generally casual with full clears. Gata had originated the forum signups, and that was where I'd met Taxibot Belle and Ironblade.

 

Of course, the task forces could be quite long, so we would sometimes take an hour break for the *really* long ones. For those of you that appreciate rocking missions with 8-person teams, these were the task forces that you wanted to be on.

 

One time, I think we actually had Yahtzee on our task force (when he was living in Australia). At least, I'd like to believe it was him, keeping low-key. The thing was, doing an afternoon task force for us meant it was godawful in-the-wee-hours of the morning for him, and he had to bow out, mid-way.

 

Doing these tasks forces is another reason why I advocate having Recall Friend because it helps tremendously in a variety of situations (and I'm obviously not talking about speed-running).

[Ironblade]

On 9/23/2020 at 7:45 AM, Johnny said:

Actually, and Ironblade can vouch for this, we had a weekly forum signup for doing task forces, sometimes up to three groups at a time, and the runs were generally casual with full clears. Gata had originated the forum signups, and that was where I'd met Taxibot Belle and Ironblade.

Yep.  Open sign-up on the forums - anyone could attend.  Gata ran it for a while.  MsCats ran it for a while.  I ran it for a while.  In each case, "a while" was a year or two.  Every Saturday at 1PM.  We ran all the task forces and trials in order by level, starting with Positron's and going all the way up, only skipping Dr Q because it was so long.  I would run that one on a different day for the crazy people.

 

On a side note, one week I had someone ask if they could join.  I said everyone was welcome.  She said she wanted to bring a kheldian and understood they weren't always welcome (back when we had shadow cysts to annoy kheldians).  I said EVERYONE is welcome and I organize everyone into teams and I'll put you on my team so no one dares say anything.  That was back in 2010 or so and we've been together in real life for years now.  🙂

[sundew]

On 9/25/2020 at 2:10 PM, Ironblade said:

I said EVERYONE is welcome and I organize everyone into teams and I'll put you on my team so no one dares say anything.  That was back in 2010 or so and we've been together in real life for years now.  🙂

As I recall, it was several months of weekly tfs before you put me on your team.  😘  But you did say no one would give me trouble for bringing a pb, and no one did.   Those Tuesday and Saturday task forces were the best.  You all had fun every time.  

[EmmySky]

So yesterday, I was working on getting my patriotic toon (state named adult beverage) up to the appropriate level to run apex/tin when it comes up for my theme team.  It was kinda boring.  Had a couple global friends along for the ride.

 

An hour or so before bedtime I announced I was done with that for the day and I was gonna go grab my baby lvl 1, sweep atlas til 5 then hit the hollows and go to bed after Frostfire.  Both friends joined me, we ran around atlas like chickens with our heads cut off til lvl 5.  We headed to hollows and decimated stuff til frostie!  Halfway through Frostfire, another friend popped online and brought a lvl 36 to the party.

 

Much fun was had by all, many trolls and outcasts WERE harmed in the having of this fun.

 

Sometimes you just gotta roll.

[Techwright]

On 9/21/2020 at 12:12 PM, Nafsmar said:

I had some time to play so I logged in with my level 29 energy blaster. A level 25 team was looking for more and normally I don’t join random teams unless it’s a TF or an SBB but I said what the hell I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. I did tell the team when I joined that I would be doing knockback but nobody seem to mind. I did about five missions total and while people came and went there was no drama just a bunch of heroes doing hero things. The main point is that it was fun . So I guess you get out what you put in. I will be more open to Radio/tip team invites In the future. Hopefully they all go this way. I do have my doubts but we will see. 

You were 29.  I'm guessing most reasonable folk realize the cost for a 29 to gear out with KB-to-KD enhancements, at least without a level 50 sugar daddy,  and were happy to accommodate.  That or you're really great at targeting your KB attacks towards close, hard surfaces.  Glad to hear there's still great PUG teammates out there.

[Ironblade]

On 9/28/2020 at 6:21 AM, EmmySky said:

So yesterday, I was working on getting my patriotic toon (state named adult beverage)

You can't type something like this and expect us not to ask.  Alabama Slammer is my guess.

 

By the way, after typing that, I decided that was a cool name and it was available on Everlasting.  It is no longer available.  🙂

[EmmySky]

12 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

You can't type something like this and expect us not to ask.  Alabama Slammer is my guess.

 

By the way, after typing that, I decided that was a cool name and it was available on Everlasting.  It is no longer available.  🙂

Texas Teas

 

She lives on every server but only alpha'd on Indom.

 

Texas tea is like a long island ice tea but add tequila 😁  (and yes, her bio is the recipe lol)

Edited September 30, 2020 by EmmySky

[Mr. Vee]

y'mean extra tequila?

[EmmySky]

6 hours ago, Veelectric Boogaloo said:

y'mean extra tequila?

Nope my bad...meant whiskey.  

[Johnny]

10 hours ago, EmmySky said:

Texas Teas

 

She lives on every server but only alpha'd on Indom.

 

Texas tea is like a long island ice tea but add WHISKEY 😁  (and yes, her bio is the recipe lol)

This sounds like the variation of Long Island Iced Tea that I'd enjoyed back on university campus, yet could never replicate. I'll give it another try.