Star Allergies: Causes, means to address?

[MTeague]

We've all seen it. 

 

Scenario #1:  

A successfully run team, stomped things for a bit.  Then, 

leader says:   "Okay guys, fun team, but I've gotta jet.  Who wants the star?"  

Followed by crickets or a very rapid one-after-another-after-another  "yea, it's getting late, I should go too" (said at 1pm on Saturday) as people drop group. 

 

Scenario #2: 

Any given hour of any given day, glance through LFG chat. 

Bazillions looking for team, almost no one forming a team. 

 

Plain and simple, a LOT of people are allergic to the star.  Full disclosure, I can often be one such.  Intellectually, I know it's dumb. I've been on lots of teams.  And this isn't Warcraft progression raiding.  Most of the time, the leader's only job is to select the next mission.  Occasionally to scan LFG chat for 30 seconds and grab one of the many people looking to join a team, or to chat into LFG chat  "team doing <something or other>, lvl range, not picky about lvl or powers, looking for 1 more" and then choose one of the 20+ replies you'll probably get. 

 

I know it's not hard. But I rarely lead. I know this is true of many others as well. 

 

Misc Causes: 

I'm not counting things like "I actually want to read mission text, and NO ONE will wait for that."  Nor am I counting things like "Some nights I just loathe all forms of human life."  If you're flatly not interested in grouping, then it's not really a star allergy per se.  I mean when people DO want to group, but just don't want to lead. 

 

• Social Anxiety / Fear of "Doing It Wrong"
• Assumptions people just aren't interested in the content you feel like doing that night. 
• Feeling like you don't know misc task forces "well enough" to lead. 
• others?

 

Ways to Encourage People:

• Post the Nike slogan ("just do it") more. 
• Remind people it's far faster to form their own team than to look for an existing one.
• others?

[TemporalVileTerror]

Develop a more robust language to describe the sorts of teams we're looking for so that people can have more confidence about forming a team which they are comfortable leading and won't feel as much pressure at the possibility of a player saying "I didn't sign up for this."

 

 . . . that's quite the run-on sentence, but I hope I was still clear.

[Outrider_01]

Nobody really wants the responsibility of leading asshats, to much drama.  They just lemming to the one person who evolved a wrinkled brain and a spine willing to take charge who sets the mission.  You can accomplish more as a team but the other 7 prefer wiping each other's ass, who wants to be in charge and wipe the ass of the other 7 people.  Not me, no siree Bob no thank you.

[SuperPlyx]

This is real for me, I struggle with leading a team. I am getting better at it I think but doubt is a lifelong close friend so who knows.

 

For a long time my excuse was my loading times are to long and no one wants to wait for a slow leader. I recently did a minor pc upgrade and have improved that, so lost that excuse.

 

Another thing is not knowing the content well enough, always worried I am going to lead the team the wrong way in a mission. Or do the absolute wrong strategy for any giving situation.

 

One other cause, I broadcast in LFG sometimes and get no replies. This can make it hard to want to try and build team sometimes. But truth is sometimes you just can't find people wanting to do what you want to do. That's just life. 

 

I do run them alot more than I used to. I found doing arcs, TFs and SSA that I know and enjoy is the best way to start getting comfortable leading. You don't need all the answers to lead and be prepared to ask for advice and opinions as you go if it's needed. But you can do it.

[twozerofoxtrot]

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

       -Otto von Bismarck

[Luminara]

Some people are natural leaders.  Some people have been trained to lead.  Most people fall into neither of these categories, and even in an imaginary world, even if it's just selecting a mission, they feel that it's beyond their capabilities.  You can't coax people into accepting a leadership role any more than you can coax them into doing anything else that they don't intuitively understand, or haven't learned.  They have to realize that there's no harm in trying, and no reason not to try, but that realization won't come in a chat window.  It has to come from looking within oneself.

 

Be patient, share your knowledge and encourage those who are interested.  Let the rest be teammates.

[Ukase]

For me, the primary reason I don't lead as often as I might:

I don't want to wait for people to join the team. 


More often than not, I can do it solo faster than I can form the team for it and do it as a team. 
Take something like a Numina. I can solo it in about 30 minutes. Last time I formed a team for it, it took 7 minutes to form, and 26 minutes for us to finish. Why wait? 
Yin TF? 5 minutes to form, 22 minutes to finish as a team, 21 minutes to solo. Why wait? 

Obviously, an MoITF takes a lot longer to solo. Took me about 90 minutes. But nobody died. 

[Veracor]

30 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Some people are natural leaders.  Some people have been trained to lead.  Most people fall into neither of these categories, and even in an imaginary world, even if it's just selecting a mission, they feel that it's beyond their capabilities.  You can't coax people into accepting a leadership role any more than you can coax them into doing anything else that they don't intuitively understand, or haven't learned.  They have to realize that there's no harm in trying, and no reason not to try, but that realization won't come in a chat window.  It has to come from looking within oneself.

 

Be patient, share your knowledge and encourage those who are interested.  Let the rest be teammates.

 

Well said.

 

I lead Hami/iTrial badges/MoTFs on a daily basis to help anyone and everyone who wants to join such content but are afraid or shy about leading.  Whether it be from not knowing how they work or from fear of being on a stage, I'm happy to bring them along or to show them the ropes.  Some people are even afraid of asking to join iTrials in the first place, assuming they need experience to join or that they'll mess it up.  I often assure hesitant requests to join "You'll be fine, you can just follow league instructions, you don't need to say anything in chat if you don't want to."

 

What they don't know is that I used to be someone like that long ago; I was extremely introverted and actively refused to party with anyone in online games unless it was simply necessary to do so.  At the risk of sounding cliché: it's all in the mind.  Anyone can turn their personalities around and become a leader, but it doesn't happen overnight.  It takes commitment to changing oneself in order to internalize it -- to no longer be exhausted by social interactions or to no longer feel self-doubt or anxiety about being judged by strangers.  It involves you actively searching for ways to willfully be out of your comfort zone, to work with people who hold strong differences in opinion, to be open about being wrong about things, and of course a constant vigil against backsliding into who you used to be.  It is totally worth the effort to naturalize these things into a part of yourself, and for me it was an end to a dark time in my life and the beginning of a much better one.

 

I'm well aware many people who join my leagues that don't speak up or say much are not necessarily goofs or afks, but could easily be going through difficult times in their own lives.  I try my best to be helpful and positive, and to keep criticism fair and constructive; I can't tell them who they should be, but maybe some friendliness or encouragement can brighten their day.  If I can help someone help themselves, that's better than just helping them.

[Turric]

On Indomitable, I lead pick-up groups in PI or DA or task forces infrequently. I find leading to be rather easy. As someone else stated, you only have to select missions and scan LFG to fill the group. Most of the content is well known to me, with a few exceptions. My reasons, especially for pickup groups, is that I am looking only for 1 vet level of experience at a time and then I switch to another character. So, I prefer when others lead because I can quickly switch in and out.

[Widower]

I have pruned this thread of its, ah, digressions. Please try to avoid digressing in such a manner again.

[Doc.G]

I can speak for myself obviously, and all I can say is that my problem is "fear of doing it wrong" - I dont' want to ruin other's people game experience. 

Nevertheless I sometimes form mission teams (radio-tips mostly) because I'm a group player, I never solo...I just don't like it. But I often find myself asking probably too many questions such as "is the level ok? should I pick this mission?". Add that I'm not an English native speaker, so that's why I prefer to look in the LFG channel and pst "pick me! pick me!" 😄 

I guess it's also the reason I never hosted a TF or SF, except for DFB (I'm a DFB master eheh).

To be honest, this is probably the best game community I ever experienced, everyone tries to help, always. I joined only one Hami raid so far (as  a tanker) and it's been super fun and friendly. 

I'll try to lead more, I promise!

 

( but I'm always grateful to squad leaders, I never enter the mission before them nor pick up a glowie without asking permission 😄 )

 

[Shred Monkey]

-Forming would distract me from the audio book/podcast I'm listening to, but I can do missions with no problem.

-I'm probably not going to be on more than 10-20 minutes, so I feel like joining a PUG and leaving after a mission or 2 is better than forming and leaving.

 

[Aberrant]

So far since Homecoming launched, outside of maybe asking for 1 person to join to complete a difficult encounter here or there, I think I have been the leader and started an activity twice that I can recall. These were because I desperately wanted to run Dr. Kane's House of Horror so I could document it for the wiki, but it was being run very infrequently on Reunion. I'd tried and failed to join teams in time on several occasions and I was worried I wouldn't get the opportunity before Halloween 2020 ended and I'd have to wait another whole year. Eventually I just bit the bullet and put out the call and luckily it only requires 4 people so it's quite easy to start.

 

For this reason I was never able to run the Lord Winter's Realm trial in 2020, as no-one was advertising it when I was around and getting a League minimum of 12 together was too daunting for me to attempt. Luckily when I run something I intend to document I video record and demo record it so I can review everything later and grab nice screenshots so I usually only need to run it once depending on complexity (Dr. Kane's I had to run twice, as the first time we missed the Black Whip optional boss and a handful of dialogue screens as I hadn't warned the team ahead of time that they disappear if you go too far into the mansion. *Side note* Devs, make the Black Whip at least an Elite Boss, it melted in seconds! 😛). I have still never played Minds of Mayhem or TPN Campus unfortunately, I guess they're unpopular as I don't see them advertised.

 

I wish the LFG system was actually used as it was intended so that PUGs could come together without someone having to take the lead, I imagine it would need to display how many people are currently queuing for an activity for it to be useful in that role. I simply don't have the confidence to lead. I will always give thanks to the server regulars that run weekly Trials and TFs, and am very grateful for the devs changes that have made more content solo-able. If I wasn't updating the wiki it's likely I would never have lead anything at all this whole time, and joined far fewer teams.

 

Edited March 18, 2021 by Aberrant

[Aeroprism]

Never had any issues there. Granted I still dabble in the low/mid levels so, no raid stress or no complex TF pressure so far.  But as far as normal teams go, a CoH leader only has to recruit and select a mission.  You don't really lead anyone on a map.  We just jump from spawn to spawn as a collective bunch.  Everybody knows every map by now, an active leader is not required in normal game content.  

[cranebump]

I led teams pretty often back in the day. I don't do so as much anymore out of pure laziness, more than anything. As an advocate of story-focused stuff, I should probably do my part and form more story arc teams, but it's just not high on the agenda. The fact that I spend a lot of in-game time scripting AE mishes cuts into that, as well.

[Seed22]

If I want something, truly, be it iTrial or team content I lead it. Used to lead iTrials all the time in virtue during the summers, but now I’m more inclined to be patient and wait on others to try and lead. Some people dont ever want to lead, and thats fine too, not really their thing and I get it.

[Seed22]

12 minutes ago, cranebump said:

I led teams pretty often back in the day. I don't do so as much anymore out of pure laziness, more than anything. As an advocate of story-focused stuff, I should probably do my part and form more story arc teams, but it's just not high on the agenda. The fact that I spend a lot of in-game time scripting AE mishes cuts into that, as well.

I couldnt agree more! Had no idea preshutdown how fun AE could REALLY be. So yeah, leading radios and such like I used to and iTrials? Probably not gonna happen very often unless needed

[Sovera]

It's not by posting on a forum that things will change. I lead. I lead all the time. I did my early stint posting a hopeful '<AT> looking for work!' and then wait twenty minutes posting and no one recruiting me.

 

After a week of this I said screw it. I'll lead. Spend twenty minutes asking to be recruited and it not happening or spend 5 minutes forming a team and doing what I wanted to do. The math is obvious.

 

I've done so much leveling via TFs and using the same names (if there if someone with a v2 or v3 in their name there is a good chance it's me having rolled a different alt. I can't be bothered coming up with a new name, theme and costume for alts so I just load the costume and add a v2 to the name. There was a time I was on Sovera v32 😄 ) that people would recognize me and mention how they had joined one of my TFs.

 

 

But though I was not like Veracor with a background of introversion I still had the whole 'I've not played this game for well over ten years and don't really have a clue' and had to go through the phase of asking how to start Posi part 2, or not knowing where to go next on a Numina hunt (until it was compiled and now I just post the hunts after the Perez park mission).

 

 

11 hours ago, Ukase said:

For me, the primary reason I don't lead as often as I might:

I don't want to wait for people to join the team. 


More often than not, I can do it solo faster than I can form the team for it and do it as a team. 
Take something like a Numina. I can solo it in about 30 minutes. Last time I formed a team for it, it took 7 minutes to form, and 26 minutes for us to finish. Why wait? 
Yin TF? 5 minutes to form, 22 minutes to finish as a team, 21 minutes to solo. Why wait? 

Obviously, an MoITF takes a lot longer to solo. Took me about 90 minutes. But nobody died. 

 

Rewards. You're not doing Yin on x8 in 20 minutes. It takes me about 50 minutes at best to solo it because Freaks are a pain between heals and ressurects. If you're just doing it for the merits or for the accolade then hey, sure, but the XP between +1x1 and +1x8 is tremendous.

[Heraclea]

I go absolutely MAD with the POWER of the star, so it isn't a good idea....

[Herotu]

Sometimes I feel like, "Team" means, "madly rush through all the missions ASAP". 

 

It's not like on early live where people had really terrible builds and not much idea - except for one thing, they STILL don't herd very well/at all, for the most part.

 

I remember Freakshow and Crey missions being about the point in a character's progression where everybody seemed to "get it" and start playing together - you know, complimenting each other. Maybe that's because they have decent powers at that point - maybe it was the players getting used to the game. Maybe I mis-remember it. 

[Apparition]

There's really nothing that the game nor other people can do to get more people to lead teams, Incarnate trials, and/or raids.  Only the individual can do that.

 

I'm an introverted loner.  (FWIW, my personality type is INFJ, but I digress.)  I like people, but dealing with people for an extended period of time absolutely exhausts me.  However, I lead teams and even lead Rikti mothership raids.  Why?  Because if I don't, then who will?  Specifically, I much prefer red side to blue side.  You don't exactly see PUG Strike Forces forming up 24/7.  So I form my own.  If I want to do something blue side, same thing.  I'm not going to sit around waiting a few hours for someone else to form up a Penelope Yin TF.  I'll go form one of my own and get it done.

 

Back on the Champion server, the original Rikti mothership raid leader stepped down.  Rikti mothership raids were (and still are) my favorite thing to do in the game.  No one else stepped up to lead back then, so I did.  I absolutely made a fool of myself the first time I lead a Rikti mothership raid.  IIRC, I started calling out the wrong Pylons.  But you know what?  I learned from that and kept going.

 

Now I lead instanced Rikti mothership raids on Excelsior because after doing instanced MSRs, I can no longer stand zone MSRs.  Instanced is just better in every way, IMO.  I can only lead two or three instanced MSRs per week at most though because, as I said above, dealing with people exhausts me.

 

People have to want something bad enough to break out of their shell to form teams.  Nothing external can change that. 

[Herotu]

4 minutes ago, Apparition said:

People have to want something bad enough to break out of their shell to form teams.  Nothing external can change that. 

I agree with the first part but disagree with the second assertion.

 

Players can be encouraged and cajoled into doing many things that they wouldn't do otherwise. 

 

Want players to lead? Invent a new item/currency that is only earnt by leading. 

(mini rant: I thought earning costume parts was a cool concept - I don't know why they got unlocked by default on HC).

Edited March 18, 2021 by Herotu

[Black Zot]

HahahaNO.  The only thing you'll accomplish with that is getting more people to dualbox, and driving others away from the game altogether.

 

You cannot turn an introvert into an extrovert.  End of discussion.

[Ironblade]

4 hours ago, Aberrant said:

I have still never played Minds of Mayhem or TPN Campus unfortunately, I guess they're unpopular as I don't see them advertised.

Since you're on Reunion, I'm guessing you're in Europe somewhere so the times on other servers may not be convenient for you.  Several of the other servers run iTrials every night.  Everlasting, for example, has a posted schedule on the TF channel and will be doing DD and TPN tonight.  Specifically, Master of Lady Grey, DD, then TPN.  Start time is 7:30 EST.

[rookery.]

21 minutes ago, Black Zot said:

HahahaNO.  The only thing you'll accomplish with that is getting more people to dualbox, and driving others away from the game altogether.

 

You cannot turn an introvert into an extrovert.  End of discussion.

 

/e opens discussion back up just a little.

 

well...to me, there seem to be degrees of introversion and extroversion. The extreme cases I would agree they probably are fine if the rest of the world disappeared, ala Henry Bemis from Twilight Zone.

 

The rest though, myself included, can become more extroverted when they feel safe and welcomed. So for me, the scale slides. 

 

I may agree with you that a new item or currency may or may not help...mostly cause yay, ANOTHER currency. I could see badges for leading things...lead 20 tfs or sfs, badge, lead 50, lead 100...lead 5 trials, lead 20 trials, lead 50 trials....that kind of thing. Maybe even an accolade for getting them all.

 

Also, I suspect all the people who dual and triple box are already doing so and this type of change wouldn't be THAT much of an impetus to push them into doing it.  

 

I might be wrong here though, just what it looks like to me.