Worst game session, ever!

[excessionoz]

You know, sometimes it just isn't a good time to play, and today was one of those times.  What memories do you have of bad sessions, here is my tale.

My STG runs a monthly costume contest, create a themed character at the start of the month, play it up to at least5 Level 25 by the end of the month, NO FARMING allowed!.  One of the SG members is encumbered by small childred, and has limited time to play.  Today was her time, and her character was only level 7.  Tomorrow is the deadline for this month;s contest, so she needed to get up there to 25.

We agreed to aid her to L8+ so we can do positron 1 and get a bunch of levels, plus any SG teammates who need the badge.  5 of us join, when I see my good friend from back in Live who has recently returned to the game, putzing around solo on his L50.

"Come join us for posi1"

'no effing way'

"It will bwe fun! wwe are on discord"

'I cant be bothered to hook up a microphone'

"just play"

'do I have to?'

 

Anyway, he joins.  We start posi 1, and he hares off to do it speedily -- whilst we are trying to get our SG friend some xp.  "don't speeed" 'why not?' "need xp."  He speeds anyway.

So we trundle through positron, and he is speeding, and we are slogging, and I'm telling my SG how much of an awesome fellow he normally is.  They are unimpressed.

TF finishes, and friend says 'why do posi 1 at +1 ffs', and i said 'xp!'. 

"Do you want to do posi 2?"

'no'

"Are you sure?"

'oh ok'

 

So we start posi 2, and .., he is afk entire first mission, because he's drunk and watching youtube.

 

But he comes back for rest of tf, meanwhile a pubbie/unknowns spends all of the second mission AFK unannounced, and is unresponsive to /tells for the third mission, so I boot them from the team, which i don't like doing, but they were being useless.

 

Final mission of posi2, final barrel to click, and my friend leaves the fight to position himself next to the vahz boss whilst we're still fightng the group.

 

SG 'why is your friend not with us

me "dunno"

SG 'very irresponsible, not much of a team player'

me "I am not the boss of him, he's normally ace"

 

We finish the TF, and an SG member says I am unimpressed with your friend they are now ignored, and she leaves the team and discord in a huff.  Apparently she had messaged the guy to ask him why he was beintg difficuult, and his response was not polite.  He is australian  (like me) so no surprise from me, but she was peeved.

 

The oreiginal needs-to-get-to-25 person is now level 19.  I do a tip alignment mission to get her to 20, and see another Aussie friend, a good player and friends with the aussie who was just ignored, he's running around solo and I invite him to the alignment mission so we can shoot the sh*t.  he joins but says nothing.  nothing at all.  Hmf.

In discord SG agrees to do Yin tf next.

Mission ends, SG friend is L20 and quits discord to go chat with the fully miffed sg member on her discord, but stays on team to do yin.

 

First and second aussie friends follow us to independence port and I advertise for more players to join us for the yin tf.

 

A person in local says they want to join,.  I try t invite them 'you cannot invite  player because they have ignored you'.  Sheesh.  I ask a team mate to tell them to unignore me and they say they will do the tf later.

 

Go to start the TF with 7 players and yin wpnt talk to me.

 

My dad calls on messenger, so I pass star to sg friend.  Dad's call is unsuccessful after ~ 3 minutes of 'hello'?

 

SG friend invites the player who has me on ignore.

 

But they cannot start the tf -- someone on the team isn't l20.

 

it is my second aussie friend, so I yell at them in chat 'get a real character'.  they ignore me, other aussie chimes in 'yeah get with it'.

 

The person who has me on ignore says 'i see the behaviour i put them on ignore for, I'm out' and leaves the team.

 

SG member passes star back and says  'sort out your friend they are coming back'.  as tghe second aussie quits the team.  I check my global friends list ready to re-invite, and time passes.

 

lots of time

 

SG "your friends seem to be terrible players"

 

I casnt disagree.,  We wait more

 

SG this is taking too long, lets go already

 

... so I star the tf with 6 players.

 

Aussie friend says 'speeding ,,,' sigh.

 

We say 'please dont' since we want the xp

 

The other pubbie quits the tf in disgust, we are down to 5.

 

dad calls again.  cant communicate.  call fails.

 

by this time I am at the end of my tether.  TheTF proceeds and finished, and I log off and write this explanation,

 

worst afternoon of gaming in a long long time.

 

Tell me your tales of woe, so I don't feel alone 🙂

 

excuse typos nerve damaged fingers, tryping is hard.

 

[Snarky]

Sorry you had a rough one.

 

Yesterday was actually one of my best CoH days, probably the best.  And CoH is my favorite game...sooo.  Yep, best day.  Hands down.

 

Why?  Team.  Or should I say SG. 

 

You see I usually just solo and PUG.  I run solo SGs.  I played WoW for 6 months last year, joined an SG.  Could never get Discord to work.  It was like being in a chat channel.  I wasnt a good player, and they were friendly.  Good place for help/advice when things went way south basically.

 

Back to CoH in Oct.  Solo SG.  90% my game since Oct has been on my main Dark/Dark Brute.  Solo SG.  PUG.  Someone asked me to join their SG a couple weeks ago.  I thought...sure, wtf.  I was in in for about 10 days.  3-4 peeps on at a time.  One night no one was on.  Nope.  Not for me, not why I quit solo SG.  I looked at Excelsior message board and found a likely group.  Did a shout in General "Is anyone on from...."  Immediate response "what ya need?"  "SG invite..."  "We got a process"  Sigh, I effing hate processes.  But I booted up Discord enough to find their group and agree to their rules.  SG invite.  Okay, that wasnt too painless.  And I ran with them for a week, semi PUG stuff, whatever they were doing.  Got a few badges.  very active.  This was why I gave up my storage base!

 

Saturday.  Magi Master run.  Need...list of expensive inspirations.  (easy peasy) Rocking 50 (done)  Discord.  "F me"  Okay. I needed those basges.  I am approaching 1100 and while 200+ are just work the last 100-200 are not going to happen by luck.  I plug in the $150 headset I never got to work (literally scrapping dust off it) and I could hear!.  (this is a second comp, older than the main box I tried to Discord wow on...) Okay.  win.  As we get ready I play with the simple setting in Discord.  They can hear me!?!.  Holy crap.

 

We load in.  These folks do the Magi run weekly.  The really hard way badg!, 1 death for me.  gangbusters!  We do Magi trial again for a different badge.  Then two other incarnate trials.  Smooth, fun, and I felt like I mostly brought something to the League.  Even though I was the least experienced at the difficult Trials.  (I pug, soooo lot of BAF and random 50 TFs)

 

More importantly I had fun.  I got to laugh with the SG.  We had a very experienced and calm leader who kept folks updated on what was happening (props, lot of focus through 4 trials) and there was no drama.  Just a few memes and laughter at various game oddities.  Pretty much league text chat except by voice.  And very excellent real time instruction.

 

But being with the SG, and running in that League while just relaxing, chatting, laughing and getting badges?  Yeah, definitely one of my best gaming days in years.  

 

again, really sorry you had a rough one. (and it sounds excruciatingly annoying) There will be good days though.  And one of those days will end up being the best!   Well, unless the best has already happened.  And, um, by random luck all the future days are miserable and bleak.  Yeah, then that probably will not be as uplifting.  

 

Could go either way.  Cheers!

[Doomguide2005]

    Wow, those friends had better hope they are in game not real world friends or they might be getting an earful next time we meet up in the real world.

     Closest I've come in game to that rough a day was when a bit of lag caused me to hit the destructible door once too often in the i-trial with Antimatter in it and blew the badge for the team/league we were shooting for.

   

 

[TemporalVileTerror]

 

In all seriousness, people have bad days.

If you want to address them about it, I'd recommend refining your thoughts on the events of that session over the next few days, and then talk to them about it.  Make sure to review what you have in mind, so that it's clear and easy to follow.  Don't want any communication errors exasperating things further, after all.

 

Granted, playing drunk . . . not a lot you can do there, except drop someone from the team when it becomes apparent they're in such a state, assuming you have the star.

[excessionoz]

I wrote my blog post rant so that I could point my SG at it to explain a few things. 

 

You see, my Aussie friends are awesomely talented players, I mean top shelf gurus of the game, from our time back on live. But the situation was awkward with them not being on discord, and my SG doing things for 'odd' reasons which weren't apparent.  One of the other SG members wrote to the Aussie guy mid TF (Yin) explaining the why and whatever, and my friend took that on board and moderated his desire to speed through and leave the team to deal with the riffraff.  That fixed up my friend's rating with one SG member; however, the other is mightily upset over the positron 2 incident, and will not easily back down from her pedestal of irateness.  Her choice.

 

Generally my Aussie friends only play at UTC+10, which is 15-18 hours ahead of US times.  I play all the time, so during my daytime I play with the American SG and at night I sometimes play with the Aussies, f they are on.  It would be nice (for me) if my American SG would be able to see my friends in their element, but that is generally not going to happen.  And when it did happen, it was a disaster.

 

Some days in CoH are worse than others.  Assuredly having CoH is so much better than not having it. 🙂

 

I did not post to garner sympathy or strategies on how to deal with what happened.  I posted to show/describe to people how things were from my side of the equation and hopefully straighten out some kinks in the friendship chain that have resulted from this botched interaction.

 

[TheOtherTed]

I know you're not looking for advice, OP, but I'm posting this as a general thing to anyone reading this.

6 hours ago, excessionoz said:

"Come join us for posi1"

'no effing way'

The story should have ended here.

 

6 hours ago, excessionoz said:

"It will bwe fun! wwe are on discord"

'I cant be bothered to hook up a microphone'

Or, at the very most, here.

 

Trying to cajole people into doing something they clearly don't want to do generally will not end well, especially when they know what they're in for.  If they sign on in spite of themselves, expect passive-aggressive behavior, either because they're trying to make a point, or because they're amusing themselves at your expense, or both.

[TheOtherTed]

Anyway, figured I should answer the OP's request and share my worst tale.

 

Back on Live, it took me a while to team, mainly due to lack of confidence.  I made a character devoted to teaming - a Kin/Arch defender - with Big Plans to be the best gosh-darn defender out there.  Got to The Hollows and put up my shingle with "Kin/Arch Offender" in the description.  I was almost immediately picked up by a team of 3 (IIRC, a blaster, a tanker, and a scrapper, with the blaster leading the team).  We immediately fought a small-ish spawn (3 outcasts, I think), when I got yellow flag number one - the tanker said, "well I guess we're ok LOL."  I throw out a single question mark but get no response.

 

We go looking for another spawn, and suddenly I notice the scrapper is off to the side fighting a lone mob that cons red to me.  I move in to support as best as I can, but my transfusion keeps missing.  Oddly, my siphon power and my arrows hit just fine, so, you know, yay Offender!

 

Suddenly I notice the blaster and tanker's health bars dip - and I realize I have no idea where they are.  Just as suddenly, the scrapper leaves the team.  I run to the top of the nearest hill to  find the other two, only to watch them both drop in the middle of a very large spawn.  I type question marks into chat, and the tanker replies "the heals were somewhat... lacking LOL."  The blaster says some other things that I probably shouldn't say here, but it boiled down to me being at fault for not healing them both.  Flummoxed, I lamely answer "But my description says Offender."

 

Long story short, the blaster and I exchange words, I quit the team, we exchange more words, I suggest in no kind terms that he put me on ignore, and I promptly put him on ignore.

 

So ended my first teaming experience in this game.  I nearly deleted my character as well right then and there - the only reason I didn't was because I didn't want to give the blaster the satisfaction.  Good thing, too, as I ran that character for another 5-6 years, with consistently better team experiences.  Only saw that blaster once after that, while I was playing another character.

 

...of course, now I'll never run a Kinetics def, troller, or corr if my life depends on it, but that has more to do with "SB plz" than anything else...

 

 

Edited March 21, 2021 by TheOtherTed
Need to know basis

[Andreah]

2 minutes ago, TheOtherTed said:

...of course, now I'll never run a Kinetics def, troller, or corr if my life depends on it, but that has more to do with "SB plz" than anything else...

That's sad. I've run several kin/ defenders on HC, some very offensive in their style, and I've had great team experiences with them. It goes to show how a bad initial experience can color things in a bad way for a long time.

[Hew]

Random people on teams arent riffraff.

 

2 hours ago, excessionoz said:

One of the other SG members wrote to the Aussie guy mid TF (Yin) explaining the why and whatever, and my friend took that on board and moderated his desire to speed through and leave the team to deal with the riffraff. 

 

[TheOtherTed]

1 hour ago, Andreah said:

That's sad. I've run several kin/ defenders on HC, some very offensive in their style, and I've had great team experiences with them. It goes to show how a bad initial experience can color things in a bad way for a long time.

I appreciate the comment, but that first team experience was quickly made irrelevant on my next team, and pretty much every team thereafter.  It really was six straight years of "SB plz" that eventually drove me nuts.

 

Granted this was all before Null the Gull and before SB was made AoE, but if there's any one thing that can "trigger" me, as the kids say, it's that one dreaded phrase.

[Shred Monkey]

1 hour ago, TheOtherTed said:

replies "the heals were somewhat... lacking LOL."

Don't worry... with an attitude like that, they've long since quit the game because it's too hard for them, and you're still here.

[excessionoz]

59 minutes ago, Hew said:

Random people on teams arent riffraff.

 

 

 

You misunderstand -- I was referring to the remainder of the spawn around the last barrel/glowy, those riffraff. 

[excessionoz]

2 hours ago, TheOtherTed said:

The story should have ended here.

Ah.

 

The player in question is a veteran, who recently returned to the game.  We have a long history of prodding and poking each other, so his comment of 'no effine way' was to be taken with a grain of salt, he was just acknowledging my existence.  His first comment upon joining the team was 'you realise <leader> (me) is going to die, a lot?'

 

Our relationship over many years is hidden from your world-view, and that is understandable, but a grave error if you think he was 'serious' in his dismissive attitude to the question.

 

And the discord thing -- well, discord isn't really his scene, or the other Australian, they don't have the luxury if being able to talk out loud during the evenings, due to other people in the house ... our history never included voice-chat, so there was no real surprise there. 

 

Your point about forcing people to do execrable TFs is well made, and needs to be drummed into people -- if they don't want to ever do Synapse, it isn't your place to -force- them to go through the pain.  I refuse to do underground and tpn i-terials (unless invited and lb3k is running the show), so an aversion to certain content is completely understandable.  My two Aussie friends and i would trio original positron back in 2010 or so, and we were pleased to get it done in 3 hours.  There is no way he is 'positron averse'. (These days flashback positron takes me 90 minutes on a full team, but its so much easier with TT and ATT spread across many players.)

 

Just clarifying, not neenerism.

[EnnVee]

4 hours ago, excessionoz said:

 

 

however, the other is mightily upset over the positron 2 incident, and will not easily back down from her pedestal of irateness.  Her choice.

 

 

 

I am the above mentioned - on the pedestal of irateness ....... lol I am actually well over the situation. LOVE LOVE LOVE @excessionoz and no matter how his friends, outside of our group, act or play, I will never stop loving the group Im in !! Im blessed to be a part of it, glad to know these people, and can't imagine life without them around !

[joebartender1979]

2 hours ago, TheOtherTed said:

Back on Live, it took me a while to team, mainly due to lack of confidence.

 

This is me to a T except you can replace "a while" with "three years" and "lack of confidence" with "crippling fear of letting others down". Finally one day I work up to put out in LFG chat "level 33 brute LFT" I get an invite quick enough. I make my way to the mission, zone in, see the group start moving ahead, so I dive in and start fighting.

 

After about 30 seconds I get a tell from the team leader "help or get the boot". I'm totally confused, because I'm with all 7 other team members and I'm smashing things gleefully. I send back that I have no clue what he's talking about, I'm doing my part. About another 30 seconds "last warning, no door sitters leaching XP on this team, join the group or you're out". I'm franticly sending back that I don't know what he's talking about, I'm being a good teammate and boom I'm booted from the mission.

 

I'm just stunned in real life at this point. I finally worked up to doing something that terrified me and it went as terribly as it could have went and I had no idea why.  

 

Through asking on the forums over the next couple of days I was able to find out that there was a bug that would let you get out of synch with your team upon zone in. You would see yourself with the group fighting like normal and to everyone else, you'd appear like you were standing at the door not helping. I tracked down the leader in game and sent him a tell with the URL to the bug reports and they apologized and I told them I totally understand why they'd want to kick someone that just stood at the door not helping. 

[excessionoz]

Ennvee, you left discord so quickly, I had no time to ascertain particulars before you were gone. 

 

I was very peeved that the 'meeting' between my old server friends and my new ones went so badly.  My judgment over how you guys reacted is probably skewed, because of my fondness for my long time friends as well as the SG regulars I currently team with each day.  It hurt me that my friends were  less than perfect (ie asshats) this time -- which is quite a claim, since *I* am the one who is always exhibiting objectionable behaviour when I team with them.

 

Glad you ain't too scarred by the encounter.

 

[VV]

10 hours ago, excessionoz said:

"Come join us for posi1"

'no effing way'

"It will bwe fun! wwe are on discord"

'I cant be bothered to hook up a microphone'

"just play"

'do I have to?'

Holy cow.

Listen, I don't mean to be mean, but you really caused all the problems yourself by not listening to your friend. He clearly stated his answer. My advice is, next time, respect that and your life will be much better.

 

10 hours ago, excessionoz said:

"Do you want to do posi 2?"

'no'

"Are you sure?"

'oh ok'

I mean...

 

10 hours ago, excessionoz said:

Apparently she had messaged the guy to ask him why he was beintg difficuult, and his response was not polite.  He is australian  (like me) so no surprise from me, but she was peeved.

Also, if you know your friend is a d!ck, do not invite him to mingle with your nice friends. I have plenty of d!ck friends, nothing wrong with that, but I don't bring them into anything with nice friends unless they are also friends with them.

 

1 hour ago, excessionoz said:

The player in question is a veteran, who recently returned to the game.  We have a long history of prodding and poking each other, so his comment of 'no effine way' was to be taken with a grain of salt, he was just acknowledging my existence.  His first comment upon joining the team was 'you realise <leader> (me) is going to die, a lot?'

Ah, I see you have already addressed the above, but I still stand by my assessment. 

 

As far as my story of bad nights, I say the above from experience. There have been many and most of my bad gaming nights involved a similar story to yours. I was foolish enough to mix incompatible friends. Or, sometimes I have been the incompatible friend who joined something I did not really want to do. But, now I am old. I installed my "do not mix" policy many years ago, and my gaming experience has been much better since then.

 

Yours is also a good cautionary tale for people to carefully advertise their runs. I have noticed that more and more people are getting better it this in game, which is cool. Speed runs, casual, steamroll, RP, etc, etc.

 

Honestly, it has been so long since I had a bad gaming night, I can't even remember a good story. Probably on CO doing that ridiculous final boss run (can't even remember the name) with too many people who did not bring enough DPS. I mean, I don't mind helping to carry a few people, but when half the league is underbuilt and under-equipped, it gets to be less fun. Everybody knows it is a run only for your A-List builds, but yet people kept bringing underwhelming builds. 

 

6 hours ago, Snarky said:

Sigh, I effing hate processes.

OMG I love SG-joining processes. 1) It generally means the SG is organized and active, and 2) it really saves on later problems.

 

6 hours ago, Snarky said:

But being with the SG, and running in that League while just relaxing, chatting, laughing and getting badges?  Yeah, definitely one of my best gaming days in years.  

Being in a great SG really is the best!

 

1 hour ago, joebartender1979 said:

Through asking on the forums over the next couple of days I was able to find out that there was a bug that would let you get out of synch with your team upon zone in. You would see yourself with the group fighting like normal and to everyone else, you'd appear like you were standing at the door not helping. I tracked down the leader in game and sent him a tell with the URL to the bug reports and they apologized and I told them I totally understand why they'd want to kick someone that just stood at the door not helping. 

Ugh! I remember that bug! Caused many a group much consternation.

[excessionoz]

6 hours ago, VV said:

Listen, I don't mean to be mean, but you really caused all the problems yourself by not listening to your friend. He clearly

 

Without stereotyping -too- much, there is a vast difference between Australian interaction with others and  American interaction with others.  Generally speaking, Aussies are rough and forthright, needling and prodding, just to raise hackles for a laugh.  Whereas Americans, in general, are polite with strangers, to what I consider to be an excessive degree, always ready to defend strangers against accusations of incompetence:

 

"they might be having internet issues"

"maybe they are indisposed"
"perhaps they are busy on the phone at the moment?"

"don't you think maybe their dog got run over?" (<-- this is an SG joke, sorry)

 

Offering explanations for others actions to avoid 'accusing' people of wrongdoing (or plain incompetence) seems to be the American norm, and it just isn't that way here in Australia, in general interaction with others, especially amongst people you know.

 

This is all very meta, and I guess if you have no experience with other cultures, this kind of adversarial ribbing/taunting would seem ill mannered ... I am trying to get across that the perception of black/white delineation of intent in exchanges can be very very different depending upon just who s talking to whom. 🙂

 

The SG I roll with accepts my attitudinal differences without batting an eyelid these days.  But initially, i was deemed an odd duck indeed.  The other ducks over on this side of the pacific pond are much the same as I. 🙂

 

Quack!

 

[TemporalVileTerror]

Ironic, considering the general Canadian perspective on each of your cultures and perceived rudeness.

Then again, the individual states tend to have VERY different cultural norms.  What's even considered "polite" can be demonstrably different in the north, south, centre, east, and west.

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, excessionoz said:

 

Without stereotyping -too- much, there is a vast difference between Australian interaction with others and  American interaction with others.  Generally speaking, Aussies are rough and forthright, needling and prodding, just to raise hackles for a laugh.  Whereas Americans, in general, are polite with strangers, to what I consider to be an excessive degree, always ready to defend strangers against accusations of incompetence:

 

"they might be having internet issues"

"maybe they are indisposed"
"perhaps they are busy on the phone at the moment?"

"don't you think maybe their dog got run over?" (<-- this is an SG joke, sorry)

 

Offering explanations for others actions to avoid 'accusing' people of wrongdoing (or plain incompetence) seems to be the American norm, and it just isn't that way here in Australia, in general interaction with others, especially amongst people you know.

 

This is all very meta, and I guess if you have no experience with other cultures, this kind of adversarial ribbing/taunting would seem ill mannered ... I am trying to get across that the perception of black/white delineation of intent in exchanges can be very very different depending upon just who s talking to whom. 🙂

 

The SG I roll with accepts my attitudinal differences without batting an eyelid these days.  But initially, i was deemed an odd duck indeed.  The other ducks over on this side of the pacific pond are much the same as I. 🙂

 

Quack!

 

I should have been born an Australian. This is a comedy bit in the making, the things we Americans won't say because we're concerned about being labeled this or that. 

[Nemu]

Just like in real life you have different circles of friends. I imagine you'd want to hang with these "top shelf" players for speed apex/tin whatever because they are efficient, but leave them out of your social gatherings.

 

Real "top shelf" players can carry the team and pay attention to team chat/dynamics and adjust accordingly. Any idiot with a copied build can speed. Bragging about that shit is like bragging that you brush your teeth.

[DougGraves]

My worst days in CoH are not bad teams.  They are days when I can't find a team and I waste my time waiting for a team instead of soloing.

[excessionoz]

3 hours ago, Nemu said:

Real "top shelf" players can carry the team and pay attention to team chat/dynamics and adjust accordingly. Any idiot with a copied build can speed. Bragging about that shit is like bragging that you brush your teeth.

Don't disagree. 

 

The circumstances were just too fraught at that particular juncture. 

 

A series of unfortunate events.

[Snarky]

7 hours ago, Ukase said:

I should have been born an Australian. This is a comedy bit in the making, the things we Americans won't say because we're concerned about being labeled this or that. 

I am an American.  I will say it.  Not to raise hackles for a laugh (although that can be a nice bit of whipped cream on top)  I say it....because it is the TRUTH.  Over the last few years I have actually modified HOW I say it, and placed some consideration on WHY the person is doing what I feel needs to be pointed out.  Yet, in the end, I will be pointing it out.  Basically no one gets to do whatever they want due to the fact no one should mention they are violating social rules, are ignorant of what is supposed to happen, or are doing something stupid.

 

If I offend, that is not the primary purpose.  Heck, I'm pretty lazy.  I really did not want to have to mention it.  But I will.

 

If it is amusing, that is not the primary purpose. In fact it can complicate the resolution.

 

I will speak the truth to the abusive, the ignorant, the stupid.  I only have so much time left on the planet and I generally plan to put up with as little crap as possible for the remainder of my days.

[cranebump]

No one's heritage is an excuse for a lack of manners. Nor is being on the other end of life's timeline (I'm 58, if that makes s difference).  If anything, the more, ahem, "seasoned" among us should probably be trying to set a good example?