Is there such a thing as societal norms in CoH?

[Ukase]

Just like the old NCSoft CoH, the HC CoH has a diverse population. Folks from Europe, Australia, Canada, US and who knows where else folks may be from. 

It stands to reason that there will be a lot of differing expectations when teaming together. 
Obviously, we're never going to like everyone we encounter in game. Some folks can make it really easy to dislike them, while others, for whatever reason, are a lot easier to like. 

I am probably more in the former category, as I tend to speak my mind, without a filter. Sometimes, I'm wrong. But, from where I sit, I don't think so, or I wouldn't express myself in whatever way I felt the occasion warranted. 

This morning, I realized it was Sunday - last day to get that weekly in before it changed. Now, I can solo a moonfire with rad/dark defender, I suppose. But, the character hadn't done market crash, so I got a spot on one of those. The leader was an affable sort. Polite, and clear on what they wanted. I don't relish a kill all usually, although sometimes, I'm in a mood for one. Today, I just wanted the purple, and well the notice of the well would be a bonus. 

As I entered the first mission, I see that our team of 1 tank, 2 blasters, 2 defenders and 2 controllers and 1 dom are facing +4's. This is really not a big deal, but it just means instead of taking 10 minutes for a speedy run, it's going to take 40 minutes because of the low dps. (More on that in a bit). 

When I play a debuffer, with a weak heal and a decent buff, I try to cast these powers where I think they'll do the most good. Most of you wouldn't be too surprised if I told you one of the blasters died a few times. Still, when we have all these holds and debuffs, nobody should really be taking much damage, at least, not until we face an av. And nobody was. Except this blaster. 

I finally realize that he's level 34. Not vet level 34, I checked. So, big deal, right? I check for powersets while I'm in the blasters info tab, and no powersets - which means they're using SOs - which is fine. Or, they're unslotted. Or, I suppose, it's possible they're using common IOs. No way to know without looking under the hood. 

My issue is with this player joining a level 40 minimum tf --  fighting at +5 for this player in question. I think it's fine, if you're level 40 and trained up. They clearly were not. I didn't make a big deal out of this, I just brought it to the leaders attention via tell. They said, "So what? Who cares?" 

I said I did. I find this to be either ignorant or selfish. I'm really not okay with either one from a teammate. I mean, they can't be totally ignorant. They knew how to get to Kallisti. They obviously knew how to train, or they wouldn't have gotten to 34. That leaves selfish. As if they are entitled to be carried about in the game without hustling for resources like everyone else does. Some of you know me as having a lot of inf. This is true. The only reason I worked to get all this inf is so I'm not "That guy" that leeches off the backs of others. It's just a game, but this is like going to a bar and letting all your friends buy you a round, but you never buy them one. 

Obviously, it's not my place to tell someone how to play, but is it okay to do this? I think in this case, it's not okay. We spend a horrid 40 minutes in this tf, and I'm grateful it wasn't more - but even a kill all Market Crash shouldn't take more than 30 minutes. But, our team had weak dps and half of the higher scaled dps we did have (the aforementioned blaster) was defeated and useless more often than not, aside from a lot of Vengeance. 

I feel bad for the leader, a little bit. But only a little. They should have checked that idiot from the start and refused them an invite. 

PUGs. Ain't they great? 

I already know some of you are "who cares" and some of you are "Dude, I'd have quit right then" or something along those lines. 

But is there a proper way to team up for a task force? Did this player violate unwritten societal norms, or am I just expecting too much? It's not hypocritical - I expect as much or more from myself to be kitted out as best as I can be with the resources I have. I just would never be okay with 7 strangers carrying me. Friends - that might be a different story - but on a PUG of unknowns? 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

13 minutes ago, Ukase said:

or am I just expecting too much?

 

I'm gonna go with this. It's a game. If you don't want to deal with the random, don't PUG.

[klulka1]

How would the TF have even started? Market Crash is 40+, right? So the lvl 34 blaster would have had to leave or if they needed to lvl up to 40 then lvl up.

[GM Impervium]

While it's not your (or anyone else's) responsibility to police the build choices of others, I wonder if in this case, it might have been beneficial to reach out to the player in question? "Hey, I see you're dying a lot and not able to keep up. Is everything okay?" Based on your description, I would go so far as to say their powers weren't even enhanced at all. Though this would be putting yourself out there, and not everyone always has the time or patience to walk someone through building their character. At the very least, you could point them to a few guides or the Help channel or something.

It's hard to distinguish malice from ignorance, especially online. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I would hope (but know it's too much to expect) others to, as well. That's the kind of culture we'd like to cultivate 😃
 

[Bastille Boy]

I've talked with several people in the past couple of weeks who only recently found out about Homecoming. I think all of them played on live, but that was a long time ago! One of them had only played for the first few years the game was online.

 

When giving advice, it's good to remember that you might be talking with someone who's new to the game or someone who last played the game when Pluto was still considered a planet. There are no norms about how to play the game well that you can expect everyone in a pickup group to know.

 

It's also good to remember that people have different ideas about what counts as playing the game well. I doubt that's the issue here. It sounds as if this person needed some advice.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

 Most of you wouldn't be too surprised if I told you one of the blasters died a few times. Still, when we have all these holds and debuffs, nobody should really be taking much damage, at least, not until we face an av. And nobody was. Except this blaster. 

I finally realize that he's level 34. Not vet level 34, I checked. So, big deal, right? I check for powersets while I'm in the blasters info tab, and no powersets - which means they're using SOs - which is fine. Or, they're unslotted. Or, I suppose, it's possible they're using common IOs. No way to know without looking under the hood. 

My issue is with this player joining a level 40 minimum tf --  fighting at +5 for this player in question. I think it's fine, if you're level 40 and trained up. They clearly were not. I didn't make a big deal out of this, I just brought it to the leaders attention via tell. They said, "So what? Who cares?" 

 

Something is not right.  Either you misread, misremembered, or the old game suffered a more wacky glitch than I have ever seen.  You could not have been on a Market Crash with a level 34 teammate.  Seriously, pics or it did not happen moment.

[Ukase]

30 minutes ago, GM Impervium said:

While it's not your (or anyone else's) responsibility to police the build choices of others, I wonder if in this case, it might have been beneficial to reach out to the player in question? "Hey, I see you're dying a lot and not able to keep up. Is everything okay?" Based on your description, I would go so far as to say their powers weren't even enhanced at all. Though this would be putting yourself out there, and not everyone always has the time or patience to walk someone through building their character. At the very least, you could point them to a few guides or the Help channel or something.

It's hard to distinguish malice from ignorance, especially online. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I would hope (but know it's too much to expect) others to, as well. That's the kind of culture we'd like to cultivate 😃
 

I would've liked the time to do that - but there are still 6 other players to consider. Over discord, not a problem, but over team chat - each letter you're typing is a power that could have been activated. It would have taken us from 7/8 strength to 3/4. essentially. 

[Ukase]

3 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Something is not right.  Either you misread, misremembered, or the old game suffered a more wacky glitch than I have ever seen.  You could not have been on a Market Crash with a level 34 teammate.  Seriously, pics or it did not happen moment.

The team lead stated in team chat that the blaster in question wasn't trained up. That's the only way it could have happened outside of a glitch. 

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I'm gonna go with this. It's a game. If you don't want to deal with the random, don't PUG.

Fair point. I knew better, too! 

[The Larker]

Yeah, I'm too much of a bastard to PuG, I'm judgemental as hell and if I don't know you and we haven't teamed before then it ain't happening. 

 

Listen buddy, do what I did get yourself a good group of friends and team with them...exclusively. 

Pugs suck and so do people. 

[Normal Thomas]

I definitely notice a lot of PuG players are quiet and go with the flow types, even if the situation does get out of hand.

[TheZag]

Except you need to pug to find those friends and if they dont pug outside their friend circle then there is only a small chance for the 2 to meet.

 

[MoonSheep]

i suppose the answer is to build teams yourself to manage expectations. if i’m recruiting for a speed run i note on LFG that it’s 50+ / no MM’s (if someone is 40+ and pretty much fully slotted i’ll make an exception) 

 

some people are online for casual play, some are online for power play

[Snarky]

20 minutes ago, Ukase said:

The team lead stated in team chat that the blaster in question wasn't trained up. That's the only way it could have happened outside of a glitch. 

So even if enhanced (with anything besides attuned and I believe no set bonuses was mentioned) then the 34 (or 40 w/e) Blaster had NO enhancement because they would have outleveled them. Fighting 50+ enemies.  Yeah.  That spot was vacant as far as team help was concerned.  No damage and just eating up peoples time by distracting anyone who tried to buff or pull agro from them.  Worse than a waste of space.  A detriment.  Sit by the door.  Easier to be carried that way

[MoonSheep]

8 minutes ago, Snarky said:

So even if enhanced (with anything besides attuned and I believe no set bonuses was mentioned) then the 34 (or 40 w/e) Blaster had NO enhancement because they would have outleveled them. Fighting 50+ enemies.  Yeah.  That spot was vacant as far as team help was concerned.  No damage and just eating up peoples time by distracting anyone who tried to buff or pull agro from them.  Worse than a waste of space.  A detriment.  Sit by the door.  Easier to be carried that way

 

valuable veng bait if you ask me! 

 

[TrelNargil]

58 minutes ago, GM Impervium said:

While it's not your (or anyone else's) responsibility to police the build choices of others, I wonder if in this case, it might have been beneficial to reach out to the player in question? "Hey, I see you're dying a lot and not able to keep up. Is everything okay?" Based on your description, I would go so far as to say their powers weren't even enhanced at all. Though this would be putting yourself out there, and not everyone always has the time or patience to walk someone through building their character. At the very least, you could point them to a few guides or the Help channel or something.

It's hard to distinguish malice from ignorance, especially online. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and I would hope (but know it's too much to expect) others to, as well. That's the kind of culture we'd like to cultivate 😃
 

 

   Very sound advice I would say imo. I personally have never done that TF as of yet, but having just checked myself, there is no way a level 34 character (blaster or otherwise) could have been on that TF, so Snarky is correct in this matter. So what happened then? Not sure, but as far as I play, if I see someone calling for a TF or even just a general mission with a specific level request, then I myself wouldn't even think about joining said mission/TF unless I was at least that lvl. Are you right in feeling that something was up and this was "wrong" here? Sure, absolutely. Could this blaster been at the right lvl, and IO'd out with sets too? Yeah, maybe (though not everyone does until lvl 50 I might add). However, please also try and remember and consider this...

   This game should and would never exist again if not for these great GM's giving it to us (and the code being released), for free no less. Too often I hear people complain (justifiably or not) that this mission took to long, or that TF took too long, or some such thing. Back during live, well before "official" speed run's on anything, people just played the game for fun's sake first, and prayed someone on the team did not die like a dozen times lol. But it happened, and when it did, generally we moved on and just continued playing. Anyone remember the good old days of the Positron TF by chance? 🙂 

   It's this mentality of "everything must be done as FAST as possible, no matter the goal, or we are screwed" attitude that has changed the way some people play, and perceive how the game should be played. 10 minutes compared to 40 to finish a TF? As someone who played during live, I am like "so what"? Ever done a TF in the shard before during live? That one could be both very long, time consuming, and painful. But if we had fun doing it, it mattered little. Yes, some people have only a little time to play the game sometimes, and doing a 2hr TF (like in the old days), would kill some folks, but that is just life ya know?

   What the issue is, is a lvl 34 blaster joining a lvl 40 minimum TF somehow, not that they were all tricked out with the best stuff around, or that the TF took longer to finish because of the "speed mentality"; at least in my opinion. Heck back in the old days, some of us would start having fun with the constant dying of the blaster, make fun of him/her, get him/her to laugh about it too, try and educate them how not to die so often (if possible), and even tea bag him as some mean folks would do cause they thought it was funny. PUG's always run the risk of being messed up in some ways, but again, that's life and gaming life in general.

   I feel and understand where you are coming from, but at the end of the day, just try and have fun, roll with the punches so to speak, help out when you can (even if it takes a moment out of your game/fighting time to just ask some questions as GM Impervium suggested, and remember... your playing a game that shouldn't even exist, so always be happy for the "food" on your table, because it could always be worse. 🙂 Enjoy whatever life & game life throws at you, and try and maybe even do as the some people who know far better then me do... Improvise, Adapt, overcome...

   And try to just have fun... 🙂 

 

Peace...

[Apparition]

1 hour ago, TheZag said:

Except you need to pug to find those friends and if they dont pug outside their friend circle then there is only a small chance for the 2 to meet.

 

 

 

Exactly.  I came to Homecoming with about 40 friends and associates... all but a small handful stopped playing completely by mid-last year, so I had to start PUGing again.  Even eventually switched shards and made new friends. 

[Greycat]

Personally, I'd love to completely block powerset/bonus listings. I don't need anyone feeling judgemental because I do or don't have something. Nobody else's damn business, as far as I'm concerned.

[Apparition]

2 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Personally, I'd love to completely block powerset/bonus listings. I don't need anyone feeling judgemental because I do or don't have something. Nobody else's damn business, as far as I'm concerned.

 

 

No, you need to know that information ahead of time to plan.  If you're doing a +3 speed run MLTF, and the PUG Tanker only has three IO enhancement sets in his or her build, expect for the Tanker and you to die a lot without sufficient support to back that Tanker up... it's happened to me twice in the past three weeks.  Both Tankers, coincidentally.  Bad times.  

[Shred Monkey]

I try to avoid being that guy who sidekicks up to a +4 TF.  It doesn't matter how strong your build is, fighting +5 is slow and extremely ineffective.  You WILL be getting carried by your team.

 

Instead, I try to be the guy who makes everything faster.  I play almost only pick up TFs, and usually prefer to avoid speed runs, so I see teams like th OP described a lot.  However, instead of noticing my teammates' incompetence, I focus on contributing as much as I possibly can.  I critique my own play, looking for improvement.  I never look for teammate deficencies.  If people ask for help or advice, I will give it, but generally I don't go beyond looking to see who's leading the way, and if it is nobody, the I do it.

[TheOtherTed]

Please forgive me, but this is the first thing that popped into my brain when I read the OP:

 

 

On a slightly more serious note, we always have options.  We can quit a team for whatever reason, we can join another team who seem like a safer bet, or we can start our own teams with whatever criteria we want.  The flipside is that if we don't use those options and have a miserable time, well, that's on us.

 

Personally it almost never bothered me if someone on a team was "sub-optimal" in some way, so long as they were in the fight.  If I saw that someone was having trouble, my usual response was to try to cover that player's backside in some way or other.  Very rarely would I call them out, either directly or indirectly.  In fact, someone would have to be clearly and deliberately trolling the team before I'd say or do anything - and I honestly can't think of a case where that actually happened.

 

Except on my Kin defender.  I was always angry when playing my Kin defender.

[cranebump]

On the whole, doesn't seem like it's really worth an argument.  Run 'til completion, then hop off. Beyond that, I'm in the camp of, if you don't want to gamble with PuGs, don't join them. Sucks if you get on one that has an issue, but there's a difference between my own issues and others. Since I never start any groups myself these days, I just hop along for the ride. My only real issue is when we have someone who makes the experience socially unpleasant. Had this happen a couple times lately with a leader who wanted a very specific playstyle and was militant about it, to the point of repeating the same instructions like a drill sergeant, each and every time we went to a mish (and these were contact mishes, not TFs). Stuck with it for a bit, then politely sent my merry way. I'm not going to change their behavior, after all. And there are plenty of other groups forming if you run on Excel. 

 

P.S. Ran into the same group leader running a different toon. Didn't realize until mish started. Got off that one quick, too. Wasn't just playstyle. It was Ethos, as in "everyone else plays the game the wrong way but me." (sigh...Life's too short, and this is a silly video game, sez I).

Edited June 6, 2022 by cranebump

[Greldek]

If the team is struggling it's time to drop the difficulty. Too many pug leaders think everything must be run at +4 no matter what.

[Agorazium]

I joined a PI team led by an MM who kept all his pets on passive and did absolutely nothing, forcing me (a controller) to open every fight and die immediately because no one else was equipped to do it. If it had been me on the MM I would have thought that bodyguard-tanking and/or lowering the difficulty would have been better options. I left after one mission because it was so frustrating and noticed a couple of my teammates did too.

 

That said, that was my first bad experience in a PUG in a LONG time. This game is so easy that even one person with a kitted-out build can carry the rest of the team. I generally lead my own teams and am happy to bring 7 lowbies along for the ride. I just don't think this is a problem. We've all joined teams we were not really contributing to at one point or another. IMO and IME, if you have demands about your team composition/playstyle/builds/what have you then you need to be the one leading (i.e. if I am running harder content I will ask that only characters of a certain level ask me for invite, but if it's not my team then it's not my place to complain unless someone is afk or something).

[Apparition]

28 minutes ago, Greldek said:

If the team is struggling it's time to drop the difficulty. Too many pug leaders think everything must be run at +4 no matter what.

 

Then you run across the PUGs who demand that the leader set the mission/TF/SF at +4 because they're used to being carried and think that if there's one or two level 50 characters on the team (even if they're both Controllers), then it should be no problem, and get upset and leave if you don't set it at +4.  I've had that happen quite a few times, especially on ITFs.