Thoughts on how to encourage players to form task/strike forces

[KaizenSoze]

I have seen some comments about players being nervous to create task forces. Because, they don't know a particular task or strike force well enough.

 

I had a thought, maybe we could create a list of text macros that players could use for each mission in a TF. Something that would provide direction for that mission if needed.

 

Examples for SIlver Mantis:

"We just need to click the six glowies and defeat the two named boss spawns"

"Once, Duray appears I will step back into the ship and fire Assemble the Team. So, we can fight him inside the ship, for an easier fight. Please, accept the ATT when it appears."

 

Then we can create a guide for each TF/SF.

[ScrewlooseCohh]

I appreciate your positive attitude, but there are plenty of guides for almost everything.

 

People who want to find out will find out.

 

There are a bunch of hurdles that players could be helped to learn to get over, starting with how to join a team and how to lead a team.

 

Some sort of training program for people who want to improve their play and feel comfortable taking a stringer lead would be interesting and good for the game, but would take a bit of organising and effort.

 

regards, Screwloose.

"I am not young enough to know everything."

 

[KaizenSoze]

21 minutes ago, ScrewlooseCohh said:

I appreciate your positive attitude, but there are plenty of guides for almost everything.

 

People who want to find out will find out.

 

There are a bunch of hurdles that players could be helped to learn to get over, starting with how to join a team and how to lead a team.

 

Some sort of training program for people who want to improve their play and feel comfortable taking a stringer lead would be interesting and good for the game, but would take a bit of organising and effort.

 

regards, Screwloose.

"I am not young enough to know everything."

 

If you look the guide forum, there isn't a guide for SIlver Mantis.

 

At best there is the HC wiki page, but that not something you can cut and paste into a team chat easily.

 

Also, the macros could contain nice tricks like pulling Duray back into the ship.

 

Another example:

Lady Gray's TF.

"Kill the pylons, but leave the RIkti. They distract the mitos."
Then the description for each mito weakness.

 

Maybe, I should make a teaming 101 tutorial video guide.

[ScrewlooseCohh]

I agree resources can always be improved.

I have seen Trial Leaders use macro'ed info snippets to keep the group informed about what was happening.

There is definitely a gap where some players do TFs and Trials that they know but are hesitant to do ones they don't.

And one part of that is because in almost all cases leaders don't tell you whats happening.

If you could advertise a "First timer's run with Explanations" then you might get some takers and then your in mission tips would be worthwhile.

[Ukase]

12 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

Maybe, I should make a teaming 101 tutorial video guide.

I like the idea. But, the biggest issue will be that only a fraction of the players visit the forums. You can lead them here with a URL in the help chat, but will they actually take the time? I think most folks won't. It's just easier for many folks to wait for someone else to do it. 

I still think you should do it. 
But here's what I would consider the dilemma: 
You have a new team lead, and perhaps you've taught him via video how to make a pop menu, how to edit it, if needed. And, let's say the player actually places the pop menu in the right directory and shuts down the game, reloads it, and has it at the ready. 
Will they know when to give the instruction? Some will pick up on it, I'd hope, but others might not. 

I know the underground trial as well as anyone, except those who know how to pigg dive, and I still have to scroll through my pop menu to be sure I'm giving the right instruction at the right time. 

In other words, yes, better for them to have the tools, but I just hope they'll know when to use them. But I don't think it would hurt to have something like that available. 

[KaizenSoze]

One thing I would like to clarify. Initially I want to create  macros for the low level TF/SF.

 

There are plenty of folks willing to run the iTrials. Ukase among them,  know them like the back of their hand.

 

I think it's the low level ones TF/SF that need the most help. This is when folks have their first experience running a TF.

 

Examples of tips that should be provided:

Posi 1: Last mission description of how to avoid triggering the ambush too early.

Drowning in Blood: Which contacts to use to progress from zone to zone. How the battle against the twins unfolds.

 

Evening some high level ones could use help like Lady Gray. So, many little details that need to be typed out.

[Marbing]

I think you could do this by updating the homecoming Wiki and then see if the Devs are willing to put some reference to that Wiki in the initial dialogue with the contact somehow, upon starting the TF. That way the "new to this TF" player will have some direction on where they could go to get more information about that TF. It could be as simple as pasting the link to that SF/TF's page on the Wiki at the bottom of the intro dialogue with that contact. We would just need people to keep things up to date as updates/changes are made. 

 

 

EDIT: This is turning more into a suggestion and may be better placed in the suggestions section of these forums.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Marbing

[Snarky]

Git gud

[Bionic_Flea]

If you, @KaizenSoze (or someone), could make a popmenu with nested menus with each TF, that would be truly awesome!

 

Have each TF listed in the order they are in LFG; click on a TF and get the list of missions, click the mission to get one or several hints that get placed in team chat.

 

While I agree with Ukase and others that merely having the tools will not mean people will know how and when to use them, or even want to use them.  But I do think it will help some.  I would go further to suggest that, once the popmenu is created, you recruit a few people that volunteer to learn, follow you on the TFs to see how and when you use the instructions, and then let those folks recruit their own volunteers.

 

For convincing Ukase, I offer the following:

 

 

[KaizenSoze]

3 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

If you, @KaizenSoze (or someone), could make a popmenu with nested menus with each TF, that would be truly awesome!

 

Have each TF listed in the order they are in LFG; click on a TF and get the list of missions, click the mission to get one or several hints that get placed in team chat.

 

While I agree with Ukase and others that merely having the tools will not mean people will know how and when to use them, or even want to use them.  But I do think it will help some.  I would go further to suggest that, once the popmenu is created, you recruit a few people that volunteer to learn, follow you on the TFs to see how and when you use the instructions, and then let those folks recruit their own volunteers.

 

For convincing Ukase, I offer the following:

 

 

That's a great idea Flea! Also, I am very old and remember that commercial. 🙂

[Snarky]

I stopped running endless TFs when i set up a second acct to PL my new 50s.  Prior to that I would run all the TFs pretty much in order on each new alt until 50. It was faster and more profitable to PL myself

[Six-Six]

While the intent is noble and community building, the saying "you can lead a horse to water..." may triumph in this situation.

I suppose the most you can do is advertise TF/SF Familiarisation Run where 1) it's the opposite of Speed Run and 2) you call out basic story, objective, strategic directions, things to watch out for, etc. to get the team members cozy and comfy enough with the run that they might try it themselves. In the end, it will be up to the person to hopefully do the same, or at least grow the hair on their balls to take initiative to start a TF/SF on their own.

The wiki has enough info to get anyone started... again if they wanted to... but the specific experience either from personal mistakes or one handed down by a mentor or trainer will still be invaluable. 

There was a time that I did learn the ins and outs of most TF/SFs by joining both PUGs and friend-led ones over and over (there are still some that I'm as good as a headless chicken during a prostitution raid) and have lead some myself. I also learned that I'm not too fond of PUGs and that I may not be cut out to be a leader. If a team member bit off more than he could chew, strayed from the group, is about to get ganked, or whatever, I just didn't care. I'm not too anal on roles (healer, cc, etc.) but if you can't pull your own weight, at least keep yourself alive so I don't have to double back and rez you. And spoilers, I won't.

 

[Black Zot]

Six-Six has the right of it.  The majority of people in any given random sample simply are not cut out for leadership.  You can offer all the tools and advice you want, but in the end there's certain personality traits needed to lead that most people don't have and never will.

[Marshal_General]

Don't forget macros for kill alls that the mission header doesn't indicate.

[Six-Six]

I forgot to add that The Hounds of Love in Reunion, one of the top if not the biggest SG on the shard, runs TFs and Incarnate trials with sole purpose and explicit intent of familiarising aspiring players to one day lead them. They're called "casual" in the LFG, IIRC, and are scheduled weekly; and they're advertised and scheduled differently than the "regular" which almost always coincides with the WST and ones aptly labeled "badge" or MO runs. The league leader and his lieutenants of team leaders do a great job of informing everyone what to expect, what to do, what not to do, and tips and tricks that work; they even answer questions people may have regarding certain parts. Of course there are the hecklers and those who still go off on their own inconsiderate of the entire league. but most of the people there behave like they're on a guided tour.

I haven't seen the like in Torch, Indom or Ever (the internet gods won't let me play on Excelsior)

[Ukase]

19 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

If you, @KaizenSoze (or someone), could make a popmenu with nested menus with each TF, that would be truly awesome!

 

Have each TF listed in the order they are in LFG; click on a TF and get the list of missions, click the mission to get one or several hints that get placed in team chat.

 

While I agree with Ukase and others that merely having the tools will not mean people will know how and when to use them, or even want to use them.  But I do think it will help some.  I would go further to suggest that, once the popmenu is created, you recruit a few people that volunteer to learn, follow you on the TFs to see how and when you use the instructions, and then let those folks recruit their own volunteers.

 

For convincing Ukase, I offer the following:

 

Oh, most vile perfidious flea! How could you sully the amazing image of Heather Locklear for your own advantage!

Oh wait...she sullied herself in selling out for a commercial. Makes me wonder if the stars of the 70's, 80's and 90's would have been stars in this new era of the internet and the incredible competition for our attention. But that's a different topic. 

Below are my pop-menu files for the Master of Underground. The reason there are two is because even though my screen is fairly large, I tend to provide a LOT of detail about the various pitfalls and challenges. 

I have never encountered any other league leader that actually explains what's going on in the final room against the Avatar of Hamidon. They don't mention the Discordant Spores, which is a PBAoE mag 20 confuse with a 600 foot radius. It doesn't even require line of sight. It's spammed every 20 seconds, but only lasts for 10 seconds, so you are literally confused half the time, unless you mitigate this with clarion, a collection of tactics from leadership pool, or tier 3 break frees. 

I would venture most folks are so accustomed to having one or two players spam a clarion, they aren't even aware there is a confuse effect. And that's fine - but when you're going for a master run in underground, it can take some time, if your league wants to be conservative, and would rather not use the spaceballs method to take out the bombs, and wants to snipe all of them. (madness, I say, but some folks would rather be conservative) 
A leader may as well share what they know. 

So, if someone wants to use these in this effort - go ahead. 

Additionally, I stole this Lambda pop-menu from somewhere in the forums. Not sure if it's Oklahoman or Hyperstrike's. 
Oh, there's an MSR one, that I'm pretty sure comes from Hyperstrike. 

 

Master_of_Underground1.mnu Master_of_Underground2.mnu Master_of_Lambda.mnu Mothership_Raid.mnu

[Neiska]

I wasn't sure I was going to add to this thread. But after some thought I thought it might help posting why I "don't." These are my own personal reasons, and don't reflect on anyone else.

 

1. First off, I mainly solo, or play with friends. I do very few random teams, and when I do it's usually something like DFB's. But I never "start" them in any case.

 

2. I often have to go AFK. I am not 16 any more. I have to respond to emails, chores, or step away for a few minutes for any one of the 1000 of reasons required of an adult. When I am solo I can pause whatever I am doing and take those few moments, and continue on when I can. I prefer to think of this as doing others a favor actually, as someone who has to afk often is more of a detriment on teams than a help. And I would sooner avoid having a "leech" reputation and so on.

 

3. I am actually deaf IRL. I do have a cochlear implant, but I don't wear it all the time. In fact I prefer not to. This means that I miss a lot of the sounds like glowies or even story narrative during cutscenes. Unless I have time to read then I won't fully understand what is going on. I have done story missions with others that I didn't even know what the plot was, or who even the big bad guy is. When I do team with friends, they understand the situation and most times they explain things or the story before we go in, or someone will tell me if there is info I need to know as we go. But expecting this on random teams I think is unrealistic. I also hasten to add that this is nobody's fault, it's just how it is.

 

4. Not all teams have been positive experiences. I would say it's been about 50/50. Some teams have been fantastic, but others have been terrible. Again, nobody's fault, it's just how it goes sometimes. I have been called names for not noticing a glowie behind me, or suggested that I am unskilled in rather colorful terms. And while I think that is part of the MMO experience these days, I do want to highlight that teaming isn't all sunshine and rainbows either. People can be offensive, or get political, or bring up any number of other hot topics of discussion. Or for me its how most teams assume everyone has done this 1000 times before, so just speed through as fast as possible. I might get lost, or not understand what the changes in mission are. If I even stop to just admire a map, I might get yelled at. Again, not blaming anyone, or even saying this is normal, only that it happens. And it happens often enough that unless there is a badge or something I want, rolling those dice are a dim prospect for me. I would just sooner wait for my friends or SG to do it, than join a random team, much less try to host something that I have little knowledge or experience doing.

 

And yes, some of the forceful/negative attitude here on the forums does bleed over into the game sometimes. The whole "We do it this way, my way, and no other way. Now GOGOGOGOGO." Again, not always, but it is certainly felt.

 

The basic TLDR on "why not?" for me personally is - either it is cumbersome to do with random strangers, or the risk of it actually being more "unfun" than "fun" makes me rather just do my own thing where I am sure I will enjoy myself. So at least for me, it doesn't matter what carrot you try. The stars pretty much have to align for me to join a random team to begin with. To lead one? You might want to buy a lottery ticket. To put that into perspective, I have quite a few characters over vet level 100. A few over 200. One over 400. And I have never done a spaceship raid, or a Hami, or any of those giant teams that others do. I wouldn't even know what the Spaceship looked like if I was standing in front of it. That's now little I do random teaming. Pretty much the only random teaming I do, is as I said before, random DFBs on a new alt for the badges. That's really just about it, aside from opening my AE farm to other random people, should they choose to join me. 

 

And I am not trying to derail the conversation here. I only hope that me explaining the "why not" might illuminate things. But yes it is a case of "lead a horse to water" as mentioned before. To put it simply, I would rather spend an hour in the costume editor, or hanging at the pocket D roleplaying, or going down the ski slope, or tinkering in MIDs, actively farming, passively farming, soloing story content, or any other kind of action possible before doing team-only content. Even more so if its with random people.

 

If I was "forced" to join a team, as in that was the only activity I was allowed to do, and I "had" to do it in order to advance fully on my character, incarnate powers and the like, then I would find another game. Not everyone likes or even enjoys teaming. No matter what the reward might be. For any number of reasons. It's really just that simple.

[Bionic_Flea]

Even if all you do is solo, the TF popmenu could be valuable to see how many missions are left, and hints on what to do on TFs that you may not have memorized.

 

PS - I'm self-employed and also mainly solo as I may have to leave suddenly to take a call, respond to an email, or otherwise step away from the game for a few minutes to a few hours.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I think it is always nice to have options and tools, but I agree with a lot of people above that players are going to need to want to lead teams, to recognize that the reason they don't currently want to lead teams is because they are not familiar enough with how it works, and then to go through the actual process of remedying it.  We can provide the tools, but we can't change their nature.  We can only help them execute on their desire for personal change.

 

For me, if I am doing something I am not overly familiar with, I will start a team and let people know from the outset that it's not a speed run and that I'm not super familiar with it and ask if they are ok with that.  Seems to work for me.

[Ukase]

In the past I suggested that team leads get extra rewards for the hassle. Unfortunately, nothing came of it. Add to that, even if it were implemented, I can imagine if a team lead got disconnected, logged back in and was no longer the team lead, they'd probably not get credit, and that might cause some issue. 

[MoonSheep]

if recruiting via LFG, letting people know a rough time estimate helps those unfamiliar with the TF. i do wonder whether some people shy away from TFs as they assume it takes too much time

[UltraAlt]

On 8/20/2022 at 7:38 PM, ScrewlooseCohh said:

Some sort of training program for people who want to improve their play and feel comfortable taking a stringer lead would be interesting and good for the game, but would take a bit of organising and effort.

 

There are a lot of areas for tutorial missions that would be good for the City's player-character citizens.

 

They can be created in the AE (I have made one), but you aren't going to get players to go to the AE to search for tutorial missions.

 

This would mean that it would have need to go through a contact that characters are directed to in-game.

Most players aren't spending much time in game forums. It's good to have guides here, but players have to come looking for them and they aren't directed to them unless someone give them the link in the help channel.

 

I would think that this would be handled through the training contact in the open world as they are trainers/mentors, but possibly separate Long Bow/Hero Corps/Arachnos/etc. contact that characters are directed to at a relevant level.

 

I don't even recall getting any direction since I've been playing Homecoming to go to the City Rep (at level 10?) to setup a supergroup or to go to the University for IO construction training.

 

One explaining how to lead a team would fall into this category as far as I'm concerned and should cover the menu options, how to select a team mission, and use along with basics of how to recruit. 

A tutorial on tips missions would be good once the first tip mission drops.

(I'll probably think of more later)

 

Along those lines, I think there should be an obvious contact in the  AE that players could access that will only give them options to select DEV's Choice AE missions (none of my missions have been selected for DEV's Choice last time I looked so no bias). [next best thing to actually adding contacts for these in the open world]

And, yes, I know you can sort for them, but user-friendliness and directional-prompting can be a good thing as games are far more complicated than they once were and knowing how to navigate the unspoken leads to content glossed over or simply missed entirely (AE farmed to 50?)

[hexadecimalwtf]

I recently got into leading TFs, at least the simple ones as I level up characters. One thing thing that drives me crazy about TFs, and this isn't limited to leading one, is that enhancements don't drop if you are exemplared down. This is a problem for leaders though because most of the time the leader needs to be above the max level of a TF so it gets run at the highest level. This means the leader never gets a chance at enhancement drops. You can join Posi1 at level 8 though and get enhancement drops but not if you formed the group as a level 16. It's a bit dumb in my mind.

 

Now most people probably don't care about enhancements at low level and will say to just buy IOs but never getting drops take away some of the fun. It's also nice to get that little boost while leveling up. Most of the time I just spend the first 20 levels with no enhancements till I can start buying attuned.

[Herotu]

Completing X TFs in Y amount of time should spawn a special giant monster or event. That is how you incentivise things. Make them trigger special stuff.

 

Stop just giving people everything and make them work for it. Inconvenience is important! 

https://massivelyop.com/2022/06/09/massively-overthinking-every-mmo-inconvenience-is-someone-elses-game/

[Ukase]

2 hours ago, hexadecimalwtf said:

Now most people probably don't care about enhancements at low level and will say to just buy IOs but never getting drops take away some of the fun. It's also nice to get that little boost while leveling up. Most of the time I just spend the first 20 levels with no enhancements till I can start buying attuned.

Just so I can understand - is this because you want things to be more challenging? 
You don't have the influence? 
You're leveling up too fast to make the expense worth it? 
You're always teamed, so you're getting various buffs to help you along the way? 


I thought about playing that way..but when I miss several times in a row, it's quite maddening, so I'm in the habit of slotting a kismet Accuracy, and accuracy SOs in all my attacks as soon as I possibly can - which is level 7. Life is too short to miss. Wait...I mean, when you miss, life is shorter. 

Just trying to understand. 

Fun fact, while SOs seem pricy, below level 25, they're cheaper and better than common IOs, as far as the % boost. I like to use attuned sets, but I also tend to put this off until the 20's because the SO boost is so much better until level 25-30.