Trick-or-Treat Leeches

[roleki]

Leechers are kind of annoying just in basic theory, but in the grand scheme of things, they're not causing THAT much harm, other than contributing somewhat to the lag that accompanies the ToT shenanigans. 

 

I suppose they *do* leech XP/rewards, but they have to be doing damage to do that, and if they're doing damage, they're helping to clear mobs in some way, so it's not like they're door-sitting or what have you.  I tell myself that their presence is distracting mobs from beating on my exemplar'd (??) friends, and that I'd just be throwing Alkaloid out in every direction instead of knocking on doors and flooring what comes out of them.

 

That said, when one of their pets was caught dangling in an awning and preventing anyone from clicking one of the ToT doors, I kind of wanted to go spend a few minutes on a high-KB build, clearing mobs out of the middle to deny them even a couple ticks of XP.  Or get both my Geav/Darks and just start Black Hole/Dimension Shifting various areas to deny them the targets. 

 

But at the end of the day, I just want to click on doors and occasionally warp out to stomp zombies/GMs/Banners.  At this point, the leechers are just part of the experience.

[srmalloy]

38 minutes ago, roleki said:

At this point, the leechers are just part of the experience.

So are midges in the Scottish highlands; it doesn't mean that I'm happy putting up with them.

[Herah]

I've been leading the ToT league on Torchbearer for the last, idk, 4 years. I appreciate that we've had some amazing folks step up to the plate in the last few years. We've gotten new folks to run the league, take up scouting, and other volunteer activities. 

 

That being said. I am officially fed up. I'm not running this next year and maybe not ever again. Here are some of my personal pet peeves from the last handful of years. 

 

9 hours ago, GM Crumpet said:

What I do as a league leader is Incan to another location.

• I have been doing this the last 2 years at least. Some folks think I am bringing them back to a safe location. I am not. I'll give you a full minute. If you don't move, you're gone. I've TPd back at the hospital, parking deck, behind the motel, or down the street. At this point idc if the league is even full, I'm putting in a lot of work and you are not.
  • Also, if you've been AFK dead for a while, you're out. If you need to be AFK, just let us know. We understand that you need to take the dogs out, bio break, get a phone call, grab a snack, make a martini, and other such actual life events. Just tell me, I get it. League leaders have to pee too.

 

• Assuming that I am ok with you sponging XP w/o even asking me. I mean that is some nerve. I have had some folks that actually ask, and it's typically an alt that is AFK. If we're not full, yeah, sure, whatever. If we get full, alts get the axe. You already get to play this super awesome game for free. You have all of these kick a$$ GMs that volunteer their time for free. Players lead events and run content all of the time. It's not too much to ask that you earn your keep in an environment where everything else is handed to you.
  • What it comes down to is this, if I can manage to keep track of 47 other people, people waiting in the wings, moving teams around, hunting GMs, running banners, zombie invasions, and monitoring league, local, broadcast, LFG chat, and tells......if I can do all of that and be participating, you can keep your one toon active.
  • I also understand with many of the holiday events, the cumulative amount of team damage done depends on if you even get credit or a badge for a particular event. I try to keep team damage as evened out as I can. In speaking of sponging, I have now gotten into the habit of moving all spongers to the same team. Still on the league. Want to complain that you aren't getting XP, badges, merits, threads? You are putting in the exact same amount of effort and damage as everyone else on your team. 

 

• Not reading. OMG, such a huge pet peeve. I get it, my adverts are dumb and silly. But when it comes to managing ToT events, I actually put up useful information. Read it.
  • For example, I have running banners about as efficient as I can make it. When I tell you I need some w/ Incan on X, Y, or Z banner, I need someone, anyone. If no one speaks up I have to log in alts to TP. I can't tell you how aggravating it is to have logged in 2 alt accounts just to move people and then have someone who didn't say anything have and use Incan.
  • Look at the league window. If you're at the top of a team, you are there because you are 50. When you decide to log or alt, you team jumps down to the next in line, that could be 47 or 12. Everyone else left on that team exemps down to one level below that. I can always tell when this happens because 2/3 of the team automatically dies. I'll level with you, being a team lead w/in the league has zero responsibilities aside for replacing yourself w/ another 50. I'm not going to ask you to do anything more than that.
  • If you are serving a particular role, like scouting, tell me if you're leaving. That way someone can take over what you were doing.
  • When I say that I cannot move player positions w/in a specific team, I mean it. If the 50 drops and the current lead is AFK or doesn't know how to promote, I have to literally pull the entire team apart to get a 50 in charge. If I have very few league spots open it will take a super long time or I will have to kick people off entirely to restructure. Most of our scouts realize when this happens and will hold off on teleporting until fixed.

 

• Lack of volunteerism. I've done this event for a few years. A lot of people come back year after year. Once people truly understand the ridiculous number of moving parts this event takes, many will volunteer to take on roles. Once their destiny slot is open, they'll get Incan. It's the most used power in this entire event. I will happily show you the scout locations for GM spawns. I'll explain what you need to do for banners and zombies.
  • Conversely, I have people that return year after year to do nothing but take advantage of the generosity of the league. I know you have dozens of 50+s, I know you have all Tier IV incarnates, don't tell me you need more threads to make Incan, you could have made it 37 times over by now. You only need 1 level for Incan to get the only benefit we need from it. You have 60 threads.
  • Look, I get that running the league is complex. I am happy to teach folks how to do it. Aside from ToT, we use league format for Winter events, Hami, SNS, iTrials, and various other TFs, or content. We don't want you to rely on the same people all of the time, we get burned out.

 

• If the league is not full, but you don't want to join, that's your decision. Want to play alongside the league, weird, but whatever. I can only do so much, so asking for me to tell the wider public everything we're doing, not likely to happen. 
  • Generally I follow the same formula year after year. Banners go in color order, Red>Purple. Zombies are always at Portal Corp parking. GM hunts happen when we have enough damage to get it done. We do not leave PI to pursue the events in other zones. (Except Supa Troll Raves. "Gotta go!"  j/k ofc)
  • I don't do tip teams anymore w/in the league. I tried it once. It was a pain. Not worth it.

 

• I am not a GM, I am a player. ToT league is a player led event. I follow the CoC and try to play w/in the spirit of the game. I love to have new players, explain the game, help get people into the community, but I have my limits. I can and do use my global ignore.

[Dr. Feel-Good]

I have been running ToT leagues from 2019 to now (and other events). I always get mad/upset about leaches or just general complaining. Don't get me wrong, I welcome questions. I agree with Herah post above. The time it takes and the complaining is just not worth for me any longer. She has been run ToT with me for 3 years now. This was my last year of running ToT. I stop running them after the second week. People need to understand I do not need to host events, I like to but it's hard with no help. I can't even level my own alts because I'm helping others. I have to say, people have stepped up imo and every year I get more help. 

[lemming]

19 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I think we've identified one our leechers  😄

He's clicking doors and letting the league kill off the mobs, it's the opposite.   I've even done that if I needed either the tip mission or just a couple costumes for those last badges.

[Glacier Peak]

As I've said many times in the past, you'll find a leech free, and really a player free experience on Indomitable of you're looking to avoid this in the future. There are more doors on city hall than players active on Indomitable. Heck, you'll roll a Mastermind just so it feels like you've got other folks to play with. 

 

I am kidding, but you might try out the lag free and pleasant experience that can be found on Indomitable. 👍

[Bionic_Flea]

Leeches, Fleas, Vampires, and Mosquitoes are all blood suckers.  We can't help it.  It's in our nature.

 

Don't be hatin'

[Clave Dark 5]

45 minutes ago, lemming said:

He's clicking doors and letting the league kill off the mobs, it's the opposite.   I've even done that if I needed either the tip mission or just a couple costumes for those last badges.

I was mainly kidding, but wooo, let me team with you when you play so I can tag along and open a door and let you defeat the bad guys, sounds like an easy time of it!  Most of the (same guy) I keep reporting are literally standing around doing nothing, not even clicking doors.

[Sanguinesun]

19 hours ago, roleki said:

Leechers are kind of annoying just in basic theory, but in the grand scheme of things, they're not causing THAT much harm, other than contributing somewhat to the lag that accompanies the ToT shenanigans. 

 

I suppose they *do* leech XP/rewards, but they have to be doing damage to do that, and if they're doing damage, they're helping to clear mobs in some way, so it's not like they're door-sitting or what have you.  I tell myself that their presence is distracting mobs from beating on my exemplar'd (??) friends, and that I'd just be throwing Alkaloid out in every direction instead of knocking on doors and flooring what comes out of them.

 

That said, when one of their pets was caught dangling in an awning and preventing anyone from clicking one of the ToT doors, I kind of wanted to go spend a few minutes on a high-KB build, clearing mobs out of the middle to deny them even a couple ticks of XP.  Or get both my Geav/Darks and just start Black Hole/Dimension Shifting various areas to deny them the targets. 

 

But at the end of the day, I just want to click on doors and occasionally warp out to stomp zombies/GMs/Banners.  At this point, the leechers are just part of the experience.

 

 

I've seen this year's holiday event more issues with AFK leaders and AFK brutes for some reason which is a bit weird really on the brute front.  Every year there are afk spam aoe healers and there's on excelsior the same flying robot mm I've seen nor for 3 years straight who is never in a group too.  Its why when KWarf has groups running, its the best place really as that just doesnt happen vs PI.  The focus on MM's and people going over the top to report mm's like the OP is encouraging when there are plenty of also valid mm's participating isn't helpful, either.

[SquidVicious]

3 hours ago, Sanguinesun said:

The focus on MM's and people going over the top to report mm's like the OP is encouraging...

The OP had a different solution altogether and in fact did not encourage people reporting MMs.

[arcane]

I mean, regardless of the time of year, ostracizing masterminds can’t be a bad thing.

[srmalloy]

15 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Leeches, Fleas, Vampires, and Mosquitoes are all blood suckers.  We can't help it.  It's in our nature.

You left out politicians... 😁

[Bionic_Flea]

10 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

You left out politicians... 😁

 

That's not nature, that's a choice.  😛

 

[srmalloy]

20 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

That's not nature, that's a choice.  😛

It all comes back to the 'nature vs. nurture' question...

[Ghost]

#banMMs

[Clave Dark 5]

4 hours ago, Ghost said:

#banMMs

Playing an MM is punishment enough.  (I swear, I make one about every year and a half, take it to fifty and then just drop it when I keep remembering pets getting one-shotted all the time).

[kelika2]

Cutting the exp would fix most of these problems.

Maybe im still bitter over the winter lord nerf like 15 years ago.

[Snarky]

What I do works really well.  Not give a shit.

[Bionic_Flea]

10 hours ago, Snarky said:

What I do works really well.  Not give a shit.

 

Vampires don't poop.  Confirmed.

[Mopery]

Dowhatchalike.

 

I've always found that October is the one month were it's damn near impossible to find a team, unless of course you want to mindlessly gorge your character with the all-you-can-collect Inf/XP buffet that is the Halloween Event. It's possible that next year everyone will do their very best to be well behaved and participate in this game just exactly how you want them to, but it's not very likely. 

[Clave Dark 5]

Yeah, @Mopery I too am already unhappy to see so many people engage with outright farming too, and I have often had trouble finding a team on less-than-peak hours only to see a crowd gathered in Pocket D's AE room. 

 

Farming for XP (more of a merit farmer during ToT myself, but anyway) during Halloween is a different beast though, as it allows players to come together in a whole league which is a lot more fun imho (I love the whole league thing in an MSR too). 

 

And then someone invites themself along to your farm and you can't get rid of them and they let you do all that work and siphon off a percentage of your gains.  Imagine if people could do that to every instanced map you play on (shoot me an invite the next time you're on and I'll be happy to demonstrate!*). 

 

 

But since people will want to do this (in ways at least grey-area-enough against the stated rules that devs will take some action against it) why have rules at all for anything I guess?  Rules are there to stop people's worst excesses, just FYI.  They acknowledge that folk will do a bad thing but are there to curb it and to state that such isn't acceptable to the group as a whole.

 

*Really I will, please call!

[Andreah]

I differentiate between leechers, people on the league who're just not putting in a fair effort, and kill stealers, people outside the league who're not clicking doors and just stealing kills from others.

 

AFK leechers annoy me, but I was generally kinder to them. Often they would at least run shared buffs or auto powers that helped others. I would send them tells and ask them if they were AFK, and requested they participate more. Worst case, I would boot them, and not let them rejoin for my duration leading that day.

 

Kill stealers outside the league who refused to join and especially ones with "attitude", I had no patience for, and added to my block list. I run other kinds of teams and leagues, and they will never get on them.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Andreah

[kito]

Stop nerfing farming and people won't use the event to farm. I agree it's annoying but you tell farmers every patch it's bad to strong the wrong way to play w/e. Then hold massive events that give better rewards more exp and inf and encourage you to make as many alts as posssble so you are always making new low LVL toons who can't help with the event but if you want that particular whatever (btw got up to 80 of them now after however many years playing 🙂 ) or want to LVL fast you can jump into a League and LVL much better then you can in a farm.  

 

Just my two cents. 

[Oklahoman]

There's already a mechanic in the game to make a door go cold briefly if it's clicked too soon. I wish a door would go cold for several hours after it's been clicked (by anyone) X number of times. That would force the ToT league to move to a new location which would create problems for the leachers who are left behind running into the corner of a hotel that's turned their lights off and are no longer handing out full sized candy bars.

 

[GM Crumpet]

The main problem I think is the motel. If people ToT elsewhere I haven't seen the same problem. Kallisti Wharf does it at a building with 8 doors and there are normally enough players and enemies that moving from door to door doesn't really hurt with the door cooldown too much. I've also done it in RWZ with the same effect. The best part of KW and RWZ is they are co-op zones so heroes and villains can league together without having to go see Null and change alignments. Some players are against that for RP reasons. Even in PI there are plenty of streets with doors each side that are god for ToTing.  I think everyone is just used to the motel as it's a convenient spot everyone knows. 

 

I'd like to see league leaders think a little outside the box for PI next year 🙂