Another “Reckless” Yin

[cranebump]

Really, I TRY to be positive, but this stuff…

 

(sigh) if I may indulge for a moment…

 

Yin run. Everlast. Supposedly we’re a team, but our gaggle has 3 people who are basically soloing, including both tanks (one slightly less so than the other, who is obviously there TO solo, and whom we shall call The Magnificent Asshole).

First mish: we engage first mob holding hostages, and they leave squishy support types to finish off the rezzing purple Freak tanks. At one point, there are only 2 of us, so I have to inform everyone there’s still hostages back here. We get a bit of help, but our soloists do the same thing with subsequent mobs, so I end up on the clean up crew again, trying to, you know, complete the actual mission objectives. Once inside the po-po station, the Magnificent Asshole tank (who has evidently joined this team to smell his own musk) runs off again. He is joined by a Peacebringer who becomes his Magnficent Shadow. But Shadow is either a noob or a complete dumbass, because he dies multiple times during the TF. I am happy when it happens, and I laugh and mumble, “You shoulda waited, you feckless cretin.”
 

Moving along: Same thing happens on subsequent office map. They run off. PB gets ass handed to him in the Freak-filled L1 room. At one point, when I finally catch up to the Magnificent Asshole, I see him start to get slammed a bit, and I actually hold off on my support attacks for a second, because by now I wish he’d faceplant. But he pops his tank heal. I dutifully lay down some Arsenal support to obscure the fact that I wanted his toon to die and get mapserved. I pray for such divine justice, but, well, no such luck.

 

Council map: same thing (what did you expect?}. They run past the mission objectives (council raid leaders), to do…I don’t know wtf. Evidently something. Once again the people actually teaming have to clean up their droppings. By now, I really hate these f***ers, but I’m wordlessly trudging through it, because anything I say won’t fix douche baggery. I pray for a lightning strike to fry the Magnificent Asshole’s hard drive. God ignores me (again!)

 

Finally, the finale. We get ported to the reactor by one of our front runners. I begin to think we might actually do something as a full team.

 

No. Far from it. We plunge in, knock out the AV well before the mobs annnnd…

 

Someone clicks all 4 gd glowies. Before we’ve cleaned out the mobs. Before we’ve even come close to cleaning them out.

 

Triple aggro. We’re all running around like slaughtered, headless chickens. For a moment, me, the squishy Troller, seems to be the only one targeting Clamor upon her return. For my pains (and because I don’t know what’s behind my freakin back in that mess)  I catch a big fat slamma jamma from something (still not sure what…I think it was a diesel train) and I faceplant. I rez, pop a purple, eat some greens, duck into a corner (I have ONE small blue to use), and reconstitute, resummon and reload. I head back into the fray and mf’in Clamor’s STILL just hangin’ around. I’m not sure what everyone’s doing, but eventually they run out of lesser targets and we all FINALLY focus on the same thing (thanks, God…bit late, though).
 

We finally take her down, exit. Someone comments on how fast it all was (though it was not announced as a speed run). I comment on the triple aggro at the end. True to his nature, the Magnificent Asshole responds with how much he enjoyed the “reckless”nature of it.” I comment that “you might want to clear it with everyone else first.” (Of course, what I want to say is: “F*** YOU! Of course YOU like that sh*t! You’re a f***ing tank! You can wade around in that sh*t waving your dick while the rest of us get clamped in the firebox YOU likely made!” F*** you, sir! F*** you, indeed!)

 

The sad thing is, such “Magnificence” isn’t even all that rare at the moment. Of the last dozen or so Yins I’ve been on, I’d say fully a third of them have had someone click the reactor room glowies while the big end fight was not under control. It seems to actually be a thing. I would therefore like to request that such runs be advertised in some way. I’d prefer to call it a “dumbass douchebag run,” but “reckless” will do. 
 

So if “reckless” is your thing, please let others know up front that the task force will be all about you and what you find fun (like porting us all into the rear room so you can activate all the ambushes at once and watch the squishies die). Yes, we can figure out your douchiness on our own pretty quickly once we’re running. But it’d be nice to have a chance to dive off the team beforehand, for those of us who don’t want to stare at your ass tracks in the distance (not to mention clean up what’s come out of it, now that you’ve sh*t on the whole TF). In short, don’t hide your selfish jerkitude. Announce it up front, you gd, mamma-dint-raise-yew-raht POS. You know you’re a Magnificent Asshole. Might as well embrace it.

 

(Now returning to more positive frame of mind [slowly…slowly…])

Edited May 30 by cranebump

[MoonSheep]

1 hour ago, cranebump said:

No. Far from it. We plunge in, knock out the AV well before the mobs annnnd…

 

Someone clicks all 4 gd glowies. Before we’ve cleaned out the mobs. Before we’ve even come close to cleaning them out.

 

[Snarky]

This is why i TANK on a fire fire Blaster up to +4 content.   Combined with knowing the content reasonably well and not abandoning my teammates it works 100% 90% of the time.  

Edited May 30 by Snarky

[WumpusRat]

5 hours ago, cranebump said:

Someone clicks all 4 gd glowies. Before we’ve cleaned out the mobs. Before we’ve even come close to cleaning them out.

 

We did this on the Yin run I was on the other night. Of course, it was 8 tanks, so there was no choice BUT to click all the glowies and see just how much chaos we could get thrown at us at once. Anything less would have been an embarrassment. 

 

[cranebump]

You know, if people WANT to do it that way, then it’s all good. But how about letting the rest of us know about it? Or make sure the group can handle it. We were just not a party that melted things. Especially the support toons relegated to cleanup. I can more or less mez things indefinitely. But my little pew-pew gun takes forever to bring down purps at that level. Irony is we’d have been speedier if we’d have worked on the mobs together. Assuming speed was the goal. I’m not sure what our strategy was, but I think it was “none.” Or rather, some people had a plan to screw everyone else. (I still can’t figure out why the Kheldian kept charging ahead. They seemed determined to leave an exquisite corpse, at least once a mission).

Edited May 30 by cranebump

[Ghost]

There is no way this happened on Everlast.

We have been repeatedly told that the only server with idiots is Excelsior!

 

In all seriousness, you probably should have tried your best to get the rest of the team to quit with you, and start up a new Yin - give the A-Hole and his shadow some alone time.

[Digirium]

After years of taking part in Yin PUGs none of that stuff phases me now.

 

The latest Yin stuff I roll my eyes and facepalm at is the new anti-pattern of [Pool.Teleportation.Fold Space] being used. Yin is a like a test bed for all kinds of less effective bad play and this one is when the team moves in to engage and some idiot sucks away the engaged critters. I would not care if this power got deleted from the game or did an auto-aggro on the caster with a -def -res on them too to make them either drop that power or learn to use it properly.

 

 

Edited May 30 by Digirium

[Triumphant]

If I'm playing on a PUG, I always assume that I'm playing with people of varying levels of skill and experience, so I just suck it up.  It's not worth the emotional investment to throw in with a group of randos and then be irritated when they don't play the way that you want them to play or if you get the occasional jerk face (an unavoidable consequence of interfacing with the human species though, as a misanthrope, I do sympathize with your feelings about this).

 

Also, I'm a fairly mediocre player, so I may be one of the people causing the problem for you (though, not in this particular case, as I don't use wormhole/fold space).

 

You've got basically 3 options when you're playing an MMO:

1) Play solo.

2) Play with a group of buddies that you know and trust to play the game the way you like to play it.

3) Suck it up, Buttercup.

 

 

[Ukase]

8 hours ago, cranebump said:

(Now returning to more positive frame of mind [slowly…slowly…])

First, I want to thank you for sharing. I was beginning to think it was just Snarky who had experiences like this. 

This is just my first thought: too bad you had a rough time of it. 
My second thought: Glad I can afford Summons from the newly re-named START vendor so I can solo these if I feel like it. 

I think with the influx of newer players, unless we only solo or play with folks we know, we're ALL going to experience things like this every so often, if not more frequently. 

Team play can be challenging to do well for a lot of people.
Some teams have leaders who recruit and never say anything to actually lead. 
Some teams have players who genuinely don't know, or don't care about any impact their play will have on your enjoyment. 

Last night, I was watching a 2*LGTF over Discord. And while I can certainly understand each side in a minor debate, there was a moment where a tank was a little frustrated because they couldn't get a Feral Kraken to move - because it was immobilized by fire cages and perhaps some tenebrous tentacles. And, for those that have done advanced LGTF, if there's a Suit about to die, it can be important to position targets and the team itself to more opportunistic areas. To their credit, they got through it unscathed, but it raised some teaching moments for all parties involved. 

Unfortunately, unless someone takes the time to type stuff out, nobody is going to learn anything. I have been on teams like this, where one or more are going off, doing their thing. I have no problems typing. Just look at this wall of words I've typed already! 
Me: It may be a good idea to not click the glowies until we've dealt with Clamor and her cronies. We might be able to handle the ambush, but why risk it?

I pretty much say that during every Yin I've done since I learned it was the glowies that triggered the ambush. I've only had one team say, "We can handle it". And we did. Heck, we were all fifties, I think. Or mostly 50s. So, yeah, we should be able to handle that. 

Still, proactive communication - done in such a way where your preferences are posed as suggestions instead of mandates generally go well. 

Just my two inf. 

Thanks again for sharing. Sorry you had a rough one. 

 

[PhotriusPyrelus]

9 hours ago, cranebump said:

Someone clicks all 4 gd glowies. Before we’ve cleaned out the mobs. Before we’ve even come close to cleaning them out.

Did you, or anyone else tell him not to?

[Frostbiter]

I love reading all these stories. Makes me glad I gave up on teams back in my DDO days.

 

[cranebump]

54 minutes ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Did you, or anyone else tell him not to?

First, I'll answer your question: No, and I didn't notice they were doing it until there was one left.

 

Second: the implication here is that it's someone else's fault for not informing the person about the glowie clickies. While I agree with that sentiment if you're running with new people, and you're in charge of the team, and you actually want to make it smoother, a) I wasn't in charge (and didn't want to be, or I'd have formed the team myself), and b) I cannot confirm we had new people. Maybe some of them were. The Kheldian certainly played like a noob.

[cranebump]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

Thanks again for sharing. Sorry you had a rough one. 

All's well that ends well. I'm not even sure the last room bothered me near as much as the running past objectives, especially the first two groups of hostages in map #1, and the Council Raid Leaders. It's not like you can finish the mission without accomplishing these first. Hell, in the opener, you can't go inside the police station until you take care of the outside objectives first. The soloists made it slower by flying ahead and, in some cases taking team members who were following the tank, expecting, I guess, that the tank knew what he was doing. The whole "let's fill the reactor room with shit!" is obviously a thing at the moment. It may well be new folks. I guess I'll have to ask questions now, like I do with Pos1 (i.e., Clearing sides first?)

Edited May 30 by cranebump

[Excraft]

I have a genuine question here.  If you're having bad PUG experiences, then maybe try something different like teaming with people you already know?  Or quitting the TF and forming one of your own?  Joining random teams is a mixed bag and everyone has a different way of enjoying the game.  If you're finding yourself on teams that aren't to your liking, then move on and create teams yourself.  You can control what you do, you can't control what others do. 

[Lunar Ronin]

10 minutes ago, Excraft said:

I have a genuine question here.  If you're having bad PUG experiences, then maybe try something different like teaming with people you already know?  Or quitting the TF and forming one of your own?  Joining random teams is a mixed bag and everyone has a different way of enjoying the game.  If you're finding yourself on teams that aren't to your liking, then move on and create teams yourself.  You can control what you do, you can't control what others do. 

 

But... but... forming teams scary!

 

After a session of AFK farming on Indomitable, it amazes me every time I scroll back through LFG chat and see multiple people repeatedly beg for teams, sometimes for hours.  If just one of them actually tried forming a team, he or she would have had at least three others.  But nope, they'd rather spam LFG for up to hours saying that they're looking for a team instead.

[Scarlet Shocker]

Here, in one post, is why SGs and good mates are a valuable teaming resource.

[lemming]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

I was beginning to think it was just Snarky who had experiences like this. 

I am Snarkacus!   And so's my wife.

[Ukase]

32 minutes ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Here, in one post, is why SGs and good mates are a valuable teaming resource.

You don't seriously expect me to give Snarky material for the forums, do you? 

In all seriousness, Snarky is a great teammate when you're on discord. He doesn't enjoy my jokes, which is why he's invaluable. I thrive on his suffering. 

[ZemX]

11 hours ago, cranebump said:

First mish: we engage first mob holding hostages, and they leave squishy support types to finish off the rezzing purple Freak tanks.

 

I'm not saying your MA wasn't indeed a MA for everything else they did on this TF, but this one specific thing is kind of a pet peeve of mine from the Tanker's perspective.   There's no need for ANYONE to hang around fighting rezzers.  Move on.  The rezzers will follow.   Waiting around to be sure no Freaks are standing up after their time delay is a waste of everyone's time... not just whoever is tanking.  Same goes for PP Elites who pop a god-mode (MoG, Elude, Unstop, etc.)  FFS.... don't just stand around whiffing them for damn near a minute.  Just move on.  

 

Course you only move on to the next spawn.  If your tankers were going past that or in different directions, yeah.. they were hotdogging.

 

[PhotriusPyrelus]

2 hours ago, cranebump said:

First, I'll answer your question: No, and I didn't notice they were doing it until there was one left.

 

Second: the implication here is that it's someone else's fault for not informing the person about the glowie clickies. While I agree with that sentiment if you're running with new people, and you're in charge of the team, and you actually want to make it smoother, a) I wasn't in charge (and didn't want to be, or I'd have formed the team myself), and b) I cannot confirm we had new people. Maybe some of them were. The Kheldian certainly played like a noob.

That may be your inference, that was not my implication.

My implication was that you're complaining about something you had the means to avoid.  Trying to excuse yourself with "but I wasn't the leader" doesn't fly with me.  If I want a badge that can be screwed up (e.g. Cadaver Counter in DFB), and I don't say anything in chat; if I don't get the badge, it's my own fault.

Edited May 30 by PhotriusPyrelus

[cranebump]

1 hour ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

That may be your inference, that was not my implication.

My implication was that you're complaining about something you had the means to avoid.  Trying to excuse yourself with "but I wasn't the leader" doesn't fly with me.  If I want a badge that can be screwed up (e.g. Cadaver Counter in DFB), and I don't say anything in chat; if I don't get the badge, it's my own fault.

Well...you really just verified the implication here by this response. Further, you also excused the poor (and inefficient) play of the jokers I ranted about. This is pretty typical, though. Forgive the jackasses who caused the problem, then blame the person who points out their fuckup. For the record, I DID let the party know we had hostage groups that weren't freed (and thanked those who came back to assist my low DPS Troller). I also later commented in team chat that we had Council Raid Leaders left standing (which a few us cleaned up, per usual [and slowly). So, I DID mention the objectives were still active. As for the reactor room, well, is what it is. Didn't announce "please hold off on the glowies" because I was trying to do my part. And I'm not entirely sure a request on the part of someone who's not the leader would've had any cache, anyway. These guys were going to play how they were going to play. Didn't matter if anyone else was around, which seems a pretty mannerless way to play. We succeeded, but the choices of a few caused things to be a LOT tougher than they needed to be. The one thing I wish I'd asked was if anyone had never run the TF before. Then I'd have felt justified in being more vocal than I was. But then, I don't have much Magnificent Asshole in me. Well...most of the time.:-) Perhaps next time I'll be a bit more insistent. Provided I'm not too busy mopping/catching up to type.

 

FYI: point taken. I should probably speak up more than I did.

 

1 hour ago, ZemX said:

 

I'm not saying your MA wasn't indeed a MA for everything else they did on this TF, but this one specific thing is kind of a pet peeve of mine from the Tanker's perspective.   There's no need for ANYONE to hang around fighting rezzers.  Move on.  The rezzers will follow.   Waiting around to be sure no Freaks are standing up after their time delay is a waste of everyone's time... not just whoever is tanking.  Same goes for PP Elites who pop a god-mode (MoG, Elude, Unstop, etc.)  FFS.... don't just stand around whiffing them for damn near a minute.  Just move on.  

 

Course you only move on to the next spawn.  If your tankers were going past that or in different directions, yeah.. they were hotdogging.

 

Sound advice. But my gang was 2 mobs down the road. So we'd probably have had to run back and sweep up something we could have taken care of fairly easily. They skipped out on the first TWO hostage groups, partially clearing, but not checking to see if the hostages were free (then racing ahead). If we'd have just taken a second, we could've mopped it up then and there, avoiding the initial splitting and saving ourselves some time (plus our "free safetys" could've actually participated in the bulk of the subsequent piecemealed battles). The main thing for me is the thought some of my team had that it was okay to just leave shit (that was tied to mission completion) for everyone else to deal with. In this case it seemed,  at best, unnecessary or inefficient. At worst, it felt disrespectful. 

 

Honestly, I've seen this before. But the whole "reckless" comment just got under my skin. I don't expect perfection from a PuG (though it does happen more often than not. But we had faceplants we could've avoided with even just a wee bit of selflessness and team play. 

Edited May 30 by cranebump

[ZemX]

8 minutes ago, cranebump said:

Honestly, I've seen this before. But the whole "reckless" comment just got under my skin. I don't expect perfection from a PuG (though it does happen more often than not. But we had faceplants we could've avoided with even just a wee bit of selflessness and team play.

 

I like PuGs for being different and unpredictable, but "reckless" is just another word for bad gameplay.  If the team is so OP it can handle this kind of chaos then it's by definition not "reckless" anymore.   But if the team can't handle it... it's pretty much just griefing, really.

[Snarky]

6 hours ago, Digirium said:

After years of taking part in Yin PUGs none of that stuff phases me now.

 

The latest Yin stuff I roll my eyes and facepalm at is the new anti-pattern of [Pool.Teleportation.Fold Space] being used. Yin is a like a test bed for all kinds of less effective bad play and this one is when the team moves in to engage and some idiot sucks away the engaged critters. I would not care if this power got deleted from the game or did an auto-aggro on the caster with a -def -res on them too to make them either drop that power or learn to use it properly.

 

 

I play on some pretty good discord groups.  Used properly Fold Space is a great way to increase a teams kill speed.  Used improperly it is like dropping random construction cones on a 60mph freeway.  Annnnnd.   Most people that "experiment" with it are of the variety that cant find their butt with both hands. Also, trying to ask someone who is misusing a power in CoH to do anything different seems to be the grandest insult on their family honor they have ever heard.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

48 minutes ago, cranebump said:

Further, you also excused the poor (and inefficient) play of the jokers I ranted about.

Citation needed.

[cranebump]

1 hour ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Citation needed.

Please see Section I, subsection 17-A, paragraphs 3 and 4.:-)

 

Hm. So, here's my thinking: By focusing on my reaction to the event, you're ignoring the event itself. Which, while not excusing the offenders, makes me the focus of the issue, rather than the behavior that incited my response. Granted, this doesn't overtly give a pass to the jackassery I witnessed, but by making it all about what I might have been able to do by speaking up firmly early on, your angle seems to make me responsible for any subsequent shitty behavior on their part. This, when we know that (a) I did (politely) mention the bypassing of objectives, and (b) the behavior of the soloists was not changed in any way (as evidenced by MA's rather clueless remark upon completion). I don't think any amount of verbiage on my part was going to change things, because the small amount I offered didn't. The idea that, by just being forceful I could somehow modify what are likely ingrained habits is laughable. I'd offer that NOT engaging forcefully got me the best possible outcome I was gonna get under those circumstances. Of course, we'll never know. (You did mention badges, above, but there weren't any badges to get. So the standard protocols of "Badge Run" as a pro forma tactical reminder just don't apply -- this was about a lack of awareness on the part of the soloists in the event of what was not announced as a speed run. Whether this was intentional or not, I can't say. It sure seemed like it, though.)

 

Anyway, you seem to want to win an argument here, so I'll just concede on all points.  Which fits in neatly with the entire incident now that I think about it -- nothing I say is going to change what you think or do (and you'll notice, above, I already said I probably could've been more forceful, thus recognizing your initial argument). I just didn't want to be a complete asshole by attempting to usurp leadership on a group to which I was merely an invitee, and did not wholly consist of MA's. I make nice when I'm on a team. And we finished the TF. I guess that's all that matters. But it shouldn't be.

Edited May 30 by cranebump