When you think someone is playing their AT "wrong" ...

[Murcielago]

Unless you're an storm/energy defender who purposefully flies into a group, scatters them, and then knocks them all away from melee forcing them into an eternal chase. 

[EmmySky]

When I played storm/energy I watched where everyone else was knocking them and blew them back to the tankers and scrappers.  Appreciation pts FTW!

 

(still wont play storm or energy...kinda hate them after a few years)

[PaxArcana]

1 hour ago, EmmySky said:

blew them back to the tankers and scrappers.

I used to do that with my Robo/FF mastermind sometimes.  One mob at a time, but still ... 🙂

[molten_dragon]

On 8/25/2019 at 9:23 PM, PaxArcana said:

But whatever you do, don't tell anyone they're playing wrong, just because they aren't playing the way you think they're supposed to.  Because if you do ... then the only one who will be wrong, is you.

In general I agree with you.  However, I will point out that context matters.  You mention having a discussion about Masterminds in the suggestion forum, and that may be one of the places where pointing out someone is playing "wrong" (or rather is playing in an unintended way) is appropriate.  If someone is suggesting something that's intended to cater to people who choose to play in an unintended way (petless masterminds for example), it's perfectly acceptable to point out that that isn't how the AT is supposed to be used.  Which isn't the same as saying it can't or shouldn't be used that way.

 

The other thing I'll unapologetically call out as "playing wrong" is playing in a way that is detrimental to other players.  I was running radio missions in PI a couple weeks back and an energy/storm corrupter joined the team.  First mission and he's blasting guys all over the place.  It's taking us forever to finish this because the mobs are getting so scattered.  I politely asked him to tone down the knockback a little, and he responded with (paraphrasing here) "Can't lol, I've got knockback sets in every power", at which point I kicked him.  Sure, concept builds like that can be fun, I've played several myself over the years.  But when you're making other people's experience less fun and refuse to make changes when asked, you are absolutely playing the game wrong.

Edited August 29, 2019 by molten_dragon

[Tsuko]

On 8/26/2019 at 3:23 AM, PaxArcana said:

... don't....

 

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.  😄 

Exactly the way i think, and the reason why i dont do PuG and i play exclusivly with SG / friends.

[PaxArcana]

2 hours ago, molten_dragon said:

You mention having a discussion about Masterminds in the suggestion forum, and that may be one of the places where pointing out someone is playing "wrong" (or rather is playing in an unintended way) is appropriate.

Here's the context:

I mentioned, offhand, that once I was done summoning and upgrading my pets, my main on Live, an MM, didn't care how much END s/he had left, as they wouldn't be using it during the mission.

 

I was told, that if that was true ... I wasn't playing Mastermind right.

(Plot twist:  that MM was Robotics/Forcefield, with no personal attacks.  Just lots of toggles and pets.  "Not using END during the mission" is pretty much the default setting for /FF Masterminds.)

That is what prompted me, after much thought, to post this thread: the fact that someone, with incomplete information, leapt to the assumption that because I played differently from them, that my way of playing must somehow be objectively wrong.  Rather than, you know, asking something like "Wait, how the heck do you not use any powers during combat?"  (To which the answer would have simply been, simply: "/ForceField" ... probably followed by "Oh, of course.")

 

And that's what I want people to do.  ASK, learn ALL the details, before deciding right-or-wrong.

2 hours ago, molten_dragon said:

The other thing I'll unapologetically call out as "playing wrong" is playing in a way that is detrimental to other players. 

That's not what my post was directed at, at all.

What you describe is not "playing a Corruptor wrong", it's "playing on a team wrong".  S/he should have modified their tactics, to use all that KB to try and push enemies into tight knots, so as to maximize everyone else's AoE.  🙂  But, that's tactics not Archetype (and would be just as true of a Storm/?? Controller, or an Energy/Energy Blaster, etc).

[MunkiLord]

14 hours ago, Murcielago said:

Unless you're an storm/energy defender who purposefully flies into a group, scatters them, and then knocks them all away from melee forcing them into an eternal chase. 

This is exactly what I would do. So I have so far resisted making a Storm/Energy

[Frostbiter]

No discussion that centers around how other people play is going to end well. People are contentious and incapable of passing up a chance to talk down to others when they're convinced their way is best. 

 

For instance: I still slot Freeze Ray as a hold on my Ice Blaster.

 

*ducks behind cover*

[Obitus]

On 8/27/2019 at 4:53 AM, DSorrow said:

I honestly disagree with the statement that there isn't such a thing as "playing an AT wrong". In my opinion you can definitely play an AT wrong, but fortunately it doesn't matter most of the time.

 

On 8/27/2019 at 4:53 AM, DSorrow said:

Generally if I'm leading a team, especially if on one of my finished level 50s, I don't have to care about most of my team. My characters are very optimized and there's pretty much a 100% chance I'll get at least 3-4 other good players in the team anyway and that's enough to finish just about anything in the game, no matter what the remaining couple of players are doing.

 

This sums it up for me.  I spend probably an unhealthy amount of time tweaking builds and discussing the game's mechanical quirks on this forum so that I don't have to care what my teammates are doing.  Of course, there are exceptional cases where a player is either so clueless or so inconsiderate (or such a troll) that he is a noticeable detriment, but those situations are very rare, and they generally have more to do with the player's behavior than they have to do with his build.

 

As far as builds are concerned, sure, bad ones exist.  But, a few notable exceptions aside, unless you have access to a full Mid's data import for a given player's build, you probably don't have enough information to make a definitive judgment.  Just looking at power choices doesn't tell you terribly much; one of the beauties of this game is that almost any character/build concept can work.

 

When the topic of bad builds comes up, usually I find myself shaking my head at the examples people trot out - tankers without taunt, or blasters without snipe, that sort of thing.  If you know the mechanics, then you know that a Tanker doesn't need taunt to do his job effectively.  Sure, I'd prefer to have Taunt on a tanker, but the lack of it isn't by any stretch a deal breaker.

 

Petless MMs are an extreme example of the same thing: sure, it makes sense to roll your eyes when someone chooses to avoid the vast bulk of the benefit from his Primary power set, but MMs have buff/debuff secondaries.  That gives them the potential to contribute more to the average team than most other builds, even without their pets.  So petless MMs are gimped in principle, and certainly they're gimped in solo play - but ironically they can perform very well in the only environment in which anyone's likely to care about how gimped they are.  "Oh no, we have the equivalent of a low-damage Corruptor!"

 

What I'm getting at here is that I agree with the spirit of the OP.  People have always been a bit too judgmental in CoH, a game in which team play is extremely forgiving.  There's usually no point in running a team like a martinet.  Getting into a huge fight with a team leader (or rage quitting the team) over offhanded comments or guidelines is silly too.  More often than not, the most angry/outspoken/critical teammates I've encountered speak from ignorance.

 

Still, there are bad builds, and there are disruptive players.  Can't get on board with the blanket assumption that all criticism is always baseless.

Edited August 29, 2019 by Obitus

[PaxArcana]

22 minutes ago, Obitus said:

Can't get on board with the blanket assumption that all criticism is always baseless.

My assertion is intended to be, "Criticism with less than the full range of relevant information is baseless."  🙂

[Twisted Toon]

6 hours ago, molten_dragon said:

The other thing I'll unapologetically call out as "playing wrong" is playing in a way that is detrimental to other players.  I was running radio missions in PI a couple weeks back and an energy/storm corrupter joined the team.  First mission and he's blasting guys all over the place.  It's taking us forever to finish this because the mobs are getting so scattered.  I politely asked him to tone down the knockback a little, and he responded with (paraphrasing here) "Can't lol, I've got knockback sets in every power", at which point I kicked him.  Sure, concept builds like that can be fun, I've played several myself over the years.  But when you're making other people's experience less fun and refuse to make changes when asked, you are absolutely playing the game wrong.

This is where I'm going to ask for a little more context.

 

Were you (or whoever was herding) playing right? What I mean by that is, were the mobs being herded to the middle of an open area, or were they being herded to near a wall or other obstacle that the person using KB could use to mitigate the distance the mobs were being thrown?

 

The reason I ask this is because I have a FF / Energy Defender. And the people that I team with regularly, know to herd the mobs near walls. because every attack in both sets has KB. Its the same with Storm/energy. the only way to tone down the KB is to not attack. For some reason, people on PuGs tend to get upset when someon doesn't do anything in the mission.

[PaxArcana]

6 minutes ago, Twisted Toon said:

Were you (or whoever was herding) playing right?

And this is another facet of the issue:

Sometimes, it's not that the other player is incorrectly playing their archetype.  Instead, it might be that you, yourself are not correctly adapting to the presence of someone with those particular powers.

 

My old Robo/FF mastermind, back on Live, had the big Repulsion Bubble - when people herded near a corner, it was great, I could push all the mobs back into that corner and KEEP them herded.  (Due to the extreme END use of that power, I often had to shut off my other toggles, but still - everyone else could focus on "burn them down", instead of "keep them clumped".  Did wonders with my robots' burn patches, too.)

[Kigo]

This thread pulls me both ways.

 

On the one hand I have personally experienced a time on my fire/kin troller when some random blaster told team chat several disparaging things about my play including a point blank "This was the worst controller ever!" before he left. Nevermind that we had no tank and I was clearing half the map all by myself while the entire rest of the team worked on the other half, all he cared about was that he was dying because I was not there to hand hold him and keep him alive when he invariably gained aggro since he had built a glass canon with huge aggro control issues. But both the team leader and myself agreed that it would be a complete waste of time and my powerset to have me staying with the group like that. We were finishing maps in half the time by my doing that, but he cursed me out just because I was not there to babysit him.

 

On the other hand I have also personally experienced times when a specific teammate would repeatedly knockback entire groups of enemies out of my AoE attacks making me waste my cooldowns. I'm fine with people having KB powers (although in this age with multiple sets that change kb to kd it does annoy me) but if you are going to have a power like that which can interfere with teammate's powers can you at least delay using it until after their own cooldowns are all tossed out? -_-

[PaxArcana]

Original post edited to add a statement to clarify what I was intending with this thread.  🙂 

[StarseedWarrior]

On 8/25/2019 at 8:23 PM, PaxArcana said:

... don't.

Seriously, please just don't.

 

There is no One True Way, for good or ill, to play any particular archetype.  Defenders can focus on their attack powers.  Controllers can focus on their buffs and debuffs.  Masterminds can go petless.  This is all allowed ... and it absolutely dismays me that there are any people left in our community that don't understand that.  (I've just been having a back-and-forth about supposedly "playing Masterminds wrong" over in the Suggestions thread, which is what prompted this post.)

 

As long as you're not griefing other players .... do what you like.  Have fun.  People going against type, excuse me, against the assumptions of their archetype, has even inspired the creation of new archetypes.  Defenders who went for Attacks first, and buffs/debuffs last - known back in the day as Offenders - are why we have Corrupters.  Seriously, that's where the inspiration for Corruptors came from.  They aren't "blasters who can (de)buff", they are officially-canonized Offenders.

 

So when you find yourself thinking "s/he is doing it wrong" ... stop.  Ask yourself, not "isn't that wrong", but instead, "why are they playing that way?"  Heck, maybe ask them why they've chosen to play like that.  Who knows, maybe you'll decide the idea is worth checking out for yourself .... and maybe you'll even decide "HOLY CARP, THIS IS HELLA FUN!"

 

But whatever you do, don't tell anyone they're playing wrong, just because they aren't playing the way you think they're supposed to.  Because if you do ... then the only one who will be wrong, is you.

 

...

 

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.  😄 

>>> EDIT FOR CLARITY <<<

 

It seems I have been - as usual, perhaps - less than brilliantly clear in getting across my point.

 

I am NOT saying that you should never criticize anyone for any reason.

I am NOT saying that there is no such thing as playing badly.

I am NOT saying that you should just put up with whatever obnoxious behavior another player chooses to inflict on you, because oh the poor snowflake.

I AM saying, that you should not immediately leap to the conclusion that someone is playing their archetype wrong, just because they aren't playing it the way "everyone else" does, and especially not because they've chosen an unusual mix or powers, powersets, or enhancement slotting.

You should first ask why they have chosen to go in that direction, why they have chosen to try and buck the trend for their Archetype.  They may have a perfectly valid reason for being .... call it experimental, call it avant-garde, call it just plain wierd ... but, the important thing is, they may have a very good reason for how they've chosen to build their character.  Even if it's a completely silly reason - for example, "I lost a bet, this is my forfeit, I have to get it to 50.  Ugh."  That's still a reason!

 

Or maybe they don't.  Maybe they really are just completely clueless.  But, newsflash for everyone: if you start out saying "you are wrong", you stand a good chance of putting that person on the defensive.  They may then not only not listen to any advice you offer, but they may outright reject it completely.  A more collaborative tone is likely to produce much better results.  If they're a newbie to CoX ... reminisce about your own first weeks or months of play, and how much you learned.  Then, share those things with the newbie.  They're much more likely to listen to, and follow, advice given in a friendly tone, than in a derogatory or accusatory one.

 

It is sad you had to edit this post to make things even clearer, when it was 100 percent transparent to begin with, maybe people assume way to much these days and automatically go to the defensive. Regardless this is a very good post to help filter out the over offended ones and trolls, but in the end they make us better and better at posting things like this don't they?

[Murcielago]

8 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

This is exactly what I would do. So I have so far resisted making a Storm/Energy

Named Mr. Trololo

[Myrmidon]

14 hours ago, PaxArcana said:

  ASK, learn ALL the details, before deciding right-or-wrong.

 

Words cannot adequately describe how wrong playing Radiation Emission without the debuff powers is.

[Skyhawke]

I had a situation last night that made me think of this thread.  It also ended with me doing something I haven't done in any game in yeeeeeears: quit without saying a word. 

 

So, I'm on my kinetics/rad defender, just looking for a team.  Someone shouts out they're putting together a double feature team and is asking for a healer.  (red flag 1, not buff/debuff...just "healer") I join and it's a tanker that couldn't be more of a rip off of the Thing if Jack Kirby descended from Heaven and drew him, a PB that stayed in lobster form and the leader was a Heath Ledger Joker knockoff as a blaster.  (red flags 2-4) We que up and when we get in, I head for the vendor to get inspirations.  I see that only myself and the tanker have zoned in so far, so no rush.  Suddenly, cut-scene.  (red flag 5)

 

I pop into the arena first and everything just molly whops me before anyone else zones in.  Then everyone else appears and the PB lets out a "lol" at my being down already.  (red flag 6) I hospital it to the lobby and zip back in to see the tank and pb chasing the minotaur around like a Benny Hill sketch.  No taunts, just constantly trying to catch it and hit it while it chases the blaster around because he's doing all the damage.  (at this point, I'm thinking about investing in red flags) The blaster and I drop several times, the PB goes down once and all the while the PB is "lol"ing at the whole situation.

 

I thought about this thread at that moment and wondered if I should say a polite "if the tank can taunt and hold the enemies on him, I can keep him alive and we can take the minotaur down".  He has taunt, he's just not using it and guess who the angels are targeting.  Guess who can't keep anyone healed because he's either getting destroyed by the angels or nobody is close enough to the minotaur to be healed.  It goes like this for an uncomfortable amount of time, but I've always been the grit your teeth and pull through type so, away we go. 

 

Finally, the minotaur drops and just before the ninjas show, the blaster says "whoever said they could heal, lied".  /quitteam When I popped back into Atlas Park, I moved back a bit and watched the spot the group left from.  Sure enough, about 10 seconds later the tank popped back in and ran off towards the tram.  The PB and blaster followed a few seconds later and the blaster started his sales pitch again.  I shook my head and logged off. 

[Mansome]

While I get you can't tell people how to play there's a minimum basic expectation the team has though. I saw a */kin controller level 50 with no speed boost. She didn't use fulcrum shift or her primary controls correctly. What I mean by this is she would do the Kinect heal without anyone near the critter mobs at the start of the fight getting all the aggro dying immediately repeatedly. She would also do fulcrum shift the same way with no one next to the mob to get the buff. We did have a tank but this person kept going ahead of the group just to get slaughtered. This caused us to have an extra hour added to the TF completion time.

[Myrmidon]

1 hour ago, Skyhawke said:

I had a situation last night that made me think of this thread.  It also ended with me doing something I haven't done in any game in yeeeeeears: quit without saying a word. 

 

So, I'm on my kinetics/rad defender, just looking for a team.  Someone shouts out they're putting together a double feature team and is asking for a healer.  (red flag 1, not buff/debuff...just "healer") I join and it's a tanker that couldn't be more of a rip off of the Thing if Jack Kirby descended from Heaven and drew him, a PB that stayed in lobster form and the leader was a Heath Ledger Joker knockoff as a blaster.  (red flags 2-4) We que up and when we get in, I head for the vendor to get inspirations.  I see that only myself and the tanker have zoned in so far, so no rush.  Suddenly, cut-scene.  (red flag 5)

 

I pop into the arena first and everything just molly whops me before anyone else zones in.  Then everyone else appears and the PB lets out a "lol" at my being down already.  (red flag 6) I hospital it to the lobby and zip back in to see the tank and pb chasing the minotaur around like a Benny Hill sketch.  No taunts, just constantly trying to catch it and hit it while it chases the blaster around because he's doing all the damage.  (at this point, I'm thinking about investing in red flags) The blaster and I drop several times, the PB goes down once and all the while the PB is "lol"ing at the whole situation.

 

I thought about this thread at that moment and wondered if I should say a polite "if the tank can taunt and hold the enemies on him, I can keep him alive and we can take the minotaur down".  He has taunt, he's just not using it and guess who the angels are targeting.  Guess who can't keep anyone healed because he's either getting destroyed by the angels or nobody is close enough to the minotaur to be healed.  It goes like this for an uncomfortable amount of time, but I've always been the grit your teeth and pull through type so, away we go. 

 

Finally, the minotaur drops and just before the ninjas show, the blaster says "whoever said they could heal, lied".  /quitteam When I popped back into Atlas Park, I moved back a bit and watched the spot the group left from.  Sure enough, about 10 seconds later the tank popped back in and ran off towards the tram.  The PB and blaster followed a few seconds later and the blaster started his sales pitch again.  I shook my head and logged off. 

And this is why I read these types of threads.😁

[LeapingLemur]

There are powers in this game that I HATE. There is one in particular that will make me leave a team if I find out someone has it and is using it. I am fortunate that I have never joined a TF that someone is using it because I honestly don't know what I'd do then. I personally wish it was removed from the game because it's so damned annoying.

Not even my closest friends know what it is because I'm polite enough to make up an excuse and leave a team when I see it. I find it absolutely SHOCKING that there are people out there who tell others what powers and ATs they should have and how to play. Bow out quietly. If enough people hate your play style, you won't find any teams.

[DR_Mechano]

On 8/29/2019 at 2:18 PM, PaxArcana said:

Here's the context:

I mentioned, offhand, that once I was done summoning and upgrading my pets, my main on Live, an MM, didn't care how much END s/he had left, as they wouldn't be using it during the mission.

 

I was told, that if that was true ... I wasn't playing Mastermind right.

(Plot twist:  that MM was Robotics/Forcefield, with no personal attacks.  Just lots of toggles and pets.  "Not using END during the mission" is pretty much the default setting for /FF Masterminds.)

That is what prompted me, after much thought, to post this thread: the fact that someone, with incomplete information, leapt to the assumption that because I played differently from them, that my way of playing must somehow be objectively wrong.  Rather than, you know, asking something like "Wait, how the heck do you not use any powers during combat?"  (To which the answer would have simply been, simply: "/ForceField" ... probably followed by "Oh, of course.")

 

And that's what I want people to do.  ASK, learn ALL the details, before deciding right-or-wrong.

That's not what my post was directed at, at all.

What you describe is not "playing a Corruptor wrong", it's "playing on a team wrong".  S/he should have modified their tactics, to use all that KB to try and push enemies into tight knots, so as to maximize everyone else's AoE.  🙂  But, that's tactics not Archetype (and would be just as true of a Storm/?? Controller, or an Energy/Energy Blaster, etc).

Having had a Bots/FF MM back on live, especially when the shield buffs were single target, I'll be honest, I didn't take them. Thankfully the protector bots got me covered and would buff allies with their shields and people would think it was mine...

 

...most of the time I just ran my toggles and kept with the group...it seemed to work because...well FF masterminds...I distinctly even remember being thanked for the buffs...

 

This is a post to prove that I'm not above making a sub-optimal build and weird power choices. I do think my time away from this game and playing MMOs where Builds REALLY matter (a sub-optimal character pumps out like 200k DPS, which is HEALER DPS levels, healers who spend very little time DPSing. Meanwhile an optimal DPS character pumped out over 1.5 million DPS (this was back in Legion before the numbers squish) has altered my attitude in a way for the worse.

 

And most bosses had DPS check phases where if you didn't have enough DPS you simply couldn't beat the boss. CoH is clearly more forgiving in that regard. Finished a Ms Lib TF with a spines/fire brute as the main tank...it was messy but we blitzed through it in the end.

Edited August 31, 2019 by DR_Mechano

[PaxArcana]

1 hour ago, DR_Mechano said:

Having had a Bots/FF MM back on live, especially when the shield buffs were single target, I'll be honest, I didn't take them.

I did, mostly because when on a team, I could keep just the Brute/Tank bubbled (which is what I was doing that night).

 

Or, especially when solo, if my Assault Bot started taking a bit more heat than I liked, I could bubble him up and keep him alive longer.  Usually long enough for the Protectors (and myself) to top up his green bar again.

1 hour ago, DR_Mechano said:

(this was back in Legion [...]

... the need to optimize-or-GTFO like you basically describe/infer, is why I pretty much stayed the hell away from Dungeons and similar content, for my entire tenure in WoW (through to the then-level cap of 100, and then for about one month of Legion).

 

[Malclave]

I think my favorite accusation of playing "wrong" was someone upset about my character name as it related to my powerset. It was funny enough I still remember it.

 

Character was a mind/ empathy controller. I wanted a pure support character, which my D&D group called "cheerleaders" because they sit on the sidelines and watch while the action takes place. So, I made the character a high school cheerleader in her costume and bio and called her "Spirit Girl".

 

Got a blind invite to a group, no questions about my powers, and we set off. I did my "cheering"... sleeps, holds, and healing, letting the jocks in the group show off their muscles (i.e., I left damage dealing to the damage dealers). I thought we were doing fine, and everybody got to show off what they did best. Then I got kicked from the group.

 

Apparently, according to the group leader, I was not only playing wrong but being outright deceitful by having a name with "Spirit" in it when I wasn't an Illusion controller.

[TheOtherTed]

On 8/31/2019 at 11:05 AM, Skyhawke said:

I thought about this thread at that moment and wondered if I should say a polite "if the tank can taunt and hold the enemies on him, I can keep him alive and we can take the minotaur down". 

I take it you didn't say anything?  I definitely would have.  There's always a chance that the tank is relatively new to team play, or has solo'ed so long they forgot they even had a taunt.  And as for kin defs, my experience on live was that nobody knew how to take advantage of the kin's strengths unless the kin spoke up.  I had a keybind to tell the team, "When playing with a Kinetics Defender, melee is the safest place you can be."  People would "lol" at that, of course - but not when I repeated it after the first team wipe.

 

A little communication can bring together a team, so long as the team members are willing to listen.  If not, what's the worst that can happen?  Either you get kicked, or you have a story to tell on the forums

 

 

Edited September 1, 2019 by TheOtherTed
grammar