Barata

My favorite toon is a fire blaster. I don't see a problem with DoTs. I know him well enough to be able to turn my attention to another foe so the DoT is wearing off. The only "problem" is that many players get into the mindset of "hit it until it's dead" and keep blasting regardless of the fact that the DoT will finish the job. An enemy might get one additional hit in on you, but that shouldn't be a problem.

As for rains..... they do a lot of damage to a lot of people and are very endurance-friendly when you use them on several enemies. Rain of Fire, even with enemies moving out of it, will take a serious chunk out of an entire spawn's health. There's a minor slow mechanism applied to at least several of the rains so that mobs don't leave them too quickly.

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I..I am fine with that kind of farming, I have no problem with that kind of farming since it does have such benefits as an expanded pool of items for the BM/WW. Those N00bs come out with tons of levels and the experience of virgin...


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Actually, that's not the virtue you claim it is. Yes, you get more items to flood into the market, but players gain experience and levels at a proportional rate and then create new characters, so there are more character toons that require those items. They cancel each other out.

Maybe they should make it so that if a character gets more than half of his experience from AE, his name shows up in the game world as pink or something. Or maybe if you've gained more than two levels, AE security comes in, takes you by the arms, and leads you out of the building. "Prolonged use of AE can have detrimental effects. For your own safety, you will be banned from AE until you gain one more level conventionally." hahahaha

One thing I don't like doing is being a dictator. When I do lead, I take into consideration my team's desires. When I'm on a team where the leader has the attitude of "it's my way or the highway", I take the highway. When I put together a task force, I let people know that we're working together and everyone is not working for me. So while, as the leader, I reserve the right to make a final decision, I encourage people to speak up. Likewise, if I'm on a team and there's a problem and we're disorganized and not doing well, I'll speak up and try to organize us better with more effective tactics.

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I've been doing ticket runs on red side frequently to finish my brute build, and the most clueless AT I have run into are Masterminds. If I get on a team that has more than two, I jet. I just can't do it.

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Hit me up if you're on Victory some time. I'm in a Masterminding mood Currently in the process of getting one to 50, but making a new arc delayed him by about a week.

And no, I'm not a terrible player

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Why do people find masterminds hard to play? If you can play a simple RTS...then you can play a mastermind! Even if you CAN'T play an RTS to save your life...understanding game mechanics isn't hard.

The problem is that most MMs don't seem to like to actually control their pets or realize that they have other teammates to consider. I don't use binds or macros for my pets and I never have problems controlling them when necessary.

There is nothing wrong with the MM AT.

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I think the MM AT is wonderful. It's the most unique one in the game. That said, I gave up on teaming with my MM because I haven't mastered how to control the henchmen in a team setting. I wound up soloing my MM to 50 and he's my main character I play when I feel like soloing.

I have a robotics MM, and one of my problems is that the robots do knockback. Invariably, a mob will get knocked back into another spawn and then my henchman follows up with an AoE faster than I could stop him and we'd wind up with multiple spawns attacking us. I try to have high standards for myself when teaming. I don't want to be the one to aggro another spawn. Yet it would happen with more frequency than I cared for, so I'm very cautious about teaming with him.

So yes, I do have a problem controlling them at times. And that's with binds. Not all the time, and not on all maps, but enough so that I find it disconcerting.

I seriously hope the devs are working hard at addressing these things. If taken with a grain of salt, the forums do put into words serious problems or concerns from the player base. Ever since AE was put into place, the forums have been inundated with complaints and horror stories. The last mechanisms that generated this type of response was GDN and ED. GDN and ED was a nerf to the system, while AE is almost the opposite. It basically empowers players so they can bypass ALL content within the game (with the exception of AE itself) and get weeks worth of experience in a day or two.

If the devs don't think this is a problem, then it's not. They're the ones that have to determine what kind of environment they want the game world to be. I would think though that if one type of content is attracting almost as many players as all of the others combined, that there's a problem.

The author does have a very valid point at times. The idea that an intelligent enemy will focus all of his attacks for many minutes on a the one character able to withstand them, instead of sending out that single attack to the "healer" who is keeping everyone alive, doesn't make sense. The author does fall short in the "collision detection section, as not all games don't have it. CoX obviously has it. Once dumpster diving became a popular exploit, it was put into place.

I think the nature of gaming, computer MMOs in particular, encourages polarizing the various "classes". In real life, there's not such a wide spread between the "health" of various individuals. But in computer games, your character is supposed to be more than real life. This ends up causing the characters to be more stereotypical. Boss characters end up being exponentially more powerful than their minions, requiring that the classes move even further into their extremes.

I don't see this as being necessarily a problem. If I want to experience something close to real life, I'll just go outside. CoX embraces the stereotypical archetypes, and that's fine because the archetypes are fun for many people. It doesn't need to be the only model, it just requires that another company choose to develop a different system.

One of my dumb moments was the first day I played the game. I did the tutorial, went to Ms Liberty to level up, and started grabbing missions from the first contact in City Hall. One of the first missions was a "Defeat 5 Hellions in Atlas Park". OK, easy enough. I exited the building and headed over to this little park I saw near City Hall. It had a nice little lake and a statue. I looked around for some plaque to see what the name of the that little park was, but it didn't have a name. I started looking all over the zone for all the little parks and still couldn't find Atlas Park. I thought maybe it's an industrial park, so headed towards the warehouses. I spent about an hour running around looking for Atlas Park until I noticed when I looked at the map that the whole zone was Atlas Park. Ooops!

Nowadays, my stupid moments come at various times. I'll forget I'm exemped down to some lower level and run up to a boss and hit my hold...... to find out that I don't have a hold anymore. Or the time I was on my Dark Defender and we were stealthing through a mission, and I forgot that fuzzy was with me and aggroing everything along the way. hahahaha

I go through periods where I put together teams, and I go through periods where I just don't want to. If it's during the week, I'm usually starting to burn out in the evening after working all day. I have a drink ,start to veg out, and would really rather let someone else lead the team. It does require ongoing work to keep a team going. I don't like sending blind invites, so I always send a tell first. As people drop, you have to find replacements. Some people don't mind doing it and just do it like second nature. That's not the case with me. I have to be in the mood to. Like right now, I've been running around all day, had a bit of a stressful experience earlier, and just want to take it easy. I'll probably play my blaster as I won't have to constantly be worried about trying to maintain aggro with my tank or keeping the team healed and the mobs debuffed or held with my defenders/controllers. I really don't feel like leading others at the moment, so I'll see if I can get on someone else's team.

Remember.... for every person that likes to lead teams, you need seven other people that don't.

I think the devs expected farming and such, but I don't think they expected it to be as pervasive as it is. I think they probably expected the amount of people farming would be about the same, or maybe increase a little. Heck, I too expected farming, but didn't imagine it would overshadow all of the other content.

I ran a Manti a week or two ago, and we left the first mission and reset the TF. We had a lot of high-conning mobs and it was VERY difficult, and the leader said those shouldn't have been spawning. So we disbanded and restarted again. Didn't change difficulty settings or anything, just abandoned it and started over, and it appeared to be of normal difficulty. The leader said that it was a bug that surfaces now and then and seemed to be happy with the 2nd iteration. We then breezed through it with no real problems.

You're not dual-boxing are you? I know it's a stupid question, but everyone makes a "doh!" mistake now and then, but you are trying to create the HEAT/VEATs on the same account that your fifties are on, right?

I was about to say that AE doesn't make bad players, and that they make themselves, but I changed my mind. Take a new player who's never played before. He creates a character and gets a choice of which zone to start in. What's the first one listed? Atlas Park. What do they see upon entering AP? Broadcasts to join teams. Joining a team is only natural in an MMO. So they join, figure out that they're supposed to go into that big building, and just do what comes naturally. A few hours later, they're in their 30's or 40's, don't know what an enhancement, has never seen another zone, don't know what the villain groups are like..... they're a bad player. Technically, they're not bad themselves, they're just lacking knowledge. But it ultimately doesn't matter as you invite them to your team and find out that you have someone who has no idea at all what to do.

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It's like a catch-22 for me.

I go to the zones I'm interested in and ask if anyone wants to group I hear crickets.

I attempt to solo the stuff, which isn't enjoyable to me (my own opinion I know others love soloing).

I go to AP, say "lvl X Y LFT" and immediately get an invite and/or whispers.

I recently reached Cimerora and loved the build up of something sinister in the area as I talked to its citizens. Then to be unable to find anyone to do the missions sent me me crawling back to AP. I felt like I didn't have a choice.

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Protip: Broadcasting isnt the optimal way to find teammates

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Apparently not outside of AP.

Do you have any suggestions for the other zones?

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Some people have suggested going to AP and broadcasting that you're putting together a team for regular missions or arcs. They've said they have luck because some people either want a change of pace or can't get on their farming teams.

Well, the OP does have a valid point. His point was that AP has become the central hub and the other zones have less population now. That is true. I play for at least a little while practically every night. I log onto toons of all level ranges, and lately have been concentrating on one of my 50's. With my 50's, I'll travel through the zones, starting at Peregrine and working down, looking to see if teams are forming. There has been a change in the population in the other zones. There always used to be a couple instances of PI, but now there's just one and it's pretty quiet.

I don't believe though that it has killed the game. It may have killed some people's enjoyment of the game, but the game itself is still going along pretty steadily. Before anyone is too harsh on someone else, you have to remember that people play games for different reasons and with different expectations. When the environment within a game changes noticeably, some people will like it, some people will be ambivalent, and some will dislike it. If you're unfortunately one of the people who dislike it, it's perfectly natural to vent frustration over the fact that something you enjoyed so much has changed and is not as enjoyable anymore.

I have an AR/Dev that I really enjoy whenever I play him. Devices is a bit of an acquired taste, but it does have some strong points. For example, Arachnos can be incredibly annoying with their smoke screens, but Targeting Drone totally negates that, along with letting you hit high-defense items like Rikti Drones more easily. Caltrops are VERY nice (my only complaint being the horribly short range). They really put a very effective buffer between you and the mobs. Web Grenade pairs nicely with Ignite. Smoke Grenade stacks onto any defense you're getting from a defender or controller. Tazer is an adequate stun for things that get too close. And they all work nicely in a team setting. Devices gets a rap of being bad in a team setting, but that's really from just those two powers (Trip Mine and Time Bomb).

As for the primary powers, the only one I don't have is Sniper Rifle (which I generally like but didn't have room for). I use all of the other powers frequently. Keep in mind that many do knockback, so you have to use them carefully in team settings, but they function well.

You don't have the damage boost from Aim and Buildup, but I don't find that to be a problem. With almost as much frequency as you'd be using Aim/Buildup, you'll be pumping out heavy damage with Full Auto (though it comes later).

Devices isn't the best secondary (duh), but it does have its charms and grows on you.

I would just send a PM to the Mod and ask him/her. It's a business address, so I can't imagine why they wouldn't give it.

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This is an experience I've been having lately.....

I have a dark defender at level 50 that I enjoy playing on occasion. I also enjoy building up my SG base. A couple items I want for the base require the SG healing badge (5,000,000 points of damage). I've logged on the last several days with the intention of finally getting that badge. Since our SG was just almost 99% complete, I figured a couple sessions with a high level team should easily let me hit 100%. I wasn't up for doing a task force and just wanted to get into a basic arc or radio mission team.

Over the last three days, I've moved the counter from almost 99% to 99.5%. Yes, I found some teams, but it was not easy. I'd be in PI and get tells saying "Want to help us fight an AV?" I'd say "sure!", accept the invitation, and see that everyone's in AP. AE missions don't contribute to non AE badges, so I'd tell them that, wish them luck, and quit.

Yes, I could form my own team. Yes, I could get on a task force. The environment within the game has changed pretty drastically though as before, I wouldn't have to manage a team or join a task force, I'd almost always be able to join an existing team. But they are more scarce now. If that's the direction the game is heading, then I'll easily accept that. But there's also nothing wrong with being honest and admitting that it's not an environment I like as much.

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Honestly its better to run the team yourself or play with trusted friends anyhow, imo. Games more fun when you arent putting your debt in the hands of total strangers

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"Fun" is different for everyone. One of the things I like about MMOs is that you meet new people. It's boring if you only play with the same people all the time. Besides, my real-life friends don't play CoH, and debt isn't a concern to me. I rather enjoy PUGs because you never know what to expect. Even when you have a couple people playing badly, I look at the bright side and consider it a challenge to try to compensate for them. Being on an optimized team with the same people can feel like a rut because not much changes. And if you always blaze through missions with little risk of danger, it gets bland pretty quickly.

As for running my own groups.... I do that on occasion. But I'll honestly dislike it if I have to do it all the time. There are many times I'm burned out from work and tired, and want someone else to lead.

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Well, thats your definition of fun, then. My own definition finds that I have an active SG I'm part of, and the game is NEVER boring for me running with the people I consider my online friends.

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I should have been more clear. I do enjoy playing with friends or online friends. In the last MMO I played, a few other players and I ran our guild and did all kinds of things together. It was VERY fun. I never made online friends with this one though. There seems to be a high turnover in our supergroup, and I haven't established relationships like I did in the last game. I never minded it though because I would team and meet new people, which I enjoyed doing. What I meant by playing with the same people gets boring was that when I would do that, we would be very efficient after some time. That game was all PvP, and the PvP was very advanced. Since it was against other players, it was rarely boring. Running these types of PvE missions can get predictable though, and teaming with new people I meet gives it a change of pace. I really don't mind losing, so when I find myself on a sucky team and having a team wipe, I usually chuckle at it because it's refreshingly humbling. It gets interesting because then I have to think "what can I do to make this better?" I switch around tactics, take control sometimes, and just generally have fun with it because it's different.

I didn't mean to put down teaming with friends, I had meant to extol some of the virtues of meeting new people through PUGs.

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This is an experience I've been having lately.....

I have a dark defender at level 50 that I enjoy playing on occasion. I also enjoy building up my SG base. A couple items I want for the base require the SG healing badge (5,000,000 points of damage). I've logged on the last several days with the intention of finally getting that badge. Since our SG was just almost 99% complete, I figured a couple sessions with a high level team should easily let me hit 100%. I wasn't up for doing a task force and just wanted to get into a basic arc or radio mission team.

Over the last three days, I've moved the counter from almost 99% to 99.5%. Yes, I found some teams, but it was not easy. I'd be in PI and get tells saying "Want to help us fight an AV?" I'd say "sure!", accept the invitation, and see that everyone's in AP. AE missions don't contribute to non AE badges, so I'd tell them that, wish them luck, and quit.

Yes, I could form my own team. Yes, I could get on a task force. The environment within the game has changed pretty drastically though as before, I wouldn't have to manage a team or join a task force, I'd almost always be able to join an existing team. But they are more scarce now. If that's the direction the game is heading, then I'll easily accept that. But there's also nothing wrong with being honest and admitting that it's not an environment I like as much.

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Honestly its better to run the team yourself or play with trusted friends anyhow, imo. Games more fun when you arent putting your debt in the hands of total strangers

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"Fun" is different for everyone. One of the things I like about MMOs is that you meet new people. It's boring if you only play with the same people all the time. Besides, my real-life friends don't play CoH, and debt isn't a concern to me. I rather enjoy PUGs because you never know what to expect. Even when you have a couple people playing badly, I look at the bright side and consider it a challenge to try to compensate for them. Being on an optimized team with the same people can feel like a rut because not much changes. And if you always blaze through missions with little risk of danger, it gets bland pretty quickly.

As for running my own groups.... I do that on occasion. But I'll honestly dislike it if I have to do it all the time. There are many times I'm burned out from work and tired, and want someone else to lead.

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Sands of Mu though is a vet power. There's no reason why a pool power can't overshadow a vet power.

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It's not the comparison to Sands of Mu that is the issue, it is the comparison to Shadow Maul. And if Sands of Mu did less damage than Shadow Maul then you could say that. But it doesn't. If A = B and A > C then B > C.

If Flurry were turned into a cone attack with the damage that it currently has, though, there would be no problem. Flurry does less damage than Shadow Maul. So the only similarity would be the same range and cone arc. Shadow Maul would still be the better attack. (There's also the -Acc vs. the stun, but IMHO the -Acc wins that one, too)

Of course, Flurry recharges faster and costs less End than Shadow Maul. But that is a constant for all attack powers. No one says Air Superiority is better than Haymaker because it recharges Faster and costs less End. (Well, maybe they do )

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I'm not sure I understand this focus on making it a cone. I have Shadow Maul. I doubt I can actually get it to hit mulitple people more than 1/3 of the time, and that's if I'm very lucky and carefully align mobs up so that I can try. Applying that to Flurry means that 1/3 of the time (at best), you have an OK power, and 2/3 of the time, you have a sucky power. Because of its damage, Shadow Maul is at the very least an OK power when it hits one person, and very sweet when it hits more than one. Why "fix" Flurry so that it's only OK 1/3 of the time and still sucky the other 2/3 times? And that's if you're lucky!

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Exactly. It does less for the long animation, so making the animation shorter would bring it in line. Upping the damage would bring it in line too, but I'm more partial to seeing the animation time decreased.

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I guess the only argument I have against this is that since Shadow Maul and Sands of Mu have the same animation and are cone powers, new players (such as myself, once upon a time) who see Flurry in action would expect it to be a cone power also. This expectation would hold true even if the animation were shortened. The devs would have to change the animation entirely to remove that expectation, and I wonder which is easier, development-wise -- developing a new animation for Flurry, or making it a cone power?

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Making it a cone would be easier. Very much so. It's just adding another attribute to the power. But it still subjects it to the problem that it's only good when you do manage to get it to hit multiple people.

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I'm ambivalent about making it a cone. It's very tricky getting the cone to affect more than one target in Sands or Shadow Maul and requires that you have enemies practically on top of each other. Since the damage is fine for Shadow Maul, it's like having icing on the cake when you get it to affect more than one target. If you don't, it's no big deal. But if the only change you make to Flurry is to make it a cone, it'll only be on par with other attacks if you do get it to hit more than one person. Most of the time, it'll affect only one target and still be underpowered.

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I don't expect that Flurry will ever be "on par" with Shadow Maul or Sands of Mu because, frankly, it's a pool power, and I don't expect pool powers to be as good as mainline powers. I just want Flurry to be the kind of power I can take without feeling like I'm hurting my toon. With only moderate damage and a low chance to disorient (one of my least favorite effects), I still wouldn't consider it a good attack even if the animation time were decreased. Give it the potential to multiply that moderate damage and low chance to disorient over 1 to 5 minions, however, and now we're talking.


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Sands of Mu though is a vet power. There's no reason why a pool power can't overshadow a vet power. Actually, there's no reason why any one power has to be more or less than something from another pool. People state "A power in a secondary or pool power should never be stronger than a primary power" as if it's some kind of universal MMO standard, but it's not.

But once again, even if it was made into a cone, it would only be on par with Shadow Maul and Mu if you managed to get it to hit multiple people. You use Shadow Maul or Sands on a single target, and they're still good. Making Flurry a cone just means it's good in much fewer situations.

I don't expect it to be a good attack. I just want it to consistently equate to an average attack.

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Actually, my recommendation would be to reduce the animation time by a third, but keep the graphics as close to the way it is as possible. I think being a little quicker would make it feel on-par with other powers. They did it to Flares, keeping the graphics about the same, but decreasing the animation, and it turned a very frowned-upon power into one that people highly recommend. There's no reason why Flurry couldn't benefit from the same treatment.

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I would agree were it not for the fact that Flurry's basic animation is shared by Shadow Maul and Sands of Mu, and I have yet to see anyone register a complaint about those powers on account of their animation. I'm guessing this is because they provide sufficient bang for your buck -- i.e., a high DMG cone attack with -ACC is worth the chance of whiffing while being rooted for 2-3 seconds. That leads me to think that it's not the animation that makes Flurry bad -- it's the fact that it does so little for such a long animation.

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Exactly. It does less for the long animation, so making the animation shorter would bring it in line.

Upping the damage would bring it in line too, but I'm more partial to seeing the animation time decreased. I'm ambivalent about making it a cone. It's very tricky getting the cone to affect more than one target in Sands or Shadow Maul and requires that you have enemies practically on top of each other. Since the damage is fine for Shadow Maul, it's like having icing on the cake when you get it to affect more than one target. If you don't, it's no big deal. But if the only change you make to Flurry is to make it a cone, it'll only be on par with other attacks if you do get it to hit more than one person. Most of the time, it'll affect only one target and still be underpowered.

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I like Telekinesis on all my Mind Control characters and my Empathy/Psi. However, Telekinesis is also one of those KB powers, so it takes so getting used to in order to see good situations for it and also knowing when it's bad to use it. However, for you it'll allow you to triple hold things, Pet. Gaze, Dominate, and Telekinesis. Allowing you to keep bosses held, and since Telekinesis is a target AoE, you can actually plausibly hold an entire group, in a corner, while debuffing stuff other than their to-hit, and defeat them faster with teams.

It just takes some playing around with the power and knowing when to and not to use it because of the KB component.

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Could you give me some advice on what to do with my Telekinesis and its single slot, and how to use it effectively?

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Force Bubble is better.

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Uh..... blueberry pie is better than Force Bubble. But it doesn't exactly have anything to do with Mind Control, does it?

This is an experience I've been having lately.....

I have a dark defender at level 50 that I enjoy playing on occasion. I also enjoy building up my SG base. A couple items I want for the base require the SG healing badge (5,000,000 points of damage). I've logged on the last several days with the intention of finally getting that badge. Since our SG was just almost 99% complete, I figured a couple sessions with a high level team should easily let me hit 100%. I wasn't up for doing a task force and just wanted to get into a basic arc or radio mission team.

Over the last three days, I've moved the counter from almost 99% to 99.5%. Yes, I found some teams, but it was not easy. I'd be in PI and get tells saying "Want to help us fight an AV?" I'd say "sure!", accept the invitation, and see that everyone's in AP. AE missions don't contribute to non AE badges, so I'd tell them that, wish them luck, and quit.

Yes, I could form my own team. Yes, I could get on a task force. The environment within the game has changed pretty drastically though as before, I wouldn't have to manage a team or join a task force, I'd almost always be able to join an existing team. But they are more scarce now. If that's the direction the game is heading, then I'll easily accept that. But there's also nothing wrong with being honest and admitting that it's not an environment I like as much.