Wicked_Wendy

/grabs the comfy chair and big tub of popcorn

Yeah that can be entertaining.

/hands Forbin the popcorn and sits back to watch the fireworks!

/signed and for just this reason. I was so happy to see that stupid RATING system disappear .. you remember it. IF I agreed with everything you said .. you'd get all your friends to give me a high rating and I'd have like 4 stars or whatever.. then if I had to nerve to post something that even remotely disagreed with your "Expert" posts the next day my rating would plummet. Well the same is true of Post Counts just like Bill said. I have seen certain players on here who shall also remain nameless that will agrue a point to death and pad post counts by picking apart anyone's arguement against their view LINE BY LINE. Makes me wonder if they ever actually have time to play the game or if they have any sort of real life at all.

The reality is post count no more means anyone is right or wrong than VET badges. I have played with some 7 year Vets that had me wondering... "Did you BUY this account on Ebay? Cause you are playing like you have been here for 7 weeks not 7 years?" hehehe

The numbers don't lie and globals are simply a much better way to find a team. When base building prices dropped the need for a huge SG just to have a base with teleporters and storage declined. In a few months a friend and I built a nice sized VG on Virtue with everything we needed to support us while playing the game. Heck even teleport isn't as big an SG draw as it once was. The Yellow and Green lines merged on Blue side making it possible to get just about anyplace faster. Ferry system merged on red side and now they not only merged the helicopter line but added more of them. Then figure in the Ouro Portal which DROPS you close to a lot of transportation areas Blue side and drops you in almost every zone Red side. The RWZ is a quick way to get to a number of zones and works really well for Vigilantes and Rogues.... I am in Cimerora, I run through the Midnighter's club to Cap Au Diable, hop over to the RWZ base there and I can be in Grandville, St M, Atlas Park, Founders Falls or PI in a really short amount of time. My bases have telepads to every available zone and I rarely need to use them these days.

Even larger SGs can't match the potential of globals for teaming.. Say you belong to a 150 member SG... how many of them are actually on at the same time you are? On any given night I can access VirtueTf2010 and find 300 or more players all looking for the same things I am. Another 150-200 on VirtueLFG Beta and more on any of the other 6-8 I use for finding or building a team. So you log on and find 20 SG members on line. Half are already on teams, if not better, some are getting ready to log off for the day or whatever. If your lucky you MAY be able to pull together an 8 man team. Coalitions? You can't even see their rosters and have no idea if ANYONE is on line. Globals just make life a lot quicker and easier.

I don't think the SG is necessarily dead these days.. its role has just changed and it isn't nearly as important as it once was.

BINGO you got it and in only a few clues johnny what do we have for our winner. LOL let's run down our friendly team leading JA's normal tactics for all to enjoy.. shall we?

The SG "LEADER" in question has "Follow the Tank" as a bind and will drive you insane with it. No I am not joking he does. This lovely individual invited me to team one afternoon when team mates were slim. I told him I was only a 7 level and didn't have much to bring to a 50 level radio team in PI but he insisted this was FINE no problem .. well XP on an 8 man team = leveling faster than XP solo so I joined and made my way to PI. Mission one went pretty well and I managed a level + by the time we finished. So as we prepare for mission two I get a tell. Our "HERO (??)" wants to know if I am interested in joining his dynamite Super Group. I thank him for the offer but explain I am already the leader of an SG and am not looking for that. Silence follows and then in pretty green letters I see I have been kicked from the team. IN THE MIDDLE OF PEREGRIN ISLAND WITH AN 8 LEVEL. When I Imed thinking it was a mistake I was informed that someone else had showed up and I was no longer needed. Of course mister tactful failed to realize as a 5 year plus vet with my own SG I had a base teleporter and i simply hit that and then used the base teleporters to get to KR, Later when I relayed this little tale here I got several private message and confirmed the same jerk that left me to find a way back out of PI has a history of that sort of thing. Join my SG.. No? Fine then you figure out how to get back to Kings Row without dying KICK!

His play style was old and obolete as well and he frequently managed to get people killed herding WAY too many mobs at once for the team to deal with. Then of course the resulting deaths were anyone's fault but his.. Just follow me and we will be fine. YEAH SURE we will lol

There are good and bad leaders out there and my simple solution to dealing with the bad ones is.... get outside mission and use the quit team button. I can always find another team or solo a while and have no problem with that as oppossed to hanging on with some nut case that THINKS he knows how to play the game.

Let's see other examples of some really abd leaders I had encountered..

Talos Safeguard mission. Team enters and instead of heading to the bank our hero starts leading the team forward attacking street mobs. I was waiting for him to ask why we couldn't blow stuff up. I think he was fresh from only playing COV. Well we got close enough that the bank robbery started and a couple vets headed to try and deal with it.. I followed when i saw Bank robbers are getting away and at least one of the others had died outside the bank. Our fearless leader still wasn;t headed to the bank and along with the one other vet left i tried to stop the escape but we failed. Outside I got a tell screaming at ME for messing up the mission.. I quit and put that guy on ignore. [I suppose it would have been better if I'd just ignored the escaping robbers and stuck with him. Problem was the result would have been the same.. mission failed!]

Maybe it's just that radios and bank jobs attract new or bad leaders.. Incident two involves another safeguard. This time the team, including the leader, headed to the bank and did take out the mobs up front. I headed toward the vault to stop the Boss and minions i knew were breaking in. As I headed back I saw the robbers are getting away. I also saw that only one of the other 7 team members was still in the bank and he was by the front door. Well I did the best I could with the 8 man mob including BOSS but ended up face down on the floor. After i hit the hospital I found the rest of the team at the escape site trying to stop the robbers there.. Mission failed! [Ummm you do realize we CAN fight them inside the bank right? Answer no REALLY?] DUH

hehehe I could go on and on.. and ON I have a rep as a PUG queen on Virtue. I will team with just about anyone. As a result I have seen the good, the bad and the very VERY ugly!

Thankfully either I get very lucky, which i doubt, or the good leaders tend to outnumber the bad. So take heart my friends .. jusy quit and find another team.

I think this is the case for most of us. There are some SGs that use the base to socialize, meet to form teams, and to roleplay but I use mine for the same things you do.

I have them set to provide as many services as possible and when i finish poof I am off battling good or doing evil depending on the base of course LOL.

I enjoy the benefit of having all the telepads and access to the Pillar of Ice and Flame for time travel missions. Instead of running to Ouroborus I acccess the mission or arc from base and can teleport right to the zone in question. In my workshops I can pull salvage out of MY storage vault and craft without moving more than a few feet and then turn around and store the IO in a bin if I don't need it right this minute.

The need for bases has diminished over the years with improvements outside of them. Teleporters aren't needed as often because I can get to almost any zone using the Ferry and Helecopter systems on COV and the trains on COH...which now all go everywhere. I have access to a number of zones through my Ouro Portal, after level 25, a few hero side using the Midnighters club, and a few more using the RWZ on both sides. Heck as a VET I even have a mission teleporter than drops me at the front door of my next mission at least once every 30 minutes. Still it's nice to have a place to call home .. a liar I can go to and escape for a short while. And of course bigger SGs with coalitions do provide a source of potential team mates. I say let's keep them LOL

Also depending on what your base has in storage while you can resupply your inspirations through a combat nurse in any hospital now they are all tier one levels. In my bases if I head to base after a death i can resupply with tier 3s and even grab some different type of inspirations, purples, oranges, etc that I didn't have previously and now realize I need on THIS mission to defeat the AV or whatever it was sthe killed me to begin with.

I don't use the feature as often as I used to .. Prior to combat nurses the only way to buy inspirations while on a TF was in your base IF it had an Auto Doc or if you had them stored there. Now even on a task force or a trial you can grab fresh one on the way out of the hospital as you head back to the battle. ... heck in the new incarnate trials the hospital and nurse are inside the mission itself! Still access to tier threes when recluse is giving you fits on an STF does come in handy,

I do like the Vote to kick option.. as for your add on to vote to kick leader I have been on a few teams where I'd had given anything for that option. But for the most part.. If someone, that is even moderately competent, has taken the time to build a team THANK GOODNESS! Since this whole incarnate system began I have been amazed at the number of players with multiple 50 and loads of Vet badges that seems scared to death to leade anything. It amazed me when I arrived in IP the week the STF was the WST and found close to 20 players all standing around .. waiting for someone to form a team. twenty players is practically 3 teams so all any one of them had to do was pick the team they wanted.. since they had plenty of options .. and had a chat with Statesman. I ran several Kahn TFs the week it was the WST simply because I didin;t feel like sitting around for an hour.

Now I have yet to lead a trial mainly because I dc to often from the lag and don't want to force leadership on anyone else if my computer decided I need a break and I go POOF!. But it has amazed me the number of players that will NOT lead. And on the trials I have seen leagues that were amazing.. everything going so smooth it was wonderful. After a quick trial or two the leader thanks everyone and says he/she has to run and the next thing you know .. the league is gone and I see people I was JUST teaming with advertising for a team again. YOU WERE ON A TEAM ..why did you leave? Because no one wanted to take charge!

So while I have had a leader or two that... well lets just say that voting him out of his job would be the nicest thing that ran through my head while on his team. Some of the others would get me arrested LOL
But for the most part HEY if you found anyone actually willing to recruit and form a league.. hang onto them. If they are really bad we all have a way of voting even now... LEAVE their team and go find or form another!

Well that would be great je_saist but it brings up another slight problem we have all seen with these trials. I have been on teams where REPEATED it was briefed

"If we all go over the wall instead of through the door we can avoid the CS!"

Team enters queue, team arrives outside facility and sure enough one, two or MORE players head straight for the door and we all get another opportunity to take a Bio break while Mother Mayhem blabs.

Let's see...

On the BAF we have to SCREAM at players to let Siege get closer so once he dies and rezzes he will be near Nightstar. Otherwise they start attacking him half way between the Admin building and the helipad. I know he's slow but can you be a LITTLE patient?

On the LAMBDA players can't figure out something a simple as I am on team 2 I am suppose to look for grenades.. So why am I shooting at the containment chamber?

On the BAF they can't fathom the notion of stay at your chock point don't chase them. "Hey why ARE all these prisoners escaping?"

To be honest while I don't doubt scaling the walls of the BAS would work.. I personally have never seen it happen because there has always been one idiot that used the door. LOL

Okay then here's another idea ..shorten the silly thing. And they HAVE done that before.. The cut scene with Romulus used to longer and no idea if people complained or just some tech issue forced it.. they made it shorter and all that HUGE text that showed up in your chat box was gone.. I AM NICTUS! I'm just not as loud anymore

It was bad enough when we were working our Alpha slots and endured a week of Doc Aeon when the STF was the WST. People were complaining then but that was one week and we moved on. We are over a month into I-20 and I personally have watched MM chat with Siege and Nightstar hundreds of times now. I consider myself lucky when I have a slow load and arrive when he thing is half over.

Yes I know eventually we are getting more trial. Yes I know that one or maybe two are being prepped for beta testing if they aren't in testing already. But considering past history of how the player base reacts when new content arrives didn't in ever cross a single Dev's mind .. "Gee this thing is sort of long and the players will be seeing it over and over and over. Maybe we need to rethink this!" Obviously NO

I think the placement has a lot to do with it as well. I have seen people complaining about the Maurader cut scene in Lambda too but that usually involves a discussion of the emotes Maurader uses etc not the length. At least with that one its fairly short and comes toward the end of the trial and as a way of signalling the end of a phase. Mother M's cut scene starts as soon as the first player starts to zone through the front door. You haven't even gotten inside yet, haven't SEEN a single enemy, and everything grinds to a halt while the terrible trio yak at one another fro a good minute or more. Maybe they could have cut the length of the thing and placed it to run after we breech the facility and take out those first warwalkers? Change the tone a bit to one of gloating..

"Ah they have taken the bait and fallen for our scheme. Now that they are attacking the facility we can release our sleeper agents and infiltrate the Resistance!"

At least we'd actually get to attack something before hand and if they made it shorter on top of that I think a lot of players would be happier!

I agree Tech and it isn't even just dcing. The Lambda trial can be a nightmare for anything squishy. I pulled out my Arch/Ice Blaster (50+1) and did some LAMs over the weekend. Just exactly what is participation? I helped clear the street outside the facility, helped clear the courtyard and helped take out all the turrents. I went inside and helped take down the Security Guard, THEN comes the part every squishy dreads.. I hit INV and headed in to TRY and destroy comtainment chambers and grab acids. I did managed to get a number of attacks in and even helped destroy a number of the chambers but I also died three times and have to hosp, or two times or ?? it varied depending on the run. On each of these trials I wound up with an acid and promptly went and closed a portal, reported my acid was used and checked my folders to make sure I didn't have any more. I helped attack the weapon delivery sites until we have every portal closed and then launched into the mob surrounding Maurader. Now results varied from trial to trial depending on the FX the league was generating but on a couple I had periods wher I WANTED to attck thing but I was sort of frozen and none of my attacks worked.. eventually this woild pass and i could attack again. On at least one I dc'd during this phase and had to hurry back before maurader died.

I never got a higher reward than an uncommon, most were commons and on the one trial where IO dc'd I got the dreaded 10 thread reward. I have been on trials where i spotted a solo player sitting outside when i was on my way back from the hospital to help my team. Now I am sure THAT personm got 10 threads and deserved them for hanging out doing nothing most of the trial. But if I am missing time in the fight because I DIED fighting how is that NOT participating? Let's just do away with the setup and make drops random like they do with purple drops or even just normal recipies and salvage. Sure it means that wall sitter I mentioned MAY wind up with a Very rare for doing nothing but it also means a lot of players trying their best have a shot at them too even if they do wiin Hospital a few times of DC.

Really? Now I have done countless trials both BAF and LAM. I have found very few leaders that don't take at least the time to ask... Is this anyone's first time? If the answer is no then normally instructions consist of clear street, clear courtyard, then guns and finally EB , team 1 on nades and team 2 on acids. Any questions? ... SILENCE ... And then the pop up screen appears and we head inside. Sure every one knows that routine by now but it still lets players know... I don't plan to RACE through this we are taking out everything we can until we head in after the glowies! Tells everyone which glowies they SHOULD be after and cuts the number of questions inside to .. should I just keep my nade or give it to someone. Takes around 20 seconds or less. YOU'D quit a league over that?

If not while they are fast and short ..those were instructions PRIOR to entering the trial. Same thing with the BAF.. pull AVs to helipad, teams 1 and 2 north chokepoints team 3 south. That took me like 10 seconds to type.... and is there anyone out there with trial experience that now doesn't know what to do inside?

Of course there is such a thing as being a GOOD team member too. the first time I did a BAF and they used the new strategy of pulling to the helipads and using chock points instead of watching each door.. I had NO idea what they meant by chockpoints. Had a vague clue of where the helipad was.. but I clicked on my team leader and just followed him to the right spots. By the end of one trial I was a vet and all the instruction I needed after that was pulling to tennis courts or helipad? using chock points or doors? okay using chockpoints .. where is my team north or south?

Most of the good leaders I have teamed with take a second to see if anyone is doing this for the first time and if so WILL explain it more and league members will wait patiently while he does. That new player may be the difference between success and failure so giving the leader time to educate him or her is worth it. Now since the first phase of both trials is untimed this can be done inside or out but most of the time it occurs before we teleport into the missions. Things get hectic inside so it just makes sense to brief prior to it.

Ah now there's a totally irrational solution to the problem. So rather than have the Devs create a feature to allow league locks, which it seems obvious the majority here wany, lets go 100% the other way and place the entire incarnate system in the hands of a system that is flawed and sucks:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=333
(let me clarify: the question came up if any of the things I tested in this post were possible or impossible. This does not mean that if you join the queue waiting list you can not access those menus or travel .. you can go from zone to zone, enter your base, slot enhancements etc.. the SCREENs will appear. BUT if you do each time you will need to click on the LFG tab and once again request to put on a waiting list to be invited to join a team. By doing any of these things you essentially remove your request.)

That link is to a post in another thread where I went and experimented on what the LFG forces players to endure.

1. Travel is impossible. Don't use a train, the ferry, helicopter or Ouro portal. The full screen graphic will remove your request for a team and you will have to start all over.

2. Acces to you SG (if applicable is impossible) again the full screen zoning menu will drop your request and you have to request again

3. Aside from street hunts you can't do missions.. accessing any door will bring up another full sized zoning menu and you will be dropped and need to start over when you come back out.. you can;t eventry to JOIN while inside a mission

Want to do other things while waiting..

4. You can not conduct a character respec... the full screen menu will delete your request for a team and you have to start again when done

5. You can't create a new costume or alter an older one .. THAT full screen menu will drop you and you'll need to reapply when you are done

6. YOU can create enhancements(IOs) IF you are in a spot like the RWZ while waiting.. You can't access your enhancement trays and slot them or buy enhancemenets at a store or WW and slot them because that full screen menu will drop your request for a team and you have to start all over

So plan on not doing much of anything once you clcik LFG and select one or both trials. You can buy some inspirations as long as you don't need to zone to get to the place to buy them. And you can have a conversation in local, broadcast or global chat. that's about it


So what else can we expect from LFG if we can't pre-form leagues any more?

7. Minimum league size for the BAF is 12 for the Lambda its 8... the LFG will take the minimum number of players required for a trial and send out invites. With a full sized BAF you can earn about 10 to 15% of the iXP required to open a new power. So figure on earning about half that on a trial that has half the members and spawns mobs half the size. So it takes between 7 to 10 trials on a 24 man team .. figure needed around 14 to 20 if every league has only 12 members. Doing the math that means each incarnate character you decide to do trials with will need to now do around 28-40 trials just to open up their judgement and lore slots. Providing the majority of those trials are succeses and drop A and E merits lets go with the lower figure of 28. Then head on over and start doing Lambdas!

8. Currently league leaders can move players around from one team to another as they recruit so when they enter the queue all 3 teams have a good mix of ATs so they all have good defense, good damage and all stand a good chance at survival and at earning decent rewards when the trial ends. The LFG just takes the first 8 or 12 players available at tosses them into a trial. Leader can still move personnal around but whatever you have you are stuck with since you can't invite anyone once inside. Some teams will be fine and complete trials Others will fail miserably. Considering the queue doesn't care what it throws together in a trial .. plan on the failure rate to increase.. so that number of trials needed just to open the tier one power may increase again.

9. Good news for those in the queue now.. currently the wait time to actually get an invite to a trial is between 20-30 minutes. THAT's about half an hour sitting around doing nothing waiting for the game to find you a team. IF SG got his way and no pre-built league can join the queue wait times will be reduced. At the time of day when players are on line, available and looking for a trial. AT other times the wait will probably be just as long if not longer .. finding a league at 10 AM EST on a work day is not easy since a lot of the player base is at work or in school. THAT won't change a bit. And the queue gives you no way of seeing how many other players are waiting to join a trial.. HOWEVER if you go to the RWZ and join a pre-built league now you can easily see that .. "oh we have 20 of 24 slots filled.. 4 more and we can start!" Until the button appears asking do you wish to join the queue? you have no idea if 2 other people are looking for a trial or 200.

Yeah that sounds like a sound marketing strategy that will vastly increase the satisfaction of the player base. Or maybe it will increase the number of players not renewing their subs .. I think I can hear the marketing department screaming NO WAY! right now.... not to mention the CFO.

Now lets use some SG logic. Repeatedly as this topic has been discussed and discussed and discussed I have heard "the queue will place players on teams even if that league leader doesn't want them. there is nothing wrong with this and it is the way it is designed and working as intended." or words to that effect (this is not a direct quote but does cover the general meaning of statements made repeatedly) Okay but the Devs didn't see fit to disable the Kick function on league either so, using the same sort of logic, any leader that feels the need to kick the 1 or 2 players the queue adds to league they built and held to a particular size in order to cut lag and increase the chance of success is ONLY doing something that the game allows so its not being an <censored> at all its using a trial tool provided BY the DEVS the way it was designed to be used and is working as intended. Don't feel bad guys .. your not <BLEEP> your just using kick function as it was meant to be used.

I can't say for sure but I do think you are right Fleeting I have had a number of occasions where Maurader was enraged and I tried to use my grenade but someone had beaten my to it and the thing simply would not fire .. then the Maurader Pacified came up and I used mine the next time he was "ENRARGED" No clue on Acids I have never seen a team where the situation even came up .. people fan out as soon as we exit the interior and if someone is already standing near a door .. Go somewhere else.. QUICKLY! lol

I have seen leagues work both ways Hand all the grenades to the tank or whoever and .. everyone just keep what they have and use as required. Both seem to work fine so WHATEVER makes the boss (league leader) happy.

LOL why does that NOT suprise me. Anyone ever wonder how some of these people manage to drive anywhere? If they follow directions in real life like they do here.

The GPS says to turn right in 2 miles onto 4th steet So we drove 4 miles and for the life of us we could not find 2nd street anywhere???

Honest officer I have no idea why this accident happened. The sign back there clearly says no right turn on red. So I turned left!

How can we get into trouble? the sign back there said the speed limit on route 55 is 88 miles an hour and I am only doing 70. Huh? What do you mean this is route 88?


I did a Lambda yestreday and fortunately we had several Veats adding to hit buffs and a couple good controllers debuffing Maurader so it may have simply been a case of what do we need these for he's dead but we headed back to the RWZ and several players wanted to know do the temp powers still work when we go back in? Seemed about 4 of them still had pacification grenades.

You have seen that and as early as last night was on a Lambda that had all 10 portals closed before attacking the first weapon cache was complete. Why we see constant missions where 1 or 2 acids can't seem to be located is a mystery .. especially since I have had runs where I was on the Acid team .. died taking out a containment chamber and rezzed in hospital .. while waiting on 20 time lock on door to end {I HATE that damn door} another chamber went down and I was awarded an acid. Then all chambers were destroyed and our team heaed over to assist with grenade. LOL I swear I am not making this up I was on one onf my squishier toons .. I died hunting down weapons crates and wound up getting a grenade while rezzing in the hospital as well. ALL on the same mission.

Maybe we need to start searching that combat nurse in the hospital.. she may have thosands of grenades and acids at this point and just isn't letting anyone know about it!