This guide is great. I hope to God that millions of people read this (at least until I7 comes out) and take it to heart, though I doubt it.
One more thing:
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If you are doing TF/SF/trials, make sure that you know the level range. For respec trials, the level range is big. If you want a person to be exemplared/malefactored, you should inform the person when asking.
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Also, PLEASE know the approximate length of the TF/SF or trial. There are few things worse in this game than putting together a TF team and having it fall apart after 2 missions because 6 of the 8 people in the team only had an hour or so to play. Team leaders should be straight forward with this information but people joining teams should also know that a TASK FORCE or TRIAL is not a 15 minute, pop on and log off kind of deal. It can go very fast but I always prefer to hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Great guide!
@Remianen / @Remianen Too
Sig by RPVisions
Good start, a few things I think you should mention or expand on.
You might also want to add a few samples of teaming requests.
/tell <person>, I got a 30-32 team running some missions, interested in joining us?
or
/tell <person>, I got a 20-23 team here puting the hurt on the Family, care to join.
Also I'd reccomend talking about the flag settings 'Looking for Any', 'Looking for mission team', etc. Many people don't use them (either they don't know or dont care), but many recruiters do, and try to respect those with their setting on 'Not looking'. Likewise, many soloers expect people to pay attention to the setting and not blind invite them.
Usually when my team is really hurting for members, I look into those with their setting on 'not looking' and I acknowledge that I am aware that their flag is down. This is especially useful when trying to form a team for Task Forces and respec trials, which sometimes need a balanced team to work. It also helps if you send a question which reflects you actually read their search comment.
/tell <person>, I see you flag is on not looking for a team, but could I interest you into the 44+ respec trial?
Keep it up, we need more info on team making.
How-to-invite guide
Recruiting to form a pick-up team has always been frustrating in the game to both team leaders and the people being invited. Blind invites have been widely discussed in the forum. And no one like to be team leader, people tossing the star around. This guide is written from a perspective of a person being invited. Hopefully, this will make recruiting and pick-up teams less frustrating in general.
Some facts:
Before going to details how to invite, it is good to know the following fact. Any time of the day, if you search for people looking for team, you will only get a few for the whole server. And among these people, those with a level similar to you will be even less. No wonder why team leaders will have to recruit the people who don't put a tag up looking for team. Given the high turn-down rate, it is also no surprise that team leaders will like to randomly shoot out invites and see who join afterwards. But still, it is a good idea to invite sensibly such that the team will work and people will stick with the team longer, which saves you time actually.
Background knowledge:
It is necessary to have some background knowledge of the game in general. To form a team, you will need to have a rough idea of what different archetypes can do. For example, if the team is heavy on damage, and you want to find some players to provide support, you need to search for the right archetype. The following list provides a rough idea of what archetypes can do.
Tanker: Meatshield, damage
Scrapper: damage
Blaster: damage
Defender: support, damage
Controller: control, support
Peacebringer: damage
Warshade: damage
Brute: damage
Stalker: damage
Dominator: damage, control
Mastermind: pet, support
Corruptor: damage, support
Obviously, this is very rough, but it suffices for the purpose of recruiting. A word is needed to what is meant by support here. Support means buffs, debuffs, healing and some minor control. It is not necessary to insist on finding a healer. Any means of support are created equal, and they supplement each other, no one is better than the others.
If you are forming a team to do a TF/SF or trial, you need to know at least the level range of it. It is a common question when you are recruiting for TF/SF/trials, because if a person is not within the level range, he is either not allowed to do it or he will be exemplared/malefactored. Other common questions include the length of the TF/SF/trial and what mobs will appear. It will be great if you can prepare for these questions before starting. I compiled a list below showing the level range of TF/SF/trials.
TF/SF and trial list:
Heroes:
10 - 15 Positron
15 - 20 Synapse
20 - 25 Sister Psyche
23 - 28 Moonfire
25 - 30 Ernesto Hess
25 - 31 Citadel
30 - 34 Katie Hannon
30 - 35 Manticore
35 - 38 Numina
40 - 44 Dr. Quaterfield
40 - 50 Sara Moore
44 - 50 Justin Augustine
44 - 50 Faathim the Kind
12 - 15 The Cavern of Transcendence
24 - 33 1st respec
34 - 43 2nd respec
38 - 40 Abandoned Sewers Trial
39 - 41 Eden trial
44 - 50 3rd respec
Villains:
15 - 20 Virgil Tarikoss
20 - 25 Silver Mantis
25 - 30 Strike Force Leader Renault
25 - 30 1st Respec
30 - 40 2nd Respec
35 - 40 Ice Minstral
How to search:
To search for people, if you simply click the search button in the search window, you will mostly likely get a long list which is truncated. A more efficient way is to specify the level range as well as a specific archetype. You can search each archetype one by one, then you will get a very manageable list. In the search result, you can find out whether they are looking for team or not, what levels they are, their locations and their search comments. If they are in a team, they are greyed out, otherwise they are bright blue in color.
It is up to you who you want to invite. In general, take a glance at their comments and try to recruit people close to your level. It is ok to recruit people much lower than you if sk/lk is available, but people too low has few powers and the powers are not well slotted yet. Also, no need to waste time on people who are greyed out, it is hard to lure people out of their original team. But you can give the solo-ers in mission map a try, in particular those who also have their looking-for-team tag up. They probably do some missions while waiting for team at the same time.
How to ask:
Before going to how to ask, it is necessary to understand why people don't like blind invites. One reason is that people don't want to join a team and find out that they are going to get very low xp, and have to say that the team is too low. So, people will like to know beforehand what kind of team they will be joining. Secondly, if people are fighting some mobs, a sudden pop-up of the invite window is annoying.
A very common way that team leaders use to invite is just to send a tell saying "want to team?" or variations of it. In fact, this is as blind as inviting through the invite pop-up window, because people still don't know what kind of team it is, what level the team is.
If you are doing mission, the best way is to tell people your level or the team level if the team does not have a wide spread in level. It is ok to use mission level but it can be misleading. For example, people like to set their mission to invincible/relentless, the mobs are like +2/+3 to the whole team, and then you are recruiting a person +3 to whole team using the mission level. The person will find out the rest of the team is at least -2/-3 with respect to him. Not to say there are always leechers who are like -5 and refuse to be sk/lk. So xp-wise, the person may be better off solo-ing white mobs himself rather than having a bunch of people not contributing much but sharing the xp. Some people are fine with this, but in general, they will not stick with the team for long. There is in general a tendency to rephrase the question such that it looks good to a high level. Keep your invitation simple and straight forward, like "want to join mission, level of team is 30" for example. If people like to join, they will join and stick with the team longer, saving you time and less frustration later.
If you are doing TF/SF/trials, make sure that you know the level range. For respec trials, the level range is big. If you want a person to be exemplared/malefactored, you should inform the person when asking.