Guide to Successful Teams

The Philotic Method - A Guide to Successful Teams!
Table of Contents

1. Preamble
2. My Credentials
3. Preparation
4. Getting the Team
5. Keeping the Team
6. Success and Follow-up

Preamble
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all teams are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Team Leaders are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Team Leader becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to leave the team with proper notice, and to form their OWN Team, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
-Jefferson Thomas IV, Evil Mastermind from the Eighth Dimension

My Credentials

The reality of the existing game community has caused certain people to start calling the game a "Ghost Town". This is mostly because A) Server loads [those little dots] almost never turn red anymore because we now have much MORE powerful servers than we ever had before that can handle a bigger load, B) Instanced missions are more attractive than street sweeping so few are standing around outside and C) The community has moved away from the model of gathering in Atlas Park and forming teams with whoever is shouting over Broadcast.

Now if you want a team, you need to FORM YOUR OWN DAMN TEAM. Here, I hope this comic will illustrate it a little better:



This belief is B.S., pure and simple. The game is NOT a "Ghost Town" and you CAN get a team EASILY. ESPECIALLY with the new Super Sidekicking System, which allows ANY group of characters to team together and still earn XP no matter what their level ranges.

I just spent 45 levels running my own FULL PuGs (That's Pick Up Groups) full of villains of random archetypes on a server that was NOT Freedom or Virtue. I have so far had NO problem "getting a team". How? Well that's what this guide is here for.

So who am I, to be so arrogant and fly in the face of "common knowledge"? The short answer is that I'm a five year veteran of the game.

The long answer is that I am, the writer/editor of The Combat Handbook, where I showed that even veteran players can still learn something new, and The Force Fielder's Bible, where I proved that a set that "has only 3 useful powers" is actually a set where EVERY power can be an amazing addition to your arsenal, with some creative thinking.

People need to think outside of the standard path, and apparently I'm the one that need to smack them around and show them that other path. So here we go.

Preparation

So, how do I do it? Well the first rule of being a successful leader is to plan. This is DOUBLY true when you are running a pick up group. Why? Because most of the people that will accept your invite don't want to mess around, they want to PLAY, and you are an unknown quantity to them. They do NOT want to stand around waiting for this or that. As such, YOU need to be the glue that holds the whole thing together and YOU need to be prepared. You are hiring them for their talents, you are hiring them to do THEIR jobs of being good players. YOUR job is to keep the team together and running smoothly. Here is what you need to do to prepare:

Learn to Alt-Tab - Windows has this neat little feature called "Task-switching", which allows you to switch between different applications that are running at the same time. Why do you need this? You'll see later. Here is the quick and easy way to learn how to do it. Open up your Desktop Calculator. Now open up Windows Notepad. Now hold DOWN the Alt button and keep it pressed. Now with the Alt button held down, keep pressing the Tab button. See what happens there? A little "mini-window" pops up that shows you all of the open applications. Now you can keep pressing Tab slowly to take a look at all the applications one by one. When you know which application you want to switch to, just make sure that it is the currently selected application and simply RELEASE the Alt button. Now you're switched! Isn't that great? You'll need that ability later to make good use of NOTEPAD. You'll see.

Decide What You Want To Do - Don't get a whole bunch of people together and then waste their time deciding. As leader, it is your one and ONLY duty to keep those villains or heroes busy. Players that are standing around doing nothing feel like they are WASTING TIME, and they WILL leave the team if they are bored or they feel like the team isn't going anywhere.

Getting the Team
Now it's time to put together an AWESOME team! Which is.... any team!

Step One: BEFORE starting up CoX, open up Windows Notepad and KEEP IT OPEN. All the time. I mean it. It's SO useful to have such a small thing open.

Step Two: Once loaded into the game, head to the contact for the missions that you wish to start. Get a mission. Heck, talk to several contacts and get SEVERAL missions. What's BEST is to have access to those contact's cell phones so that you can contact them from everywhere. But as long as you tell people that you're going to the contact for the next mission, most will understand. However, it's usually better to have several contacts activated and juggle their missions so that there's always something up on the Nav window. Radio or newspaper missions are AWESOME for a PuG for just this reason, you always have more missions. Now SELECT that mission and click the Select Task button. ALWAYS have a mission up on the Nav window selected in red. ALWAYS. That way the team always knows what to do next and isn't left guessing. As soon as you complete one mission ALWAYS get the next one up and selected ASAP.

Step Three: Now you have the missions that you need to keep the team busy. Great. Now here is my SECRET SUPER AWESOME POWER GUNDAM KITTY RECRUITING METHOD! (Sorry, just got done watching a lot of live action Japanese TV....) Open up your Team Search window and change the filter to include characters of your level range or lower, in ALL zones. If you are lower than level 20, I'd suggest inviting anyone from level 1 on up. If you're over level 20, I'd suggest only inviting people that are level 14 and higher. Why? Travel powers, need I say more?

Also, why select people your level range or lower? Because people love being sidekicked UP, but not so much being exemplared down for some reason. I've tried, and I swear, 9 out of 10 people above my level do NOT want to lose any of their precious powers. So don't bother inviting anyone more than 5 levels above you.

Now filter the results to people looking for "Any" kind of team, and people that are looking for the type of team that you are running (i.e. TFs, Missions, etc.) Invite these people first because they put up the flag that says that they ARE looking.

Then after inviting all those people, you'll take off those flag filters and sort the archetypes to one or two types to start. I like to "work my way" down the list of archetypes. Why? Because if you mix archetypes on your search, often times all of them won't be listed on your results because there are too many. Especially on the more populated servers. That's when you get the message at the bottom of your search results that says "This list was truncated."



You DON'T want to see that. Why? Because it means that you're not seeing some characters! And if you're trying to get a full team together, you DON'T want to rule out anyone just because you can't see them.

Now click the Search button and take a look at your results. I personally like to sort my results by level and invite from the lowest level of character that may have travel powers on up. Why? Because lower level character generally APPRECIATE being invited to teams and sidekicked up more than higher level characters. You can sort any column that you wish by clicking the top of the column's "header". If you don't like the way it's sorting, you can sort it the other direction by clicking the same spot again. And here is an example of my results.



Take a VERY close look at that list. You see that there are some characters that are highlighted and some that aren't? The ones that are darker are already on a team. DON'T BOTHER THEM! They are already having fun! YOU want the people that are highlighted that baby blueish color.

Step Four: Now you have your first list. Alt-tab over to Notepad and start to type out your "recruitment message". This is a message that you will use to give everyone that you contact all of the major details that they need to know to decide if they would like to join your team. This message should include (not necessarily in this order):

• The types of missions you'll be running (i.e. "normal" contact missions, radio/newspapers/Task Forces, etc.)
• If a Task Force, the LONGEST estimated running time of the TF (That's important!)
• Perhaps the level that you'll be fighting at. This is actually quite impressive for lower level characters and is a great selling point.
• I like to make mention of the new SSK system by saying something like "With the new SSK system, levels don't matter anymore!"
• Flattery

That's right, flattery. Now there are many ways that you can do this, you can either say something like "I would LOVE to have you on my team!" or "We could really use the help of someone of your caliber!". I only do things like this when I'm REALLY desperate to get people to join... like when I'm trying to run a team at 10:30 AM on a workday. What I USUALLY just do for the "flattery" part is to use a neat little trick called "$target". If you include the code $target into your message... when you send the message, the $target will be replaced by the name of the person/character that you currently have targeted. And trust me, people LOVE to see their own name. It's basic human psychology. Here is an example of me using the $target placeholder to send a simple message:



Okay, now here is the result of me using it.



The really nifty thing about this? When you select a character on the Team Search window, they are considered targeted, no matter where they are!

Step Five: Putting it all together now. I type out my recruitment message in Windows Notepad. I decided to send a message to the first person on my list, saying "Hello, $target, would you like to join a Captain Awesome Task Force? It is levels 1-50, takes up to 5 hours, and is worth a random rare recipe and the You're Uber badge!" (typed out without the quotes of course). Now that I have all of that typed out on Windows notepad, I Copy it into the Clipboard, using the Edit Menu's Copy command. Now that it's sitting in Window's Clipboard, it will stay there until I replace it with something else. I Alt-Tab over to CoX, select the first person on my list that is highlighted and not already on a team and then click the Tell button on the Team Search window. Now my first target is ready to receive my message.



To input what I've copied into the Notepad, I just hold down the Ctrl button on my keyboard, and then press V. BAM! My message has been pasted into the chat box. Now I simply press Enter and as you can see, my Tell with the whole recruitment message was sent successfully and it changed $target to the name of the person I was sending the Tell to:



Step Six: Wait about 5 seconds for some sort of response, then select the next person highlighted on your list and do it again! Wait five more seconds, etc. etc. More than likely someone will respond to you minutes later, so when that happens, you can just respond back and take a break from sending out recruitment messages. Just don't forget where you stopped last on your list, people really don't like getting spammed with the same message more than once! When you've come to the end of the list, move onto the next Archetype and so on and so on.

BAM! Now you've got a team full of people. Your own minions perhaps.

Keeping the Team

Now you have 7 other players ready to go, right? Well, they are on your TEAM at least.

This special little section is for Task Forces:

Quote:

MAKE SURE THEY CAN STICK WITH IT! Send your team a message saying something like "Okay guys, if you CAN'T stay for the whole X hours that it MIGHT take to complete this task force, I need you to go now so that we can pick up someone who can stay." You want to make sure that the people on your team are COMMITTED and able to stay with the team the whole time, and this is the most important thing to keeping your team... getting people that will stick with it. They may have read your full recruitment message or they may not have, but if you make it CLEAR to the team before you start the TF that they need to commit to the LONGEST time that the TF might take, then you will have a group of people that will both take you seriously, and know what you expect from them. Often times, there will be one or two people that didn't really recognize how long the TF would take, or forgot that they had this or that coming up soon, and they will quit. Better now than later, because now you still have the chance to fill in that spot!

Now back to teaming in general...

Keep Positive! Remember, running a successful Pick up Group is ALL about psychology. People that are disheartened or are losing morale are MUCH more likely to quit than those that feel they are doing great. If you have a team wipe, turn it upside down, say something like "wow, those jerks sure took us down, time for some REVENGE!" or something else that turns a negative into a positive. As the team leader, you will be setting the "mood" for the team, like a Dungeon Master does for a good roleplaying campaign. A positive mood means happy players that will be more likely to stick with it! Almost every other tip to keeping a team boils down to this simple concept.

Keep the Team Updated (Task Forces) - Specifically on the progress of the task force. Keep track of how many missions you've completed, and how many you have left to go. You can use a bit of psychology here as well, especially at the early stages of the TF. When your team is near the start, say (HONEST) things like "Hey, we've already completed 1/4th of the TF!" or "Wow, 30% done already! Keep it going guys!" Focus on what they've already accomplished, not the long road that's still ahead. When you finally get the contact's cell number, make a big deal out of it. When you reach the halfway point, make a big deal out of it. After that, it's all downhill and it's much easier to keep people in. Then you can shift to saying just how much is LEFT to go, and STILL use what they've already completed too. An informed team is a happy team.

Individual and Group Flattery - Yes, that naughty F-word comes back again. But you would be surprised at how far it goes. Just by taking the time to say to one person each mission what a great job they are doing, it can make a world of difference to keeping a group of strangers together. I ALWAYS end the first couple of missions with a "Great Job Team!" and then after that, I move onto things in the middle of the battle, like "thanks for saving me, SuperBob!" or "wow, we're doing some awesome AoE damage!" Be as specific or general as you like. Also, DON'T overdo it, or people can get annoyed with it and it starts to lose meaning. Pace yourself. Something like a group compliment and one individual compliment per mission, spread about randomly during the course of the mission can do wonders for team morale.

Keep the Team Moving - I have seen more teams (not run by me!) break up because they were waiting on someone to get back from doing this or that, either in-game or in real life. I have a simple rule for the teams that I run: The team stops for NO ONE PERSON, period. If someone needs a bio break, if they need to "go sell", let them and they can catch up later. There is always plenty to do on a good team. One or two people can go and catch up later and the team is no poorer for it. However, if the team is HELD UP because they are waiting on one person, that can cause impatience and kill group morale, and that leads to people DROPPING.

If a person is gone for TOO LONG and they aren't responding after the end of a mission and you're trying to set the next mission but can't because they are still inside the old... send a polite TEAM message, apologizing that you have to kick them to keep the team moving and ask them to send you a tell when they get back for a re-invite. It should be a TEAM message so that the whole team knows why you did what you did and that you're not just a dick. Once you've kicked the person, I'd suggest sending them another invite right away so that if/when they ever come back, they can just rejoin if you haven't already filled the spot.

Also, as the leader, you are not above this rule either. If something happens that I need to go for an extended period of time, I will exit the mission but not the team. Possibly hand off the leadership temporarily to someone else. If I have to go for a SHORT time and get something done, I'll WAIT until we've JUST entered a brand new mission, then tell the team to start without me. An absent team leader will KILL a team, especially when he's not communicating what's going on. Communication is key.

Once you select a new mission, then you can go TO the contact of the mission you've just completed and get a NEW mission. Just tell the team to start without you and that you'll catch right up. Always keep missions ready. Always. Keeping a team BUSY is KEY.

Keep The Team Full - Between missions, it's common for one or more teammates to have to go. Don't let that discourage you. Just set the next mission, tell everyone to head to it and to start without you. Tell then that you'll be refilling the team, then go back to the process above to fill that spot. Make sure that in your /tell that you tell the potential new teammates that you HAVE only one spot left so that they know that they may not be able to get into the team if they "Don't Act NOW!™" That Infomercial stuff really DOES work believe it or not. But always ALWAYS keep the team full. If it looks like it's slowly disintegrating, that can cause others to leave for greener pastures.

Don't Be A Tool - This may sound pretty silly, but I mean it. With the star, can come the attitude that you are the "end-all", "be-all". You are the leader, but that doesn't mean you have to be bossy. Especially in combat. If one person is doing something stupid and getting themselves killed, try to in the nicest way suggest that they work better with the rest of the team instead of going solo. DON'T tell people how to play their characters if they aren't getting anyone in trouble. DO step in if there is an imminent danger to the team. You can offer bits of advice here and there like "I think we should take this large cavern from the right first"... simple things like that that make sense. If one person is starting to get on your nerves with what they are saying in the team channel, either resolve the issue yourself with a few polite Tells, or if the aggravation is specifically targeted towards you, just simply /ignore them so you can't see what they're saying, at least for a little while. Then /unignore them later on in the mission, or in the next mission. If the squabble is involving two other people instead, suggest to the more level-headed one in a private message that he ignore the other. As leader, you should be above petty squabbles, and set an example of rational and even leadership. Just... don't be a tool. You're not God, you're just another player who just happens to be leading.

That being said, if you have an obvious griefer that keeps on getting the TEAM killed, do not hesistate to kick the jerk. If it's some poor Blaster that keeps getting himself killed.... well, that's normal to be honest.

Success and Follow-up

So you did it! You managed to put together a motley crew of misfits and run them through a bunch of missions! You get a cookie! Now that the team is over, because you've got to go or something, you all might want to celebrate. Sing Kumbaya, take group photos, exchange /friends lists or add some new global friends. Make use of the new Ratings and Notes system so that when you run across these guys in the future, you'll remember what you did with them. Most important of all, make sure to say thank you to the team before leaving the team. Offer to pass the star to someone else. If no one answers, just shrug, thank them once more and be on your way. Who knows, maybe someday you'll have a whole supergroup or coalition of people that you've teamed with that all remember your great and noble leadership.

Playing this game mostly on Pick up Groups, and more recently falling into the role of team leader has proven a few things to me:

• You can take ANY 8 random players and successfully complete some of the hardest stuff in the game.
• There are ALWAYS more people to fill up your ranks if you follow the advice in this guide.
• And finally... being a team leader means you're NEVER without a team. So LEAD!

So, LEAD. And help this City of Wallflowers become a City of Awesome!

Originally Posted by EarthWyrm But I do understand that there is an internet rule that any bad idea must be presented by someone at least twice a year to remind everyone who hasn't already read every previous thread on the topic precisely why the idea is bad.

Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?

Originally Posted by Back Alley Brawler Did you just use "casual gamer" and "purpled-out warshade" in the same sentence?

Well, FWIW I just gave you +rep. Excellent guide. The next time I'm doing an extended session at the auction house and see some forlorn character broadcasting for 10 solid minutes that they're looking for a team, I'm going to send them a link to your guide.

(Of course what I continue to hope for is a "Team LFM" function since some people just won't form their own teams no matter what; but that's another subject entirely.)