An observation on teams

My completely anecdotal evidence shows that finding a team is easier. Just the other day on Virtue my 23rd troller ended up running with a team of 30-somethings in Brickstown for several missions. I hadn't even had the chance to go slot up my new slots or replace enhancers I had leveled past and I was still able to make valuable contributions to the team. I've also gone and PuGed with lowbies just to have something to do and things went fine (altho I did miss my Stamina).

I praise the SSK gods!

Once the back-to-school population slump cools off and the Halloween event and so on kick in, I think the new SSK is really going to start working even better. By then we'll all have more of an idea just how broadly we can form teams and we'll be seeing more of them more often. I think the new SSK is one of the best ideas in a long time the devs have come up with.

I want united servers!!! It's time to unite the NA and the EU servers and let us all play as a global community across the whole planet!

I always thought it was awesome how Superman, for example, could "belong" to any and every nation on the planet, shouldn't our Heroes have the same chance to win the hearts of all?

After reading several replies, I have to add my 2 cents (which has pretty much already been said).

It really is no big deal starting your own PUGs! I have no problem getting a PUG together everynight, and getting replacements when people log. It usually takes me under 10 minutes to build a full team. I just check out the search, find the level range I want (which is even moot now), and send tells (like "interested in mish team?"). More so than not I get replies, with people joining me. The biggest pet peeve I have is when I don't get a reply at all. All I ask is a polite "no thx", which I thank in return and move on. It's just courtesy. I also never try to bug anyone who has specifically stated they are not looking for any kind of team.

It's a great way to meet new players(vets and noobs alike), and if things go well I ask for a global friend request to ease the search in the future.

I will admit that sometimes it's tough to build a well-balanced group, but even then, with more people, it's more fun, and you can come up with creative strategies to win the mish. The name of the game, for me, is fun, socialization, and variety. I don't care about farming or powerleveling. Debt? Big deal! As many have said on these boards: "The journey is more fullfilling than the destination!"

Like I said, just my 2 cents. Thanks.

Who needs well balanced? You can take ANY team full of characters and make the team work well. Teams don't need "balance".

Just go to show you that some folks are just afraid of the star no matter what the devs do.

i remember all the whining threads about AE killing PUG forming.

No, the problem was many folks don't want to do any work to get a team going. they just want to get invited.

I always try and aim for a balanced team but sometimes that isn't possible, whether it's because of people quitting or just lack of specific ATs.
Last night I saw a Sister Psyche TF being advertised on Freedom TFs (I always advise to join global channels), so I decided to tag along on my level 29 DB/Invul Scrapper, and hopefully I'd get some fun, levels and merits out of it. We had 2 Blasters, 2 Scrappers, 1 Tank, 1 Controller (with Forcefields), 1 Assault Rifle/Trick Arrow Defender (who made his build as "The ultimate redraw joke, but he ended up being Uber") and a Kin fender; a very well made, and balanced team. Within about 3 missions we had lost our Bubbler and our Kin (also being our only real source of heals), another couple of missions later we lost our tank, now we were 3 crucial players down and we had gone from being very balanced to very unbalanced.

So me and the other Scraper ended up tanking, we had no heals and no buffs, outside our own and any inspirations we picked up along the way. A team mate suggested I set it to the lowest difficulty possible (As I had the star, although I wasn't actually the leader ) so I set it to -1 level to hopefully enable us to finish it.
It was a long slog but was very fun and we ended up being very smooth with little deaths, not necessarily the fasted Sister Psyche ever but at least most of us were getting xp.
We ended up winning despite the fact it was an unbalanced team of 5 taking on missions set to 7-8 with a Rad/Rad Archvillain at the end, this may be anecdotal evidence but I believe it shows that you never need the perfectly made team, as long as everyone has a good attitude, knowledge of their build and how to use it and adapts; you can take on most challenges the game throws at you. (Special mentions Helena Frost, the ghosting Blaster and Dangerr Man, the AR/TA Defender whose debuffs we all loved)
Overall everyone showed a great attitude and were all very flexible in their play styles, not to mention kick ***
As a note: All of us (Except Helena) were level 20-30.

But as a note on PUGs, when creating them I generally try and find people around my level, sure anyone will get xp (barring level 50s) and they'll all be Sidekicked or Exemplified but a level 6 will be underpowered compared to level 26s who have more attacks, better enhancements, more slots for the enhancements and a bit more experience with their builds.

Agree with some prior posts - many times I see ppl looking for team all posting in broadcast or global channels and must say find it amusing. Quite a few times I have just send blind invites to peeps who are lft and build a team in 60 seconds. I never understand why one of them doesn't see all the others who are lft and just decide to form up. Many times there will be more than a full team of peeps who are lft at same time and all posting in same channel but nobody bothers to form up.