Was I in the wrong here?

I very much enjoy teaming with strangers. I even sometimes like forming and leading teams. However there are times that I do not want to team with strangers, but instead am teamed with close friends or being antisocial/doing something that is more fun solo. Even when I am interested in teaming with strangers, however: I don't ask strangers who I know nothing of what they are doing beyond seeing them in a search to invite me to their team.

I only ask global friends to invite me to their team, and then only if they're on a team of size between 3 and 7. And if they say no I am nice about it... and don't ask them again for at least a couple weeks if they sounded at all irritated...

The only way I ask to join teams is in broadcast or global channels, otherwise. Not with tells. I feel as though it's too risky of being an imposition to ask a stranger to invite me to their team. I also feel it's especially rude to phrase the question in the form of me offering to do THEM a favor... as you seemed to with "can your team use a hand" though that is fairly neutral, it could be worse. But I recommend to avoid phrasing as 'does your team need a corrupter' or etc and instead be more polite by saying 'I am a 41 corrupter looking for a team, just in case you were looking for a teammate' kind of like that... making it less of a burden on them to demur or simply not answer.

I do not think his reply to you was polite, but it was especially rude to respond to him that way... and you weren't even funny (being funny makes up for being rude, doesn't it? Of course there are exceptions, but in general if you want to be rude and get away with it, be funny).

I don't think you were in the wrong for asking. I think he was in the wrong for snapping at you. However I think you were also partly in the wrong for not accepting his reasons (however rudely phrased or inimical to your playstyle they were) - I don't know what good you thought would come of it - trying to "re-educate" players on their behaviour in that way rarely does what you intended and almost always leads to verbal escalation (as it did here). Lesson learned, maybe.

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Originally Posted by Scythus This. I'm always readily welcoming of new team members. How else are you going to make new friends?

Not everyone wants to make more new friends I'm sure we've all run into those really clingy strangers with few/no friends that just want to be your "bestest friend evar!" - the ones you really regret making into a global friend (because at first they were behaving normally), because suddenly they want to monopolise all of your online time. I've had a fair few of those, and for a while after each one I became rather reluctant to team outside of my clique of friends with any strangers, unless they were a friend of a friend who had already been vetted as not being some kind of "clingy superfreak"

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Originally Posted by Sailboat I can't speak for other posters, but one reason I dislike it is that I often get "Can I join your team?" requests when I'm, you know, not teamed. Since you can tell by the search tool who does and does not have a team currently, this indicates to me that the person asking either can't be bothered to think for a moment, or doesn't understand the search system, which sometimes (not always) indicates the kind of confusion that means I'll have to tiresomely explain everything. You know, should I invite the person, which means I'd form a team, find something to do, and start herding cats. But I'm never rude to the people who do this -- it's a small world, and I may be teamed with them some day soon.

I feel pretty much the same way you do. Though I'm always hidden, so when I get a /tell out of the blue I know it's not from someone looking at a search window - it's from someone stalking me in an outdoor zone (I've actually had people follow me across a zone, just so that they could ask in /local if they could join me - it's freaky, almost as if they don't realise /tell exists).

I usually team with my global friends (one in particular) and their global friends almost exclusively. That's unless I feel like PuG'ing, which usually happens when I want to do a TF/SF - in those cases I usually either join a TF that is starting up on a global public channel, or I start the team myself, using my global friends list and those global public TF/event channels (which are pretty good on Union/Defiant) to recruit the core of the team from, and then either they pull in their global friends or we recruit from broadcast or rarely the search window.

What bugs me is when I'm teaming with a friend and someone asks to join, but won't accept my polite refusal without a reason (and I refuse quite often because my friend and I are enjoying chatting while moving through content at our own pace) - usually I just tell them "sorry, I'm teamed with a friend and we just don't want any more on the team" - you'd be surprised how many people see that as a red rag to just lecture me on my responsibility to team with the rest of the playerbase, specifically them. Entitlement, much?

A few times we've let someone join our duos, just to mix things up, explaining that we'd rather keep the team small and work on story arcs because we find it more fun that way. But almost always the new invite starts saying things like "invite soandso" or "give me the star a sec" or "lets do newsies" or "we need more people" and inevitably they try to take over. I think there's a lot of people who don't want to start a team, but like to lead a team - they'd rather take over an existing team and twist it to their purpose, than try to start a team from scratch - because we all know that recruiting is the only thing that makes leading a hassle, especially getting a team started off, and if you can join a pre-made team then half the work has been done already.

There's never any excuse for rudeness though - although I've rarely had cause to use the ignore list, it's always there as an option for persistent aggravation-addicts who'll use anything you say as an excuse to start an argument. The trick is not responding to these idiots - well, not unless you have a really good comeback and you think taunting them might prove amusing

I personally don't mind if I get a tell asking to join my my team. If my team is in a situation where either a.) there are no slots available, or b.) my friends and I aren't up to adding an unknown to out midst, I will let the person know so.

More often than not, it's getting towards the end of our evening.

If we have room, I'll shoot back a "1 sec", then then do a /sea for the person. If they're level is within a reasonable range of our own, then either I our the Team Leader will send them an invite.

If they are say, level 3 and we are on 20+ level characters, then odds of them getting invited are slim. Although there are exceptions to this.

As for the "Not looking for a team" comment, that's generally correct, I'm usually not 'looking' for a team. That does not mean that if someone sends me a tell asking me to join their team, that I will jump down their throat or crawl up their ***, because I might actually say "Sure." After all, I wasn't 'looking' for a team. If I wasn't willing to join a team and didn't want to be bothered, I'd throw up that big red 'Do no disturb meh!'in my search dialog.

Edit: And I agree with everyone else, there is no excuse for rudeness.

The only thing that is irritating about the people asking to be invited are those that ask and through them either explicitly telling you or you looking it up...they're usually something like level 15 to your 45.

I don't care if SSK makes it not matter. I don't want your worthless dead weight mooching off of me.

What makes it more aggravating is when they do it on a server where I know they can get a team of their own level but aren't trying for the obvious reasons.