What

edit: I apologize for the title being so short; I meant to add more after I previewed my screenshot, but then forgot. It should say "What am I seeing in this team search screen?"

I was on Guardian early this morning (I think it was 4:00 AM in the server's timezone, whatever that's worth) and I got curious about what sorts of ATs people were playing at that hour. I guessed that I'd see mostly soloists.

Well, there weren't a whole lot of people on at that time, but I went through the search function, sorting for each AT, and stopped when I came to Controllers.

All the other ATs had a random-looking range of level variation and name styles showing among the characters online, but the controller population looked like this:



Out of 14 Controllers online, 12 of them are level 21. Of those 12, 11 have names that look (to me) to be either Asian or nonsense groupings of letters.

5 of those are in SG base and 6 are in mission(s). All 11 of the strange-looking ones are teamed (although I can't see if they're teamed with each other). The only two Controllers who are NOT teamed are the two with normal English names.

Is this a themed team or supergroup of some kind? Or Are we looking at a new crop of gold farmer Fire/Kins being raised?

The 11 teamed characters names look like the sorts of names I used to get gold seller spam from. If they're gold farmers, I don't understand why there are 11 of them instead of clumps of exactly 8 at a time, or why some seem to be in the supergroup base for...an hour and a half now. Also, none of the 21s have leveled up in an hour and a half, which doesn't seem to match what I'd expect to see from experienced power-levelers (unless the level showing is only the trained-up level, maybe?)

I apologize if I am slandering anyone's actual characters, themed team, or supergroup. I just thought this was a very odd grouping to see in the search window and wondwered if I'd stumbled across something.

At one time there was a bug that had characters in missions listed as being in a SG base, a bug that might still be around. Those names could be farming a BP mission for inf and salvage with the xp turned off, and the "business" only has 11 accounts (or just 11 showed up for work, heh).

Speculation, of course.

Judging from the lack of sense most of those names make, I'd hazard they were a level-pacting group of RMT farmers grinding influence.

Can you level pact more than just two characters yet? Last time I did anything with it, it was just one other character that you could form a pact with (thus two total in the pact).

Theory: If this is a concerted effort we're seeing, it's likely that they are all running AE missions for the farm which means that there will be no fighting outdoor spawns. It is also likely that they have a scheduled team session, and they are unlikely to move without all eight of them in the mission. Thus, level pacted or not, there's little if any possibility of them earning any XP that all eight didn't share in.

Now the screenshot shows more than eight people who may be a part of this. For this I posit that it's possible that they MAY be pacted, but not to anyone else on the team. Essentially, each person on team A is pacted to someone on team B. If this is the case, then everytime anyone earns XP on team A, then it would be evenly split among all 8 players, and then each even portion would be split to the partner on the other team keeping as many as sixteen players at the same level.

However, I do not know WHY they would do such a thing, as it seems needlessly complex.

Those character names are mostly Chinese names, so it'd put my money on farmers.

Saw the same group in AP this morning in the AE building.

Most were CL 41 now, so they've obtained 20 levels in 24 hrs-ish. They were effective level of 49, as they were being led by a level 50 fire/kin. One was locked in follow mode, running against the wall facing Wentworths. They all had the leadership pool. The ones I saw were fire/kin and fire/emp. Only one was in a SG.

I one-starred them all for future recognition in case they make alts, but their global was also their toon name in each case, so I suspect they are all one-offs.

Interesting - I've never really seen RMT'ers in action.

It's the army of SUPA AZN GORD FAMAZ!!!! Gone To Teh AmericanZ!!!! XD

(couldn't help myself)

y'know my boyhood dream is playing video games for a living, maybe they're hiring?

I'll check it when I get home, work network blocks all the fun stuff

I ran in to some of these jokers of freedumb before a group of 8 controller all fire/kin minus 1 fire forcefield with group fly none the less on follow, all weirdo names and all the default costume multi colored like a rainbow. I was actually with a friend so we started pestering them bad bugging them to PL us and stuff just cause we thought they deserved some of their own medicine spam style. They never once responded to us and boy we tried are hardest to get any reaction we could.

They probably couldn't understand a thing you were saying. So you were probably wasting your time.

Saw about six of them (same names, I believe) in Portal Corp last night, all level 50 now. I got some screenies of their virtually empty badge lists just to amuse myself, but haven't uploaded same to a hosting site.

No vet badges, of course, which fits the theory they are throw-away accounts.