The Boot Myth

I will never ever kick anyone off my team based on powers. If you wanna roll a petless MM, I'll question you in my head, but wont mention it. If you wanna roll an empathy and only have 2 powers out of your primary, whatever. If it's fun for you, it's fun for me.

But if you decide to be an *** on my team, whether you're the petless MM or the purpled Elec/SD scrapper, you will get the boot and probably a /ignore.

I've never managed to be kicked from any team at all. I've played an Illusion/Storm (she did used to get told not to use Freezing Rain by Herding Tanks back in i4 but thankfully they seem to have died out), a Warshade (who doesn't want a WS on a team? *boggle*), a Grav/TA controller (got more "Cool choice of sets" and "Nice control" tells than anything else) and currently a Plant/Emp lacking a rez or big heal.


I think the boot myth is just that for the most part.


I do get miffed if the team is struggling and there's people doing silly things which aren't helping (MMs focusing on shooting over support, someone negating another persons abilities mindlessly for no good reason), but a gentle "Hey, lets try this instead" usually does the trick without people getting upset.

*Comes in, reads the first page, skips to the end to post*

I run TFs regularly under a very specific, very simple mantra.

Any build, any budget, no exclusions.

I've never kicked someone from a team for power based reasons.

Attitude, however, is a different story.

I've never been booted from a team for bad power choices.

I have however, quit a team when the leader decided to kick an FF Defender for not being a healer, even after I pointed out that my Tanker had a better survivability rate with FF Defenders than Emp Defenders and told him point blank that if he kicked the Defender I'd quit as well.

I quit, teamed with the defender and got tells off the rest of the team 5 minutes later saying that the leader had been an idiot, caused a teamwipe and blamed it on them and could they join the new team.

I invited them and had a fun night of it.

I never kick for power choices.

I kick if you do something stupid like training mobs on us, or run into a room screaming some version of "lerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroyjeeeeeenkins", and if you act like a jerk.

Funny enough I can barely remember the last time I kicked someone.

Might be because I no longer do pugs and make most teams from the global channels like VU and the Freedom Channels.

/shrug.

I can't recall ever being kicked from a team. Then again, most of the time I'm the team leader, and I generally like myself enough not to kick myself.

That said, I'm also in that camp that never kicks people simply for power choices, only for bad behaviour, including leeching. 'course that happens so rarely I have yet to encounter such behaviour. In my experience people just get along in the game.

There's been one situation where I wished I kicked someone, though. Now, there's a few things I need to specify about my teams first: Everyone is welcome on my teams regardless of AT or powersets and I usually don't give orders, at most I just give suggestions to the team. What that means is that I do give an order, I expect it to be followed.
So I was doing Maria Jenkins' storyarc and we were at the mission with Black Swan, you know, the one where you don't actually need to beat Black Swan. Knowing that, I explicitly told everyone not to save the hostage until Black Swan is defeated. Naturally one Scrapper decided that orders are unheroic so he went for the hostage. At +2/x8 I just hoped he would faceplant and since we've been steam-rolling AVs up to this point I figured just seven people were enough. Naturally circumstances conspired against us and the Scrapper was the twinked out with IOs kind so he did save the hostage as we were fighting Black Swan. Minutes later we team-wiped and since the mission was officially complete, we couldn't just hosp it and return.

Yeah, I know you can just keep doing the non-arc missions to get Black Swan again, but at that point I was so pissed at being cheated out of my Dimensional Warder badge I told the team I just don't feel like playing anymore. Later, though, in tells someone basically agreed with my sentiments, since he didn't just cheat me out of the badge, but six others as well.

So I guess the moral of the story is I should've just kicked the jerk because those six other people were awesome. Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose.

While I don't doubt there are idiots out there that do kick over such pointless things, I feel that we have far less of them here than in other games I've played. If anything, I'd say the opposite attitude is far more prevalent.

A couple ofdays back I was invited to a Frostfire team, despite telling them that my level 11 Tank was a concept build with no active powers from the Primary and an attack chain of Air Superiority-Boxing-Kick. The general attitude was "No worries, the more the merrier".

I've kicked people for being rude, or doing something completely stupid as pulling the big group from across the room to many times when we are still working on the AV or w/e. But Usually I don't kick for build, the only time, and I repeat this, the only time I have kicked a Petless MM was because he was a Thug MM and he wanted on our LGTF, he was replaced instantly by another MM Thug that was petless except for Gangwar the most useful power in that set in my Opinion, but we only did that the one time, he was picked up by use later for other missions. (He did participate in the LGTF just not as his Petless, he changed to a Blaster after we told him no.)
But other then that one time, I wont kick ya now, I've grown sence then, I understand peoples choices a little more, plus I usually play the Defender or Brute so I'm usually wiping up the mess anyways.

I recently kicked someone from a RWZ Raid team for being level 18.

Player: TP pls?
Me: No travel power?
Player: No, i'm only level 18.
/kick
Player: Why did you kick me?
Me: Because you will die over and over and reduce the team's ability to earn merits. Get something higher and I'll reinvite.


That's the first time I have kicked someone from my team in many, many months.

If a player is contributing little enough to our success that I actually notice them as a gap in our effectiveness amidst the chaos of CoV battle, then they get kicked. This is usually a case of them standing around without contributing, spending more time chatting than fighting, etc. I usually won't kick a person for powerset choices, if they're at least trying to use those powers... even if they're a petless mastermind who ignores their secondary to use nothing but crappy Thugs pistol attacks. What I will do at that point though is start looking for someone else to take the star, and go start another team. And if I know in advance that a person is playing that kind of combo? I won't invite them in the first place.

When I'm starting Strike Forces, it's a totally different matter. I find out AT and Power Sets before inviting anyone. I don't have any requirements ("Need a Granite Brute and Kin, or we can't start!!!"), it's just a sort of basic competence test to bounce a couple questions off of people, just to make sure they can communicate. But if they join the SF team and I see that "Thugs/Poison" actually means "Crappy pistol attacks/Poison", then they're out before we start the first mission.

Things I Have Been Kicked For:
Not being a healor. (O2 Boost doesn't count!)
Using Freezing Rain. (It makes some of the mobs run away!)
Using Seeds of Confusion. (It steals our XP!)
Successfully taking the alpha (and beta and delta, for that matter) on a Dark/ Defender. (zomg wait for the tank!)
Not having a heal. (... on a Dominator.)
Using Ice shields. (They hide my costume!)
Not having enough IO set bonuses. (On a Plant/ Dom on the ITF.)

Things I've been kicked for...

SG RP Respec Trial...I brought along my Spines/Dark, cocky attitude, make fun of everyone 11 year old hero.

I get a tell "((I don't know if I should kick or not. ICly I would, but OOCly I wouldn't"

I respond "((lol...you can just say you do, and I can help OOCly OR just do it and I'll find it funny))"

That was right before the last mission of the respec, and I was kicked. OOCly I was glad they were able to complete it, I would of teased them terribly ICly if they didn't.

I was kicked one other time, for defending another players power choices.

I've only kicked someone twice...

1 was a RAD/ Defender who wanted to be just a healer, spamming AOE Heal, Aid Other, attacking was almost non-existant, and kept dying because he'd stay in melee with Mary. And wouldn't use the the toggle debuffs, because they drained his END.

This one I feel a bit bad about, as after lots and lots of defeats, we beat the tenth spawn of Mary (on the KHTF), and really didn't matter after that point, but I had everyone on my team sending me tells to kick him (before and after we defeated her). But he was annoying me so much, because he wasn't listening, that I did.

This was back when she actually grew in levels as you defeated her.

The second was on last mission of a STF. Got a message of "If you don't like it, I can leave." Being very snotty to me. So I kicked and said "I'll save us both the headache" Should I have? Eh. Maybe, maybe not, again had members saying to kick him. I believe I'm on his global ignore list now.

I've never kicked someone for power choices though. I might complain about power choices in my SG OOC channel, but I've never kicked for it.

And I do get annoyed by the KINs with SB, who refuse to give it to team members with low end. I don't even go about saying "SB me". I let the KIN go about it how they normally do. I'll send a tell, hey, so and so is low on end they can use a SB, if I have the star.

But, I've never kicked a KIN who didn't have SB. But if you do grab it, I think you should be using it at least when a team member is sucking wind.

I'll sigh and get annoyed at tanks who keep getting mezzed because they didn't take their mez protection, even more so if they complain about it. Same with any melee really. Makes it worse when they blame the defenders for not keeping them alive.

If they do the complaining or blame the rest of the team, I'll tell them.

I don't care for the Trollers with 1 power from their Primary and all their secondary or the Defender with their tier 1 secondary (I find this worse with Archery and AR Defenders who skip their nuke)...but I've never kicked them.

And I get REALLY annoyed by Cold Doms, Sonics, FF, Thermals who skip the ally buff shields. While I haven't kicked any of them who lack them, I promise you, if I invite any of those toons, part of the reason why is for those buffs.

This was made plenty obvious when running a PuG ITF, and out of 5 support toons, all the above mentioned Secondarys (trollers, 1 corr), none of them had the shields. *sigh* Luckily for me, my Dark/Sonic Defender didn't need them. But I don't recall if we actually finished that ITF.