Why do you (not) hide from searches?

I don't hide because I almost exclusively PuG. If I don't feel like teaming for some reason, being unhidden simply means polite responses of declination to the few tells I receive.

I used to stay hidden, back in the days of RMT e-mails and when I was in active SGs with in-game friends.

Now, unless I'm only a solo-only toon who stays hidden from level 1 onwards, I don't hide from searches. I haven't run into any problems on my visible toons. I don't get blind invites (I ask for "no blind invites" in my search info), I rarely get tells when my LFT flag isn't flying and those that I do get are generally polite about it. My Emp doesn't even get more traffic than my other Defenders. I actually expected staying unhidden to be much worse than it's turned out to be.

Just curious... Does anyone have their in-game email set up to receive emails from anybody, not hide from searches and not get spam email any more?

Putting myself on Hiding From Searches pretty much eliminated the spam emails. I like leaving my email open and have no intentions of closing it to just global friends or SG or anything.

But... If the RMT emails are over, I may give turning off hiding from searches a try again.
I never had any problem with tells or invites or anything.

More or less, I don't hide from searches because I don't have any overriding need to, and I do like to team in this game.

Like a couple of people in this thread, I am an introvert, but I don't feel the need to hide to satisfy that part of myself - if I didn't feel like interacting, I probably wouldn't be playing at that time anyway. I play on a relatively low population server, so I don't really get pestered too much either. And if it gets tiring, I can always go do something else. So I don't *need* to hide. And I don't really *want* to hide, because it's on teams where I can encounter the most interesting and fun gameplay available. Soloing is fine, but it gets dull after a while, and the much wider mix of elements on teams leads to many more interesting tactical possibilities. I like a lot of the tactical minigames (like aggro control) that teaming brings.

i don't hide because i enjoy meeting people and inflicting my horrible, horrible puns on them.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Because I've seen too many threads on the forums complaining about how people who don't want to team anyway can still be found in searches.

I don't want to team for a variety of factors. I put myself on hide because apparently this is what I'm supposed to do for etiquette? I don't honestly know.

I don't hide because I prefer that people have an accurate view of the number of people online.

And also because I haven't had repeated blind invites and I like the opportunity to receive team invitations.

I don't hide because I like people to be able to contact me. Sometimes a random tell out of the blue asking if you want to do a TF or join a team is a nice thing, and I might go for it even if I wasn't seeking anything beforehand.


If I can make a serious point though, CoX strikes me as a game where sections of the community are light years apart in their knowledge, partly because the game itself is not very good at explaining itself and thus people have to research it themselves or be lucky to find a helpful player willing to explain. Due to this we have a large section of the playerbase which is ignorant to a lot of the mechanics. (Defence, Resist, Accuarcy, ToHit, Control, IO Set bonuses, etc).

We also have a smaller section of the community comprised of veterens who know how these mechanics work and how to make the most of them. Yes this happens for most games to varying degrees, but I think because of the unique mechanics of CoX it is more applicable here.

In other games, a healer is a healer is a healer. They might heal slightly differently, and knowing their strengths might give you a small advantage, but in essence they are all healers and fulfill identical roles.

In CoX, one Defender might vary hugely compared to another Defender. Dark Miasma vs Force Fields? Empathy vs Storm Summoning? Kinetics vs Trick Arrow? It is difficult to put a succinct title on all the different options available to a Defender. Buff/Debuffer is probably the best I've seen, but not widely used ingame.

Don't get me wrong, this is a huge reason why I think the game is so great, but it is also a strong reason to be more tolerent of the large section of the community who might not have the knowledge to immediately identify what these sets do. Unfortunately though, many veterens I think don't have time for this, and sometimes it frustrates me too (see previous rants), but if we shut our doors and windows and only team with people from our global channels then we are doing this community a huge disservice. Just my 2 inf.

i don't hide, i just put the no blind invites in for searches and it works 90% of the time

I do usually hide from searches. I solo most of the time - it allows me to play at my own pace and lets me be afk if I need to be. If I know I'm not prepared to team I'll hide to save the trouble of folks sending invites for me to politely decline.

I have been monitoring chat channels more though for opportunities to jump in on zone events, TF. The latter I don't jump on often, but now and then there will be a window of opportunity (i.e. kids out of the house) for it.

I'm too lazy to actively search for a team.

But I play on EU redside anyway, so even if I don't hide it's not like anyone will invite me anyway, blind or otherwise.

I don't mind. I'm levelling up a MM right now. I have my own team. If anyone invites me, sure, that's fun. If not, I don't care.

Seriously though, I don't have anything to hide -from-, nor any reason to do so.

I generally do not hide, but do in select circumstances.

Why not usually? I play dominators a lot, which are generally far less desired than brutes/corrs. I also usually play alongside family/friends a lot, so an invite to a team is usually out of the picture. Solo I have a 'talk to me first' search comment on about all characters, so if they don't I already know they're not good at 'listening,' and so decline. If they chat, and I have time, I'll join.

I've also found that it's a good idea on more 'ideal/desired' builds to purposefully leave out those details in my info. (Kinetics, empathy, and radiation emission being big ones here.) Instead, I give the character's concept, and let them work from there. I can't solve all their problems automatically by being a certain power combo, so I shy from giving that info away. I don't have to hide them from people, and can still easily communicate.

My tanks have a similar problem, but less easily solved. The invites I've found there are often to situations where I'm supposed to save teams from team wipe situations, usually caused by bad choices/timing. I may join to help out, but if all the team's bad play is on me, and they won't listen to some tactful tactical advice, it's a bit stressful. As such, my tanks do go hidden at times. (There's no way to conceal archetype.)

I will hide when working on an AE arc, doing a flashback, doing an in-depth costume remake, or crafting. These are solitary/confined endeavors, which in some cases can't be fully communicated in process, or cannot be escaped from immediately. As such, I hide so as to spare both parties unnecessary effort.

I rarely hide from searches. Most of the time, I'd like to be invited to a team.

Once in a while, I feel like organizing/running a team; in those cases it helps to be findable.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, when I'm feeling like being left alone, I do sometimes hide. Mostly in those cases I do an Oroboros flashback arc solo with some of the difficulty settings on, so I can get badges and have more of a challenge - and I really don't want to be invited to team during that, so I hide.

As for the Bill vs Marcian view of the world, they're both right; but I don't mind meeting morons, if they're nice ones. Some stupid people are very nice. They are restful and fun to be around, most of the time. As for the mean ones, I can usually just ignore them and if they do something horrible, /report them. So Bill's problem - it's not an issue for me. The nice, interesting, smart people who I do like meeting, are kind of more of a problem - I play relatively few hours, and so I can't count on ever seeing them again, which is kind of sad....

I rarely /hide myself. I only do that if I'm on an extremely tight schedule or if I have a very very particular goal in mind for what I want to get done and you are NOT going to derail me.

Then again, I'm also often set to Not Accept Invites, so there's that. I'm a soloist at heart and have been since my intro to graphical MMOs back in the EQ1 days.

The Virtue global channels are my friend anytime I do want to team, though, and I have taken to joining TFs/SFs regularly from there.

For me: PuG's = Awesome fun! At least 90% of the time. So I never /hide.

When the gold spammers got rolling I put all my characters on hide and they remain there.

I take them off when lft and promptly go back on hide. I see no benefit to being unhidden (the bottom radio button only) and the following downsides:
1. gold spammer gets name, hello spam for eternity
2. getting asked to join my team when I am not in a position to bring them onto one (Ouros arc, Hami raid, team member not leader, etc.)
3. getting asked to quit my current team to join their team (I thought the first time was a fluke but it happened more times after that)
4. getting distracted by the message texts flowing in instead of whacking foes
5. forgetting to hide when sneaking around PvP zones for badges and temp powers

I hide because
(a) I solo 99.999% of the times and
(b) I have gradually developed this weird social affective disorder where tells from strangers cause me to have a mini-panic attack.

I don't know what happened to me really; I used to team years ago but am now at the point where it would be a very big thing for me to join a team.

I dont hide because I wish to be found.