Seriously, Virtue?

so not trying to get off topic... but...

Anything is possible. Its just really, really hard.

((Stuff like this is why I just don't do task forces (tasks force? task forci?) Most of them take a lot of planning and time. Everybody who forms teams to run them has his/her own method of doing so and I wouldn't be offended if they asked me specifics about my characters' powers. But I've started so many and dropped out in the middle because of the length of time it takes to complete them that I just quit bothering: I don't want to waste people's effort because I'm unable to finish. Maybe it's for that reason that I can see why someone organizing a TF team would ask specific questions about AT's, powersets, and even if prospective teammates have enough time to commit.))

Yeah, for the CoP, I'd say that would be *recommended*, but I'd never say that Alpha would be required for people running on a non-Alpha TF, and maybe not even then. And yes, I've run on PuGs with all kinds of stuff...all brute/scrappers? Yep. No heals? Yep. The tank being a massively IO'd blaster? Yep.

I can see preferences being made for certain types, especially when the majority aren't IO'd and with really good power selections. But heck, I even had fun on a colossally failed alpha TF on day 1 when my party thought that you had to have the Alpha slot unlocked and didn't need the slot FILLED. It was fun, and I actually felt like I was fighting a truly impressive, dangerous enemy for the first time in about 40 levels.

The only time I'd say there should be a requirement at the signup, would be if it is needed to complete a mission due to gimmickry. Like the LG Hami mish.

The worst I've seen, was someone getting his drawers all bunched up because of the leader's power choices (which were sub-optimal, but hardly BAD). He quit the group, and then we went and found a non-jackwagon player and went on to ALMOST do a MoITF with a PuG group (we got separated on the shadow cyst mission, and a Minotaur and Cyclops and a couple dozen of their friends said "Hi" to me).

*thinks of what RP fun it would be to have a few nearly helpless people in the non-AV parts of a Alpha-TF, while 1-2 alpha'd people showed off their epic power*

Today, I got called a troll because I ignored a person who had an Empathy defender with exactly one attack (that likely never got used).

Did you know that ignoring someone you don't want to associate with is imposing your opinions on them and trying to irritate them into responding to you? Because I didn't.

I've been kicked from teams for not having the badge in City Hall next to the SG registrar.

I haven't run into this specific problem before, lacking any 50s, but I've dealt with similar on occasion. Though it was usually a case of "Sorry, we have plenty of damage dealers/tanks" when I offered to join up, not getting booted after I joined.

My personal policy is just to accept whoever responds in the order they reply. Sometimes I'll add on to my request that we could "Use a controller/defender" or the like, but it's little more then a suggestion. I've seen teams of six Scrappers that could make it through any challenge without much difficulty, after all.

Though I have ignored players who couldn't type a halfway legible request to join the team. Mostly because I've had enough experiences of those types of players also being jerks.

But yeah. They don't want you on the team? Go find someone who doesn't have their head up their butt.

People without an unlocked Alpha slot getting kicked from teams running the Apex or Tin Mage Incarnate TF is regrettable but justifiable.
People without an unlocked Alpha slot getting kicked from teams running ANYTHING else is very sad and smacks of unbridled elitism.

I've yet to see it happen but it doesn't absolutely surprise me. There are still people out there who use things like Vet badges as a discriminator as to whether a person is allowed to stay on a team or not. It's unfortunate but MMO elitism has always reared its ugly head anyway it can. The best we can do is to try to not be guilty of it ourselves to keep it to an absolute minimum.

There's been a fairly protracted case of NewShinyBabies flooding the servers, with Freedom and Virtue being the hardest hit; those are the two which I can count on to be in the red almost every time I log in. NewShinyBabies really water down the player base with folks who bring with them mentalities from other MMOs, or just a "Keep up with the hypothetical Joneses or you suck" mindset. Since the Monkey Farm got nuked right around the same time as i19 hit, you've got a lot of those Babies passing their time getting their power-gamer on with Incarnate stuff. All these little tidbits add up to things like what is mentioned in the OP.

This is why I don't PuG (unless someone reads the Tag in my little search box; I love when that happens) right now; I'm all about meeting new players, but I apply the same filter to that as I do to meeting new people in RL.