Auto-teaming tools

I think it's high time we did something about this. For all of its innovations and genre revolutions, City of Heroes has been falling behind in team-building tools for years now, and falling behind HARD. Granted, there is a section of our population and of MMO-playing people in general who believe that this being a social environment, the responsibility should fall on the player to head out into the wild, interact with people, forge friendships, organise events and generally live the life of a socialite. Ignoring the fact that that's not what everybody wants, an hour into any MMO (or MMO-like game) that's come out within the last year will give you ample evidence that this doesn't have to be the case.

My reason for bringing this up is something of a crisis of conscience. I've often gone on the record as decrying forced teaming, refusing to team much of the time, complaining about team tasks and many other things of this nature. Yet I've tried a few other MMOs within the last few days and found myself on a team the majority of the time. And while I initially expected to hate it, I found I left teams happy and satisfied, exactly like an MMO should play out. And I began to wonder why. Why is it that I can team so easily and have so much fun doing it in, say, Spiral Knights, but it feels like pulling teeth here? Well, the simple answer to that, surprisingly, is auto-teaming tools.

Auto-teaming tools refers to tools kind of like our AFK queue, if it actually worked properly and extended over the entire game. Auto-teaming tools are tools which facilitate teaming in ways similar to joining multiplayer servers in your typical FPS. They are tools which allow a person to either form or join a team doing what he wants to, when he wants to, and not need to go the complex route of asking people and arranging meetings. In other words, I'm talking about a team-making interface which takes away the opportunity cost of putting a team together, at the apparent cost of slightly less calculated organisation methods.

What I've come to realise is a basic obvious fact that many have previously stated on this forum - many people like to team, but not many like building teams, by which I mean recruiting, broadcasting, asking people and so forth. And that's very much true. While I, personally, wouldn't want to team all the time for my entire play session, it's not the teaming aspect of the game that I dislike, so much as the fat, laborious process of actually getting there. Even if I'm not the one recruiting potential team-mates, I'm still sitting on my hands for sometimes half an hour while the team gets going.

Now suppose this were different. Suppose you didn't have to make your own team and didn't have to ask for people. Suppose you can tell the game what you want to do, and have the game look for other people who have stated they want to do some of the same things. When it finds enough people, it yanks you out of your instance and slaps you all together in a team ready to go. Suppose you start doing something and tell the game to send anyone who wants to do the same thing to your team. How many more people do you think would team that way who wouldn't otherwise want to bother?

When I log in, my first question is "What now?" If my options are either to put in the work and put a team together or simply click my Mission Teleporter, I pick the latter every time. If my choices are between clicking my Mission Teleporter to take me to my solo instance or clicking my Mission Teleporter to send me to team in progress... I might well pick the latter, and a lot of the time, even. In fact, if that were the case, I might actually go out and make a team-centric character, knowing that I could rely on teams without without having to sit on the sidewalk like the runt of the playground and hope someone notices me or play cat herder.

Now, some might suggest that this diminishes the social aspect of running into strangers at the Market, striking up a conversation and igniting a long-lasting friendship. Ignoring the fact that not all of us go to bars to chat up strangers, no it doesn't. It's an easy way to put people within a communal situation and gives them more situations to socialise. You may disbelieve me for saying this, but I'm actually a pretty nice guy when I'm on your team. It's just that I'm never on your team because our team-building system is so byzanitne it may as well consist of mail-in invitations over physical mail services. Sure, you'll get a lot of uncommunicative twatts, just like you do now, but you'll still see much more frequent opportunities for the communicative among us to meet others we like to be around.

I firmly believe that the lack of any auto-teaming tools (that work) in City of Heroes acts as a great detriment to the game, and contributes a LOT to the hatred people like me have for team encounters, raids, task forces and even something as simple as a simu-click mission. I would bet you dollars to doughnuts that if such a system existed for the full breadth of the game's content types, that you'll see me and people like me complain about "teaming vs. soloing" a hell of a lot more, to the point where it'll go the way of "bridging" requests.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You know what our "auto teaming" tools are in this game Sam? CTRL + C and CTRL + V. I don't know where people get these ideas that when building a team your obligated to chat with the people you're inviting. I create one message that includes all the applicable information; and then send that message out to everyone not on team on the search list in the correct level range.

The problem comes when that doesn't work. When after sending out tells to 10 or even 20 people and you still only have four people on your team It is then that building a team requires real effort. It is at that point that building a team switches from being a relatively easy exercise that was not detracting from your relaxation, to one of real work. You hit up the global channels, then you ask in the broadcast and in request chat, then you get desperate and ask in Help chat. All of which require a new message that still contains all the pertinent information, as well as other Information clarifying which side Of the game you are on and the teams level range. That is what I have always considered to be the real meat and potatoes of building a team.

Realize also that I made no mention of team composition many people seem to think that it is actually important when it's not. Another thing many people don't like is the "responsibility" of being a team leader, of being responsible in the case of a team wipe. Guess what. IT"S A GAME! All it is, is data being shuffled around. It doesn't matter if you are leader when the team wiped! Nobody's going to bite your head off for it and if they do you can kick them! RAAAAAAAAA! people *****footing around over being the team leader really gets on my nerves.

I find it funny that you try to argue people should just lead and not worry about it because it's a game and, in the same breath, yell at them in all caps.

Hint: this is why they don't want to lead.

I don't lead teams because my goals are typically selfish ones and I'm looking to complete my story arc or finish my alignment tips or farm my 1,000 Woozle bosses for the Woozle Net Gun temp power.

I'll join teams if I'm just looking to gain xp and don't care what I'm doing but most of my personal goals can be soloed and I'd rather just solo them than be responsible for anyone else's enjoyment while I pursue my own things. Trials/TFs/GMs being the exceptions.

Towards the OP: I'm pretty neutral on it either way. Maybe getting a full team is difficult but what needs a full team aside from task forces (and even they don't need a full team)? If you want to be on a team, set your flag, maybe hit up broadcast and your globals and go from there. But I'm not against the idea of a teaming function either -- I just don't see it as something worth investing in.

The problem is that any way you put it, it's an active process. I have to actually go out and ask people to join. It doesn't matter how easy it is, it's still not as easy as putting the onus on people to join me, as opposed to me inviting them.

The trick with the notion of auto-teaming tools is to let the game handle the work in organising and putting together the team for you, both initially and continuously. The idea is to remove the need to socialise just to make the system work. I have nothing against socialising, but I prefer doing that for its own sake, not for the sake of operating an in-game system.

The thing is that if I feel like I want to team, I want a system which allows me to click a button and be put on a team. Not necessarily with people I'm going to like, I can't expect a game to account for that, but be put on a team just the same. If I find that team disagreeable, then I can quit it and ask to be put on another one. Once teaming has no opportunity cost, then the apprehension towards will disappear almost entirely. Oh, sure, you'll still get the occasional people who just want to keep to themselves, but even they will have one more choice to team much more easily if they want to.

And traditional teaming via chat organisation will never die. Some people are just too particular about who they team with and what they team for. However, automated teaming will put far more people together than the game does right now. When a game puts it on you to find people, interact with them and play together, many people will opt not to. When the game offers to find people for you, that's far, far superior.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Ok...auto-team dumps a bunch of people into a team, through whatever mechanism. I'd assuming that most of these are the types that are "start-team" phobics, else they would have done that. So...who's the lead? These people still need to pick missions, which means someone has to have the star. I can see that turning into a good 10-15 min game of hot star....mainly because i've seen it happen before when the original team lead has to bail...

One problem is that if there is any type of buy in ("click here to use auto teaming function"), then people will simply not use it. I've been on looking for a group and not been able to get a response, but I've also been on and gotten a half dozen messages within seconds of asking. In both cases, there was no one marked as looking for a group using the search functionality. To state again - the system we already have in place where someone can passively mark themselves as willing to group without taking any initiative whatsoever is already too much effort for most people.

I'm with you Sam. When I first heard about the turnstile for Trials I mistakenly thought it would be an auto teaming tool for the whole game. Along the lines of if I'm leading a team of 4 and need some damage I can check looking for Blaster/ Scrapper. Then if I log in my Blaster and click join any I'd be auto'd into that group.

The team would already have a leader but with this setup the leader wouldn't have to hold up the remaining team while searching for more. Just select the option and go back to missions and eventually one'll pop in.


My biggest issue with teaming is as stated above. The main reason I've evolved into a soloer over the years has been the increasing decrease in avail warm bodies. Back 3 years ago I couldn't log in without being blasted with no less than 20 blind invites, even to the point of being sent /tells when I had my flag as not looking.
These days though, I'll log in and set my flag to any, send a few broadcast messages and a few global inquiries and then go about soloing. After 2 hours I realize I haven't had a single bite. Few more Global inquires and broadcasts and I give up.

Leading a team for me is NOT an option. Been there done that. Back in the day I wouldn't hesitate forming my own team. Then I realized it was more hassle than reward and made me feel like I was still on the clock.

I'm a leader at work. I get paid to make sure everyone is up to speed. I get paid to organize people and projects. I get paid to be the one in charge. When I play I just wanna 'blend in' and kick some digital baddies. I don't want to have to decide what we're doing and when. I don't want to have to stop my enjoyment after every single mission just to look for replacements. I just want to be absorbed into the game and let my brain have a break.
That's why I don't form my own. It's a personal choice for sure and as such I try not to whine about it.

That said, I fail to understand why this suggestion should provoke anything other than a yes or Meh. It's not like it would chage anything for those not having troubles. As you'd still be teaming with your tight nit group anyways.

Just so we're clear Sam, what you're asking for doesn't exist in any game going. No automatic teaming system I've seen or heard of covers all aspects of the game content.

As for socializing more on automatically generated teams, you may plan to do it more, but I can tell you as someone who has made a lot of use of these systems, it doesn't work that way for most people. You're meeting strangers. Over and over again. You haven't spent any time with them so you're focusing on not screwing up at the same time you're watching to see if they do. You don't have anything invested except the time you spent in the queue, and for most people that commodity becomes cheap if things go bad. In other words, if the least little thing goes wrong people bail instead of trying to stick things out and make them work. Usually they do it with a lot of not nice words for the person who screwed things up.

Yes there are other times you meet someone nice, but it matters less and less, because your chances of seeing them again are slim to none in the queue system. In the end quite a lot of people use the queuing system like a vending machine. They click it, wait for the delivery process to be over, and walk away with their points/loots/whatever. Encounters happen on automatic pilot, and no one gives any thought or time to the players there with them unless they queued up with people from their friendlist or guild.

Automatic teaming is not a silver bullet. It works in some games on a pretty limited basis, only because the structure of the teaming system is very rigid and the encounters are highly designed. Even then it leads to almost class warfare because certain classes get premium queue times because they are in demand, and others end up sitting around. That isn't as likely to happen here since by it's nature the teaming rules here can be loosened, however that opens another can of worms. How intelligent can a queuing system be made? Is there any way for it to know that certain encounters become very slow with 8 scrappers while others are unfairly easy? Can it be smart enough to spread buffers around pretty evenly without making people wait forever to get one, or giving them an unfair queue time advantage?

Your premise is this game should have one, then you extend it to all aspects of teaming, and call it a necessity. I only agree with one of those 3 points.

One other point (which may have been covered in the skimming) - there's very little here that requires a team, so auto-teaming isn't really as big a deal.

For comparison - GW does have stuff that requires multiple people... but gives you NPC henchmen to use, as well. Aion? Darn well BETTER have a team for a good chunk of the game, even the non PVP stuff. Here? You can walk through spawns with relative ease, adjust the size and difficulty as you like. Here, if I say "I'd better just pull this one guy, I'm going to be working on him for several minutes and don't want interference," I'm talking about a GM or AV, quite possibly. Elsewhere, that's one mob - more than 2v1 (with you being the 1) is rare, if not suicidal, in many games.

Here, teaming's a "why not" for most things. Elsewhere, teaming's a "you really had better, unless you really like donating to the hospital/soul healer/doing corpse runs."

See my Guides and Tutorials

I would be open to the auto teaming but it's the games decision as to who becomes "leader". The current game through the que seems to throw this role at anyone. If the tasks or objectives were the same for everyone the leadership would be shared by everyone. Sadly I have a big doubt it will ever happen but sometimes the devs surprise me.

Spot on Wendy. Historically, the one thing that retains players in any MMO isn't the game itself, but the community. As it stands, in this game you can go from 1 to 50 and never talk to another person. The only thing that requires the most minimal communication with the rest of the players at all is joining a team, (and not even that sometimes, if you respond to blind invites) and somehow it's supposed to be in the game's best interest to automate even that?

Frankly, I'm not too hot on the whole auto-teaming idea. To be clear, I'm not against it, but what you propose doesn't fill any need I can perceive.

It's based around the premise that it's recruitment alone that presents the obstacle to teaming, and I can tell you firsthand that it's completely and utterly false. I lead PUGs almost exclusively, and nine times out of ten when I announce that I'm leaving and ask if someone wants the star, half the teammates will have quit in the time it takes me to type out a goodbye. If recruitment was the only issue, why does almost nobody ever step up and assume leadership instead?

There are, to my knowledge, two obstacles to be overcome in creating a team.

The first one is the lack of players willing to take leadership of a team. It appears to be a purely psychological issue, given how ridiculously easy* it is to act as a team leader. To be honest, I can't quite wrap my head around this, so I can't really present any solutions either.

The second problem comes from the opposite direction - the need for the team leader to contact potential teammates. Here the auto-teaming mechanism sounds great - at a glance. The problem is it doesn't provide the member with information about who leads the team, nor enables the team leader to approve his new teammates. Most leaders are mellow when it comes to their teammates, but there's still occasions when they prefer to team with {non}roleplayers, people who can string together more than three letters in a word or someone whose first words will be "u pl me rite". It would be blind inviting, writ large, only from the opposite direction. It would, on the other hand, be easy** to simply create a serverwide channel where prospective teammates and leaders could announce when and what they are looking for. There are already global channels on every server for that exact purpose, but as we've already established, people are lazy and convincing others to join anything they're not already familiar with tends to be an uphill battle. Conversely, a inserting a "Teaming" tab with a Teaming channel would probably have the same effect it had on the use of Help channel {i.e. much better}.

Just my two cents.


*really, once I've got enough teammates, all I do is set the missions. That is it, I am not joking, that is the entire extent of my frequently-praised "leadership" skills. Rocket surgery it ain't, people!
**standard code rant my bleached butt. If they could sneak in Architect Chat with the stealth that would put a Pre-I13 stalker to shame to be unused by damn near everyone, adding a serverwide channel can't possibly be difficult.

An open letter to NCsoft