A short Public Service Announcement for our new players

Recently I have seen several instances of a "disconnect" between newer players and the old-timers. Mainly it has happened in Task Forces.

Today I was in a Sister Psyche TF on my 25 Blaster, we had a full team and we were in the second mission. The second mission is a "kill the boss and his friends" mission, meaning that the only thing needed to complete this mission is to kill the boss and the spawn of mobs with him. We had one of the people in the group stealth to the end and then TP the group. Mainly to save time. Sister Psyche is a long TF and if you make every mission into a "kill all" you increase the length of that TF considerably, especially with at level toons.

2 of the players in the group became very upset and rude, complaining that "You are leaving all that XP behind", and "We did not join the TF to skip XP". We tried to point out that we have run this TF many, many times, that the XP is still good, and that xp is not a limited resource. There is PLENTY of xp in CoH and the average group of "vets" tend to run the TFs as quickly as possible.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to kill every mob that you see, but that is not the way that most groups run a TF. If you join a TF and wish to kill every mob in every mission then I suggest that you speak up before the TF gets started, or simply form your own group with like minded individuals.

But, please do not expect the majority of us to change our preferred way of running a mission simply to accomadate 2 people out of 6. If I had been the only person in the group that wanted to run quickly then I would have happily left the group with no hard feelings, but too many of the newer people do not seem to have this attitude and seek to cause drama when it is not needed.

My point is simply this: Everyone likes to have fun, everyone has their own idea of how to have fun. There is no reason to become upset when people have fun in a different way than you, and they should not become upset because you chose to do something differently. If you are a new player (and you know if you are), and what you want out of a group/mission does not seem to be in-line with the group, speak up. Talk to the group you are with and try to work out a compromise. Failing that, move on and form your own group and keep having fun.

That is all.

Good advice, and some that even a few veteran players ought to take heed of.

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Why is it their responsibility to preemptively speak up about something they might not be aware of? Here's a better idea - if you're doing a speed run, announce that when forming.

Agreed. With all the new players joining the game the best thing to do is to announce when forming every TF if you plan to speed through it and bypass all unnecessary sections.

Doesn't sound like you made it clear that the TF was going to be run the way it was. You or the team leader should have laid that out at the outset, that you were going to speed when possible. Can't lay this at the feet of players who thought that they were going to fight through.

New players are not bitter and jaded at the design and playtimes of the TFs, so is it really surprising that they might have wanted to fight through, beat up the baddies and win? Your post makes it sound like the "right" way to run Sister Psyche is to speed where you can and fight where you must only. To lots of people, that's boring and defeats the purpose of a game where a major appeal is to smash great big gangs of bad guys.

EDIT

Here's a proper public service announcement for new players. Don't be surprised if you join a task force and find that the more experienced players are unilaterally deciding that they know best how to run the TF, without consulting or even informing you. Don't take it personally; they are set in their ways and can't understand that some people might have different assumptions than they do. A good practice when joining a TF is to ask, "are we speeding this?" because many team leaders won't even tell you that at the outset, even though it can make a huge difference in fun for many. Remember, if you join a TF and it turns out to be run in a way you don't like, you can leave and form your own!

Oh, its a disconnect alright. But I never even found the boards until like a year after I started playing, so it's Vets talking to Vets here. If you are adding some PUG members into your team, it is definitely a good idea to give everyone a heads up. Myself, I hate to lead anything, and I hang with MO hunters on my favorite channel. When on a TF with them I just do what I'm told and try not to screw up my ATs job. When on a PUG TF I try not to say anything about how it's going until it really goes sideways. Also, if its going to go sideways, in my opinion there is almost nothing to be done about it. Whether from poor group dynamic, bad AT setup, or just poor playing some teams are just doomed to be miserable. Do your best on these to be polite, and get out as soon as possible.

Please note the difference between a Speed Run and a quicker run. The former being an attempt to run the content as fast as humanly possible, the latter being an attempt to skip unnecessary parts of the content. This is the difference between a 15 minute ITF, a 45 minute ITF and a 2 hour ITF.

For example, the "Defeat Security Chief And His Men" missions on Manti are on gigantic maps that can take upwards of an hour to clear if you kill everything. Stealthing to the Named Boss (if not to TP the team then at least to locate him) does not make it a speed run, it makes it an "I don't have 4 hours to dedicate to this TF" run.

A lot of the old TF content is like this (don't let's get started on the Shadow Shard TFs ) and so even for new players it's often beneficial to run them in an "optimal" way, that isn't speed running. *Explaining* this to new players goes a long way towards helping the situation.

That said, if you're doing a "real" Speed Run, say so upfront.

What I've been seeing is that nothing can be taken for granted anymore and it's a good idea to talk more. Lots of returning players with pure SO builds that don't know the limits of what they can and cannot do.

Lots of new players with bad habits from other games who don't understand how buffs beat heals, or how tanks aren't mandatory for most of the missions, or this or that. City is really a different style of game, and people got used to everyone knowing how to run the different task forces and now we have a flood of new players who haven't learned the tricks yet. And they are used to MMOs where you to kill everything on a pass because raids are a pain to organize and yet the only way to get the best exp and loot. City is totally different but they have no idea how many options they have because few other games give so many. So have to talk.

Personally, I've been enjoying it.

i personally dont like speed tfs either, but i do know that most of the hero tfs are boring awful slogs that need to be revamped so missing a few mobs wouldnt hurt if it saves a few hours

There's a world of difference between a Speed Run and stealthing a mission or two. Regardless, if the latter is your intent, you should announce at the offset "we'll be stealthing missions where we can/where it makes sense".* If anyone is concerned about XP, point out that a faster run might result in a faster rate of XP gain, even if the total amount gained is less.

In the case of something like Sister Psyche, it's definitely worth mentioning that it's done to shave time off what would normally be a long TF. The approach "this is how vets do it, get with the program and lrn2play n00b" is definitely not the right one to take, especially since it's not a universal truth.

*Speed Runs, of course, should always be announced well in advance.

Explain that mission completion XP dwarfs any XP that trickles in when killing everything, and pretty much only the most stubborn XP-addicts will refuse to stealth some to make things less tedious.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Personally I hate speed runs. To me it's like skipping to the end of a mystery to see who did it. I hated what Katie Hannon TF turned into once IOs were introduced.

While I can understand for someone who have done a particular TF or Trial for the nth time that it's old hat and you want to skip all the boring stuff, people who haven't done it before or enough times to be bored with it, may actually want to take in the sights along the way.

So when forming a TF or Trial, please make it clear up front what the plan is.

To be clear, we were not doing a "speed run". We were just skipping some of the longer missions that we could. And part of my point is that I have not joined a TF in a LONG time that did not run the missions this way, or if they did they said so up-front that they were taking their time.

And, to me, that is the disconnect. Most of the vets try to run a TF in an "optimal" way, and killing every mob in every map is not really optimal from an xp standpoint, nor is it adding to the story, there is no additional story when you kill every mob. I have no problem at all with people that want to enjoy the story, even if we are trying to move quickly, but I stand behind my observation that most TF groups wish to complete the missions in a timely manner, not treat every mission as a kill all.

So how much of the story is someone missing when 10 identical spawns of freakshow are skipped? The only story is in the mission briefing and clues. Those are every bit as detailed for speed runs as for kill alls. Absent a reading disability, those can easily be read while in transit or while mission speeders are doing their thing. If you do have a reading disability, the text is online at the wiki site. See, you even get a plug.

Here's my advice to new/returning players - if a certain playstyle is crucial to you, form your own team. If you join someone else's team, then they set the tone. Yes a team leader should mention pace, but again, if it's that important to you, then it's incumbent upon you to ask. It's pretty mind-boggling to think that one person who wants to read the story in the game rather than online should have their wishes met at the expense of every other player on the team. That's not reality. Again, they need to form their own team if it's that important.

There are a lot of good comments here.

I think it's enough to just say that there is no right or wrong way to do a taskforce - depending on what the plan is.

There must be someone leading the taskforce; someone who does the inviting - and that someone is typically the one who dictates what the plan of action is.

However, there are two things that lead to disappointment: Unrealized expectations and unrealistic expectations.

To be so ...focused as to believing that because you've done things a certain way, that it is the best way is just ridiculous.

I was on a Lambda incarnate trial recently and someone asked if we were going to leave the turrets alone. I'd been doing them every day since they had been published, and I'd never been in a league that didn't knock out the turrets. Yet, apparently, this was another way. Is it better? It all depends.

For best results, make some binds that point out your preferred play style. This way people know what's expected. Otherwise, there may be unrealized expectations.

Spad and Deacon speak the truth. *nods*

Also, I always get Yin and the heroes killed in LGTF if I play villains, because I'm a hardcore RPer. Screw heroes.

Yes, there is a disconnect.

However, the source of that disconnect isn't what the OP believes it is.

OP: Your team essentially told those new players "We don't care that you've never done this before, we're doing it OUR way because OUR way is the RIGHT way to do it."

Even when YOUR way isn't the way the devs had in mind for it to be done. I mean, seriously, if the point was to avoid fighting as much as possible, would those enemies be there in the first place? Probably not.

Whether you realize it or not OP, your "public service announcement" is a prime example of veteran elitism. Your assumption that everyone does things the way you do because that is the only way to do it completely fails to take into account anyone else's play preferences. Elitists do that a lot.

When forming a TF (a PUG even), I always state the following: "Speed is inherent. TFs (imo) are for badges/merits. You can find xp on a farm." It has always worked simply because I am letting the team as a whole know what "my" expectations are and also giving them the opportunity to bow out if they're not comfortable with it being run this way. However, recently I joined an ITF and it turned out to be a literal kill-all...I was slowly dying inside but suffered through it simply because 1. I was not the lead and 2. I did not ask upfront. As for any story-lines..yes I have a toon that has run every mission this game has to offer save for 4 flashbacks I missed along the way and have no intention of doing the same with another character.