Game Playing Styles

Well, in the time between then and now, I've had opportunity to team with my evil twin again, despite all my efforts to avoid doing so. (Now I know why the heck we have a hide command. I've never found it so useful before to avoid a SG who is nice, but damn persistent in trying to team with you into an 8 man team.)

Pride cometh before a fall, and I let my ego get ahead of me once long enough to try and round up two groups of Banished Pantheon with like 10 totems. After all, if the other stinking tank can do one, oh so slowly, why the heck can't I do two? Bored waiting anyhow. Whoops. I passed it off as an auto-run error (poor auto-run errors and wife aggro, how much of it is actually true, I wonder...) and then felt obliged to stay for the whole damn herding mission and then another, as a secondary tank guarding the poor squishies from spillover from the invulnerable shepherd.

Well, once you put ego aside, I got two revelations from it. One, the function of secondary tank will possibly become very useful in I5. It is actually very handy to put one tank in front (let's say a stone who can resist nearly every freaking thing still) and a second tank in the middle, the squishies behind.

Stuff WILL leak from the primary tank in an 8-man mission (I have been trying all freaking week on my own teams to hold complete aggy, no go, I get about 90%, always one or two mobs who will fly off or stay behind to shoot stuff) unless you are a fan of the 'round 'em up for 5 minutes' cowboy method. And I am personally pleased to say that given the devs' efforts in I5, the lack of resist/defence should make spontaneous herding extremely difficult and the tank real vulnerable.

Hence the secondary tank who can use his taunts to also protect squishies. It's a thought anyhow. Notice I say spontaneous herding, because I am sure the pro-herder PL'ers will create their army of tank + sonic/ff/whatever defenders to do the same thing, it'll just take more time for Mr. I-AM-THE-MAN Tank to accrue the same size herd and keep it aggro'ed long enough for a blaster to blow it to bits. If anything, the waiting periods will just become LONGER. (*shudder*)

Which brings me to point number 2. Ok, once my evil twin wasn't lagged to death, he was actually a fairly good tank, charitably speaking. In fact, if you liked his kind of playstyle, you could say he was a fantastic tank, because he was willing to sheepdog run the whole fragging thing while we sat around and waited to kill stuff. Of course, no one died.

(If you team with me, sad to say, I've had plenty of blaster deaths due to trigger happy nutcases who shoot the wrong mob, or accidental quantum hits to the kheldians. Strangely enough, it's always the same people who are dying, while some others of the same AT don't. Why is that? Hmm? - Could it be because they don't realize positioning themselves in front of the tank is asking for the next group to shoot the frag out of them? Or that shooting up the guy not looking at the tank because his taunt recharges is a bad idea? Or standing next to a tank with AoEs exploding around him every second is a really cruddy idea?)

Our controller just decided to go afk. I was tempted to do the same. Except I didn't quite want to be accused of leeching. I was, however, bored to death.

And after that, I learned to love the hide command.

Because after all, I wrote the book (figuratively speaking, ok, really just -a- guidebook) to learning to live and let live on various tanker styles. And its main message is simple - every tanker is different, let him do what he likes, stay if you like his style, leave if you don't. And natural selection will take care of the rest by seeing who still wants to team with him.

So ironically, I am HIDING from my evil tanker twin because I hate his playstyle. Yes, I know it is hopelessly safe. The same afk controller was later telling me that he didn't get any debt out of it. (Same guy who keeps standing next to me in my missions trying to run hotfeet and cinder-hold stuff, so of course he eats AoE and dies constantly. And he has a level 50 tanker.) Didn't know what to tell him. He's quite an amusing chap, reminds me of Nemser, he can't shut up on any topic and will always have some interesting gossip. :) Because of that sentimental fondness, I tolerate the fellow possibly more than I should, even though his own ego is the size of several football fields and he will micromanage from time to time.

I suppose in the end, we will see who still wants to team with me, through my chaos. :P

Because I like going from group to group in an 8-man mission. I herd up my own solo missions so often it's boring. Currently, I have three AoEs as a fire secondary. I can actually kill my herd all by myself, slowly but doable. I have even stacked up on corners when I get lucky so that my bugged single-attacks can also whack them all. But I really really feel that the game becomes pointless if you leave the tank playing his own personal game of "herd 'em up" (he's okay, he's still doing something) and then sit there waiting to blow shit up. You may as well try and find some kind of bot that will push two buttons when the tank says "Ready!" and run Progress Quest to see your numbers increase. Why gain levels and powers if ya don't use 'em?

(How interesting. The below paragraph was written earlier, and I find that I wrote the exact same thing in the above paragraph without even realizing it. I'm leaving it here for comparision. Because I really feel strongly about this point.)

And I think it's damn boring for people to sit and wait for the tank so they can press a few buttons. What are all your powers for if not to be put to use? I let controllers become valuable because I'm BOUND to have stuff spilling over - that's what you look out for and hold, defenders are kept busy mitigating damage, the blasters get to blow stuff all over the place, the scrapper gets to let loose and so on.

You know, something occurs to me now. Maybe squishies like tanks herding because they don't get to see it often, unless they have a pet tank. So someone doing it is like a novelty. Meanwhile the tank is bored because he does it all the time. Maybe.

But if there's one thing very often seen in Freedom server's population, it's an obsession over xp. I'm convinced Freedom is the home of the larger, more vocal grouping of Achiever/Explorer-type exploit-hungry powerleveler-types. During the time of the Winter Lords, I never saw as much howling for WL PL'ing on any other server 'cept Freedom, and Atlas Park in Freedom was a shock the first time I went in, because the channels are filled with leetspeak and obssession over levels. They want XP, debt is anathema, they'll sit through boring to see their little numbers go up. And these are the people I don't want to play with. I'll have to sift through a lot of them, but that's how it'll have to be.

Thankfully, my little middle of the week break (I like leave) has allowed me to do some afternoon leveling at a time when all the sensible US folks are in bed. Which means I got to group with some random LFT chaps rather than SG guys over and over. I realize I really dig the random unpredictability. It's fun. Stuff splashes around all over, you get to be a superhero team wading in to kick some major ass. Not shepherd and sheepdog. Heck, even sheep are more unpredictable than mob AI, I'm sure. Risk versus reward. Why play a game if it's not going to be exciting and fun?

Anyhow, I think I am starting to repeat myself many times over by now. End of the day - I'm having fun. If people have fun with me, then they can look for me to group with them again. If not, they can leave and hug the tanks who will herd for them. I can and will solo. Enough room in this game for all types of playing styles.

Despite Statesman's desperate efforts to make sure we all play his way. :)

It's a good thing that I generally agree with his sentiments and find it fun to use my auras and punchvoke, not just taunt, to pull back mobs. In theory, I should still be safe. In theory. Hem, today I really should copyover to Test to see just how many even con mobs floor the invul. I'm level 30 now, so it seems like a nice round number. And am also armed with a respec. :P