I know it's time consuming to get multiple characters through your daily routines, and I know sometimes it's more of a pain to offer assistance to others, but if you know your stuff, it would be greatly helpful to the game, in general, to offer to help unknowing people with their skill. I ran a t9 raid yesterday with a pug group. The tank was Rage, and I could see he was in obvious need of a mentor. The powers he was using to tank, were not meant for tank. So, after we failed, and failed, finally succeeding, I offered to help with a more suitable tank loadout, to which the person was quite happy to receive. It took about 15 minutes to respec, allocate skill points, give a loadout, help with rotation, and give examples of how to tank; as well as put on track with artifact priority. Now the next time he goes into a raid as a tank, he won't die on the first set of adds, and will likely survive the bosses now. His cr was 288. It takes just a short bit to help someone, rather than get agitated and leave them stranded with no help.
I will chime in here and add my two cents.... YEARS ago when I arrived here shortly after City of Heroes shut down I created a Controller ALT. Now I had been a troll on COH but the powers and abilities were different enough that it was a learning process trying to become a good Troll here. Now this was back in the days when in most cases a raid team was usually 2 or 3 DPS, 1 or 2 tanks, 2 healers and 2 trolls. I started out as THE troll responsible for handing out power but me build was off and after a while I switched roles with the other troll. At that point we breezed through the raid. Afterwards the other troll got together with me and helped me get the right set up in my attack tray, showed me how to set up my SP and basically helped me become a better controller. All that took maybe between 20 to 30 minutes but it was twenty minutes he could have been doing another mission to grab more marks and better armor. I greatly appreciated his help and from his example I to this day TRY to help players when I can. NOW admittedly at times the advice you are offering goes in one ear and out the other and some players may even become agitated and tell you to mind your own business... But most will accept the help. If you have ever been on a team that struggles do to lack of knowledge … this idea can help cut those bad teams occur. No one says you need to spend 8 hours a day teaching but when it is possible .. lend a helping hand.
Also- if you're having problems in content and keep dying and someone offers to give you help don't act like a child and insist you're fine and that they're the ones who are bad. I used to help players more but after that happened a few times I decided it wasn't worth the effort to try when there was a good chance they'd refuse any help.
I am nosy and inspect people in public areas. I see crazy artifact combos. I find so many people view coaching as criticism though. It's strange. Doing more damage, surviving long, better heals: it jopust boils down to a better game experience
I think there are two parts of the problem. The first is text chat can be tough to read intent or is easily misread, so it can be easy to get a message and totally get it wrong. The second is the approach some people take in offering any advice. There are times where the intent isn't being misread and the person offering the advice is kind of being a jerk about it. Bad experiences with either problem can unfortunately color any future interactions someone might have.
I've been in the game long enough to remember when such behaviour was pretty much the norm. back when I was struggling, I remember just asking the top dps in the raid we'd just done to inspect me & let me know if anything needed a tweak. over the course of the next hour, he went through absolutely everything for me. by the time we'd finished, I came out the other end with an entirely new build & playstyle, &, above all, a brand new sense of confidence as a player. next raid I did, I topped the board for damage for the first time ever. wish I could remember his name, I'd raise a big ol' virtual glass to him. top bloke. never saw him again. that said, however, things are different now. you offer help or advice to almost anyone now & you get a face full of abuse & told to f*ck off. I will help anyone who asks me for help if it is within my power to do so, but I long ago gave up offering.
This is one of the reasons why I don't spend a whole lot of time with randos I meet in PUGs. If someone is interested in joining the league, sure, I'll give them more info about the game than they can probably process...but to do that for a lot of people I'll never see again just seems like a complete waste of my time, heh. If I'm going to invest, I want to see a return beyond some sort of super nebulous "good of the game".
Minor nuances. I will offer to help other people in as much as is possible. I do not ever volunteer advice that they don't want. I ask them "Can I give you a tip about X?" Whether it's a fight mechanic or a power or role issue, I let them know the topic and I ask them if they would like some pointers. I do this in /tell, instead of announcing it to the full group. If they don't respond or don't want my advice, I don't give it. Point blank, some people are not going to want to listen. Some people do not want to believe they are doing anything wrong. Some people take advice as insults, especially when it's announced publicly and it puts focus on their shortcomings in front of the rest of the group. I use these basic rules because these are the expectations I would have of other people. While I respect there are things that I do not know in the game, fights I am less familiar with or powersets that I have less experience with, when I am doing my job and doing it perfectly, the last thing I want is somebody with less experience than me to start throwing out random bits of bad advice, declaring it in group chat so that other players who know nothing about what's going on can then be confused into thinking I am doing something wrong. I left a Barbatos raid this afternoon for exactly that reason. No wipes, minimal deaths to one-shots throughout the entire raid, and I was running it while lootlocked because they had asked me to come in as a Healer when theirs dropped after the card game. Then, in the middle of Barbatos, some random Controller starts complaining about the flawless run we're having, whining that I need to "spam heals more" despite the fact we're having no deaths and everyone is fine. Literally his complaint was summed up in the fact that I perpetually had my power too high, because I run a Demon's Fang and didn't need to depend on the Controller very often for power, so he felt as though I must have some need to cast additional wasteful heals so that he could feel more useful. He voiced his complaint. Then somebody else who had also had zero deaths joined in and agreed with him. Then I politely excused myself and encouraged them to find a more power-hungry healer if that's what they wanted. You can offer advice and help, but if the other person doesn't want it, then the best thing to do is just keep our comments to ourselves.
Kudos to those of you who take the time to impart your knowledge! I'd be happy to do the same if I knew anything.
I used to try and help people. Found out quickly how toxic this community is. Now if they are not league, I won't waste my time on them.
Most people don't want the help. I use to tell people about not having white mods not it, but it never went over well.
I have never had a problem when offering advice. Perhaps it is because I message them in /tell and am very polite about it. "Excuse me, sorry to bother you, I couldn't help but notice the loadout you're using, or the augments or whatever the case may be; I can offer you some tips on how to make some tweaks to improve your performance if you're interested". For the most part, people I have said this to, are more than welcoming. For instance, just last night, I was inspecting a CR 262 Troll and noticed they were using a mismatch set of augments and I do mean mismatch. 1 Dom, 1 Might, 1 Prec and 1 Vit. I offered some advice utilizing the above way of being super polite, "She" was more than grateful for the advice. Ended up spending about 20 minutes going over some rotations and what augments/artifacts to use to better serve her role. At the end of it all, her performance improved and she was grateful. I think it's all about HOW you approach people and WHAT you say to them. But, if you start off like "Hey you aren't doing things right, or you don't have X mod or you're using the wrong augments/artifacts etc, then of course they're not going to take it as "HELP" but as "CRITICISM". (And we all know most people don't take well to that).
IMHO.. this is a double edged sword.. On one hand yes you want to help the community grow and learn.. on the other hand it's really up to their league staff to help them as you have no rightful authority over them. So.. if they are a non-leaguer and I see they are new, I might pm them and offer help, because if they are another leaguer, they have every right to be annoyed at me 'suggesting' things to them.. I've had it happen to me 'suggestions'.. I was not best pleased*, and it's tantamount to griefing. ----- *I've had some amount of cheek for helping even non-leaguers.. Q.Q *the instance I am remembering.. the person didn't even know what they were talking about, I have experience in every powerset.. go away! You think you know, but you don't know what your talking about!
