How did you make it past the first boss?

I dunno. It was a queue-in-progress, so I didn't show up until the second boss.

Los around the pillar is so that ppl actually stack w/o telling them to. Otherwise ur melee and tank leap in, and ur ranged and healer r standing out there like a turd getting half the agro. Yes stacking is hard, ppl just love looking at their character models instead of a BT4 covering their screen.

I think there are a few problems with this approach.

Problem One: in my experience, if you LoS, the people you don't want to bother explaining the fight to - the people who are supposed to be coaxed into stacking by noticing the LoS - still don't usually stack. They spread out enough to delay the kills. That's better than being spread all across the courtyard, but it's suboptimal. We can do better.

Problem Two: even if you explain, "hey, let's just stack out in the open, it's faster" while auto-running toward the boss, people will argue with you. This is what frustrates me more than the loss of efficiency: the straight-up magical thinking that people engage in. They don't actually understand basic concepts like the difference between a melee and ranged enemy. They are simply taught one thing and cling to it unthinkingly. And other flashpoint players continue to facilitate this by insisting on ways of making fights less efficient in ways that avoid teaching the other players trivial mechanics.

When players aren't taught how to do things like stack for melee adds in earlier content like Legacy of the Rakata, they are bad at it in subsequent content, like Kil'Cik the Swarm Lord. It's embarrassing to be in groups that can't handle that fight because ranged and healers don't freaking stack the adds on the boss.

Another example of this sort of thing is when people insist on stacking way out in one of the corners for the first boss on Hammer Station. This is a really stupid thing to do! It often doesn't work, because it's sometimes hard to LoS that boss well. It makes the fight longer. And all it does is potentially avoid the droids that drop red circles, which is one of the easiest possible mechanics to avoid if you play normally (and isn't even hard to heal through if players screw it up a few times). If you can't teach a pug how to avoid red circles, what can you teach them to do?

I understand and support taking steps to ignore mechanics that act as inefficiencies. For example, on Titan 6 in SM, the launch AoE does nothing, and standing behind rocks is a dps loss. While it is valuable to teach players to understand mechanics that will matter in harder content, at least ignoring this particular mechanic makes the fight a bit quicker. But avoiding mechanics by doing something that makes the fight slower frustrates me to no end. The sole reason to do it is because a smarter player doesn't want to bother spending a few seconds to explain something, and I think that's contrary to the whole spirit of playing multiplayer PvE. If you keep infantilizing pugs in group content, you're going to keep getting idiot pugs in group content.

Being inefficient isn't a deal-breaker or anything, but it is annoying and worth complaining about.

Comedy and tragedy in the same MM FP (Hammer Station).

Tragedy: the healer never cleanses the tank on the first boss despite being told to. (I do see the healer use cleanse on herself once, however.) Through judicious use of reflects and DCDs, the tank manages to survive until the boss is at 20%. Healer manages a brez, not that it's a big deal. This is the same healer who died twice on a previous MM Athiss because she could/would not cleanse herself of the Crushing Darkness dot.

Comedy: the tank decides to turn this Hammer Station into a full-on speedrun and starts borderline chainpulling groups, because, well, it's Hammer Station and the dps can deal. This works fine until Overlord Kreshan, where he stops for a bit to let the healer catch up. At that point, I am inside the room off to the left to avoid Sweeping Blasters. The tank chooses to start the fight with Mad Dash (a strange choice, but whatever). I see him zzzzzzzzzip onto my screen from the right toward the boss...and keep flying past him, like Wile E. Coyote, off the edge of the platform and straight into a death-by-gravity.

"Very well...then we die together!" indeed.

Comedy and tragedy in the same MM FP (Hammer Station).

 

Tragedy: the healer never cleanses the tank on the first boss despite being told to. (I do see the healer use cleanse on herself once, however.) Through judicious use of reflects and DCDs, the tank manages to survive until the boss is at 20%. Healer manages a brez, not that it's a big deal. This is the same healer who died twice on a previous MM Athiss because she could/would not cleanse herself of the Crushing Darkness dot.

 

Comedy: the tank decides to turn this Hammer Station into a full-on speedrun and starts borderline chainpulling groups, because, well, it's Hammer Station and the dps can deal. This works fine until Overlord Kreshan, where he stops for a bit to let the healer catch up. At that point, I am inside the room off to the left to avoid Sweeping Blasters. The tank chooses to start the fight with Mad Dash (a strange choice, but whatever). I see him zzzzzzzzzip onto my screen from the right toward the boss...and keep flying past him, like Wile E. Coyote, off the edge of the platform and straight into a death-by-gravity.

 

"Very well...then we die together!" indeed.

Lmao, that's great. I will never understand when people get obsessed with chain-pulling, but obviously don't have the group comp or coordination to do it.

I had a Hammer Station recently (vet mode) with 4 DPS, where one of the DPS was pulling pretty absurdly and then when they reached the turrets and the light bridge, they went straight past the turrets, crossed the bridge, past the adds, killed most of them after LOSing (with the help of me, the only one who had made it past the bridge with them). Then rather than going back to help the other two, who were stuck on the turrets and nearly dead, they pulled the boss.

I went back to help the other too, died in the process, mainly because adds from the boss somehow came after me and overwhelmed me. This loony toons DPS then proceeded to solo the boss and in a moment of lucidity and kindness that genuinely surprised me, came back and killed the turrets, one of which was almost dead, the other not (they nearly died in the process). Though I'm still not sure if they came back out of kindness or just because it would get them out of combat and they didn't know how to leave otherwise. Hard to say. I respawned right away, thinking it would put me close, but it put me all the way back at the entrance, so in a bout of hardcore stubbornness, I ran all the way back to get my puny CXP drop from the boss. Luckily, that one doesn't complete until you leave and do the turn-in, so I didn't get booted out even though the others left.

Also, as an aside, it flabbergasts me how many people have no clue how to play the last boss in Hammer Station. There are so many people who run in and pull him, with his sweeping blasters facing everyone, who haven't had a chance to get in the doorway yet, and half the time one or more of them dies. I've gotten in the habit of hiding behind the wall if I think somebody is going to pull before I can and face the group. Also, the number of people in general who don't get that you can move out of his Sweeping Blasters.

It doesn't flabbergast me because they don't know, but it flabbergasts me because of how brazen they are in running in before someone with a modicum of experience can, throwing caution to the wind, and seemingly assuming they will survive and there will be no consequences. How I don't know. It's like Leroy Jenkins just constantly.

Lmao, that's great. I will never understand when people get obsessed with chain-pulling, but obviously don't have the group comp or coordination to do it.

If you are fast, and run ahead of the rest of the group, then the pulled adds will follow you, but then retreat if they are pulled too far away from their main point. Meanwhile they retreat, the rest of the group running past them is not affected by them. Since this works outside of FPs & OPs, people assume that it works within, too.

Lmao, that's great. I will never understand when people get obsessed with chain-pulling, but obviously don't have the group comp or coordination to do it.

Haha well nothing beats being swamped by more then 40 ads. The perfect example to set if you want to find out if your healer and tank are as good as they claim to be..

Was running Athiss on Vet Mode, 3 DPS (1 lvl 25, i lvl 56 and me on my Jedi Shadow, lvl 70) and 1 healer (lvl 70). The healer 'healed' by running from kolto station to kolto station during boss fights and pressing them even though everyone was in full health. IDK, maybe this is how the cool kids do it nowadays

Also, this is old when uprisings first started, and I did the one on Tatooine. 4 DPS. One of them was running ahead, swearing in the chat for us to hurry the f up and being rude in general. I try to keep up and in doing so accidentally step on one of those kolto things that automatically heal you when you step on them. This was apparently too much for mister rude and crude so he initiated a vote to kick me and it went through (why the heck the other ppl voted to kick I'll never know). Oh well, first and last uprising I ever did

I dunno. It was a queue-in-progress, so I didn't show up until the second boss.

 

I think there are a few problems with this approach.

 

Problem One: in my experience, if you LoS, the people you don't want to bother explaining the fight to - the people who are supposed to be coaxed into stacking by noticing the LoS - still don't usually stack. They spread out enough to delay the kills. That's better than being spread all across the courtyard, but it's suboptimal. We can do better.

 

Problem Two: even if you explain, "hey, let's just stack out in the open, it's faster" while auto-running toward the boss, people will argue with you. This is what frustrates me more than the loss of efficiency: the straight-up magical thinking that people engage in. They don't actually understand basic concepts like the difference between a melee and ranged enemy. They are simply taught one thing and cling to it unthinkingly. And other flashpoint players continue to facilitate this by insisting on ways of making fights less efficient in ways that avoid teaching the other players trivial mechanics.

 

When players aren't taught how to do things like stack for melee adds in earlier content like Legacy of the Rakata, they are bad at it in subsequent content, like Kil'Cik the Swarm Lord. It's embarrassing to be in groups that can't handle that fight because ranged and healers don't freaking stack the adds on the boss.

U can use legacy markers. Takes 1 GCD to put down, pretty hard to miss and avoids the complications of "i dont read chat/i dont have chat turned on/i dont speak english/i dont use my brain cells/etc." They work very well in my experience.

Naked people

Once in a while, you get ppl that forgot their gear somewhere and don't realize it until somebody else point it out because they have a suspiciously low item rating

I once jumped into a flashpoint with my healer, realizing during the first pull ( a particularly healing-demanding one) that I forgot my weapon on another toon .... Because apparently, there is tons of healing abilities you cant use without a gun XD . People died, and I shamefully had to log off just to get my damn legacy weapon and come back oops

I also saw someone in a particularly non-smooth run of ec sm with only orange gear ... with no armoring, mods or enhancements in it ...

Had a pretty weird run last night. Not sure the person was piss drunk or trolling.

MM Czerka Meltdown, PT tank, merc, jugg (me), sorc heal. all 70.

So as soon as we zoned in, the tank types out something gibberish and heal says, ah dw we are with you buddy.

merc types nah, we are gonna get so many wipes...

Tanks gives a smiley.

well... aside from 2nd boss we did pretty well. except when we stop, tank types out something weird and funny comment follows from merc and sorc. I ended up saying dude do you have a cat that is walking on your keyboard and he/she spammed the chat with cry emoji... damn... I should not have said that but it took us about ten minutes of wating b4 he/she calms down and proceed to final boss... I will remember this cat-person for a long time.

So this is more of a "The great people..." post but weird one as well.

Umbara MM. PT tank, sniper, marauder (I think?) and me, merc healer. Everything starts normally, we clear all the adds. Then we get to the first boss... Tank goes into the room and immediately charges at the boss. One of the DD didn't get inside in time... So the other DD says "stuck it", I jump off, it will just take unnecessarily long with just one DD. It's better to start over. Then tank just literally quits the group. Like, what?

Okay. One of the DD doesn't feel like waiting for a new tank and leaves. I also leave, get a 4 minute lock for some reason, so I decide to go on an alt for now.

About an hour later, back on my merc, queued up - Copero MM with the same PT tank + 2 Sorc DD.. Okay. Hopefully, this tank isn't going to do anything stupid again. One can hope, right? We have no stealther, so we have to kill all adds, fine. We start clearing adds, tank is taking weird paths, trying to go for a "shortcut" but pulls all the usual mobs anyway. Then we get to that one spot where there are 2 groups of adds on small bridges. You need to be really careful to not aggro both. Our "I-like-to-charge-in" tank manages to run past the first group, aggroing them, but charges into the 2nd group! He doesn't even notice the first group, I guess. So, who do they go for? Yep, the poor me... So there I am, tanking like 7 or 8 adds while the tank just tunnel visions the other 2-3. No AoE taunt, nothing. I am standing like 4-5m away from him, using DCDs and healing but he is super busy with those 2 elite mobs, I guess. Then some more mobs run out of the corners for me, I die (could have lived a bit longer but mistimed kolto, didn't realize there are even more adds coming from behind my back).

I think you already know what happens next. Tank leaves the group. I tell him how "awesome" he is with his ragequits after his own mistakes. 2 minutes later I get a whisper "learn to heal, you trash pve scrub". Okay, so we have one of those here. The "superior" PvP player who is so "good" that he can't even hold aggro in "simple pve content for scrubs".

We requeue, sorc apologizes for not rezzing me in time as he came back to the game after 5 years break. Plus, has never done this flashpoint. I mean, he is doing really well in that case.

We get a jugg tank, a bit low geared, just 110k health but whatever. We proceed with the flashpoint. I decide to explain tactics for each boss as that sorc said he is new to this. So I am telling which adds to kill, where to stand, when to focus on burning the boss and so on.

These guys manage to execute the mechanics of 2nd boss literally perfectly! I barely even healed in the burn phase. Being ranged helps, I guess but tank also does a great job keeping most of the adds away from us. So, I ask them if they want to do bonus. I explain where to stand, tell how you can come back above the barrier with Force Speed (one of the sorcs falls off later but successfully manages to execute that and comes back).

These guys manage to one shot the damn bonus boss! WIth one person being completely new to this! What? The small droid was under CC like 75% of the time, just wow (it is a bit OP to have 3 Whirlwinds/Conc missile, hehe).

I don't think I have ever had a cleaner Copero MM clear (the rest of fp goes fast and easy as well) in my 20 + runs... Feels amazing when people follow instructions and don't do stupid crap.

Not too long ago I had a guy who, during the final boss battle on Nathema** insisted that everyone run around the central area in a clockwise direction during the fight***. Before then, I had done that FP 6 or 7 times without any need to "run clockwise" (or counterclockwise). (I'd also been in groups that failed to complete it 3 or 4 times - so 9-11 times in total.)

Of course, as a Gunslinger, there is no (to my knowledge) "run & gun" spec. Most damage needs to be done while stationary. After a couple of failed attempt, this guy started ragging on me for not going clockwise, but rather than try to explain any of that, and because it was easy to tell that this person wouldn't listen anyway, I simply said "You've never played a Gunslinger have you?" and left.****

**If I recall.

*** This may be a viable tactic, but it's not one I or any group I've been in has used.

**** One of the very few times I've ever actually left a group. Been kicked and had the rest of the group leave, but I very seldom just quit.

Queued into a bit of a Twilight Zone MM Tython as DPS.

The tank apparently misqueued as tank, was actually a dps. S/he fretted for about a minute without zoning in (I suggested going to fleet and getting a quick set of 230s) and then dropped group. I requeued the group.

While I went over to the far-left generator that normally gets destroyed first, the healer and the other dps went, um, nowhere in particular that I could tell, and then pulled something. Then they stealthed out so everything wandered over to me and my companion. As the companion and I killed everything, the other DPS offered up some vague comment about how somebody was new, and then dropped group. And then the healer, who lifted no fingers during the fight, laughed and also dropped group.

At least I didn't get a GF lockout, I guess.

A first for me, this, in more than six years playing this game. Vet Boarding Party, always a nice easy run. Me (Mara), Sorc DPS, Op healer and a Merc DPS. The Op disconnects right from the start but no biggie, I re-queue and whip out a comp healer till someone new arrives. However, no one did and we blazed through the FP quite happily, right until the end where you have the convo in which you can spare or off the prisoners.

The Sorc abandoned the convo and stood outside the green ring, refusing to budge. No AFK or anything, he just stood there. After a min or so the Merc pipes up, "hey buddy, you wanna finish this or..."

"put companion away"

....?

"why?" I ask.

"i dont want your companion to make ds decision"

:eek:

A first for me, this, in more than six years playing this game. Vet Boarding Party, always a nice easy run. Me (Mara), Sorc DPS, Op healer and a Merc DPS. The Op disconnects right from the start but no biggie, I re-queue and whip out a comp healer till someone new arrives. However, no one did and we blazed through the FP quite happily, right until the end where you have the convo in which you can spare or off the prisoners.

 

The Sorc abandoned the convo and stood outside the green ring, refusing to budge. No AFK or anything, he just stood there. After a min or so the Merc pipes up, "hey buddy, you wanna finish this or..."

 

"put companion away"

 

....?

 

"why?" I ask.

 

"i dont want your companion to make ds decision"

 

:eek:

Now this is something...

"i dont want your companion to make ds decision"

Did you assure that person that your Companion was LS?

(And, even better, did you then proceed to make the DS decision?)

"i dont want your companion to make ds decision"

 

:eek:

Had a healer tell me to put my pet away once because it would steal her healing away from the other players.

Queued into a bit of a Twilight Zone MM Tython as DPS.

 

The tank apparently misqueued as tank, was actually a dps. S/he fretted for about a minute without zoning in (I suggested going to fleet and getting a quick set of 230s) and then dropped group. I requeued the group.

 

While I went over to the far-left generator that normally gets destroyed first, the healer and the other dps went, um, nowhere in particular that I could tell, and then pulled something. Then they stealthed out so everything wandered over to me and my companion. As the companion and I killed everything, the other DPS offered up some vague comment about how somebody was new, and then dropped group. And then the healer, who lifted no fingers during the fight, laughed and also dropped group.

 

At least I didn't get a GF lockout, I guess.

Man, what is it with Tython and people derping into the mobs. I had one (vet mode) where I was stealth and went to stealth a generator at the beginning (IIRC, I even announced it or someone asked me to do it prior) and one of the DPS just derped into a group of mobs for no apparent reason. After I basically asked *** had happened, one of the group members insulted the derp DPS and the derp DPS basically said "yeah, I walked into the mobs." No other explanation.

If I remember right, this person also respawned after the first boss (which they had died during) "thinking it would respawn them on the boss" and had to run way back, took a wrong route, and got major lost, ending up pulling a trash group we could have avoided in the process.

They weren't intentionally rude or anything, as far as I could tell, just seemed to be one of those people who insists on figuring things out for themselves, even if it means costing everyone with their mistakes, when they could have just asked.

In general, it bothers me how few people speak up when they have no clue what to do in a flashpoint (you can tell cause it becomes evident down the line how clueless they are in how it works). Like you can ask people, not gonna bite your head off.

Had a healer tell me to put my pet away once because it would steal her healing away from the other players.

this was a bug in 4.0 and has since been fixed

In general, it bothers me how few people speak up when they have no clue what to do in a flashpoint (you can tell cause it becomes evident down the line how clueless they are in how it works). Like you can ask people, not gonna bite your head off.

Just had an MM Hammer Station with a 70 Assassin tank who was very obviously completely clueless. Didn't know how to play the class, didn't know anything about the Hammer Station pulls, didn't ever hold aggro, didn't have any gear that made sense (other than a few defense mods and a shield, which were all blues and greens stuffed into adaptive cartel gear), either took an extremely long time to pull or insta-pulled, etc.

Our group was kinda stacked otherwise - me on heals, a good dps that both knew how to play their class and how to do flashpoints well in groups, and a dps that at least knew how to play their class - and we attempted to guide this tank in the general direction of being useful without being, y'know, jerks. We gave tips on line-of-sight pulls in chat. We pointed out his high-threat moves that could help him hold aggro, and we told him to guard one of the dps that kept getting highest threat. Almost none of these did any good; he kept spamming basic attack and Lacerate the entire time, couldn't hold aggro worth anything, ignored suggestions on how to manage each pull and how to do boss mechanics, and made my life as healer very, very difficult.

We never actually wiped, but yeesh. I almost would've assumed the tank had chat turned off, because he never said a word and ignored almost everything we said but he did notice the suggestion to guard a dps two-thirds of the way through the FP (not that that helped him hold aggro ever, but let that go)...

In general, it bothers me how few people speak up when they have no clue what to do in a flashpoint (you can tell cause it becomes evident down the line how clueless they are in how it works). Like you can ask people, not gonna bite your head off.

There are 3 types of players:

1. People who type on a daily basis and can do x words per minute without even looking at the keyboard.

2. People like me who, after years of hunting & pecking, can type out a sentence fairly quickly using only a few fingers.

3. People who have to hunt & peck to type out anything.

For #3, and to a lesser extent, #2, the process of trying to type in the chat takes so long that people either rag at you to hurry up and play, or they go off and start attacking long before you can finish typing.

This, when combined with the fact that many people have chat turned off (sometimes accidentally) or have such a small chat box (especially playing at 4k), it's easy to ignore/miss, can explain why people don't "ask" as much as they should.

For #1's - I can understand that it's easy to forget that not everyone can type quickly. Patience, Padawan.

For myself, as a #2, I can usually type fast enough to get a message across - particularly if I type it in small chunks. (So it's more a series of chats rather than a single long one.)

Note to #3's - start by simply typing "wait" (enter), then typing "i have a question" or "I'm new" or whatever.

There are 3 types of players:

1. People who type on a daily basis and can do x words per minute without even looking at the keyboard.

2. People like me who, after years of hunting & pecking, can type out a sentence fairly quickly using only a few fingers.

3. People who have to hunt & peck to type out anything.

 

For #3, and to a lesser extent, #2, the process of trying to type in the chat takes so long that people either rag at you to hurry up and play, or they go off and start attacking long before you can finish typing.

This, when combined with the fact that many people have chat turned off (sometimes accidentally) or have such a small chat box (especially playing at 4k), it's easy to ignore/miss, can explain why people don't "ask" as much as they should.

 

For #1's - I can understand that it's easy to forget that not everyone can type quickly. Patience, Padawan.

 

For myself, as a #2, I can usually type fast enough to get a message across - particularly if I type it in small chunks. (So it's more a series of chats rather than a single long one.)

 

Note to #3's - start by simply typing "wait" (enter), then typing "i have a question" or "I'm new" or whatever.

This post comes from a well-meaning place, but I disagree with it. I disagree with parts of your diagnosis of the problem, but more generally, I disagree with your perception of what is minimum acceptable behavior from the rest of the group's perspective.

Somebody who queues for content in group finder should either a) already know how to perform his/her role in that content or b) ask how to do it so that s/he can be taught. That's it. It's not any more complicated than that. Failure to meet this minimum expectation for whatever reason - a minor derp with the chat box, incompetence, or social anxiety - means that that person should not queue for group finder. If you go into group content not knowing how to do it and not planning to get better, you want everybody else in the group to do it for you. That is leeching, and it is toxic.

Somebody who queues for content in group finder should ....

I would agree with this as far as OPs, PvP, and to some extent, MM FPs are concerned, but not for ordinary Veteran FPs.

You sound like the sort of person who would wear a baseball uniform and cleats to play "sand lot" softball at a company picnic. (That is based on an actual occurrence. )

Not everyone takes this game all that seriously - nor should they. I'd suggest you only do FPs with a Guild group, or a group of friends, etc. Relaxing and going with the flow doesn't seem to be something you can do.

If you go into group content not knowing how to do it and not planning to get better, you want everybody else in the group to do it for you. That is leeching, and it is toxic.

So, you can understand how to do content in group finder by doing content in group finder, but you can't do content in group finder because you don't know how, due to you never ever was a part of a group. Or, despite willing to be better, wasn't quick enough to ask how. Moreover, one is toxic now, due to social anxiety ect. Great.

I can understant this position, but as new player can't agree with it, i think.