General Discussion

MMORPG.com City of Heroes Correspondent Michael Mcnutt writes this article giving players tips on leading a group in NCsoft's superhero game.

One of the greatest aspects of playing an MMO is the fact that you are never alone in your endeavors. The basic foundations of MMOs is the fact that more can be accomplished traveling with companions. Regardless of your agenda.

This brings us to the core of teaming: The leader.

In my 3 years of a life invested in City of Heroes/Villains, I have teamed with and led some of the greatest players in the world, despite their personal agendas, to glory, enthrallment and epic victories. The teaming part was easy. Just follow the leader and do your job. You just sit back, let the boss multi-task and set up the plot for destruction or arrest.

Read the article here.

Wow, this was a great read! I don't play CoH anymore, but even I found this informative. Perhaps MMORPG.com should look into making this a series of articles for each game that has a correspondent.

He nailed it pretty much on the head, but I'd suggest adding one thing:

As the leader, do not be afraid of the "kick" feature. I'm not suggesting that you abuse it by any means, but I've been on teams (and lead them) where you get the "perpetual AFKer" or the "All-chatting-no-playing" type. Both of which, personally, I can't team with. Some leaders leave these people on the team, and let the remaining players carry their weight. It's unfair. Usually, I send them a tell explaining that they need to improve, and they will. Occasionally, you'll get an arogant player that NEEDS to be kicked. To many group leaders jsut let those pain-in-the-ass, unproductive players linger on the team.

The best team leaders don't discriminate against power sets or Archetypes.  And they don't pass star.

Good PUG's are hard to find

But bad ones really aren't that common

Good article.

I'd recommend another couple ones focusing on the differences of groups in CoH and in CoV. And perhaps others about peculiar teams, like the ones without Tanks or composed of specific builds (of course, not for everyone, but for friends or close guildmates who wanna build duos or trios [or whatever] based on specific powersets/archetypes).

I agree with an above poster, do not be afraid to kick a player that (1) doesn't know what they're doing or (2) is disruptive.  It's not like teams are a rarity, you lose that 8th player usually not long to get a replacement.