For the record, no one on Guardian should ever subject themselves to playing with a katana/regen scrapper named MOKA ONLY.

My bf and I were running missions and got a 'disarm 3 bombs simultaneously' mish sprung on us; I started asking around for a 3rd, explaining the situation. I /telled MOKA and got no answer, so I asked around some more. About 10 minutes later, he says he can help, so I invite him. (In the meantime, we found a 20 regen and my bf sk'd him so he could help; it was the bf's mission set for his 29 regen scrapper; my toon is only 16, but as long as i get the bonus xp at the end of the mish, I'm happy)

He was afk most of the time, and when he did run into a fight, he would hack one guy and then stand around. Also, I was sk'd to him and I have Arctic Air, so I was standing in the fray with it on. Several times, he'd just run out of the fight leaving me tiny and frail, and go look around the rest of the floor; usually he'd find a group of guys, say "Here." and then go tuck himself into a corner and wait.

Finally, his "on the phone, sec" was the last straw and I kicked his dumb ass and ran the rest of the mish unsk'd.

Do yourself a favor and avoid him like the PLAGUE!

Current Mood: annoyed

So... did he think he was a stalker who was scouting, or what? *confused*

No clue. I don't know why he was running out of sk range in the middle of fights in the first place! As far as I know, you can't turn off the annoying, "I'm too far away to help my sidekick!" bubbles that pop up; he had to have seen them... *facepalm*

Actually you can. I had dialogue bubbles turned off on my old computer because they caused lag in a large fight with all the macros and such. The thoughts still show up in local chat, but that's assuming you're reading it/have it showing up at all/paying any attention whatsoever, which obviously, this person wasn't.

If you are in First person, you can't see them. I've accidentilly done this a couple of times, esp. in caves, where I find it hard to see where I'm going, unless I'm in first person.

Do you still get the end of mission bonus if you are too far below the group average to get xp during fights?

Sure; there's a common cheap approach of unSKing at the end when the last glowie's clicked to collect a higher reward.

You've got to wait the 30 or 60 seconds (whichever it is) for the SK timer to run out, though, once you unSK for that trick to work.

I've occasionally ended up with higher mission-complete bonuses as the team ends up spread out across a several-floor mission hunting for the last glowie, and occasionally not in the same situation even when I was out of range of my mentor when Mission Complete happened, because I'd be in and out of SK range while we hunted for it.

So I gather, although of course I take the XP for the level I did the mission at (there's no implied criticism here for getting the extra bonus _by accident_.)

Three things about XP leeches that astound me:

1) The blatant ploys that they come up with:
a) "AFK" right inside the mish door
b) Superior Invis to avoid getting killed when the rest of his teammates run past him being chased by purple mobs
c) "Scouting" ahead (toggling invis and running around) in mishes like Frostfire, which not only could I run blindfolded by now, but also are usually completely cleared anyway, as we did in this instance

2) The ludicrous excuses and ploys that they use to weasel out of either playing or leaving the mish so that they don't get XP that they don't deserve:
a) Turns out that he's not really AFK, tells me that I can do the same when we're doing my mish
b) Significant other just came home, gone for several minutes, rejoins for one fight, then has to "practice guitar"; says that he'll give us all of her inf if we let her leech
c) Says that "scouting" is what she does; never mind that we could really use her FF buffs and wouldn't mind if she didn't do damage as long as we got bubbles before the fight

3) Teammates that let them get away with it:
a) Told them what the situation was, invited them to join me (did I mention that the leech had the star?), then quit; no one else did
b) Came down to my using the "them or me" threat; other teammates relieved and happy, but not the leader (I suspect that the leech was a friend of hers)
c) Begged for and got the star, booted her, and let her back in when she promised to stick with the group

I hate XP leeches more than I hate Paragon Nazis, I think.

Er, switched gender halfway through 2b above; in the intarwab, no one knows you're a hermaphrodite, anyway.

i'm sorry, what were you saying?
i was ask for the last ten minutes.

*afk

LOL!

I run my teams tight and fast and if people arent helping, they automatically get the boot after 1 warning.

I suppose that its a little on the harsh side, but i'm not playing the game for a bunch of leechers. I'm playing the game for my enjoyment and part of my responsibility to myself is to make sure i maximize my fun (strong teams plowing through +3s and +4s). How do I exercise my responsibility? Through the 'kick' button.. Why is it my responsibility? Well, the game gave me a star for some reason..

When a leecher has the fortitude to make himself a team, he'll learn very quickly that good leaders dont keep teems if they stand in the entrance with /afk

I've had a few teams where I ended up with several uncontrollable AFKs.

Amazingly, people were very tolerant of it. I did warn ahead of time that I needed to help a sick wife at short notice though, and tell them to kick me if it was too annoying.

I think that kind of warning makes all of the difference, though. As does the team you're with.

I've occcasionally told the team, "Food coming shortly, will have to AFK to sign for it." or something like that to give them a head's up. But I don't know if I've done it when someone's snagged me for a team via the search window.

I've played with several people that had kids to tend to, and I'm completely cool with that. In fact, maybe it was the fact that they were generally more responsible, through a combination of maturity and being responsible for children, that made their play when they were on more than make up for the occasional absence.

Part of that sounds like how I get when my connection starts lagging uncontrollably. It'll be fine until the fight starts, then I'll instantly lag out (with the stripey green and red lag that keeps me connected but doesn't let me actually do anything) until the fight's over. Then I'll be fine again until someone attacks an enemy, repeat until I get sick of not being able to do anything and log off. x.x

I had that problem--my screen would freeze solid in the middle of a battle and I'd have to do a hard reboot to restart my machine. Someone told me that it was probably my graphics card overheating during heavy use, and I fixed the problem in the short term by taking the side cover off my machine, and in the long run with another fan in the case.

That sounds like a completely different problem. This is definately the network -- I can see it on the net graph. And the screen doesn't freeze, it's just that everything jumps around like the packets were coming in in random order.

I'm going afk could someone sk me so I can leech, and oh yea. Let me follow someone with superspeed and then let me come back and complain that I didn't get speed boosted :)





:P