Did you ever meet those people that say you are playing wrong?

[Angel Phoenix77]

I used to get them on teams now and then. Know it all's who tell people their build is bad, or they don't know how to play their toon the right way, or your AT is the wrong choice and you should play THIS one.

Then I look at their vet status and I have like 7 years and they have 8 months and act like experts.

Or of course sometimes a build really is bad. I once teamed with an Empath / Elec defender that had only TWO powers from the empathy side, and he was a lvl 48! Useless as a healer and a 2nd rate blaster at best.

Oh yea, I had 1 person (who was suppose to be my friend) telling me I need a respect, because he did not like my power choices. Even though I was having fun, it did not matter to him. He then proceeded to tell someone we were running with to send me through the trails. Long story short I grabbed the so in spite. When I was asked what I grabbed I told him I grabbed the so and he got angry, which caused me to get angry as well. We never teamed up after that.

[Clave Dark 5]

I was a PUG rolling through some paper missions in Sharkhead I think, and the leader of the group adds a brute and we end up stuck with a mission that's full of blue-con enemies.  He's already acting restless about it while everyone else on the team is saying "meh, no sweat, we'll knock this one out then pick up a new, level-appropriate mission and it's all good."  I can sort of see this guy felt this was a "waste of time", I guess, but I've never been that impatient to level.

So we go through the blue-con mission and he's being terse and/or cranky about it.  I'm running my Dominator in the back and mass-zapping groups of the foes, which I guess was driving him up the wall because he wanted to build his rage.  Note: this is speculation on my part as he never said much.

So we finish the mission, hop out and he rage-quits the team (ha ha), then takes the time to send me and the other Dom on the team a tell "worst Doms ever" when the team had been doing just fine (better than fine iirc), and was about to move on to a level-appropriate mission, but I guess the PUG wasn't enough about him.

[Paragon Avenger]

I hate to say it, but the worst expriences were during double XP weekends.
There always seemed to be a toon that wanted the most XP in the shortest amount of time.

The game is supposed to be fun.

[Dev7on]

I played on the Freedom server and I'll have to say that the server had several immature players. For example, I don't put IO sets on my character until I level him/her to 50 then, I start giving him/her set bonuses. The reason why I do that because I think there is no point buying IOs when you're leveling constantly and you have to keep buying them from Wentworth to keep the set bonuses updated which that's a lot of influence to spend. Some players would come up to me and read my Personal Info and notice that I have no set bonuses. They sent me a private tell saying "You don't have set bonuses you need to give your character sets" or "Why you don't have any sets bonuses on your build?" It's none of their damn business! Once I finally got my characters to 50 and started enhancing my builds I had a friend who also played City of Heroes invited me to his house and we talked about builds. So he asked me "Can I see your build?" I'm like: "Ok hold on." So I switched to my account and showed him my builds. Then, he was like "Oh no! Dude what are you doing?! You put Mako's Bite on this and you put Positron's Blast on that? Why did you slot this power so many times? You need to do this. You need to change that." Then he started to brag about how many purple sets he had on his character. I didn't expect him to react like that. I just want to have a decent friend who gives zero judgment to any of my builds. I've seen Youtube videos where players share their builds and IO sets. I don't leave a comment criticizing their builds. I took a break playing at Freedom and moved to Virtue. That experience was freaking annoying! 

[Castegyre]

For example, I don't put IO sets on my character until I level him/her to 50 then, I start giving him/her set bonuses. The reason why I do that because I think there is no point buying IOs when you're leveling constantly and you have to keep buying them from Wentworth to keep the set bonuses updated which that's a lot of influence to spend...

I do the same thing in pretty much every game I play. Use whatever is handy to level up with and gear myself out when I get to higher levels. I see no point wasting time and resources on stuff I'm just going to replace soon enough if I'm actively leveling. This is a lesson I learned early on, but most people don't want to learn it or have different goals while playing.

If I were making a character to do something specific like run a specific TF or play in a specific zone that would be another matter.

[aXe]

One memory I have is someone having a go at me for letting the squishies get hit by an aoe. Of course I explained that even though I'm holding aggro, if they're going to stand that close they're going to get hit too. They're ranged AT's after all. Luckily that's about all I ever had. I was always the tank. Got complimented on my tanking abilities too though.

The only other, quite bizarre incident was someone telling me I had a 'noob costume'. That was just after the release date. 

[doc7924]

One memory I have is someone having a go at me for letting the squishies get hit by an aoe. Of course I explained that even though I'm holding aggro, if they're going to stand that close they're going to get hit too. They're ranged AT's after all. Luckily that's about all I ever had. I was always the tank. Got complimented on my tanking abilities too though.

The only other, quite bizarre incident was someone telling me I had a 'noob costume'. That was just after the release date. 

Yeah and back then no Icon. If you wanted a new look you had to redo the character from scratch.
Sucked because I tired of my first toon's look, but after he was like over level 20, it wasn't worth deleting just to change the look.

[Inc42]

One of my very first toons was a fire/mace tank. I was kicked off of a team for not having taken Taunt yet, despite not being a high enough level to take it. After some time soloing and finally getting on another team, totally different people, I got to the level where I could take Taunt, but at that point I could also take Consume. I knew that I could not keep my toggles going, and if I couldnt do so I could not stay alive, so I took Consume instead, and got kicked immediately after the team leader realized what I had done. This turned me off of tanks completely, and it was years before I tried again (and found that I loved them).

Other than this one lousy experience, I do not remember other times where that sort of thing happened. I know people questioned my build choices, but I cant remember any time where they were talking to me as if I was doing it wrong, only curiosity or trying to provide advice.

I avoided the "optimal builds" because to this day I dont think CoH had them. I think some powers were better in some situations, but nothing was ever necessary. I have played the only melee toon in an ITF as an electric/electric brute with no taunt and we smoked it. I've done all /thermal controller ITFs and STFs and had a ton of fun. I knew people with the standard fire/psionic permadom build, and made an electric/psionic to be my own farmer (slightly slower, far more survivable), had a friend do plant/psionic permadom as another farmer, and another friend do mental/psionic permadom just for giggles.

Other games have the "right" way to play, the optimal gear, combination of classes, whatever. CoH never fit into that for me. Maybe I was just with the right people, or the wrong ones if we were doing things so poorly, who knows.

[Waffles]

I'm guilty of this. Before the massive buff, I would have to remind Stalkers to open with AS from stealth all the time. :\

[Vee]

I'm guilty of this. Before the massive buff, I would have to remind Stalkers to open with AS from stealth all the time. :\

If you were really the type though you'd never have let a pre-buff stalker on your team

[Waffles]

If you were really the type though you'd never have let a pre-buff stalker on your team

I mean, My dominator could carry the whole thing, so I didn't care that much. :c