Do people never bother grouping together anymore?

You've used that "ego" argument before. It failed then, and it fails now. Not one person here has said "I don't group with people because I'M BETTER THAN THEM!!". I very much appreciate that some players are new to the game and won't necessarily understand how to play, and I often try to help people like that out. If they're nice people and willing to learn, I have no problem. Like I said before, I do have a few ingame friends that I play with a lot. But that doesn't change the fact a lot of players in this game are very rude and unwilling to learn.

I don't think I'm the best player ever at this game, and there's a few missions out there that I'd need some help to get through. It's not my ego that's the problem, it's the guy in FoW armour running around getting killed every 30 seconds, insisting that he knows what he's doing and we should all follow him. Inevitably he will end up blaming everyone else for his failure "where are the monks!!?!!11" and then quit off half way through the Gate of Madness forcing the rest of us to restart the mission and find a replacement.

That is why I don't PUG.
1. Rudeness
2. Sillyness.
3. Immaturity.

I will play with a pickup group when I'm bored, when I have time on my hands, or when it's a mission that absolutely needs humans. (Gate of Pain and Gate of Madness come to mind in my case, but not much else.) But when I'm testing a build, in a rush, or need to level a low-level hero, I go solo. And I never take a human party for quests; only missions. Since my guild is just getting started, I can't ask guild members for help, so it's heroes or PUG.

Sometimes there are good groups where I meet nice people and end up adding them to my friends list... and sometimes there are groups who will call me a noob, insult me, do all sorts of unkind stuff. And they are the reason I like to solo.

Interesting story... I was doing the first mission on the Ring of Fire. I said I was an MM. Was invited into a group. I was running the Heir to the Master build with Flesh Golem replacing Aura of the Lich as I did not have that yet (I feel no problem with using wiki builds as I think having fun is more important than calculating builds, and after all, getting a build from a wiki site is no worse than asking people for a build in-game).

So we avoided the main gate. All good so far. We get to an area with loads of lava spitters (or whatever they're called) and then the MM-hating starts up... one of the players aggros them all and then blames my minions. Near party wipe. Only 2 of us escape, me being one. Guess who saves us? I summon a Flesh Golem and through self heals and spamming Blood of the Master, it carves through the one enemy that was holding us back from ressing the team. The wammo who lived then resurrects the rest of the teammates (the lava spitter had been holding us back since I had low damage and he had barely any self heals, but with it dead we repaired the party).

We proceeded from then on using my golem (which died and was reanimated many times) and the occasional bone fiend to do the job. I would put on my enchants and regen and then walk through the lava, grab the aggro of the enemies, and the warriors could cross and attack. Most of the party ended up gaining 60 dp over the mission (Dark Bond and Infuse Conditions combined with Mystic Regeneration kept me alive), but through use of minions and careful pulling we made it through. It was concluded amongst the party that minions were indeed very useful. The End.

The first part of this story is one reason I don't like PUGs (blaming my minions when I was following the group and the party was actually attacking before my minions were, then yelling at me when the near-wipe came). But the second part of the story is something I always keep in mind, that they do sometimes have redeeming qualities, and so I'm usually willing to give PUGs a try. I hate being group leader though. I prefer to just find a group, get my role chosen, and then follow the group.

Ah, and now I've rambled on.

EDIT: Oh, and I also hate that cocky attitude that comes up so often with monks. (Being vital to a party will do that, I suppose). I will always take a healing ritualist or a hero monk in place of a human monk unless I see the human monk being polite for more than 10 minutes in local chat. And even then I'd still prefer the healing ritualist, just to help dissipate the idea that the monk is the only healing class. I've met nice, polite monks, but most of the really nasty people I met were monks as well, and liked doing things like refuse to heal me.

Actually, I don't PuG because... I am better than them!
Seriously... I'm only mortal. I don't particularly want to waste my precious time leading a bunch of half-wit morons through a mission I could've got done in 5 minutes with AI.

Well... sometimes I PuG, but only when I want a laugh.
If I wanted to play with other people and hope to get stuff done... That's what the Alliance is for.

Hmm... I go H'n'H because:
1. I don't have to wait 20 minutes to make a group.
2. I can go out for 40 minutes and come back to mission, without worrying about someone rage-quitting.
3. They do EVERYTHING (well, almost everything) that I tell them. I want them run away from fight to try again - They DO it. I don't need to listen to an Elementalist that wants to nuke monsters with Meteor Shower, even if monsters are damaging him for over 150 damage each hit.
4. I dont have to worry that someone has an armor with 15 AR or a weapon from pre-searing.
5. And that he took 4 superior runes. Or a hammer on Mo/W
6. I know builds of my own heroes and henchmen. I know what they can, and I know that they dont cast spell because it's recharging/no energy left, and not because they are AFKing or just simply rude.
7. I don't know that a henchmen got a gold elemental sword 15^50 20/20 +30 hp. If I knew, I would envy him, and even if I can't get it... Would someone from PuG give me it? No.
8. They usually dont aggro every monster in the map. And if, I can just flag them a bit behind me, while I lure them with flatbow.
9. Like someone already said, I don't need to worry that Cynn will call me an a$$hole, because I got a gold dead sword. And Mhenlo won't shout at me because I had 6 hexes, and a Deep Wound + Blind on me and he can't heal me out.
10. I don't have to worry that one idiot is NOT changing his pr0 R/E fire magic caster... Or monk, that wants to use Frenzy, Backbreaker and smiting prayers.
Well, that's it. I can give more reasons, but those are the most important ones.

Abedeus summed it up pretty well. Why take a PUG when you can ultimately control the flow of the game?

Unlike most MMO's (LOL WoW), player skill is a huge factor in Guild Wars. When a player is shitty, it's extremely apparent. So when I fail in a mission, I want it to be my fault, and not the fault of the tanking monk, or the Ele waving a sword around, or the warrior who thinks he should be casting Meteor Storm.

Guildies or heroes I hardly ever pug.....

Yep, thats generally when i PuG, well, until my disconnection issues started (thank god for reconnects) now I never PuG due to that fact. Although I would still join a few friends that know my situation.

Sacrilege!

If you organise youre pugs, masters is easy.

I don't like the hero's, this makes guild wars stupid, it's an MMORPG, play it
like an MMORPG then.

I can understand why people wouldn't want to group during the EoTN preview. I'm sure most of us wanted to keep the experience to ourselves without interruptions or arguments from others about skipping cutscenes, rushing through areas, etc. I breathed a sigh of relief after I saw the first scene with Gwen because I knew I avoided another overused, generic sexual comment about a video game character.

As for the normal game, I don't know many people and my guild is very, very tiny (just me and my college buddies who actually have lives and don't play as much as I do), so I don't mind getting PuGs. Like a previous poster said, I think PuGs are about taking the good with the bad. Unlike most of the people complaining about PuGs, though, I'm willing to take a risk on others even if most of them are probably idiots. Good teammates who become friends--therefore becoming future teammates--should be more important than the idiot kids who play this game.

Also, if it's any consolation, summer vacation is up for most kids and high schoolers.

Yeah I'll pug if I KNOW that I can hang around for a couple hours, but typically I'll play in spurts where I'll kill a few mobs and then go do something and come nack and progress a bit further. It wouldn't be fair to the PUG if I were to join as I might all of a sudden go AFK for 15 minutes....

I hate PUGS. I promised me to play gw:en with pugs, bur it's rly impossible. I mean, when you pug with a ranger/monk that is using 2 resurrection skill (3 with res signet omg), + healing breeze and power shot u can just think "why the hell should I play with him loosing for sure the whole time that this mission takes?" That's why I never pug anymore. I always try to play with guildies and friends, and usually I always stand a change but pugging is impossible nowadays....the problem is that the ones that does not pug are able to think about what the mission requires in order to go on with this, while pugs just think that "their build is the best". I try to pug, but it's rly impossible. Today I tried to PUG eternal groove. what did happen? Me, with 5 warriors a sin and a ele, while the sin was complaining about the absence of monks (oh well this happens when u invite 5 warriors) and saying that "this mission is impossible". wtf u just need a bit of strategy to go on; when I sayd "let's just split and body locking the doors" he was like this: "it's not that easy". Aight, then I leave bb. That's how pugs go nowadays.

Well you're welcome to pugs til your heart content, me I rather not waste my time. I have guildies to team up with when we want to play. It's nothing to do with ego whatsoever, in CH 1 most people pugs because henches were rubbish. With NF and the heroes, there're no need for random people. 2-3 guildies fill the rest with heroes and off you go.

Everyone enjoyed pugs when there're all good players in the team, by good I mean not just the skills but decent manner, willing to change build, listen to call, tactic, take mending out of skill bar etc. Let face it, is hard to come by these day.

A random R/A with ms, Mo/N with flesh golem as his elite, healing warrior with woh. Anyone can play this game however they wanted to. And they can choose not team up with those random people if they wanted to as well.

I've said I don't group with PUG players because I'm better than them. It's not because of ego though. Being better than a typical PUG player in GW is not an accomplishment in the least bit. It takes very, very little to be better than the typical PUG player in GW. So there is no reason to take pride or have any kind of ego in being better than the typical PUG player in GW. Acknowledging the reality that the average GW PUG player is horrible, and anyone with a bit of an understanding of the game is way better -including one's self - is simply a way to save one's self from agony, grief and wasted time at the PUG players' horrible playing.

Not everyone feels like donating their time and energy all the time to teaching random stranger players how to play the game properly (which is what one would be required to do to successfully PUG in GW all the time). For those who do enjoy that, that's great. But bad PUG players have no right to lay claim to the good players' time and energy who do not wish to donate it to them.

There's a huge difference between "making mistakes" (which good players do) and "having absolutely no clue whatsoever how to play" (which the average PUG players do not).

Like you said, it's a game. Should be fun. Donating one's GW time to teaching total strangers how to play, in my view that would be a crappy job.

That is the absolute most self centered drivel I have ever heard. I'm sorry your 30 years old and decomposing, with one foot in the grave, and there's no one else around as old as you my distinguished grey haired sir...err wait, 25-30 is one of the main demographics of this game genre...you must just be high or just too smug to participate in social events. Sorry.

Elite missions, like DOA, the Deep, Urgoz, require real people. Although you can take Heros on some, generally they have to be select roles and watched dilegently to make sure they do what they need to to. Guilds are generally the way people go, but even here this is not a guarrentee of no problems.

One of the largest problems is getting a group together which takes far too long in most cases.

I enjoy playing with real people as that is part of the interaction and the game. If I wanted not to play with real people, then why am I online. Generally what is fun is to use Vent or TS to communicate. I dislike using the keyboard and the text flies by so fast while I am busy with something else I can often miss a key message.

The only thing with this type of direct (voice) communcation is language and etticotte can be an issue. I am a mature player, so have children I would not want them to exposed to some of the language and rudeness I have listened too. I don't see the fun in swearing and creating conflict in game conversation, but it appears some do.

I don't have a solution, but voice communication is the direction, I just think it may need to be monitored and some folks will need to use the talk key to mute themselves and their language. I think if folks behave mature and respectful they will be fine, similar to what they would do at a job.

Too much WOT eww

I think perhaps sarcasm is lost on you. Have no fear, I shall elaborate: "When I play as my ranger/para/mesmer/ritualist..."

I enjoy the PUG because i'd like to think Guild Wars is a multi-player game and if we fail we fail, when we win its a great feeling of teamwork.

I disslike being the leader of a PUG as then you are expected to know what to do and lead everyone. Leader being the top position on the party window.

I did not PUG durring the preview event for one reason only, I had no idea when I was doing a mission or not, everything was quests and in my mind i can do quests on my own. Missions are for PUGs.

It would seem that looking over the quest log that there will be no missions in EoTN and since the BMP will be in your quest log as well, missions as we knew them are over.

i dont ever bother grouping because most of the time wen im in a group people afk or quit which really pisses me off. Henchies and heros will listen to you and not go afk.

First off topic:
Which endgame instances have you played through in WoW to come with such a statement?

And back to the topic:
I still think that GW needs something that will make player grouping more attractive.
Example could be to give better drop rate (instead of rewarding a cookie cutter solo build), additional faction reputation etc. for each "real" player in a team.
This will also make it more interesting for players who got a negative attitude towards pug's. You finally will be able to go with people that can play
I still like to have newbies with me though, since some of them are good listeners and play as a pro when they first get the catch.
And if you see people with odd skill bars, maybe take your time to explain "why, what and how" instead of screaming "n00b"?
Another thing that bugs me is the urgent rush for things.
More and more people want to do everything in 5 minutes and less.
As well as some people cant take a single wipe :O
Its not like that it costs you anything then taking the time to try again.
Unlike some games where you got repair costs and have to use uncountable amounts of potions to get through the learning curve.
Oh and there should be some sort of anti leech system, it's frustrating to have some one in party that leaves after 5 minutes, but lets her/his character stay afk in the mission. Same goes for battlegrounds.
Yeah there are a few rude people, but hey, thank arena net for the ignore list.

I am tired of hearing the often repeated and completly invalid "if you don't want to play with people, don't play online games" argument. Well, games like Diablo 2 have an offline option, and people DO play it offline. GW doesn't have that option, if it did, then this argument would make sense.

I am one that has tired to help newbies before and what do I get for it, the occasional, thanks, but mostly, shut up, I'll do whatever I want and "insert vulger statment" PuGs are bad. And don't say "join a guild" yea, tried that, MANY times. doesn't work. Basically I have WAY too much stuff that I need to do to complete my personal set goals in-game. I can't waste said time losing a mission 5 times in a row. Sry. Besides, like it has already been said, If I lose, I want it to be MY fault.

A lot of posters forget that Guild Wars is meant to be both a single player AND a multi player experience. What do you people think the henchies and heros are for?

Solo play with henchies is one of the ways the game was designed to be played, why on Earth would people complain about their popularity?

I don't believe his/her statement was about smugness or being a hop-head.

I'm 22 and feel almost exactly like s/he does. There's a lot of social/cultural differences between a teenager and an older player and it's understandable why s/he would be apprehensive about partying with them. There's also the age vs maturity debate (if that demographic is true, then it could be argued that MMOs are a regular ice cream social for "manchildren"), but I don't want to kick a dead horse.

I don't bother with PUGs in PVE... I did it once this weekend for frostmaws. They got slaughtered on the 2nd level, and took forever to get there. Went back and got Hero+Hench, got slaughtered on 3rd level, in about the same amount of time. Went back, brought a hero interrupter, beat the dungeon 4 times in a row for stuff to sell, in an easy hour 15 minutes each. Now I got two greens sold, and about a 8 or 9 golds and some purps from chesting.

Yeah, you miss out on the social element of the game, but I just care about getting what I want done, and H+H just does it better + faster for me. As stated:

QFT.

I usually only use henchmen/heroes for several reasons:

1. I can go at the pace I want, go afk, and turn off the game for no reason without upsetting anyone.
2. I REALLY like designing team builds for me and my heroes with bars that compliment one another. That is where I get most of my fun now-a-days because I have mastered all of the skills that my profession (assassin) has to offer.
3. Henchmen don't rage.
4. Getting a team of henchmen takes 10 seconds. Getting a team of people can take ten or more minutes!

Easy choice really. If having the perfect team setup wasn't so important for this game I would probably PUG more, but as of now it just isn't worth it.

WTH. You took one sentence out of my entire paragraph and assumed that I was being a jerk. You also know nothing about me and made a LOT of assumptions as well. I'm 33, work for Qwest as a primary job, work teaching martial arts as a secondary job, never done drugs, and I am pretty down to earth. I am in great shape and not even close to being one foot in the grave, nor am I falling apart or decomposiong thanks to a gym membership mixed with the martial arts. The problems I have and worry about are FAR, and I mean FAR different than a teenage or early to mid 20's person, and do NOT fool yourself, they are a bigger group than the 25-30 demographic. So basically, what I am saying, is stop being an idiot and think. When people hang out with someone, they hang out with someone their own age. There are always exceptions, but the problems of the person 8 years and greater young than me are a world apart.

So next time my little wet behind the ears, bottle sucking kid, don't make an assumption about something or someone. Try critical thinking, you'll get along better in life.

I never PUGged , even back when that meant just playing with dumbass henchmen. I've always either played solo or with real life friends.

I always try to find experienced players to play with, if no guildies are available to come.. I find playing with real people is a lot more fun than playing alone and chatting along makes it more fun and faster, altho I use h/h too, when I'm just not in the mood of looking for people or I can't form/find a good group. I think it's all matter of personal taste

H/H are one of the reasons I like GW so much. I've been playing GW on and off since it originally came out, but really got into it when NF was released. I loved how I could create a full party and just roll. If I mess up or need to take a break to help the wife or kids, I can do that without having to worry about the other members of the party. I got through the missions in NF with no problem and also did the preview weekend for EOTN without any issues.

After playing WoW for a few years (did everything from 5 mans to 40 mans), I stopped playing a few months after the expansion hit. I was in a good guild that progressed well, it was just getting frustrating having to tie myself down for huge chunks of time whenever doing anything with 5+ people. Sure would have loved to have a few heroes or henches to play with and not have to worry about grouping with guildies unless I had the guaranteed time to spare.

Playing in PUGs is sort of like picking up woman in a bar: You fail most of the time and sometimes the experience could be downright unpleasant. But, that's where the excitement comes from.

Playing with henchmen is like, well, humping a mannequin: You score everytime and the mannequin won't give you attitude, but it just becomes a boring routine after a while.

Just my two cents.

I want to like PuGs, I really do. I want it to be fun to pick up and play with random other people because y'know, it's an MMORGP and I like to meet people and enjoy shared interests (like gaming). However, in GW, mistakes aren't forgiven, disagreements aren't resolved and half the team chat throughout the mission/quest/etc. is 'Stop doing that you noob', 'FFS healers wtf you doing? Noobs' etc.

That being said around 7/10 of the groups I've been in have worked alright (still abusive and lacking in fun 9/10 times). I'm on the European servers and here, most of the people seem to have a clue about how to create a group that works decently. Lately though, I've become more experimental with my builds and I've also started to properly customise and arm my heroes and it's a lot more enjoyable to do than than be abused by some jacked up creep who spent half the time doing bugger all save for 'watching' his female ele dance. -sighs-

I'm very thankful for my guild and alliance.

I may try to PUG tonight and see what happens. I'm always nervous about getting some hardcore GW'er who's going to bitch at me non-stop though LOL

It's funny I wasn't going to even bother with the GWEN preview but a bunch of people from my alliance were going on and on about it and I remember reading that they were getting groups together. I thought to myself "Oh cool we can go through the game together." It lasted about 5 minutes. Soon as we entered the tunnels we got separated because certain people hadn't loaded yet and what not. Anyway, my point being I was in a party for GWEN for about 2 minutes of play time. Then I had to Hero / Hench it up. I was pretty disappointed because the only reason I had even bothered with the preview was because I thought I'd be playing with friends. Unfortunately, all they really cared about was getting through everything as quickly as possible.

I see what some of you guys are saying, I mean we were trying to get a group for one of the dungeons..and we needed another nuker. The first guy was running dual attunes and had flare in his bar, the other guy (after still advertising for a nuker) was an air spike and insisted he couldn't/wouldn't run any other builds. However, we eventually got a great human group together, and stayed together for a few quests.

This is the reason I have only been to FoW once. Nobody wants to pick up a ranger. I have beaten all three chapters, I am very flexible in my builds, I take orders well. I don't know how there are that many stupid people who can ruin it for everyone. I am not above dropping out of a group, but that is usually after it gets me killed for the third time at the same spot. I like to try to use PUGs for missions because someone usually knows what is going on. I will use H/H for quests because I like to wander.

As a person who would like to group more and I don't think I suck, I'm asking you to try and pick up at least one person at random.

Hey Al, didn't realize you posted here...then again I probably haven't for a year.

Anyways, I find the heroes and henchies, while somewhat annoying and taking more effort, are more intelligent and better than 99% of pug groups. Plus, in the time it takes to get a pug group together and screen them to make sure you don't have mes/necro with fast-casting MM skills, and making sure you don't have any Wa/Mos (I'm referring to the mentality of majority melee players, not just the build), you could have attempted and failed 10 times with heroes/henchies.

Just my opinion. I do however agree that it would be nice to find real groups forming more quickly...otherwise it's hard to build friendships or find other neat alliances or players.

That's one thing that A-Net never anticipated. They have attempted to make the game "solo-able", but that kills the need for a guild, other than PvP, and will eventually kill the game if it goes unchecked. I mean, can you really have "Guild Wars" without the "Guilds"?

Not meaning to spam or go off topic, but if like me you love playing H/H and hate pugs, check into these two threads:

7 heroes discussion

or

Better Henchies

The more people we have saying yay, the closer we get to having our perfect game

I do prefer playing with guildies / alliance as long as they can play the builds I give them. If they cant they have a tendancy to go and buy the skills so they can use them

I remember another story - I were on my monk playing a good ol' SoR prot in one of the mid NF missions. I joined a group led by an elly and as I were the only monk, she took her hero. I asked her to ping, and heres what I got:

[skill]Healing Burst[/skill][skill]healing breeze[/skill][skill]heal other[/skill][skill]jamei's gaze[/skill][skill]heal party[/skill][skill]protective spirit[/skill][skill]mend ailment[/skill] and a random res.

Granted I said let me take my monk hero or just change your hero to Mhenlo (for the love of god). Instead she just enters so I rage quit. That was followed up by a PM war of her believing her monks bar was fine and she wasnt going to listen to me cos I were a rage quit noob. I think that was the last time I ever pugged, and the only reason I did was because my monk is my secondary char and didnt have level 20 heroes yet.

The memories still haunt me.

I was with my guildies and we were going to do frostmaws dungeon. We had a pretty balanced team filling up a slot with my Koss (whos pretty damn good) and anothers dunkoro. So we had like: two warriors, a SS, a MM, a couple ele's and two monks. Unfortunatly we couldn't make it past the first room without dieing horribly. So they said we needed 3 monks because there was absolutely no way unless we had 3 monks. I told them I ran with heros and henchmen and this is normally a breeze. My team usually consists of two warriors, two eles, a MM, an interrupt mesmer, and two monks usually healing and protection and I can beat anything with that team.

Which I did after my guildies decided to call it quits. I got 2 diamonds from that trip. I'm not against PUG's and I normally use them on regular missions.

I never party with random people anymore, because they all suck at GW and have no idea what they're doing.

I only grouped for missions, not quests, and since so far, it seems GW:ENs missions are integrated into quests, i don't group for them.