Heroes, and the long-term effect on new players

Here's my theory:

Heroes came out with NF, which were far more effective and enjoyable than henches. The somewhat skilled and experienced players made effective hero teams and can solo 90% of GW now. These players use their guildies (also likely to be reasonably good players) to beat the other 10% of the game. They almost never join PUGs.

The inexperienced and low-skill players are able to solo a much smaller percentage of the game. They need help from other human players. They need more support in combat, and benefit from watching skilled players.

The problem is, the better players in the game don't join PUGs anymore. So the unskilled players are stuck grouping with only bad players. This causes the unskilled players to remain at their low skill level.

This means four things for the game:

1) The quality of PUGs is now abysmal compared to the pre-Nightfall era. Joining PUGs is huge headache, and often a waste of time.

2) New/inexperienced/poor players are getting much less exposure to skilled players. Their learning opportunities are few and far between.

3) New/inexperienced players often find the game too difficult and become frustrated. They're stuck grouping with other subpar players. The game has become far less friendly to new players than it ever has been.

4) The social aspect of the game has been scaled back. Not just because 90% of the time the only person people have to talk to in their party is Dunkoro. But because people aren't joining PUGs, meeting new folks, learning new things, and making the spontaneous connections like they used to.

I realize that a chunk of the player population doesn't care about meeting new people and that's fine. But this is a very social game for many, and I think that was Anet's goal, right?

Anyway, that's my $.02. I'm just seeing a lot of frustrated inexperienced players out there who are stuck trying to make their way in the world with PUGs full of other frustrated, inexperienced players. The players they could learn something from basically are now inaccessible. I feel bad for 'em....

I agree for the most part.

But at the same time, I glad they did. With each new campaign pugs were getting harder to find due to the player base being spread out over 3 games.

I think this was to combat a decline in pug's (and at the same time accelerate it). The 1st 6 month's when the game launched was the highlight of pugs, find parties just to explore, there was not "must be SS, SV, MM nerco or kick attitude", etc. People grouped to have fun. Those days are so long gone and they didn't come back when faction's launched either.

I highly suspect GW2 is not going to be as generous with hero/hench as gw1 is.

Joining PUGs has ALWAYS been a huge headache and a waste of time.

The last PUG I joined was to do THK with one of the only chars I hadn't got to the fire islands. After a few mins it was clear that one of the players, a warrior, wasn't doing much. In fact he was just standing there while the rest of us did the work. When a guildie and I asked him what he thought he was doing, his reply was "I'm not here to fight. I'm only here for the drops". And so he was, for the rest of the mission he did the same; standing around and only moving to pick up anything that dropped for him.

As the mission got to the part where everyone defends the king, we asked this guy to at least help for this part. We were playing it the 'defend both doors' way so the extra help would have been good. Instead he just said "No" and went off back towards the start, picking up everything everyone else hadn't picked up.

At that moment I swore I'd never PUG again. And I never have since, plus if it wasn't for the heroes, I'd have stopped playing GW a long time ago because the amount of tossers that your forced to deal with because of PUGs is just not worth the hassle.

If PUGs were more enjoyable then people would PUG more, regardless of heroes, but the fact is that a lot of people have experienced something similar to what I describe above and have learnt the hard way that PUGs are just not worth the time or effort.

It is not that The Experienced Players Puged before NF it was just alot more new player Pugs instead of H/H groups the Pugs are made up of New to Semi New to Semi Pro, The Uber Pros Go with Guildies and alliance only or Leet Heros.

It is not that The Uber Pros hate Pugs It is once you beat all 3 campaigns with more than 1 char You dont need to pug you know the areas and what builds will work.

For example:
the fire island chain you can waste a week trying to get it completed going with PUGS or Have Success on the First try with 1 or 2 guildies with Heros.
Its not that Pros dont like Pugs it is the fact they are on to achieve the Title or Item or whatever reason the first try so they can move on to the next.
Pugs Genneraly fail a mojority of the time until A Semi Pro steps up and takes command of the Group (setting up Skill bars and telling people when to run where to stand who to kill first and so on and so on).

Another example: Will include Conversation example
If one only has a hour or 2 to do the mission or quest or farm or ETC....Going with Pugs will take that time just to get everyone in the group and set up. So the Pros Log on hit G Log onto Ventrilo and Ask who is up for (what their doing for the day) meet at the Guild Hall Join up Get Heros up Click Load template load builds needed and boom group is ready (took 5 mins) 15 mins later Mission Acomplished, Still on vent you ask Who wants to do something else and Rinse and Repeate. OOO look at that 2 hours went buy and i maxed a title WOOT. LOL, So who wants to max (Blank Title Tommorw or if im on later tonight) Guildies Respond sure sounds like a plan when you thing you will be back? (player responding with Hours or time frame) everyone saying Cool see you than. Player saying Later everyone. Everyone Saying Later.

Just had to give a small example of Pro vent talk.

Dont get me wrong somethimes a PUG of Pros Rocks AKA HA Pug of R3+ on vent.



For ChunterX
Most Guilds do that i know the one Im in used to do it until we reached the size we wanted and I have tought More New players the Ropes than i care to count but you can only take so much befor one says no more im done teaching time to have fun.
Most New Players Are GUILD HOPPERS SO TEACHING THEM IS A WASTE OF YOUR TIME and if you recruite alot (money)

All I'm seeing is inexperienced players that don't want to learn.

I'd like to point out that Heroes are not the problem in itself. I finished both Prophecies and Factions before, and mostly, it was done with AI parties.

It's just that PUGs are so extremely frustrating.

I still remember the time I decided to give up on PUGing. My guild leader asked for help in the seconds Ring of fire mission. When I arrived, she had already assembled a PUG, and we kept on failing. So I've eventually had enough, I took her through alone, and made a pass on first attempt.

Never mind my worst experience, just the other day. I decided to do Gyala Hatchery with one of my characters that hadn't got around to doing it yet, and spotted a party invite there. So I said, why not, might as well. And disaster befell. Long story cut short: in spite of telling the guy that I planned to do the mission in a certain way (clearing the path ahead first), he always went straight for the group. On my third attempt, I had had enough and left, receiving about 15 minutes of abuse regarding my alleged sexual preferences for it.


In the end: Heroes are the solution to the already existing problem of assembling a functional PUG, not the cause of it.

I do PUG it from time to time, but it is a very hit and miss process and like some of the people above, you quite often come across 'nightmare' players that just seem to want to ruin your day.

Yet there are times when the group you get are great, are actually willing and determined to work toegther and you have a great time, one such example was when i joined a PUG to beat the Great Destroyer in GW:EN the other night. On our first try, we all died rather horridly, but we now knew what we were facing. So instead of splitting and finding new players, we just re-skilled (even going so far as to go to skill traders and buying some new skills and returning) and tried again...this time we rocked and won the day. Unfortunately, this is a rare case in my recent PUG experience.

I have to say i prefer Hero/Henchie or Guildie groups, because on the most part they are more reliable and waste less of your time (especially on the longer missions).

The answer for many new players is to join a Guild and hope for a friendly, experienced and active bunch of members who'll help them out, which isnt such a bad thing, as it is Guild Wars after all.

Sure, PUGs have always been highly inconsistent. But pre-NF, an average PUG was maybe 2 good players, 4 adequate ones, and 2 "bad" ones. Now I'd assert that it's 0 good ones, 4 adequate ones, and 4 "bad" ones.

Everyone has a story of a bad PUG or an extreme case like Zeph's where a person wouldn't even fight. I'm talking about the overall state of the game though, so anecdotes don't really say much.

And Zeph, you can blame yourself for continuing to group with that guy. YOU empowered him to leech that mission.

(this is not a thread to complain about PUGs. Do that elsewhere. Read the original post if you're confused).

This is what I've read or heard: It's all going to be soloable, and you'll have the option of being able to play with people or yourself for missions and I'm assuming dungeons. So from the sounds of it, it sounds like the environments/dungeons/etc. will be scaled according to party.

It sounds like a new road for MMOs. Hellgate: London is doing something very similar.

You could always "adopt a newb."
Let a newer player into your l33t guild and teach him/her the ropes. If more people did this, there would be less shitty PUGs. But god forbid you let a "new" player into your super-awesome-l33t GvG/PvP/HM guilds.

Many guild, like mine, welcome new players and will spend time explaining things to them and helping them through difficult missions. I learned very little about the game when doing things with a PUG.

Why on earth should I bother to teach people who won't teach themselves? I learned by trying, failing, trying again, failing again, and then succeeding. Why can't they?

Joining a PUG is always a huge headache, and often a waste of time.
They can look for a guild of their choice, be it pvp, pve or pvx. There're some great guilds out there that willing to take on newbies. Guru has the recruitment section down below.
When they're in the guild, they can ask for the help of the GW Vets there. Learn the build etc.
My guild & allies chats are busy most of the times, unless I'm logging on really late at night. And if I really want to be social, I would go to the pub with my friends. How often do you really talk to stranger?

Etta, you're missing my point about the changing nature of PUGs. Unless you're suggesting that there just shouldn't be PUGs.

You also seem to be suggesting that people shouldn't want to be social in GW. Even though it's an MMO.

Because not everyone is like you? Because it's often more enjoyable to learn through being social and playing as a team? Because not everyone likes to play on an island like you?

I think people are missing the point of the original post. This isn't a "vent about your PUG experiences" thread. This isn't a thread to say why PUGs are frustrating (that's an established fact). It's to discuss the impact heroes have had on PUG quality, which appears to have declined markedly since pre-NF. Also to discuss how new players are impacted by the fact that PUGs are now worse than ever. Maybe there's a solution, maybe not. It appears to be an interesting phenomenon, possibly worth discussing...

If those experienced players are playing with H/H instead of new players, it's because they don't want to teach. I fail to see how it's reasonable to wax nostalgic about the days when experienced players that didn't really want to group were forced into becoming teachers just to be able to get through a mission with new players.

I have nothing against new players, I've been known to help them out from time to time, but it's a game. It should be fun. Being forced into social activity when you don't want to be, being forced into a teaching role just to progress, and just being forced to do anything that's not fun is the hallmark of a bad game. Anet corrected a fundamental flaw in game design with heroes (well, halfway anyhow), and added some great complexity to the single player/small group party dynamic while they were at it.

I suffer from nostalgia for the days of Prophecies too, but I'm smart enough to realize it's because that's when the game was new to me, not because the game was better.

I suggested a better way to play the game for the new player. They'll never learn anything good from most pugs.
Oh don't get me wrong, they can chat away all they want with random people. Temple of Balthazar D1 is a great place to chat. (yeah i'm lying)
But a better conversations would still be in the guild chat.

I agree with that statement for the most part. I also think GW is a game where you ought to know where you stand pretty quickly. Meaning that if you find yourself stuck on something for too long, it's more than likely something you are or aren't doing. At that point, there is no shame in asking for help. The thing is, most players who are behind the power curve never ask. They try and join a group and muddle their way through, hoping everyone else knows what to do.

I see your point, Vinraith.

I'm not even talking about active teaching though. New players watch experienced players and thereby learn not only how to play, but how to act. They not only learn strategies regarding how to kill things, but etiquette. And that's no small thing.

They witness experienced players making smart moves, NOT quit out and leech (etc..), be leaders, communicate effectively with the team, etc. They get all that without the experienced players even making an effort to teach anything to anybody.

Yeah I know PUGs have always been suspect. But with the now absolutely rotten post-NF PUG quality, new players are immersed in leeching, bad attitudes, chaotic groups, conflict, and repeated in-game failures. More than ever before anyway...

I haven't joined a PUG since heroes were introduced... Even before then I usually opted for hench or guildmates.

I see your point, but I'm not sure heroes are really to blame for the gradual decline in mature play you're seeing. It seems that, in most online games, there's a gradual shift from a sense of community (presumably fostered by newness, since no one knows what they're doing) in the early days to divisive and childish behavior as they age. Since this happens in games that don't even have heroes, or anything like them, I've got to question causation.

The end result certainly sucks, though, I'll give you that.

Well, as has been stated many times, whether or not you want to play in a PuG is a personal, subjective choice. I will occasionally join a PuG in areas that I'm unfamiliar with, but saying that the addition of heroes has been the downfall of PuGs is a significant over simplification in my opinion. As others have said, PuGs are in decline for many reasons. The ability to have heroes, for me, kept me playing the game. W/o them I would have quit along time ago.

I'm a new (10 months) / inexperienced (300 hours) / poor (oh, no, no longer, as I sold a green for 65k a couple of months ago) player. I've finished 90% of Nightfall with heroes/henchies, and am working on the remaining 10%. (Not far enough along yet in Factions/Prophecies to say anything about them.)

Every so often, I ponder joining a PUG. Then I browse around on this forum, and see people moaning about other PUG players not running with all of their favorite skills. I know I would be one of those players. I don't want to be a human bot playing their ideal cookie cutter build. I don't want to justify my choices and be ranted about here on this forum. Instead, I just want to have fun, and to experiment with weird and quirky combinations of skills, slowly for myself figuring out what works and what doesn't, even if that means I kill monsters 10% less efficiently. I have the bad luck of having started playing the game now, when there is "accepted 'wisdom'" for what works and what doesn't, rather than two years ago when everybody was in my position and fun was still regularly had.
And so I'm yet another person who's not part of the ever smaller pool of available PUGers. And the effect heroes have had upon me is not to "rob" me of experienced players to learn from, but rather to allow me to play GuildWars free from verbal abuse, at my own pace. Every so often I stop to marvel at the awesome scenery and sigh happily for having chosen to play this awesome game.

If any other new, inexperienced and (not necessarily) poor players without preconceived notions of how the game should be played would someday like to team up for some of the harder missions, and happen to actually catch me online, give me a whisper.


As far as a solution to this all goes, I can't help but to remember snowball arena, and what fun I had playing there. Everyone got in at ground level, and slowly, together, we started to learn new tactics. I suspect a lot of the fun comes from playing with people who're just as far along in learning the game as you are. It might be a suggestion for GW2 to group people together not by region, language or randomly per district, but rather by total number of played hours per account. Give the option to breach this in order to play with your friends, of course, but by default, let new and inexperienced players hang out together, and let old and experienced (and jaded?) players hang out together, and watch peace and harmony flourish for a thousand centuries.

All the pug vs heroes whining makes me wonder, how the heck did we manage it in WoW...
Oh yeah, I forgot, that game is for noobs..

there's a marked difference in Cantha now when taking a new character through.

many missions are very silent, only a couple people milling about, no chatter...maybe one person lfg. kind of depressing, but often all you need is one other real player to mean the difference between success and failure in a mission...so it's not as bad as it seems

fortunately i've procured some heroes, so my little Sin is not stressing. enjoying doing the quests and missions actually.

I would have to agree that PUG quality was dropping before the introduction of heroes. Heroes may have accelerated it, but as people became more experienced and starting making their connections with guilds and friends, PUGs became less used. Heroes were introduced to fill the gap. Now, all those inexperienced players are facing what the rest of us faced when the game was new: figuring it out for yourself. I only PUGed my way through Cantha because of the time based masters req. I could easily beat every mish on my own, but not quickly enough.

Back when the game was new, I PUGed a lot in Tyria because nobody knew how to do things, and if you were lucky you got one or two people who did. If you didn't, you would figure out what worked well and what didn't, adjust, and try again. What I see is that PUG quality has returned to what it was when the game was new. The quality steadily improved all the way into the middle of the factions era, then started dwindling. Now it is back to what it was like when the game was first released. Heroes may have accelerated the process, but it was going to happen with or without heroes. Heroes just enabled us to go ahead and start playing well and avoiding the diminishing quality of PUGs. New players can still get really good the same way we did. Trial and error, having fun, creating wacky builds that work 1% of the time, and not worrying about anyone criticising them for it because the heroes don't care.

I hate henchies because they are really really dumb.

I hate heroes because they really destroy the PUG community, and the worst thing is, a lot of the people who plays heroes don't even know how to flag them correctly. I mean heroes really helps you to understand the importance of positioning. But most people just use their heroes like a swarm of meat bags.

So...the pugers do have a community after all, is that mean they can pugs all day long and it doesnt really matter if the rest of us can use 7 heroes or not?
How many people are there in this pug community anyway?

I remember my newbie days at ThK. Three Guildies checking out six districts to find two Monks for one hour. I'll take my Talkhora anytime.

KANE

At any given time there're probably seven people somewhere in the world who'd want to do a quest you need to do. The problem is, the party search feature is basically retarded.

The so-called experienced players are basically losers with nothing better to do than to play GW. The very notion that people could learn from these freaks make me sick.

That's why there are heroes and henchmen. They're better than any human player.

Again, the very thought of playing with some pimple-faced dork makes me want to puke. Losing in GW means nothing. Seeing real-life losers strutting around as though they're somebody makes me feel dirty.

Well, what what do you expect from a game that's become dominated by dorks? Why on earth would I want to have any social interaction with people who oughta be ostracized?

Anet's willingness to cater to more pathetic segment of the player-base is the root of the problem. Dorks are dorks, even in a virtual world. A bunch of socially inept people aren't going to create a viable community.

It's not that PuGs are just inexperienced, they are

1. UNWILLING to learn. Go try giving advice to that mending wammo or the monk spamming healing breeze or the necro playing a "<--VAMPIRE". They'll just yell at you for the rest of the time you group together and you'll eventually leave. Which brings us to...
2. They are arrogant little immature or lifeless bastards who bitch and moan and put the blame on everyone else when something goes wrong because they think they are l33t and everyone else is stupid.
3. Mentally deficient. It's a simple game, that's all, and if you can play for 100 or more hours and still suck then something is wrong with you, and not just with your gaming abilities. You don't need to spend that long to get good, it's not one of those games where you have to spend 50 hours alone learning to dogfight and drop bombs accurately or something.

Arguing and moaning isn't really defined as social interaction, you know, and that's all that occurs in PuGs. And if you play games for the purpose of social interaction then really... get a life.

Oh dear, he's forgotten to take his pills again.

The OP has one thing wrong.

Before being good at the game, every single of those players that go with guildies and heroes, had to pug and learn to do it on their own.

Heroes just made the life of those that already know how to play much more easier.

New players just need to work hard as the ones that are now experienced and have well established guilds/friends lists did before.

And its not like they dont get a chance.

Guild groups that are short 1 or 2, might grab 1 or 2 random dudes for some area. Guilds recruit new members all the time that are very inexperienced.

These new players only need to have an acceptable mindset, be ready to learn and be pleasant with those that are using their time to teach them.

One of my best guildwars friends, was a person that didnt knew anything about guildwars, as much that while trying to kill the doppleganger with her necro with Insidious Parasite an Price of Failure, that person whisped me that it didnt worked, and then I discovered that she actually handnt cast the spells!!!!!

But since that person was a pleasure to play with and very funny, I took my time with her, and I will take her nowadays with our heroes/henchies to any area and success.

PPl just need to know their limits. If someone knows more then them, listen. If they are the ones that know more take the lead.

Next week Marverick will be leaving pre-searing.

2 Words, Bad Experience.
If i know the person just wants some honest help and some build ideas, I will go and help them; Because of the bad experiences I have had, and i do mean horrendous (sp?), I stay away from most pugs. It's the 10% of the population that are jerkoffs like the scenarious mentioned here that ruined the game, not NF.

Ussually i only do missions with h/h or guildies, but if a player seeks help i'm more than happy to let them join. It's a shame that newbies must go through a game with hench only and if they can't beat a certain mission, they will most likely quit the game.

In the older days, those mission where so packed with players that everyone could join a team, but now with Nightfall and EotN being released there hardly any players around, especially in Factions. This makes me sad..

this thread makes me laugh, i started under 4 months ago, and had no idea what i was doing, and having done it with henchies up to Hell's Precipe missions and bonus(til i got NF) i learned more about the game, where as i know a player who has played for over 8 months and im way ahead of her due to her cluelessness from using pug parties, ur not gonna learn Missions and Bonus

I have room for 3 heroes, so when I'm going to do a mission there is room for 4 more players. Theyre always welcome to hop on as long when they need the mission as long as they follow instructions and don't waste my time. In return they usually get masters reward for w/e kind of mission. win/win situation, and with my current hero setup, loss is not an option anyway.

In such a case my heroes only help people instead of holding them back.

It's usually the fact that noobs just don't want to learn, and argue that their shitty build, is valid. It takes going on here or wiki, getting a build, and learning from mistakes to become a better player. It doesn't take skilled players to hold their hands. Hell, there's even a walkthrough for EVERY mission and EVERY quest on guildwiki. It's not hard to find out these sites.

Imo the majority of these bad players lack common sense and the ability to learn / listen, which is why i refuse to join PUGS.