Dear ANET, How about creating a reward for PUG play?

The original post was designed to invoke thought on how the game has changed.

I based my original post on ANET offering some kind of reward for users who work together as a team to accomplish a goal. This reward would be customized. It would have no impact on individual wealth. It could not be exploited. If you were not interested in doing it, it wouldn't impact gamplay.

The thought behind single classed teams was to encourage non cookie cutter builds. To get different character classes to explore different areas.

People have posted that forcing certain style play is bad, this idea isn't forcing anything for game play. It reward would be cosmetic only. Participation would not be a requirement of the game.

Guild Wars game cycle is being phased out, ANET's development effort is based on bringing GW2 online. What I suggested in the original post would require minimal development and add some excitement to the game.

ANET could release these special PUG areas on a weekly basis, create a new title for PUG play, give the reward after doing x amount of PUG missions.

I asked ANET to throw us a bone (maybe a weekly bone), to encourage PUG game play, keep people interested in GW until GW2 comes out.

I guess what I'm asking for is something similar to the Moa Egg and Rainbow Phoenix. Both were great idea's but they only affected players who wanted to tame a pet.

Something more along the lines of... Completing with no Heroes/Henchies would make more sense.. Not forcing 1 of each.

And this was a shock to you? You bought a game knowing it had AI to help with playing and your surprised by the result!

You cant offer a reward for PUGing which will make it unfair on those who like to solo or use AI. It will push those away who like to AI.

What about when your in an area (like SF) and you cant find a pug and you have no choice but to use heroes and henches. You will get less reward for completing it. How is that far when you had no choice?

Anyway, there is plenty of PUGing ingame. The only reason some areas have less PUGing is because less people play there, or people find that using heroes is more effective then using humans.

Again, the lack of PUGing in some areas is not the fault of the heroes and henches. It the fault of the attitude of a minority of players who make PUGing undesirable.

I dont want to be forced into PUGing with a bunch of immature idiots, just to get a chest reward, and potentially ruin the entire experience!

The ability to use AI is one thing which makes GWs superiour to other games, because in a game like WoW you can spend days trying to find a team to join with to do a quest or dungeon and you get bored.

In GWs youu can just jump in and get on with it and we shouldnt punish those who choose to do that. Just join a decent guild and use them to pug!

But if you really want a reward for PUGing, making it something that is non-materialistic;

Make it so you earn 6.25 or 12.5% (or round it up to 6% and 12%) more experience for every human in your team! That way if you have a full 8 human team you will get either 50% or 100% more experience from killing.

That is alot more far and you dont have any materialistic advantage over anyone else. Yes it would lead to power leveling in PUGs, but leveling to 20 is easy anyway!

Thats closed minded thinking, try playing with a Healing Ritualist in your party.

Yes, it could be frustrating. But if the reward was cool enough, I bet you would try it.

And get the same custom reward?

Its not a punishment (Loot nerf was a punishment or was it an adjustment). It is in ANET's best interest to retain players excitement in the current game.

Again because of the perception that non standard classes aren't useful.

If the reward was interesting enough, people will switch and run all their classes through. I have one of each character class. Even with just 4 character slots, most players have at least 2 different classes.

When I farmed Sorrows Furnace, I was willing to play Stance Tank, SS Nec, MM Nec, Healer Monk, Bonder Monk, Splinter Barrager, Nuker, or any other build that the group wanted.

If you go to Sorrows Furnace today, you rarely see anyone forming groups. Why? No excitement!

Again, not if they required having the PUG have 8 different primary classes.

Yes. I wanted to express my desires for the following:

1. Enhance interest in PUG play.
2. Provide a reward that can't be exploited.
3. Give players something new to do (maybe on a weekly basis).

PUG players getting more stuff than non-PUG players is a punishment for non-PUG play. You're right that it's in Anet's best interest to retain player excitement in the current game. Consequently one of the worst things they could do is damage the enthusiasm of a massive portion of their player base that does not enjoy PUG play by telling them that they're playing the game wrong.

You enjoy PUG play, no one's stopping you from doing so. I enjoy playing with friends or alone. What you propose is that Anet should reward you for playing the way you enjoy and not reward me for playing the way I enjoy. Neglecting "fair" for a moment, how is that in anyone's interest but yours and those like you?

Not really. The reason why PUG farming groups aren't forming anymore at these spots is that the economy is screwed and people aren't willing to spend the time for the rewards.

My idea is to provide non exploitable reward, requiring multi class interaction.

The reason why PUG's no longer work or form is because its more RELIABLE to do quests and missions with Hero/Henchies (not necessarily easier).

What about the players that purchased the game to play with AI?
What about those players that only have time to grab an AI team?
What about those players that have had players go afk without warning for 20+ mins?
What about those players that have had insults throw at them in PuGs?
What about those players that have to go afk themselves quite often? Should they join a PuG and then just dissapear screwing the rest of their team?

There are so many reasons why allowing pugging and h/h is a good idea. Neither is "the right way" to play the game, both are completely viable.

Dont start trying to give rewards to one group.
Why not give both rewards?

That gets players together to do pugs for those who want to but without only rewarding the one playstyle.
It would deffinately achieve more pugging if thats what your after, without penalising those who h/h.

I like the idea, but I would downsize this to 1 or 2% more per human (above the first one), not to alienate the part of the PvE community that wants to be left alone.

Vinraith: if you enjoy playing GW solo, why are you so bothered by what happens to others? This feature would not change anything to your game experience. IT would only be a "punishment" if you were to compare your gameplay experience to others', but then that would contradict the fact that you want to be left alone, wouldn't it? It sometimes seems (don't take it too harshly, it's not meant to be mean) that you want to force people into acknowledging that you exist and that your way of playing the game should never ever be changed, modified, threatened, etc.

The very funny thing is that this feature is here to encourage PUGing. Thus it acknowledges from the very start that this is rare and getting rarer, thus the non-PUGers actually are the ones winning. And by far.

Since no one seemed to read my argument on page 2, I'll point out the many flaws in this argument right here.

I'll say it once, and I'll say it again here. There's no reason that PuG play deserves any more reward than hero play or solo play. You ARE punishing hero players because you're giving more reward for a playstyle that YOU PERSONALLY enjoy. That's NOT productive at all.

Where's my extra exp for playing with heros or playing solo? Why should I get more reward for playing with humans? I'm not playing this game to play it the way someone else enjoys. I'm playing to accomplish things the way I feel comfortable, and there's no reason that between you and I, you should be rewarded for doing option A versus option B.

I'll use this anology again. If person X lifts a weight with the help of his friend, and person Y lifts it with a pulley he's constructed, but they both lift the same weight, why on earth should person X recieve a better reward?

If you want to play with people on a regular basis, there are guilds out there that support this idea. You can also chat with them 24/7, not just play with them. If you want to be sociable that's fine, but there's no reason being sociable should be a factor in the reward system for accomplishing a certain task. There's no reason to encourage PuGing. Playing with reliable people is an option that's openly available through guilds and alliances. There's no reason to give human players more reward for taking humans than heros. Both do the same thing, but one of them does it better in a lot of cases. Rewarding the players that choose to take longer to accomplish something is not the answer.



And about the limited to one class per party idea, I expect you have not gotten past the first few missions in the entire game, across all campaigns. There's no way you could accomplish things with this kind of party set up, unless everyone in guild wars knew every single detail about the game, WHICH THEY DON'T.

You can't go and tell people how to accomplish a task. If you give them one in a game, half the reason they enjoy it is because they can go about it any way they want. Taking away that option is totally pointless, and does not encourage anything other than encouraging people to quit the game due to lack of skill from other players who play these classes.

This idea fails. This thread fails. YOU fail.

Just because people go out and play combat solo doesnt mean they play it as a solo game.
When the economy is effected by other players.
When any possible changes to h/h depend on how many people use it.

Its an online game, other people effect and are effected by others.


Rewarding people for playing one of 2 styles the game advertises has an effect.
There are already huge limits on h/h as it is.
Only 3 heroes
No PvE skills
Poor AI
Access to some areas denied.

Now you want to add rewards that you can only get by pugging?

Then if that many people h/h can we finally get 7 heroes?

You can however encourage pugging without denying access to those who dont pug.
As I said, reward both styles of play.

The idea behind this is to get more people to pug with yes? Its not to reduce those who h/h. So as long as there are more people to pug with its achieved.

Adding rewards for pugging and h/h will mean players who have drifted off or dont play as much will come back for those rewards. But neither playstyle needs to be put ahead of the other.

How should we phrase it? No one forces you to PUG. Or may be in bold? No one forces you to PUG. Italic? No one forces you to PUG. Underlined? No one forces you to PUG.

So now for the real problem: you feel less rewarded if that feature was implemented. Let's be honest and fair to you here, that's perfectly true. So how do you think we could make this game more social? How do we give incentives to people to not be jerks? ... ah well, you don't care about that, that's not your problem and you don't want to hear it.

I guess it's the end of discussion here, we just hit a big heavy wall.

Then stop suggesting the idea, as I've pointed out many times that it's not fair to those who enjoy a different playstyle then you.


They're called guilds. They were designed for the very purpose you describe and are now doing their duty better than ever. I suggest that if you cannot find people to play with, you join a guild that supports this playstyle, as there are plenty of them out there.


As for the last part, the game does NOT need encouragement to play one style versus another. Maybe in italic? It is not needed to encourage one playstyle versus another. Maybe in all three?

There is no need to put one playstyle over another in a game. This is the end of the story.

/not signed

Some people, like myself, hate doing things with PUGs and prefer heroes and henchmen, because they at least somewhat listen. Sure you occasionally get a good PUG especially if it's with friends or people you trust but still, a reward just for that? I think that's a bit much.

Fril, Strat, you are basically asking Arenanet to reward you for liking the color blue more than the color red, and then admitting that the game needs encouragement to like the color blue, even after your knowledge that others like the color red. You then cover this statement by saying that no one needs to like the color blue if they like the color red, but those who like red will get a smaller reward.

That's all this idea will ever amount to. There's no reason to support unless you just like blue, and want a reward because you don't like red. That's idiotic if not several things on top of that.

All you people talking about the idea punishing players that want to play alone or in small groups, with or without heroes - are you blind or what?!

Ask yourself: Does the fact that a cross-campaign PvE player can craft a moa chick mini pet pet punish PvP-only players and folks who don't have different campaigns? NO, and moa chicks aren't even customized. The OP made a suggested end chest reward of a special customized mini pet. Not having such a thing would not be "punishment" for anyone.

Bunch of cry babies, I say.

The guy suggested something that would be fun for a good while and that would give a fair reward that doesn't even affect the economy. Why sit and be jealous and act like if it's a terrible idea just because you don't think you'd want to participate?

/notsigned.

I agree with Isileth instinctively.

... what's this thread about?

You neglected the part where they imply there's something fundamentally wrong with the people that prefer red, and further imply they'd be happier if all the red-lovers would go away. After all, there's no other way to interpret:

from where I'm sitting.

PUGers are a nasty bunch, really. They claim to be more social than those of us that prefer to play alone or with real friends, but in general it seems to me that even if I liked playing with strangers I wouldn't like playing with these people. "Play the game my way or get out" and "my fun is more important than your fun" seem to be their guiding principles.

Did you actually read any of this?



Vinraith- Yeah, I was just trying to be nicer than I usually am though. Thanks for pointing that out.

I agree with you. A lot of the currently PUGging people are a nasty bunch (apart from my Imperial Sanctum PUG, I was lucky to find a few nice people). But they're not the only one, because those that want to keep the game to their exclusive group are not better, just different. We're doomed, let's now bang our head on the impenetrable wall where we were stuck 6 posts ago.

Then we agree that this idea has failed.

Wow, I opened a huge can of worms.

I would not agree that this idea has no merits.

My main point is that for a lot of players that have finished/tried almost everything, ANET should introduce SOMETHING to encourage more gameplay.

I just picked an example that would encourage PUG play and non cookie cutter team formation.

The facts are that Guild Wars growth rate has decreased, the economy is broken, many players are getting bored because of lack of content.

Sure GW2 will someday be released. But ANET could easily add content to existing areas and offer some kind of reward.

Anet has introduced something to keep us playing. Its called hard mode, but hardly anyone does it except in GWEN for the end elite dungeons.

Your idea is fine, aslong as your not giving materialistic rewards for PUGing. As I said, give extra exprience points if you have a full human team or for each human in the team and its a fine idea.

But if you are giving weapons or gold then its a bad idea. That just makes it unfair on players who like to go solo or have no choice but to solo.

But the bottom line is that there is NOTHING Anet can do is keep GWs going for ever. They could only keep releasing new content, but they have to focus on GWs2.

They cant just keep adding tiny little things like this to keep us playing, or its just a gimic and not well thought out. Just play something else or make do with the game as it is, and play wth guildies if you want to pug.

Pardon, but I'm not sure how increasing the encouragement level of teaming together accomplishes any of this, as we've already made out that teaming together encourages people to do one thing 90% of the time: Stop teaming together.


I won't deny it. Guild Wars is losing growth and suffering economic depression. Is this suprising? The game is about to be over shadowed by a new and better sequal. Why would it attract new long term players if the sequal is advertized already? Those players will either wait until GW2 will comes out and not waste effort in a game that will mean nothing in a year or so, or go on to play other games that are still living prosperously. Aside from this, two years is plenty for some people to accomplish all they wanted. I personally am aproaching this point, and, yeah, I'll probably be waiting for GW2 and only dropping on occasionally after that.

Trying to keep a game at its height of glory and growth is impossible. You can only slow down the degradation, just as cyrogenics slows down the degradation of the human body. Hard mode slowed it down significantly, as did GW:EN. We can only hope that Arenanet is not out of ideas.


Though if there's one thing I don't see it, it is how encouraging one playstyle over another is supposed to slow down this degradation. People who enjoy H/Hing will be missing out, try for the reward, realize it's not worth it failing 90% of the time, and then wither deal with the fact that non-social gaming (As it's been quoted as) has less rewards, which is not a good thing, or just quit and move to a game that encourages their playstyle, but either option isn't a good idea to increase the activity in guild wars.


I'm all in favor of prolonging the life of Guild Wars, but saying one playstyle is more valuable than another is not the solution by a longshot. I'm sorry, it's just plainly not.

I believe it is safe to say that this idea has failed.

Someone fails hard with h/h and thnk that if AN forces others to play with them, he will succeed.
What a nice idea, rewarding players who like failures which PUGs are.
Let's reward players who don't use pve skills.
And then let's reward players who don't have 8 skills on their skillbars.
More fail = more fun, so it seems

Either you never PuG or it's for Fort Ranik in NM, because most PuGs have okay builds...

The ability of PuGs in general isn't the issue here. If we're going to start



At least let's stay on topic doing it.

I was just pointing something.
But anyway, while I PuG, I agree in the fact that Anet shouldn't reward a certain kind of play. So /notsigned

Lets just simplify this:
A group that completes something with an all people party should be granted a bonus. Maybe 7 or more if its that difficult to find a pug. I don't think this would really encourage people to take part in PvP but rather create frustration in the long run. Maybe I'm wrong, but I do agree that there should be more incentive to PUG, without any disadvantages to have a Hero/Hench group. And yeah, there is a problem with Guild Groups abusing/ over using this feature.

How is encouraging PUG play good? You want to encourage me to play with bad players?(at least the majority) I'm not anti-social, I do things with my friends. But what if my friends are busy or don't want to do that? Then I should have to group with morons to get a reward?

How does it encourage non-cookie cutter formation? If by some chance I got in a PUG where I didn't know their skill level, I would have them all run cookie cutters that take no skill to run. If they refuse? Kick.

Promoting sales for different campaigns is entirely different from promoting a certain playing style over another. In my mind, the only thing stopping people from buying the other campaigns is a monetary factor. Either they can't afford to spend more money on games, or they don't want to afford it. All the campaigns offer the same styles of play: solo with heroes and henches, and with human players. However, creating a "reward" for PuGing, whether it be simply cosmetic or not, is discriminating against those people who enjoy simply playing with friends, people that they have established a connection with and trust, or with AI.

It would only be fun for that section of the player base that likes to play with random people. That's what this thread is trying to establish. Some people do not like that style of play, and therefore should not be any less rewarded.

The fact of the matter is that, even if it is simply cosmetic, even if it does not affect the economy at all, it will affect the people who prefer to play solo or with friends. The only way to advance your character in any way after you have reached level 20 and completed the campaigns is with cosmetic things, whether that be with elite armour, or with titles, or with minipets. And it's not just a matter of jealousy, it's not a matter of wanting to show off. Sure, there are some people who get the nice cosmetic stuff to do try to prove something, but a lot of the players just do it so that they can improve their characters. That is the downside of having a low level cap.

I think the OP had some good intentions in mind, trying to find a way to prolong the life of the game. I don't think it's possible, but I also don't think it's particularly needed. I think there will be a large number of people playing until GW2 is released, and even after. Unfortunately, the game is slowly dying. I don't think it's quite dead yet, and I don't think it will be until closer to the release of GW2.

Sure they do.
"tank lfg"
Oh, and what do you mean "ok build" ? Build that works in pve?

From my experience its usually that "any and all" builds work in pve. People in PUGs get miffed because they dont work the way "they want".

If you dont kill the big bad monster the way they want you to, then it means you build sucks. Regardless of whether that build can still kill the monster!

You just said one of the things i hate about pugging.... Shortsighted people who can only play wiki builds.

anyway ontopic why should we reward people who pug? seriously are you kidding me? Is pugging considered another sort of Hard Mode?

/sonotsigned