Making PuGs viable again

PuG vs H/H has long been a controversy in GW since Nightfall. The reason people do not PuG is because many PuG'ers are generally narrow-minded, big-headed, and bad players, and most people do not want to risk having to group with these kinds of people.


Instead of addressing this issue directly, ANet has been imposing all sorts of ridiculous, numerical limitations on the alternative to PuG's in an attempt to stop this deviation instead of treating the problem at its root.


What I propose is to implement a sort of quest chain and possibly a mini-IQ test for one to prove one's proficiency and non-stupidity with. Upon completion of the quest[s], one will have an X sign next to his name in the party window, as well as the party search window, to inform other players that he is not a clueless, egotistical tard.

In order to prevent grind, the quest[s] should be short, completable in under 30-40 minutes, with a fully functional brain, and the player is given access to all skills for the duration of the quest[s].

Of course, one can still PuG without completing it; just that people looking to accomplish tasks may generally not join that person's group.


Suggestions? Ideas?


Something like this needs to be done. Either we get 7 heroes without any limitations (which won't be happening) or we get better PuG options to filter out the retards who ruin it for everyone else.

/signed
As long as ursan is banned from it.

umm whats to keep someone from running it?

lol

Come on man pugs are not so bad...

I enjoy PuGs and sometimes you can learn some things too and improve your skills playing.

My char is a monk and playing with pugs i have more work than playing with guildies, with guildies is easy cause almost all they know how to play, keep aggro, dont camp, etc.

But PuGs is a pandora box you never know what can you find and this factor add a lot of fun, sometimes your team could have some assholes and sometimes could have really good players

P.D: Sorry for my really bad english

This isn't going to solve anything. People will still be stupid and will still run bad builds.

This is a great post. I, for one, dread when I have to get into a PuG. Once it was only mildly annoying. Now it is a totally unpleasant experience. I find the people in the groups I am forced to join, especially the quests in DoA, to be rude, obnoxious, racist, and unintelligent.

At one time, you could do a quest and everyone would help everyone else. The experienced people helped the ones who needed experience. Now, if you are less knowledgeable of an area, you get abused beyond belief. I have over 8 million XP with my Ele and have done every quest and mission more than once. Many times I get in a group with know-it-alls that try to tell everyone else what to do and I know, from experience that they are wrong.

I think the game has attracted a different type of player in the past year. At one time, I would have conversations with the people I pugged with, from all age groups and from all over the world. Now, I just can't wait to get the quest finished. I never interact with any new people. They truly are way too stupid and moronic for any interaction. Plus, my ignore list has grown to the maximum.

Adding the "Ursan" thing has made things worse because now any moron can be an Ursan and finish a hard quest. No intelligence, no planning, no strategy, is involved with Ursans. It's perfect for those "clueless, egotistical" morons.

An IQ test would be great, but, Anet couldn't do that. 90% would fail. Maybe the ones that failed would be restricted to certain towns or districts. I say restrict them to Kamadan district 1. Oh, wait a minute, that's where they hang out now. Of course, having a "fullly functional brain" is not required to play GW. Just pay your money and let everyone in.

Personally, I would like to see special sections where people of the same age group could quest together. Too many times I think I am in a group of 12 year olds. For example, there should be sections where only people over 30 are allowed, or, maybe 18-30. This could lead to some interesting combinations. Maybe there could be districts where only women are allowed. Wait, how could you tell? Most of the women characters are boys, living out their cross dressing fantasies. So, that wouldn't work. I would like to see "no dancing" areas. I can't stand to look at another Warrior imitating John Travolta.

Seriously, though, playing the game and being able to control 7 heroes would be a cool addition. It would keep me from being forced to join groups that I clearly do not want to join.

That's what the function of Titles has been, however it didn't weigh the amount of knowledge one has to justify allowance into a group.

/signed

wonder how it would work and if it, in fact, is credible enough to show competence. It should be a soloable thing just like the bonus mission packs.

You will know who they are and can avoid partying with them. Problem solved.


Make it a solo quest..



I know it's not a foolproof way to weed out all of the stupid players. But it's better than nothing.

As for the 90% who would fail the IQ test... well, they can still party with the other 90% who failed it as well. Just that the other 10% of us who actually have a clue what we're doing don't have to party with them. I'm not saying that anyone who fails it gets their account banned and wastes all their money.



ANet, it's either this or give us 7 heroes. Take your pick.

Because if you choose neither, people will be gone from GW long before GW2 comes out. They will go to another MMO and get immersed in it. They will not buy GW2.

notsigned ...

stupid idea ³

say welcome to more discrimination eh ? >.>

a pug=big headed and narrow minded? well then son welcome to the life of a pug because to say that you want a way to weed out bad players u r in fact making urself big headed and narrow minded.

Just cause sum1 isnt as good as u they should get marked so no 1 will want to play with them? How bout we mark all the top ha/gvg guilds with purple fuzzy hearts so that means there chat wont show to us normal folk. Srry but just because sum1 doesnt grind a title or play 23 out of 24 hours in a day doesnt mean they shouldnt b able to get grouped with better players.

As for the "dumb" players. Just cause u say there dumb doesn't make them dumb. Shit happens!. U wipe u start over. Its 8 man party the whole team loses or the whole team wins. Doesn't mean the war that messed up aggro is dumb or the monk who missed woh is dumb or the ranger missed the interupt is dumb. It means were human and shit happens. A hero shouldn't be as good as a person. You shouldn't get 7 heroes. Your SHOULD want to play with other players good bad or in between. Ur playing an online game with kids from 8 years old to old ppl that r 60 years old. Its an ONLINE game if you don't want to deal with people who are worse then you. GO PLAY A GAME THAT HAS SOLO PLAYER

Why don't you retype that using proper words and then I'll consider reading it.

/signed i dont trust pugs =)

BTW @ songbringer GW is multiplayer optional =)

proper words? u mean proper english? kinda seems to me u would fail the IQ quest. Shorthanding makes things unreadable? your going to have a hard time in college typing as fast as a professor can talk if you dont learn how to read and write shorthand

/notsigned

Just seems stupid and unrealistic to me.

GW should calculate damage dealt, damage protted, damage healed, and damage taken for all players in a pug.

GW should also have averages of these numbes for full hench groups in that area (Anet can run simulations with just hench teams in every area).

At the 25%, 50%, and 75% completion marks of the mission/quest/vanquish, if your performance is more than 10% below that of the benchmark set by the hench whose build is most similar to yours, you are automatically kicked and replaced with a henchie.

I realize that this may sometimes result in the entire team being kicked and replaced by henchies...

After you have been autokicked and replaced by a henchie 25 times, the game automatically uninstalls and your accout is deleted.

Better idea: implement a mandatory IQ test for Guild Wars. You needn't get a high score to finish it... but your IQ will permanently be displayed next to your character name. Test may be retaken once per year.

Shorthand is all well and good when you're taking notes, but when you're on a public forum and you use internet speak instead of actually typing out the words, it makes it harder for people to understand and you won't get your point across as well as you could be. As for what you said before, I agreed with part of it, and also with what Phoenix Tears said. This is discrimination, plain and simple.

Just because someone isn't as smart as someone else, they should get marked as such? Some people don't play computer games their whole life. Some people have trouble with the game. Some people just aren't as smart as others. It can't really be helped. As long as they're trying to succeed, they shouldn't be ridiculed in this way.

I cannot believe we've come to a point where people agree with making a public display of someone just because he can't play a computer game as well as the next guy.

Although the rest of your post was terrible in so many ways, I found this section to be one that I should actually comment on. The majority of my characters are female, and I am, in real life, a man. I play female characters because I think the male avatars don't look very good. As hard as it may be to believe, I don't have any cross dressing fantasies. I doubt many of the males who play female characters do. Even if they do have these fantasies, what exactly is wrong with that? They're still human. Don't be so condescending towards your own race.

Congratulations! You have unlocked the Ignorant Fool title track! You may now display Ignorant Fool (1) on your character. To unlock Total F*cktard, please continue talking out of your rear end.

I say, Guild Wars should implement something that makes it so that whenever you use internet speak or "1337 speak" in chat, you lose your ability to reproduce. Thus, less idiots in the world as we know it.

Most of them already lost the ability to reproduce when they contracted the disease.

We must develop immunization against it.

I'd rather they simply implement a message that appears on screen at random invervals in towns/outposts (in the same way the kill x boss does in gwen) with statements such as:

Tanking Sucks
Umpteen echo nuking Sucks
Paragons > Bonders
Healing monks are inneficient
Healing breeze is a waste of a skill slot
Hundred blades is not a good choice

...and so on and so forth,

What's better than Healing Breeze?

We don't mean players who are bad at timing interrupts, or hit that WoH a little too late. We mean the Rangers that run Firestorm, or Warriors who run out of your compass, die, then demand to be rezzed in capital letters... and so on.

Ooh, ooh, ooh! And the monk with Power Shot!

And proper grammar ftw.


lol at the last part.

Depending on the build dwayna's kiss, gift of health, signet of rejuv, RoF or to actually remove a condition/hex. If you use it to heal someone who it daking dmg rather than degen thats even worse.

The only time its useful in a build is a farming build such as 55hp that relies on regens greater effectiveness with low hp.

any1 can run a few quests and still be an idiot and any1 can look up test answers on wiki. This wouldnt solve anything.

/notsigned

To Meat Axe and Zahr Dalsk:

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Shakespeare, "Hamlet" Act 3, scene 2

You see, this is the type of mean spirited attack that seems to pervade the current GW player. Thanks for proving my point. Most of what I said was tongue in cheek.

Btw, I agree with you. Playing Crysis maxed out is the way to go. It is simply the best and most advanced game out there. I loved their first game, too. "Far Cry."

Now, what's this /signed or /notsigned thing? I'm so out of it.

Actually..would you rather have a narrow-minded person who can only run ursan?
This might not solve much, but atleast it makes PuGing half decent.

No, some people just CANNOT play, or listen to orders.
When I PuGged, guess what? They didn't follow orders.
Most PuG's are ignorant, and whats with the title grinding bit? Oh...yeah ursan, I hate that skill.

Heroes/Henchmen...
"Shit happens" isn't it, "shit happens" is when a simple mistake happens once, not when a PuG fails almost indefinately on a single easy mission.

Also: please don't use so much text-speech, it's incredibly hard to read.

The reason this thread has been created is against idiots who think mending is a good idea, ect.
Ones who think they can draw penises on the minimap and think they're funny.
Don't tell me some people haven't seen the immaturity of a PuG?
But this should also be aimed at maturity mostly.

So because someone can pass some sort of IQ quest, they're good? No, they aren't. IQ has nothing to do with people who don't understand game mechanics or how to effectively play the profession they're playing. Sure you can tell people all about the game mechanics, but it doesn't mean they'll use them. You can tell people why skill x is good and why skill y is bad, and people will still run skill y.

You don't need to have skill to play Guild Wars PvE. Players have access to overpowered skills like ursan and pve skills to help them beat the game. Now see, if PvE did take some skill to play, finding somewhat decent players would be easier because there would be less bad players in the areas you want to pug. But since PvE takes no skill, there are bad players everywhere, and pugging is a mess. There's really nothing you can do about it as long as ANet keep dumbing down PvE.

As long as good players keep playing with guildies/friends/heroes, pugging is going to be crap.

There are some that are not very brings, other that are selfish pieces of meat, but other are just learning.

There is already a way to test if they are good enough or not for you.

JOIN THEM.

If you see that they make weird things, tell them so. If hey don't listen, do not join them again.

See? Welcome to cooperative play.

Geez.

1 - "Ur" is not a word, bumblef*ck.

2 - Guild Wars is rated T for Teen by the ESRB. Therefore people should be at least age 13 to play. http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

We should never encounter anyone under the age of 13 in Guild Wars.

The game mechanics are simple. You don't need to play 5 hours a day to understand them, and you don't need to be hardcore at the game to know how to play it effectively. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that spamming 10-energy skills to make red bars go up is bad, especially when that skill can only push up 18 health a second and the ally is getting pummeled for more than that. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Flare has terrible DPS, or that Monks cannot run bow attacks without expertise. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that running 4 dedicated healers on one team (yes, one PuG did that in Ruins of Morah) is a complete waste of oxygen. Now will you people shut up with this nonsense about how everyone who knows how to play the game is a hardcore, lifeless person who sits at the computer 24/7.

I'm all for giving new players a chance, but this thread is not directed at new players. It's directed for those who have played for at least half a year to a year and who still thing Mending is 1337 on W/Mo's and a pure healing Monk is useful and Paragons suck and etc.

There can be something implemented to help new players out. If you guys would stop arguing about how this is discrimination, then perhaps we can discuss that. This is not discrimination; discrimination is excluding people because of something that they cannot control, ex. skin color, race, gender, etc.

Well then YOU, as part of the COMMUNITY, will just have to refrain from putting those answers on wiki, right?

And the quests will have to be designed to be uncompletable if one is an idiot. For example, Warrior = you are tasked to kill a 4-man team with a ZB Monk with no other offense on your team (hint: tanking = bad, Warriors = kill stuff). Monk = you have to keep yourself and 3 allies alive against 4 Assassins or something (hint = pre-prot instead of healing). Yes, you could look up the builds, they're probably strewn around everywhere, but I doubt that an idiotic mind can make much sense out of it if he doesn't try to get rid of his idiocy.

Maybe the male characters look like shit? Have you ever seen a male Ritualist? I never want to again. Same with the male Monks, most Warriors, most Mesmers and Assassins.

Maybe there are some people that like their characters to not look like complete douchebags.

They need a randomized IQ test at login. If they do not score above a certain number, their manhood shall be cut off and fed to the goats.

How about instead of an IQ test, a build construction test?

The only thing about ideas like an IQ test about GW and things like that, is because "good" in video games is mostly relative. If a PvE noob wammo took the test and was just like "Mending covers for my Frenzy+Healsigging dumbasses! It makes perfect sense!" He would rage, write a hateful e-mail to Anet, and then never buy any GW/Anet product again.

To any successful business:

Money > Consumers

If you're going down that route, then we may as well point out that an IQ test would be a much greater discrimination, and against business.

That is, if you're taking any of this as seriously viable ideas.

instead of some test that is a joke fail idea anyways, get over it. the game already implimented ctrl+click on build. make them do it, or kick them. wow, you just solved a major problem in your QQ.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/IQ_test_list

I vote for a test to filter out players who think they are the elite-ess instead.

When NF came out I started Hero/Henching a lot more because I saw a dramatic increase of new players, idiots, and jerks even up to the Realm of Torment areas.

Before Heroes and Hench AI Improvements I didn't have a serious problem with PuGs. It was my belief that the more experienced players teach the less experienced ones, either through actual teaching, sharing knowledge about the mission or class, or bitching and whining like babies about the "Noob(s)" in the group to force them to get wise.

I think when Hero/Henching became possible the experienced players and guild players just didn't bother with picking up people anymore, they would just fill their gaps with Heros or They would just play alone. The Teachers were gone and the Idiots and Jerks remained.

Before Nightfall about 70% of PuGs I joined got the job done, After it kinda became 40-50%. Now with Eye of the North unless its Slaver's Exile I have never seen a PuG with 8 full players form anymore.

I Stopped joining PUGs in NF because I just couldn't get anywhere with them. I tried to go back to PUGs in GWEN and I almost never see anyone try to form one. Last time I tried to PUG a GWEN Mission I just kept getting told to Hero Hench it.

the truth is, I don't know why people who like to PUG would think the other players are noob or idiots or bad players, if you want to pug, you get all sorts, and you know the possibility of getting a bad players is there, why be so "elite" that you need to weed those that you think is "unworthy" to play with you?

Yes I've come across many very weird characters/players but that's it, and i've also come across many very good players, if you want guaranteed that 100% of the time in your life to get good stuff... well you can't! so H/H it or stop whining.

Lastly, PUG group that often failed miserably that I've been in are not those that has new players (noob as you all like to called them) or players that have bad build, it is always the one that has a very bossy players who thinks they are the most good in the game who shoves everyone around that failed miserably. I can roughly says around 80% of the time this is true. Because when you have someone bossy, another players will be there to counter them and then the typing wars begin.... hence while everyone is typing and insults are flying around everyone dies....