Making PuGs viable again

oh and BTW all this discussion about filtering elitists out, people using "bad" skills, or the IQ Test ideas.... In the end IT'S JUST A GAME!!!! You just have to accept the jerks and noobs out there, and people that make this game their whole freakin life! I stopped crying about those types of people I just hero/hench whenever I can... it's less stress on me.

I don't know about you but I've been playing for 2 years.... I kinda stopped playing 6-12 hour sessions for awhile now because its kinda getting old for me. I'm already starting to see areas in the game that are literally EMPTY now because of lack of players playing. If it wasn't for heroes I would never be able to get through those areas in the game.

For these reasons I support Heros in the game.

my 1st toon was a ranger... and guess what i did!! good old times...


thats my buddy roko that still thinks a monk with barrage is a good bar ^^

for the matter in hand, i would like to see pugging in pve again... seeing outposts full with 8/8 groups with 1 human person just make me sad.

is this an mmoprg or what? heroes killed this game along some other things.

If I follow that line of thought, WHY can I not have 7 heroes, each with 3 PvE skills, then?

The way I see it, the 3-hero limit is an attempt to get us to PuG.

The number of bad players outnumbers the good ones in PuGs by like 100:1. Sorry, not worth it.

And insults only fly when the group is wiping or something. That only happens when there are bad players.

Ok, maybe the IQ test is a bit far-fetched. How about a series of quests designed to test build construction and execution? Then it could have a secondary purpose to instruct people in addition to test them. And it can be retaken once every 3 months.

Bad players killed it. Heroes, if anything, actually SAVED the game. If it weren't for them, I'd probably have quit this game already due to the amount of frustration currently present in PuGs.

well, in my experience insults and word wars is usually before the party gets wipe. because the players who are busy typing gets kill while calling other people noob, usually the monk, guess who's not healing someone who insults them...

GW is advertised as a game you can play solo with AI.
So, we are playing a game that has an option for us to solo.

But also this isnt about not playing with others. No, this is about not playing with random others. I play online with friends and guild members, but im not going to PuG.

When they arent on I go h/h.


Should we start limiting guild teams? So that they start taking random players as well?

Of course not. So dont try and do it to h/h.
GW is advertised as a game you can play solo with AI, I purchased it for that reason along with many others. No matter what im not going to PuG, limit h/h and ill just quit.

Dont think you will see a mass increase in PuGs if h/h gets limited even more.


No its not an MMORPG, its a CORPG.

And no heroes didnt kill the game. Before heroes I used henchmen. Without henchmen I wouldnt have purchased the game.

Heroes gave the game a big boost.

Even back when it was just proph and just henchies you didnt see all that many pugging. The few times I tried back then it would take 20-30 mins to get a team and then most of the time one would go afk or just leave.

And lets not forget seeing several teams spamming "GLF 2 monks and we go".

Without AI it would be almost impossible to PuG your way through any campaign in a reasonable ammount of time.

Now with 3 campaigns and an expansion getting a team in more than 10% of area is virtually impossible.
Without henchmen people wouldnt even be able to form a team.
Without heroes people wouldnt even be able to form a half decent team.

The AI is the only thing holding GW together, take it away and those few pugs will die as well.

Not only would it remove those who play pugs + h/h but a lot of pugs have to use the AI to fill the many empty spots.

This is so true. I usually comment that they haven't taken their meds today.

There are really only 2 places where I go with PuGs, now. Slaver's Exile and DoA. In Slaver's most everyone pings their builds and it is possible to make suggestions if their build has skills that would mess things up. It is obvious if someone is doing it for the first time. It is a good teaching/learning opportunity. While we are standing around getting a group, I can usually explain why a person needs certain skills and needs to not take certain skills. For instance, a Ranger needs to take Frozen Soil to keep the Summits from rerezing immediately and Firestorm is a bad Ele nuker skill because it breaks aggro. Once a person unfamiliar with Slaver's does it correctly, he/she learns what to do and what not to do because all the Dungeons are really easy to accomplish if done right. I like the Slaver Dungeons because everyone has a diverse key role. It can be very difficult if even 1 person messes things up.

I am not as familiar with DoA as I am with Slavers. So, I usually ask for help in terms of knowing where to stand, what skills to bring, etc. Usually there is someone who really knows the quests well and can explain these things as we go. These go very smoothly.

People are afraid sometimes to say they are new or to ask for help because they can be intimidated by those who are bossy know-it-alls. I can say that if you come with us in Slavers and are new, we will help you get familiar with the dungeons, so you can do them over and over.

Rofl. I should be able to play however the hell I want, it's none of your businnes how I AM playing. But thanks for trying.
It's an online game that's advertised as a game that allows you to play solo. Don't pretend you know something when you don't.

I've scanned trough most of the replies... and i came with an idea...

I read the post about calculation about damage dealt etc etc....

How about Anet develops a general PVE title based on these calculations (eg. amount of XP aquired compared to amounts of death, amount of damage and such things), and let players with a high PVE title be able to be accepted easier in PUG groups....

I liked the old days where the game was more social and it was actually fun to play... now its either your alliance you're stuck with or your bots.... You won't end up in the original situations that can occur with PuG's....

So hmmm.. why not a high PVE title?

Yay for solo HM farming.

QFT. I wouldn't be playing anymore if it wasn't for Heroes. By the time I had played halfway thru Factions, I was tired of PuGs. I jst couldn't bring myself to play even one more mission with them. On average there were 5 or 6 fails before one complete. Pathetic! Nightfall came with Heroes, very interesting these little guys were. I can now do anything I want anywhere, no or very rare fails.

I believe the IQ test wouldn't solve a thing. I think what the game needs is far longer and more instructive tutorial sections. Newbie areas should be longer and more class specific. This would allow a player to become more familiar with what their character is supposed to be doing. Tutorials should introduce new players to each line of their primary and ACTUAL information about their primary attribute and how it can effect their character. Lets face it, as far as the game informing us about how to play our characters, its horrible. Pre-Searing Verta comes to mind. Go kill a scale so I can make a fiend out of it. Quest complete.

No, a title with a load of tiers (aka grind) is a bad idea, it would make PvE the whole rank discrimination that is PvP.

And there is no way to get any sort of estimate based on numbers... damage dealt vs deaths? Dwarven boxing ftw... XP? So solo farming the Monolith temple and gaining 5 levels every 15 minutes without any deaths makes one better than everyone else?

Because it is bad idea.

A) possible farmability
B) even more "elititsm", people would rage if they would see possibility of group screwing their titles.
C) those tests would mislabel people. Glads defence tank might end up high on that list. Good monk with good team will get low heal-res-second and spike heal statistics. Bonder in tankway would get a lot of damage prevented scores etc, smart ele with ward or so might end subpar ...

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OP idea is also bad:

* people will look up answers and walkthroughts in wiki. Follow them blindly and understand nothing about steps in guide and have no clue why they are doign waht they are doing. Or worse, gimmick will be developed to pass it and would do 0 education.
* people might use "cookie cutter" build to pass test, but will immediatelly return to their old ineficient one. Making it no impact. In fact, people who are not used to run efficient build required for that test would be frustrated by it and would be even less likely to run it in normal game.
* people would get mad because they can't use their mesmer with pet spamming conjures. QQ would follow.

Basically, everyone will have that X next to their name and you would be right back at begining.

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btw: it happened.

BMP:

* shows warrior running dslash-fgj build.
* show ritualist running chanelling bar with some better nukes on it.

Didnt really help, but we can hope that people took good from it and forgot bad.

Factions:

* Insignia quests

Easy to pass by brute force damage and as such having little impact. You cant count on factions character passing them to be good.

There will only be answers and walkthroughs on wiki if the community puts it up. It will be up to the community to resist the urge to do that.

And following walkthroughs doesn't exactly do anything.. for example, reading how to Monk and actually Monking are two very different things.


The quests here can be in AI teams where, for instance, you have to keep your team alive against a team of 4 hammer warriors with condition & hex removal for enough time to win. Any noob running pure healing stuff will get owned pretty quick, and will hopefully realize that pure healing doesn't work.


Perhaps some sort of quest that needs a high DPS (at least 80). Make it only achievable by Warriors, Dervishes, and Assassins. That way people might get away from the mentality that Elementalists do the most damage.


Or, a 4v4 against a team of dangerous casters who need to be shut down. Give them interrupts to prevent nuking and something to remove spirits (Consume Soul as 2nd elite maybe) to stop spirit forest gimmicks. Teach people how to interrupt and shut down.


Could do the same as above except with a team of melee with enchantment removal and stuff to punch through blocking. Teach people how to use blind and curses.

IMO one of the few ways to improve pugs is to make sure someone isn't running a very bad build. Thus a selection of good builds for people to use would have to be provided. However Anet rarely seems to be able to put together a good build on their own so there's little they can do about it.

Honestly, the only way to root out the idiots is to implement a subscription fee. Thus, all the kids who's parents won't pay the fee won't play this game.

Yeah, seriously... ever wondered why Guild Wars is filled with immature idiots? No fee. Implement a fee = they're filtered out.

That still wouldnt get rid of all of them.

As sad as it may seem there are some much older idiots and people who get their kicks insulting and ruining the game for others etc.


Hell I know one guy whos 34, polite as anything in the real world, the moment he gets ingame he turns into a childish little ball of hate. He plays games to let of steam and says thats what works best for him.

What you say is entirely true. Still, we would have... less of them, than we do right now.

so if the kid's parents pay for their subscription they're not idiots and automatically good at GW?

And with GW 2 fee-free there's no helping it.

There's no problem playing with a noob. However, if your party-members are ignorant 1337-idiots who think they're the best player in GW but actually suck, then it's a problem.

My advices, make them into a login-announcements, please

• If you're new to the game you should know that you're not a pro(unless you're one of the ignorant noobs), always listen to advice!!

• Just because a guy has helped you once doesn't mean he wants to spend all his time helping you (*hint hint* at certain ppl I've met in GW..). You will become a better player if you figure out how to do it yourself.

• No matter how experienced you are (or think you are), there's always someone who knows the mission a bit better than you, always listen to what your partymembers have to say.

• If you're 12- years old you shouldn't be playing the game.. (I'd say atleast 14(some 14 year old ppl are mature, others aren't))

• Don't flame the guy who is trying to explain why bane signet with 3 smiting prayers isn't a good choice on your wammo bar..

If it was possible, an asshole-filter would be nice.. :P

Yep, but community will eventually prodice those guides since there would always be someone who will want his 15 mis of fame for writing guide.

Noob running pure heal will switch to prot, alright. Life bond and Life Barrier. Or he would tank it for that team.

Chances are one could overload their condition removal with disease (or traps), or render them useless with stuff like visages. or run wards

As you see, GW is complex enough to make simple challenges like this totally gimmickable if player build is not set in stone by designers. Which would be cool, but that build would be prone to being outdated with ballance changes, meaning aditional work for designers.

I think a tutorial based on your class, that you see when you create a char and can't skip for your first one, would be better. Something in the lines of "As a Warrior, you don't have much energy. Try to avoid spells which are usually costy."

Or make pugs more user-friendly? Instead of asking a million times for someone to ping their build there should be a button that lets the leader see it without asking. And make it so you don't have to go through Euro dists, then american dists and now asian dists just to find out no one is doing the same thing as you and end up going h/h anyways. And HM groups have got to be the hardest thing to find in-game, out of the 18 dungeons you'd be lucky to find a pug for half of them, sure I can use h/h for them but I don't want to. Real players take the pressure off of you, especially if they know what they're doing. It's so much funner to play if you only have to worry about yourself and not make sure 7 other players don't stand in aoe or run off to solo a group that's nowhere near you.

PUG's have their benefits, but who want's to wait forever just to get a good one together?

Hmmm... Yes, the griding part is true....

What about PvE accomplishments... based on missions/quests done....?

And yes, it might lead to elitairism... but H/H'ing gets quite boring in my opinion....

And i had a tought about IQ... I myself have a great deal of interest in psychology... but i came to the conclusion that IQ tests would be inaccurate... It determines the IQ of a person, not his or her's social skills, which is the thing you mostly depend on in teamplay.

You can have a genius playing GW, but if he uses this as an escape of RL and takes out all his issues out by screwing up teamplay... then an IQ is no use....

Maybe a rep system should work in some way i dont know of yet... Reward players for doing missions, or such... but that would bring other complications...

And hmmm... about maturity... what has drawn my interest is... that im wondering if that would differ if you play on different servers?? (EU vs USA?) Would that make any difference? I myself am in European servers, and didnt have many problems with PuG's.... would there be a difference?

PS.

This will lead to problems, in case you dont have your build ready an ignorant leader would kick you due to his judgement that your build won't work...

All these solutions aren't going to work no matter how badly you want to filter out these types of people theres no stopping it

I've played several other MMOs and it doesn't matter how much you charge there are always going to be Noobs, and Jerks in the game. Hell some think because they pay money a month to play gives them a right to be a jerk when playing so Subscription fees are a idiotic solution.

I would say make the game M rated but I've seen grown men an women act like little babies too so that's not going to help much either.

The problem with GW is that theres no incentive to play better, its so easy to do anything that you dont have to improve. Once you can tank and spank, you can do anything.

Well there are other people who do not want those guides published. It takes less than a minute to Ctrl + A and Delete everything on that page.

Life Bond + Barrier only works on other allies. SV + AV can only be put on so many people. Tweak the AI a bit; make it so that if the AI is doing less than x dps to a target, it will switch targets; if it's attacking a target with an effect that causes something to happen when it gets hit, the AI will switch targets.

As for traps... program the AI to walk out of Dust Traps and stuff?

Train the trapper? Irresistable Blow > trappers.

Yes, I realize that stuff in PvE doesn't do this. But it shouldn't be that hard to make a small instance of it to truly test people without their shield of gimmicks.

Chances are, you wouldn't want to be on his team in the first place.

I think that's not such a bad idea, actually.


So.. is there a way to test for maturity, then?

No one started out as a skilled GW player. We were all inexperienced at one point. I am sure that many of those most vehemently in favor of the OP's idea have been playing for a long time and perhaps have forgotten that at one time there might very well have been someone in a PUG with them thinking, "this guys is an idiot....flare on a W/E?" or something of the sort. I have been playing for more than two years now and still cringe at the fact that I let myself die during a cutscene (vampiric weapon don't you know). Many PUGs are inexperienced, some are socially inept, and others just aren't very smart. One thing they all are is...people. People who are trying to have fun. Please do not ruin that by trying to brand them. Requiring certain "types" of people to wear badges so that they can be more readily identified for ostracization or ridicule by those who are their "betters" is just not right. If you do not enjoy the social aspects of this game-meeting new people and sharing a love of gaming-so be it. Honestly you wont have difficulty getting by H/H parties. In addition you have the opportunity to interact with guild/alliance members enough to determine whether or not they are able to play to your standards. In short you are not now required to play with people who aren't up to your standards so the only possible point to enacting such protocols as described in the OP would be for personal aggrandizement. An ego stroke. I am sorry but, emphatically /not signed.

I hate henchmen. Heroes meh.

Half the fun in MMORPGS is meeting people around the world (for better or worse). Henchmen f*cked pugging. Heroes royally f*cked pugging.

If I want to run around alone, I could play Final Fantasy instead

Note: My opinion could be because I run a monk in PVE. Try getting henchies to attack a target without aggroing. Watch how long it takes for something to die. In most cases I've found that said noob may not be very good at keeping himself alive, but if I take care of that said noob's damage output is more efficient than hench thus saving me precious time

And keep in mind that the main reason why GW was build was because of the free monthly play... i picked up in the time before GW was released that the createors split from the Blizzard team because they argued that MMo's could be made without monthly payment, and that caused the creation of GW... so no, keep the free game play... its the main reason i bought this game actually....

And yes... we all where like this one day... not knowing what the heck we where supposed to do... learning takes time... and we can ask for more tutorials... but that would make the game too boring... the fun thing is to master something on your own... that makes it worth it...

I approve of this idea with a slight modification.

A simple multiple choice test will suffice, with one question. Based on your answer, you get a flag next to your name.

Here it is:

1) Do you consider most people you meet in PUGs to be clueless, egotistical 'tards? YES/NO

If you answer YES to this question, you get a flag next to your name (maybe a small image) which shows everyone that you are an elitist, know-all pain in the ass, that prefers the company of artificial intelligence to humans... then we all know to avoid PUGing with you.

IMHO this feature would improve the game no end.

I think there is difference worth noting: OP suggests branding good players as good players if they choose to.

Not marking bad players.

I wont work well thou for various reasons stated. But idea of providing in-game guidance (and reality check) for those clueless newbies has its merits. If you can point out quest which illustrates flare spamming warrior why what he is doing is wrong, what is much better alternative and which would reward him with better pug possibilities, wouldn't it be good for him and for all his future pugmates?

I often wished there was "A+ newbie" flag which veterans could use to point out outstanding newbie which they educated on how game and his profession is played. aka, newbie which listens (which is often more valuable in team than experienced player.)

(this flag would be visible until any campaign is completed and would be once-per-account thing.)

Point is, positive feedback, not negative.

My personal idea would be:
When you play in places where you can get reputation points, you get XXX amount more, depending on how many people are in your group.

Hey! That is really a good one!

Hm... hm... yeah, yeah... could work, could work...

Imagine it, more people would want to PUG to vanquish, to clear Nightfall, GW:EN and some Factions areas in parties of 8...

Maybe... +15% points for each human party member for a max of 100%?

Go with 8 people and earn 15*7=105 (max 100) 100% extra points.

But that would be only for areas with points. What about the rest?

The idea is not to penalize new players, I have nothing against them; I'm sure we all sucked at this game once.

The problem lies with players who have played the game for a long time AND who still suck because they choose to suck. Those are the players that should be excluded until they can learn.

Yes, I know, people get by with H/H parties. What if I don't want to have to party with stupid henchies, and none of my guild members are online? I'd like the option to PuG and at least expect to complete the task at hand and not party-wipe xxx times.

The people who would select YES don't PuG, so by marking them, there is really no benefit given to PuG'ing.

The kind of person that I want to avoid in a PUG is someone that wants all skillbars pinged, player and hero, so they can critique and modify them according to their particular tastes.

Once I joined a PUG for Jennur's Horde; a guy spent ages going through each person's bar and saying 'bring this, bring that, go and unlock it'. Eventually he got to me and insisted that I removed Blood of the Master from Olias. Now this is just a matter of taste. When I defended the fact it was there and made it clear that I could manually disable it IF there was the slightest danger of Olias saccing himself into trouble.... the guy just quit the group without warning - having wasted ten minutes making us do his bidding. When we sent him a PM asking for an explanation he responded: "I don't like having to repeat stuff."

It doesn't matter that we're displaying Vanquisher titles and stuff, this guy is a perfect example of the type of person I wish to avoid when making PUGs.

Another one is a guy that left our guild recently. Every time he made a PUG he insisted that all Monks were dropped and replaced with his N/Rt healers. Now, there is a strong argument that they are more effective, but really, if you try to 'educate' people against their will then you shouldn't be looking for PUGs.

People are way too used to the controllability of heroes, that they now seek to micromanage their fellow human beings.

But if this describes you, it is not the "clueless tards" that are the problem, it is you and your attitude.

We have to ask ourselves....why PUG at all? There are better options in heroes and guild/alliance-mates. If you are going to PUG then you need to

a) Adopt a tolerant attitude
b) Credit other players with being decent until proven otherwise
c) Accept the additional challenge of playing with unpredictable partners
d) Use social skills

If anyone can't do the above, I suggest they go back to heroes or find a decent PvE guild.

All I read here is intolerance, suspicion, control-freakery and impatience. This is the problem, not the existence of 'good' and 'bad' players. If anything, 'good' and 'bad' are defined for me by ethics and open-mindedness, not l33tzor skill bars, 25 maxed titles and gimmick builds. Who cares if other people are crap? It's co-operative gameplay, not an olympic sport. I care only if other people are rude, not if they turn out to be crap.

Giving 2 extreme examples does not do anything. There are such things on both sides of the curve. As long as the player performs his duty (ex. warrior kills stuff instead of tanking) then he or she is fine, most people do not care about intricate details.

Yes, there are a few who do, and if you meet someone who wants every single skill of 8 all party members suitable to his taste, then just kick them. Simple. It's not hard to spot people like that because they wear their ego on their face.

And if you suggest to people to use heroes as an alternative to PuG, then why do people still keep turning down 7 heroes and PvE skills for them?

That's a pretty good idea, it would reduce grind and encourage grouping.


Give them PvE skills and reputation points.

I am all for an IQ test to determine the number of children you can have but to ask a company to determine who is a good / bad player sounds like a waste of time.
My problem with your suggestion is that it is easily beaten and would encourage even more abuse by money miners:

A. Have a more intelligent friend play through the mission.

B. Buy an account with a high user rating.

Why you would overcomplicate this when all you have to do is use your friends list and / or setup a spreadsheet that allows you to track people.
If anything I would like to see categories added to the friends list.

1. Mission / Questing: These are the people you want to play with on hard quest or missions.

2. Merchant: These are the people that stand in town and play trader. We have all meet traders that offered a fair price and did not try to run a scam and I prefer trading with these people. I will actually pm these people to offer them first chance at a item (Know of one guy that is always wanting to buy green items and since I hate sitting in town typing WTS it works out great, I get ride of greens faster and he makes a nice profit).

3. Farming: There are those times that if I don’t fill like running a hero team or running two computers or soloing and I will pm them to see if they are busy.

4. Training: We meet these all the time and in my two years eight months of playing I have only meet one person that refused to learn something (and invest the time needed). I have three people in my farming list that I am very proud of because they started out in my training list. Heck one is even a better 600 then me now and I am the one that trained him (guess I am no longer the master).

5. Causal Player: They are not the worse players you have ever met but they are not the greatest. Easy mission I don’t mind taking them along or answering questions when they pm.

6. Helpful: These are the players you would pm to ask for help on a hard quest or mission or if you have a question.

7. Do not: Do not trade / play / farm or anything with these people. I am happy to say I have never been scammed in game but just last night a friend of mine was scammed buying a mini (guy canceled trade before hitting accept, apologized saying he hit the wrong button and then switched the undedicated mini for a dedicated one).

Still needs a little polish but I feel that this would result in the most positive playing experience.