Bad PUG. Whose fault is it?

Lots of bad attitudes here about PUGs, threads about 7 heroes, more control over henchies...
But whose fault it is when a PUG fails?
My oppinion:
Everybodys!

the easiest thing to do is to blame the 13 yr old kid, or blame the one that pulled that extra group, and call him names like NOOB and put him on the ignore list so he cant reply to you.

But we all know thats wrong. All who dont agree with that are in denial!

Why exactly is it your fault?
You simply didnt do enough to add to the team.



You expect too much.

Not that you shouldnt expect anything, but you should expect failure as well as success. You just have to be real and be aware that a PUG will never ever do as well as an organized team. Ever!



Lack of organization.

But even a PUG can be an organized team. You remember that other players are human, right? Talk to them! Spare 1 minute and discuss strategies, usefull builds, favorite ice cream flavours, BEFORE you enter the destination area.



Lack of leadership.

So youre all running arround, everybody just doing their thing, and it doesnt look good? Dont ragequit! Take initiative instead.
Humans are pack animals! What i mean by that is that they will follow the person they percieve as the most able and knowlegable one, or at least, more so than themselves. Use this! Guide the team to success if noone else wont.



Last but not least, too little communication.

You know that when you smile to people, you will get a smile back? Its true
Same goes for talking. Unless someone is really pi$$ed at you, which people in a PUG have no reason to be.
So takl! Say woohoo and gg when youre done with a group of mobs. Give the monk a kiss for a good job. Tell the female mesmer shes hawt. Do your part to make others feel they are in a team. Believe me, they will respond, and it will be fun and the way it was intended to be in a MMO. And if you fail at the mission, you still had fun!



There. I had to say that. Tho it doesnt really look like what it looked in my head, but its all there. Sorry if its long.
Just my oppinion.

You forget chemistry, sometimes I just can't work with people (or people can't work with me), even if they're skilled. 100 lightyears language barrier also phails pretty badly at times .

Other points are fine, especially the one where you take a few seconds to discuss tactics, so no 'ogogogogogogogogog omg just goooooooo!'. Those kind of teams are fail and won't work.

Leave me alone. Since Big Bang I've been sticking to my heroes and henchies, PUGs weren't and aren't my concern. I did nothing to improve them, I did nothing to destroy them.

IMA INNOCENT

LOL good one, back then when I sucked I NEEDED pugs to get through the game. Guess I'm not the only one :P. It's just that heroes get boring at times.

hey i'm 13 don't blame me!

well i try to avoid pugs but not all of em are bad okay most of them are bad and are selfish but i met alot of friend when i tried to pug remember it's still a frickin game

Yes its a game, nice to see someone young realizes that


But why the "most of them are bad and selfish" attitude?
I mean if you go along with that you pretty much shouldnt play any MMO.
We are all just trying to do the same thing, play the game and have fun.

But, it can be true that people are selfish when youre in DoA, or The Deep and that sort of stuff... You cant get into a group as anything thats not a warrior, ele or monk, or ursan... *cry*

I entierely agree with you. Most of the PUGs I go with are fine, except maybe for the occasional Fire Rain Ranger, but nobody's perfect

I don't need to PUG, it's just more interesting to talk with people than with heroes/henchmen... Even though going with guildies is better, sometimes I like to meet people. And just like IRL they can be awesome or make you want to smash something.

an under standing of time would help most pugs nothing worse than spending 20mins sorting out your party and making sure everyone knows it will take at least an hour only to hear the words sorry mate got to go my maw said so 10 mins into mission

People who PUG either suck or are in denial. There are plenty of guilds who will accept people with all kinds of login activity as long as the player is polite, sensible and not a jerk. As long as the person can listen to advice they don't even have to be good at the game, listening to advice brings that easy.

Well, that one comes out of the blue but is perhaps more explained by the items below.

I expect the average PUG to be at least on level with a H&H team.
If that's too much to expect, PUGs fail because playing with AI would give more benefit.
If I can't expect a PUG to be on par with a H&H team, there is no reason to PUG.

Perhaps, but it's also a matter of resources.
I can play with someone who is a very decent player but does not have the skills that would work best for the task ahead. Kick or keep?
Specially when 6/8 have the same 'problem'.

Only possible if the team accepts you as the leader. This can be hard when there are several wannabe leaders in the team.

Agree on that one.

Don't get me wrong, I do PUG from time to time (even yesterday) and do enjoy it most of the time.
Yesterday one of my guildies and me joined a PUG and while he was complaining they were bad I had a good time. It's a matter of perception.

However, and I need to say that, there is a large gap between the average PUG member and the experienced player.
A lot of PUG members seem to lack the 'chemistry' mentioned by bungusmaximus.
That chemistry is part the things you mentioned, part attitude and part skill.

Whenever I PUG, I am an observer.
I try to determine the good and bad qualities of the players and group synergy.
Most of the time I won't take the lead and let others struggle because that's part of learning to lead.
Only when things are going the wrong direction I take over if the group allows that. But when that happens, everyone knows it's 'my' game, my map, my drawing. Follow or fail.

Now there is one big issue.
I play HM 90% of the time and there is less room for error.
The team needs to be ok, players need to be skilled and take responsibility.
Whenever I PUG I keep an eye open for players who might be an asset to our guild. I don't want the average PUG member, I want the top.
In the last month I've seen maybe three to five players I would consider recruiting in our guild.
And maybe 5 more who have potential but don't have the skill yet.
However, if their attitude is right, I might take them even though they are not up to our gameplay yet.

Why do I mention this?
Because on all teams I PUG with there are very few players that I consider more than average players.
That can't be only my fault!

And you decided to let us all know this why?

A little off topic: Can I ask why the quality of PuGs has decreased over time? Are people seriously getting worse at the game over time? I think it might be because the ways of doing things have been refined to the point where anything less of those methods is seen as a waste of time/stupid, and so there's little to no tolerance for mistakes or bad players.

i would have to be desperate to PuG these days..i usually just get good friends, guildies or heros.

Meh, i'm the person everyone hates in PUG's so i tend to avoid them for everyone's sake. i've been playing this game so long that I hate when a person first time through a misison is trying to tell me how to do it. In conclusion: everyone gets antsy. I'm not a build Nazi or anything, but I've done the missions so many times I just can't be bothered babysitting anymore. There's always that one person in the team who keeps asking "which way now" every 10 seconds. I tell them there's a map on wiki which they can look up so they can stop asking me that, which they refuse to look up. I get angry, they get angry, someone leaves...it all end badly. Everyone's fault really. Solution? I don't PUG. Everyone happy.

To RhanoctJocosa: I don 't think PUG's in general are getting worse, i just think most of them are made up of new players rather than experienced ones. The experienced ones I find are sometimes (obviously not always) a bit like me. like you said, the way of doing things has beens so refined that we find that it's a lot less time consuming and less frustrating just to play H/H.

The attitudes shown in this thread and the current "What is a bad player?" thread are the main reason I'd never join a PUG - or group with other humans, even in my guild, except for those few portions of the game where it forces you to party with actual players (most notably, since I have only Prophecies, "Adventure With An Ally" and "Across The Wall", though the latter's not worth the effort of finding and paying for a gate monkey, really ).

I'd be just the kind of player most of the rather strident elitists here'd hate, too - inexperienced, slow-reflexed, not particularly observant ('cos of the latter two, party wipe'd be inevitable if I were a Monk ), I stop to loot, check and manipulate my inventory, check collectors (frequently - there's too many of the bloody things and I forget which has what :P), free up inventory space (either merching or salvaging),read quest texts, check the maps (I get lost easily, even with the green arrow on the compass), etc., etc., etc...

Of course, the inexeperience goes away with time, though I'd probably never come up independantly with a decent build, even once I get most/all skills unlocked.

Oh yeah. You always get into a group with someone that wants to do things in 5 seconds, then rush in and die because they assumed that their team was right behind them *sigh*. Or you get the ones that looove to talk, and make a big habit of it by doing it right in the heat of battle, stressing out the team because they aren't doing their bit.

Whatever. People who don't PuG have actually tried to PuG once but failed because they fitted their own profile. *cough* Joining a PuG is exactly like an RA match, you don't know what the group is going to be like, but you do your best because it beats waiting for hours for your guild to get organised. You're not gonna get the best team, but as long as that team can function at a reasonable level, then the standards of play have been met. My mesmer wants to show you his /laugh emote. (OK OK, not 'show'. He's actually gonna laugh at you :P)

The op has it right

Before I joined a guild I depended on pugs and they are a great way to play the game, when they work, which sadly isn't often these days.

The advent of heroes and combined with recommended builds has removed much from the game.
When you do a mission with people every mission is different when you do them with an AI team they are the same.

The number of people now insisting on a specific build before you can join the party are the worst offenders and do most damage to the GW experience.
You know who you are and you bear 90% of the responsibility for where we are now.

Yes there are bad and stupid builds and strategies, but there are also many good builds and strategies.
It's not your business to beat other people into playing the game your way simply don't pick them, if they ask why tell them your concern.
If you feel you cannot spend 5 min explaining the reason you shouldn't be pugging anyway.

I completely disagree when you say it's everybody's fault.

Even though PUG's are not always of the same quality, the problem usually occurs from one or two people who are basically out of control.

A warrior who charges in and aggroes 3 enemy groups that are basically too much is one example. Aggro and luring etc are part of the game mechanics. If you aggro too much then you die. Unfortunately it takes only one person to do this.
Another thing I noticed in PUGs that fails horribly is that some people really just don't look at the chat. Even when you try to explain something they simply are oblivious to it. You can shout all you want, but they will attack the centaurs so you can't get the vine seed for the bonus and you have to start all over again.

There are people out there that I help with my heroes left and right that can be so grateful because they've been trying a certain mission for over a month...I never had that problem but there are people out there who really just don't get it.

I can say with certainty that when I go out with another guildie and we take heroes with us, we do not fail any mission with bonus in normal mode ever. After doing missions a few times and learning the little tricks you simply cannot fail it unless you do something to fail it.
What my point is with that, is that it is up to each individual person to have a learning curve. If you do not learn from your mistakes you either live in your own world where you insist everybody else should change or simply too young.

The official GW site has a wiki on it. It's not rocket science. When I see a certain amount of people with the builds they produce and the tactics they use (or rather the lack thereof) I can only hope they are 13 years old, for their sake.

And honestly, I do not see how that all could possibly be everybody's responsibility or fault.

There is just nothing you can do about people who don't listen to anyone and think it's cool to aggro as much as they can. Many PUGs fail because a too high percentage of people out there who don't get the basics of aggro, luring, killing healers first and targetting the same.
That wouldn't be so bad in the first few missions but it gets very annoying when it's the fire islands, realm of torment and such. They simply should've learned by then. That's how I see it.

A final note to the OP...all your ideas are nice theories but fail with people who always say yes and never listen. They are the worst problem with PUGs and thus none of your ideas have a chance in hell with em.

i try not to pug for mish's, but i'll pug for the "higher ranked" areas (DoA UW FoW slavers exile) because generaly the ppl there ( with the exeption of UW (unless you go urans) know what there doing lol.

When I pug i do it in low lvl area mostly to recruit for my guild. I always take the time to ask if they done the mission before, if they know how to do bonus, i warn them on what we'll be up against.

But when i get someone with the " go!go!go!" attitude, my fingers get slippery and they end up being kicked from the group.

In the case where the team is stuck with a wammo suffering from the "headless chicken syndrome" i let them run ahead and die and turn of the res on my monk.

I love to help people ingame as i was helped by lots of people, I just wont babysit or fail a mission because of a few bad apples.

Did Glint's challenge for the first time successfully this week end with the help of a Dervish. The guy was nice enough to take the time to ask me about my previous experience in that mission, advise me on how to set up my heroes and everything went well.

We where sucessfull for all the reason mention by the OP. Organization, Leadership (1 leader not 8) communication and most of all NO CHIT CHAT DURING FIGHTING

These are the exact same things i try to obtaint everytime i get in a PUG weather i lead it or not.

You assume that people are patient enough to want to discuss unimportant things like strategy. That is hard to come by in most situations.

Sometimes true, but more often than not, false. If the group is a little too chaotic/people won't listen/people don't care, leaving is much less of a headache.

People will make up reasons if they feel like it- it's that simple.

I totally agree about the monk praise part- you can't ever find any monks because people always yell at them first. Those who were here for it would remember the THK monk strike for this reason.

Are you serious? lol must have been before my time. has to because I know THK post-nerf, and that's shit easy :P

My favorite PUG's are the one's that invite everybody in the district and hit 'Enter Mission' as soon as the party's full without even bothering to look at what professions they have in their team, despite everyone saying 'Maybe it would be an idea to have at least 1 monk'

I do like to PUG most missions but if i want masters for a title or feel that its a particularly 'tough' mission then H/H are the way forward.

Some of my best experiences in this game were with pugs, and some of my worst. Pugs are a mixed bag. If I'm inclined to pug some mission, I generally look for the one whose leader is polite, and doesn't spam local (humor is an added bonus). Upon joining, if other members greet you and politely ask about your build, then it's a pretty good bet that all the ingredients for a successful pug are there. I've joined some really bad pugs for a lark, and it's amazing how bad some can be. But generally, you can tell who the bad pugs are while they're forming (by the type of "leader" forming it). If even one member of the pug acts like an idiot, that pug is going to have to work at successfully completing the mission.
So in general, I agree that it's our fault for joining a bad pug. If you don't recognize the signs before you enter the mission, you only have yourself to blame.

Pugs fail when

1) There is no puller
2) The puller over pulls or noob rushes
3) The backline moves up to the puller too soon
4) The monks (or one of them) don't know what they are doing and heal too soon or too late, run out of energy etc.
5) People fail to realize when a wipe is inevitable and don't run away and break aggro to rez up (especially annoying in missions)
6) Some moron goes afk or leaves

These are the primary reasons pugs fail and mostly why H/H are better than pugs.

1) I pull
2) I'm not an idiot, if I overpull I let myself die well away from my H/H
3) Not usually an issue with h/h, since that's what flags are for.
4) My hero monks are bloody awesome, even if they don't have Seed of Life.
5) Flags solve this too
6) h/h don't leave



Regarding monks, the problem is often that they fail to communicate with each other on who is healing whom, and one bad monk can make all the monks in the group look bad.

It's Glenn Danzig's fault. He told me so.

PvE is easy. That is the understatement of the year. To expect someone in my PuG to C-space and hit numbers 1-8 is not expecting too much. To do what the leader says, such as letting him pull, is not expecting too much.

People in PuGs do not listen. This is the problem in GW.

See above.

See above the above.

You see, if people in GW actually listened to those who know what they're on about, PuGs would succeed. But they don't. Newbies listen, whereas noobs are stubborn twats. There are many noobs in GW, and few newbies.

If he told you in the flesh he was probably off tune, don't listen to him ^^
Danzig has always ben some cross-over between Jim Morrisson and Mr Floppy, don't trust him.

this is kind of a funny thread ya know? bottom line is there a pretty simple common sense rules to success in GW. thats why i like it. my life has enough unexpected oooops moments without playing a game full of them. as long as the pugs in question understand the basic mechanics of the game then everyones better off. i read every post in this thread and they ALL have one thing in common, they basically all say dont foul up the situation. do the simple things correctly and we all win. ya cant help if some smack-stick runs in the mob LEEROYYYYYY style. or that one guy the make a dash for a chest, or my favorite the guy that no matter how many times the team screams (IN CAPS) that you CAN NOT do this or that at this junction.....he does it anyways. and why is it always a warrior lmao. now now im not knockin war's my main char is a war. they just seem to have a bit of a god complex. but i digress!! just my thoughts after reading this entertaining yet useful thread.


Cronk

The problems I experience with pugs are the following...

Rage quitters or afkers...
Inexperienced people that aggro everything...
People who don't take suggestions well...
People who switch their skill bars before they go into the mission, then get defensive when you ask if they have "xxxxxxx" skill...
People who flame and attempt to control everything...
Offensive people...
Racist people...

Which all boils down to wasted time for me. Once I got over the concept of time management, I got very good at mmo-type games. I don't waste time attempting to get a group together.

Having said all that, not every pug I've ever been in is bad. I actually met a lot of good friends in pugs, however, they are few and far between that actual good people that you meet in pugs. In my experience, people that are really good generally stay within their guild and their close-knit social circle. They don't really jump into other groups unless it is for a specific reason, and even then, normally have a guild member or two with them.

Lastly, the following is how I normally approach pugs...

I join and ping my build (courtesy)
They say cool or k
I ask them to ping their builds...
I question why they have a monk going LoD...
They kick him and get an HB monk...
I ask if everyone has the time...
One guy says he has to go in fifteen minutes...
They kick him and get another player...
On guy quits automatically...
Followed by another...
I tell everyone I will get some guild members to go...
I hop on vent and ask...
Six players want to go...
I get two of them to come...
And off we go...

PUG's suck, they rage quit, overagro, go the wrong way, heros and hench follow your every command. You fail with heros and henchies, you can only blame yourself. You fail because PUG's ragequit 3/4 way through the mission, its just not worth the grief and ignore list isnt big enough.

Agreed on that. Thats why its important to discuss things prior to entering the mission/dungeon/whatever.
People tend not to pay attention to chat during fighting. Or maybe their chat windows are cluttered with guild/alliance chat, and they forgot to disable it.
But ive found that people do respond to the minimap drawing, and especially to the dinging sound when clickink on the minimap, during battle too. So its a sovable problem.

Because its a team. Yes the team has a leader and thats not you, but you still count.

Another thing i forgot is tolerance.
I see comments like 'expecting people to c+space is too much'...
That doesnt say anything about them really, but alot about you. If you have such an attitude, dont play MMO games.

GW has alowed itself the luxury of H/H.
I dont want to start another WoW vs GW thing, but just to say, wow doesnt have heroes or henchmen. People need to pug for dungeons. And the pugs work!
Imagine why.
My guess is thats because people realize they have no other alternative, so they do their best.

While GW players tend not to put much thought about their role in a team, because they know they always have H/H who dont complain. But thats kinda anti-social if you ask me, and, honestly, sad.

GW is free to play, there are a lot of retards playing the game, and the maturity level is atrocious on average. Putting the responsibility on the "team" sounds good in practice, however, you are as weak as your weakest link. Get a bad monk in your group that decides to stop healing or ragequit in the middle of a mission and your entire mission is shot. No one is to blame for it other than the monk, and you just wasted a ton of your time because of it. H/H never ragequit, they do as you say, and you always have the builds that you think is best. Understand?

Ideally, pugs would be great, however, they tend to fail a lot (not all the time), and it has everything to do with the people on the other side of the internet. The ones that can hide behind the fact that they can pull that kind of crap and get away with it without repercussion. Leechers, ragers, racists, afkers, nubs, noobs, and wannabe leaders... can all contribute to the cause of suck pugs...

Sometimes I wish Anet would charge a monthly and begin to improve on a few things... maybe then there would be new content, less retards, and better support. Until then, we have to deal with the kids and immaturity, inconsistency and erratic behavior that is GW.

But then, if things are so horrible, how come i have great experience with pugs? Yes, theres a leecher occasionally, a leaver and all that, but we make it, despite having 7/8 peeps, and it gives me great satisfaction that we have completed a dungeon with 7 people.

There was a few times when a monk left, but the few times that it did happen, it was provoked. IE the warr dies, but eventually gets ressed, but despite that he calls the monk a noob. The monk gets pi$$ed and leaves.
If people were nice, this wouldnt happen.

Have your healer's rage on you... or your primary tank.

Who's fault bad PUGs are is a totally moot point.

The important thing is, it's never worth the time or energy to make a good PUG, since Heroes/Henchies and/or friends can always make an infinitely better party in a very, very small fraction of the time.

Therefore, it never makes sense to bother making or joining a PUG. Who's fault bad PUGs are is not even worth considering, since even knowing who's fault it is still doesn't make it worth spending (wasting, really) the time/energy to make a good PUG.

But anyhow the answer is, the fault of bad PUGs is that the vast majority of players are terrible at playing the game.

The sad thing about this thread is that i can change the OP's title to "Why heroes and henches are better" and you wouldn't even feel anything is wrong with the OP's post, even with the changed title. Why would any sane person who is not masochistic, want to go through everything that the OP has described to "try" to make PUG's that don't fail? All of the points that the OP says that a PUG fails because of a lack of, heroes and henchies have them.

Expectation.
You know exactly what to expect from your heroes and henchies especially if you understand H/H behaviour and how to control them.

Organisation.
No need, they are H/H.

Leadership.
Well duh they are H/H, they do what you say.

Communication.
Double duh, H/H remember.

The only reason anyone should PUG is if they don't have friends, guildies/alliance members to go with, or they want to fool around and socialise outside of thier guild/alliance. Other than the socialising reason, if your goal is just to complete a normal quest/mission (elite missions excluded for obvious reasons), without failure and you choose a PUG, you are a masochist and any failure is rightly, your fault.

It's because those who can play the game well where the ones who carried pad PUG players through more difficult areas moved into guild or H/H play overtime. As time goes by more do this leaving the ratio of immature, moronic penis drawing wierdo's and decent players in favor of the wierdo's.

That comment makes no sense whatsoever. We now know you have a mesmer and can use the /laugh emote...want a cookie?

Because we are playing an MMO?

WoW pve is more complex than GW pve in many ways.

WoW also tends to filter the crap players straight out of the game more than GW does. WoW also has the advantage that you aren't limited to 8 skills, making PVE a different prospect for a group of adaptable, smart players. In GW, it's all about the pre-planning of team builds. One player bringing the wrong bar, or not playing it well, can significantly mess up a whole team very easily.

I used to pug a lot back when the only other option was henchmen. Pugs sucked then and they aren't any better, or worse, now.

And I'll say this one more time : GW is NOT an MMO, it's a CORPG.

I have plenty of patience for newbies who don't know or understand. But there is no way in hell I'm going to have any time at all for a mending/frenzy/heal sig Wammo vs Shiro at the end of a game. I'm sorry, but by that point you should know better.