A discussion on how to improve PUGs

I think we already discussed how pugs fail. Anyways many don't know how to make good working builds and the most common problem with pugs is they don't synergize builds.

The PUG Mind is simple:

Monk - HB or Gtfo

Necro - SS or MM "Strictly!"

Warrior - Obsidian Flesh or "tank", Incase of a non fow/uw its some lame build with 999 self heals.

Ele - Arcane Meteor Shower or you're a noob, also they fail at running a decent elite (Mind Blast, SH or SF would be just enough) Double dragon? leave that to the old 1990's arcade game.

Mesmer - Have to say most mesmers don't know how to run or use a proper build. Backfire on warriors anyone? Also this LF cryers or kick rule doesn't apply much.

Derv - Avatar of balth dervs or some other build and 10 sec later starts pinging low energy.

Ranger - Barrage or GTFO (Don't forget to NOT equip preparations)

Paragon - Most common and good one is the imbagon build, The para can do much more than that.

Sin - Perma or kick, Sin isn't very hard to run and there are many damage combos. Success to correct build > Reading Skills description, also advised to NOT take mending to trigger such skills as golden phoenix strike.

Rit - Versatile profession, Not very experienced with it personally but seen very bad builds like multi attribute "spirit spam"

Equipment:

Equipment is important in GW with all the bonuses however most pugs just want to look leet with black voltaics (no offense to those who dyed it black) or the tormented weapons, I'll avoid mentioning what weapon mods most players use. My Tip to every player: First comes performance Vanity always last (your epeen electric spear will never cast faster than your fire wand or holy rod).

Runes:

Many think Sup runes are so good when they actually just suck, my personal suggestion: major or minor.

Also pugs tend to run gimmick builds 4 E/A, 2 Assassins, 2 Necros, Sounds familiar? as a player who hangs in ToA alot I see this everday: FoW HM clearout LF Perma Sin (tank), nukers, ss, BONDER, HB monk and sometimes a ranger. Hoy Aren't you missing the dervs, paras, sins and rits?

Note: this isn't a QQ post just pointing out my point of view on pugs. The above is just a small idea. Trolls and Flamers stay in your cage.

- Ganni

I've only had around ten PuG's in total that noticeably annoyed me out of thousands in regards to new players.

I'm ignoring PvP completely obviously.

"PuG's suck!!!" is usually the opinion of people with thin skins or REALLY serious dispositions to the game that instantly get angry at new players for "doing it wrong!!!".

You know the type that demand build pings or kicked, dictate build type or kicked, no deaths or /ragequit who react to a mission fail as if it's the apocalypse.

I find the "leet" and overly opinionated mentality of the GW community shown by many long term players far more intrusive on my enjoyment of the game.This has to be one of the rudest and close-minded MMO's I've ever played in terms of the welcome new or inexperienced players get with an instant focus on "win or else!" with no tolerance given to any form of failure or error.

GW is serious business apparently.

In conclusion I agree with your suggestions but also think much of the majority opinion towards PuG's would change if people just lightened up a bit.

Go go nubs and my respect to the veterans that actually take the time.

Jesus H. Christ people, leadership is not a black box.

I get the vibe that all the people who hate pugs never had the stones to form a party. You know what? I've never had a bad pug experience. Not once. Mostly because my pugs are always aware that I'm in charge. If they give me shit, I replace em. All is well! If you check their bars and vet them for insanity, you'll find that those left over after the cull are good folks.

And let's be honest. This game isn't all that hard, even in HM. I mean, the one time I tried DoA I literally fell asleep at the keyboard it was so dull. Same thing happened in Slavers. You can generally get by with non-optimal builds so long as the people work together. And with a modicum of effort, you can get that to happen. Hell, simply acting like a human being gets you a ton of cred.

So, in conclusion, the single solitary factor that remains constant in all your failed groups is you.

PUG's will not getter because they are full of people. This game is just too old, and the veteran players are just too bored to not do things their own way.

1 in 10 PUG's might actually have some decently skilled players in it, but the player base is just no longer large enough to sustain the numbers in outposts.

Until we have more players in each outposts PUG's will never come back as a viable mode of gameplay.

I've tried that a few times. It takes time to get decent pug'ers. The rest of the team gets impatient and ends up leaving. Then you end up spending lots of time just trying to get a team for a simple mission.

You can go through every so-called tutorial in the game without skipping and hardly learn a thing. They're all useless. This is why a majority of the players all run horrid builds. The game teaches them nothing. They have to learn everything on their own or through others. I still find it surprising that there's not a single example of a good build to be found in game.

Major QFT.

A lot of the people on this forum know about my PUG experiences - generally not the best... even when I form my groups and I feel there's no a-holes, there are. They might behave well in the outpost, but I've had a LOT of leechers, leavers and general "OMFG THIS GROUP SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!" once in. Frankly, I don't even know why I personally PUG anymore. I love the social aspect in this game, meeting new people and whatnot, but when 90% of my groups fails because the people in the team are too busy calling each other "noobs" than killing or healing... there's a problem.

And that's despite the filtering I do:

- I kick anyone who doesn't reply after 2-3 minutes upon group entry, less if it's a crowded spot where I can easily find people.
- I kick the people who go "gogogogogog". Absolutely drives me nuts.
- I kick noob callers, and people who seem too rude; you might be exp'ed, if you're a annoying 'tard you're not getting in my team.
- I accept build criticism, but DO NOT try to get me to play O. Flesh tank on my warrior, and tell me it's the only way a warrior should be played. I've kicked people because they were whining I wasn't running cookie cutter.

And despite all that stuff I still get arrogant people who love to rage after a single death, who complain that someone else isn't doing their job while they're standing 30 meters away from the team, who leech, insult, argue with everyone in the team, go AFK on long-terms without warning and come back saying "OMFG U GUYZ DIDNT WAIT FOR ME, I WAS GONE EAT!!!!" and draw genitalia on the map.

Okay, now that I've let that outta my system once again, my suggestions:

- Report for leeching in PvE.
- Make it so every slot in your party has differently colored dots on radar corresponding to color when drawing on the radar (1 is green, 2 is blue. 3 is yellow, and so on). That dude who draws genitalia, you'll find it effing fast.
- Party leader window with everyone's builds showing.

All I know is you guys have to grow some hair. My goodness. Half the things you complain about are easily overlooked by someone with a great deal of tolerance like myself.

Regardless there are a few exceptions here and there.

Genitalia drawing is hilarious, but I can understand how it would get annoying, thankfully not many people do it so it's a moot point.

Being able to see everyone's build makes the game boring, just hope they listen and if they don't have fun making fun of their skills in Guild/Alliance chat, failing, getting a new teammate after and or using your amazing skills to carry that person who sucks.

Basically everything Xander up there said I disagree with in some way, I think it adds fun/frustration to the game we need so we don't get bored and log off.

Instead of trying to fix PUGs you guys need to decide on what's wrong with them?

For me, the problem is that I'm not a farmer and I don't like rushing. That means that I'll never play in a PUG where it's obvious that I'll need to use a FOTM build, as complete efficiency is something only farmers and rushers care about.

For the farmers and rushers of the world, the problem is people who bring anything but FOTM builds, because that makes the team slower and less efficient.

For the extremely thin-skinned, the problem is that they may be told their build is "OMG NOOB!" and someone may draw a penis on the radar.

Three different and contradictory problems with PUGs. And all three can be solved by allowing 7 heroes.

The drawing thing is annoying, though, because they usually like to blank out any attempts at drawing important things on the radar, like arrows. So you can't see things like lines or arrows because some guy's busy scribbling "NOOB", "WTF", and drawing genitalia.

I would say that depends. You have the guy who sounds perfectly sane in the outpost and then ragequits because someone didn't run the exact route he wants. The demanding ones are usually the ones you need to look out for, though. Someone who goes "...I can run the build, but you'll have to give me directions" is more likely to stay on and complete the mission fairly competently.

I Get that feeling too, most pugs are like: MICHAEL PHELPS IS REACHING US FASTER U NOOBS FASTER OR WE LOSE TEH GOLD MEDALZ.

PuGs will suck until the game requires them not to suck in order to do things. The average quality of PuGs isn't going to change, but the quality of the one you're in can be.

If you want a PuG group to do will, it has to have direction. Rather than complaining that PuGs suck, remember that you, too, are part of that PuG - and if you're better than them, lead them. If that means you have to acting like your group is in danger of wiping to Onyxia, then so be it. If you sit back and let people play badly while thinking of how your Guru sob story will be written, you're not communicating, and in a team game, that often means you're sucking right along with them.

If you're the group leader, then it's even easier to make the above happen.

A discussion on how to improve PUGs

Solution: remove heroes.

Look, if you're one man alone pugging seven, your pug is going to stink. Unless you spend a LOT of time forming it, anyway. (Such that you kick the idiots and are left with only patient people willing to spend 30 minutes forming a group that doesn't fail.)

There are lots and lots of little signals that bad players give off. As you play more, you learn to recognize them. You should find that you almost invariably get what you expect once you learn to read player signals. The pinged bar tells you something, the response to questions (or lack thereof) tells you something, dialogue in team chat before you're 8/8 tells you something.

It's like any leadership deal - if you recognize and kick the idiots before starting, everyone else's opinion of you (and their willingness to listen) will go up. If you can bring a key piece of the puzzle or two with you, such that you can enforce your will on the group, so much the better. (Eg: don't make me mad or I'm out and I'm taking my monk with me.)

With that said, if you expect pure pugs to play above a certain level, expect to be unpleasantly surprised. Good players network. Get good and find one of those networks. Then you'll never lack for good players.

Exactly.

IMO more often than not it's the expectation of "must win" and non acceptance of error.In short it's the expectations of the player that makes PuG's fail.Most expect cookie cutter builds with perfect execution with no room for error.

Best actual implementation idea I've read thus far.I'm not to fussed with random penis pics but the ping spammers really need kicking.The "pingpingping!!!" panic attacks drive me nuts at times.

That's exactly what annoys me. It's not the fact that they're drawing "genitalia", it's the fact that in a lot of the case, they're blocking out instructions given on radar and the rest of the party either stop to make him stop or worse tag along and block out the radar totally. That's why I suggested colored lines on the radar - at least, you'll know who he is.

By the way, such things don't offend me - try to lead a group where there's 1 leeching, 1 AFK, three that are arguing about builds and one who's drawing on the map in order to prevent you from giving instructions. You can't work with people who don't want to work with anyone in the team.

That's when you start using them for your own entertainment!

I've been pugging since teh beginning of GW around 25% of my play time.

I was once doing a mission with a pug and we failed and we decide to try other build without anyone leaving the group. Finally we ended trying 5 times with the same group.

This good pug experience happend 1 time in my 4,000 hours of gw.

Thrust me, pugs are bad and always will. The mentality of ppl kills pug.

Nope, you can't. You can try to work with people, but if they don't want to work with anyone, that's it. I've ragequit groups a few times over things like that. I can understand people not liking to be told things like 'omfg stop leeroying noob' but, y'know, if someone is saying - civilly - things like 'stay behind this line', listen.

Being patient can go a long way to making your PUG better, and I maintain that it does... but eh, sometimes it's not worth it. I usually just make a mental note of 'people I really don't want to play with again' and leave it at that. No need to go around in localchat shouting OMFG PERSON X IS NOOB or PMing the person to scream at him/her. That's childish behaviour, and probably one of the things I hated most about quite a few PUGs.

I'll agree, the first run you just laugh your butt off at the things people do. The second run, less funny... but still, you can at least tell your friends about your horrible adventures.

But when you want to eventually succeed, after 3-4 tries with different teams and getting the same results over and over again, it gets fairly annoying. That's when I usually log off or switch in-game activities.

The learning it on your own factor is something I've always loved about GW. As for build examples, we did have the premade pvp builds at one time. The problem for GW in giving new players build examples is the constantly updated skills. Many builds which are good at one time become bad later.

One thing i'd like to see in GW2 is a "not ready" feature as someone suggested earlier.

Like in FPS Match Server Mods, everyone has to press the use button to ready up. Then when everyone in the server has readied up the match begins.

Would stop afk (then not being able to resign because of afk ><) happening, or if someone goes afk and you dont hear on vent before gvg etc.

Yeah, that'd be handy.

Man, only time I've seen penises on the radar since 2006 is when I've drawn em. That seems to open the ole penisgates.

Oh, and seriously, leechers and afks? Getting rid of them is like two seconds of prep work: "If anyone leeches, whole team is gonna leave and remake. If you need to piss, etc, do it now. No going afk for more than like a couple of minutes once we go in. [wait for bio] Okies, let's go!"

Never have to deal with leechers because I don't bluff. I have had to remake a couple parties, but a policy is only as useful as your willingness to carry it out.

I really like the post idea and your suggestions. If you do not play with real people why are you playing a MMO, simply play a single player game. I understand many folks have different reasons to play and playing styles, so its best to have a group with similar goals and playing styles.

The number one item that will make PUGs more success and fun for everyone and every other issue pales in importance is respectful communication. Because this game is suppose to be family oriented, PG-13, the communication should be in that manner. It is also much easier to voice communcate than to type everything, but I understand that this is can be a bit more difficult to manage. Voice communication is more personal and puts more accountability on people, so generally folks that do join in are more responsible to the team, but it may not be for everyone (especially players with special needs).

So as others said, besides goals and objectives of the team being clear, my expectations is everyone ping there skill bars and are open to suggestions that better fit with the team (part of the communication). Team synergy is important and is like any team there are roles each team member will be filling and there are certain skills that may be either essential or worthless (redundant) to the team so skills should be reviewed.

I am a long standing experience player,it seems like I learn more from playing with good experience PUG groups than many of our Guild teams, as the experiences of PUG are going to be significantly different, in general, than our guildies. Although not a perfect indicator, I think it may be good to be able to see how many hours each player has played to give an indication of experience. If you are exploring other parts of the game that you have not ever done before most folks are pretty responsive to suggestions, its folks that have done it many times one way that seem to be less responsive to suggestions, which I may be guilty of as well.

Personally, the old UA with infinite range was a PUG friendly skill. I mean i actually like doin UW with pugs when that skill was available. It was low stress because even if they failed, they had a chance to redeam themselves. Now its very high stress, and if you failed, guess what, you ruined the run for everyone.
It can be easily seen that with teh UA nerf, UW puging is out of question now, do you really want to trust some random guy to not screw up mountains.

But you could clock up hours of play just doing things like HFFF.

I think once people do it many times one way it becomes more set in stone for them. It's not 'maybe we shouldn't bring this build', but 'this build WORKS and YOU suck, because you should be good enough to play this build!' On top of that, once a build becomes sufficiently well-known and workable, other people who may not have tried it as many times start taking it as a set-in-stone build.

Rage gets things done.

Depends of the kind of rage IMO. Sometimes yes, it works - people will finally listen once you've gotten your point, even if it took you to scream at them for a while. However, I've noticed a lot of groups don't respond well to rage. If they rage at you, it'll be okay for them, but not for someone to rage at them (double standard). Then you have the one who rage but stop the whole group, usually people in leading position (ex. a permasin or a puller).

Then you have the groups where if the angry one leaves the team, the rest of the team will go on at a faster rate... so yeah, I do believe rage can get things done.

Won't beat decent communication coupled with experience and willingness though.

Well, nobody likes to be called a noob or be raged at. And quite often the people who rage really fast are the people who think that for whatever reason they're waaaay better than you. It isn't always the case, and sometimes they rage for something as simple as "how dare you tell me that I've DONE THIS RUN EVERY SINGLE DAY" /ragequit. The people in the best position to rage are the people who know they can get away with it because the party needs them. Like, back during the ursan days, the party could continue if one ursan dropped, but if one monk /ragequit, you'd see a whole slew of /resigns.

Of course, rage is more effective when the otherwise mild person gets pissed off. Which is why you should always try being nice first - people actually sit up and pay attention when the nice, mild, civil person starts yelling. Someone who goes in and shouts "NOOB" at every opportunity is just going to be classified under "jerk".

I get to experience enough rage everyday, it's called work. I laugh when a player begins acting like their mother was just stabbed 25 times in the face just because someone made a bad aggro, or ran in the wrong direction.

If I am playing a video game to unwind and getting pissed off enough to start screaming at people, then it's time to "re-evaluate".

Well, shouting can get you attention, but if it still doesn't work and you're getting mad at people, there's always /ragequit. It's rude, but I'm not inclined to stay with people who can't get it or won't get it or who have been generally shouting 'noob' at each other.

I couldn't agree more. I tend to ask party members to ping, and give them advice on their build as opposed to the usual "OMG nub build GTFO!"

I'd rather help someone learn the game mechanics better than degrading them to the point that they act like tards out of anger. My friends who got me into playing helped me out, as well as very respectable players....I like to return the favor. Positive reinforcement and constructive criticism is one thing, turning into a leet nazi is simply wrong imho.

As for compass drawing...very very annoying. Seems like every kid in Tyria is infatuated with drawing swastikas and genitalia...I don't get it nor do I like it.

I know you're trying to help but you really come across as a strict douchebag. Wtf only 2 mox? Not that I care I don't use him but what kind of shit is that? OMFG spams can be gotten around by spamming in lowercase...those are jsut some examples. These regulations not only fail(in both senses...) but are also shitty and probably would piss many ppl off.
Btw, how can you say most ppl don't PuG? I see tons of PuGs around...just not in areas like DoA...

I think that one key element is missing from this discussion: natural selection. Good players either join guilds, or learn to win on their own. Mediocre players improve, and PUG until they get tired of the crap, and then join guilds, or learn to win on their own. Bad players just keep on pugging.

The ranks of the PUG community keep getting thinned like this until you are left with a pure collection of idiots and tards. And these guys don't want to take the time to get better, so why are trying to force them?

Prognosis: PUGs are bad, and only get worse over time.

Who does this help? The good player, that can make a good skill bar? If he can do that, he's already done it with three heroes plus a few henchies. He didn't need the crutch that four more heroes would provide! So maybe you are trying to help the horrible player, that puts seven necromancer skills on a mesmer skill bar, and thinks it's leet? This guy wouldn't know what a good bar looks like if it hit him upside the head. You think that he's going to get better putting together eight skill bars? Not likely! Or maybe you want to allow him to succeed through brute force, thinking that seven heroes would be better than H/H? A bad hero is worse then a henchie, just as a bad player is worse than a hero.

That said, I'd absolutely like to have seven heroes! I'm just not convinced that it will do anything to fix PUG quality.

While there have been some interesting ideas, some QQing going on, flaming and other things, I have to say overall lets just leave the game as it is. Honestly, when you first bring players into the group you should all be communicating and getting on the same page in the first place. I tend to find that the noobs in the game will present themselves especially if you decide to wait a couple extra minutes in town while the genitals are being drawn and other things are happening.

For me as a leader of my own guild and a semi respectable one at that, I find that running with PUGs at least in my mind is a great method of recruiting people. For me, this allows for me to see how a player is, where he's at as far as knowledge of the game, if they're open to improvement and if they are in fact noobs as opposed to newbs (there is a difference!) The vast majority of the time, even if we've got 1 leaver or leecher or noob in the group, the rest of us at least find a way to make up for that broken link. Personally I like the challenge myself. Very seldom do i find myself as a modest player amongst NOOOBS and find myself wanting to leave but I stay the course anyway.

As far as people and their builds go, sometimes you do in fact get that one person who has an interesting build that can actually be better than the conventional and I'm always open to giving people that shot. Myself, I LOVE running the spirit healer rit build as opposed to a traditional monk heal build because of its massive healing power and ease of e-management. Many would look at me and my build and would probably wanna kick me until i break down the build to them but those who have ran with me have been absolutely stunned.

I find that people like to stay enclosed in their little bubble world and don't like to change much off the things they have come accustomed to but i find that the only way you really truely learn the game is to play unconventionally while keeping with some convention at the same time. It can be frustrating and on those lazy days its fine to do things the conventional way but overall, its through unconvetion do you become a better player. Typically a ranger is someone that in a conventional group says "stay in the back" but with a group of noobs, sometimes you as the ranger are better than that supposed tank warrior and end up frontlining for the group (Throw Dirt and LR make life wonderful in PvE) and because of that you become better at another aspect of the game as a player and as the character. Alright, I know at this point I'm babbling but I think there are enough nuggets in here that people get the general idea of what I'm saying.

Yes. It doesn't have to be offensive, which is where it becomes bad.

Though it's not so much a tool of communication as a tool of reminding people who aren't doing their job what exactly they need to be doing. If I want something targetted/interrupted and the group is in danger because that's not being done, I don't want to waste time with anything in the process of reminding them that this needs to be done right now with no argument.

I guess the first thing to be answered is - why not PUG? We can find all sorts of people that *do* use them berate those that do not, but that isn't really helping. You need to listen to why they do not.

There are two main reasons - inability of most people PUGGING to play and general rude behavior. If one were to solve those two issues then many would PUG (I know I would from time to time). The last reason, and even if the first two were fixed the reason I would still mostly hench, is that I like to be able to goof off, go AFK, and all sorts of things. I will *not* subject other people to that and the H/H haven't complained yet However that problem can not be fixed and is a valid reason for the H/H to exist (along with fleshing out a party when few are online or doing what you need to do).

Many of the things listed (like a global party search, ability to see builds, etc) would help, but it still doesn't really adress the underlying problem and get more people willing to PUG - and that is bad players.

So, how to do that? IMO something along the lines of the "dishonorable" system in PvP. For the most part the people complaining about it were the people that were intended to be hit by it and, while not perfect by any means, it mostly did what was intended. However I fully know and agree that it would not translate at all over to PvE.

So, I guess the next thing I ask is *why* are people bad at the game (rude or griefing, well, that *is* something that a pure dishonorable system would punish). I don't really think most are griefers, though there are some. I think most get drug through missions by others and end up too far, too fast, and no real way to catch up. In other MMO's their lack of level or equipment would mean they hit a brick wall, in GW not so much (though I MUCH prefer GW's system, none are perfect and this is what I see as it's largest flaw). I know in my experience that most of the really bad players were willing to learn, but my gosh if I'm at Unwaking Waters and they have never heard of melee vs ranged damage in attacking Kuunavang and how GW's aggro system works (just like other MMO's - right - *sigh*) there is just *soooo* much to teach that I don't really have the time. I have no wish to punish those people, they are trying, but they pretty much kill PUGS. As the game population ages PUGS have become more and more filled with those people, they stand around until they find a guild group taking a person or two along and get in WAY over their heads (and, as said, they are treating GW like a traditional MMO and it isn't).

IMO a rating system is needed. It needs to be either "positive" or "negative" otherwise people will say "level 200+ only plz" and the "negative" rating needs to really only be given to those that are *not* willing to learn or are intentional griefers. It needs to be flexible enough that bad players that are trying are given the time to learn but, if they are only playing lip service to learning are still denied. The negative rating shouldn't affect anything other than some indication that they have it (your choice to still take them and the H/H are always happy). I'm not sure how to do this, or heck if it can even be done, but right now that would go A LONG way towards making PUGS worthwhile to join.

So, for the rest of my post I would say feel free to argue, I haven't had more than the 10-15 minutes in the shower after I read this to think on it. The above, well it's a message board so argue away, however I firmly think it should be listened too. I'm not anywhere close to married to what I write below, I just think a rating system that meets my above requirements *really* needs to be in *any* game that is fully (or nearly) soloable if you want PUGS to succeed.

So, my initial stab at it: allow people in the group to assign "dishonor points" for bad behavior. Each member can apply one dishonor point per instance per zone to each player in the group. Dishonor points last for a duration of 5 days. Each time a *party* zones or completes a mission everyone who has not received a dishonor point gets awarded one honor point. Honor points last for 3 days, dishonor points for three days. One must accrue 20 dishonor points to be dishonored, in any outpost said person has a big red "X" displayed over their head. I would also add a minimum time limit before an honor point was added to keep people from farming them.

IMO the above system meets most (if not all) of my requirements. It takes at least a few instances full of 8 people to get the big red "X" so chances are that you are not trying to learn and is a small enough that you can't grief too many groups either. Plus it is easy enough to get "honor" points that it isn't *that* hard to get rid of the "X" if you try. People who mostly H/H are not hurt as they will need to have *several* bad runs to get an "X". Hnor points should be awarded often but don't last very long so they aren't easy to farm and then go grief others, yet for people who regularly group with other humans you should have a high "honor" quotient even if you have a few groups that are out to only apply dishonor to other people. Also those said groups should retain enough dishonor points that they can not be too disrupting as they will have to run around and zone often enough to counter their own dishonor points that they can not make *that* much an impact.

Eh, PUGS killed PUGS and they killed themselves by not being fun. The vast majority of people out there play to have fun, not to rush through the game as fast as one can or get some great rewards. The reason they are not fun is with the behavior of the individuals in question and unless any solution given changes the behavior of the individuals then nothing will work.