EXPerienced or not EXPerienced?

I (and the rest of my guild) think of it like this.
Newbie = New player (although we try not to use the term Newbie to avoid confusion)
Noob = Has to do with attitude. As you so eloquently put it, a total retard/moron. (eg: Level 20 Warrior who runs expects everyone to follow him the wrong way as he goes and aggroes a huge mob group that is completely out of the way. That's a noob IMO)

I like playing with newer players sometimes, because I find a lot of them are eager to learn. Some are just downright a$$holes though.

Wow alot of hate on the exp marker.

I don't really see the problem. When I do farm runs (Sorrow's Furnace mostly) I do it from my friends list. When we need someone to fill a spot we advertise "Experienced team LF XXX" When the person comes on we asked them, "Are you experienced in quest X" at which point they always say yes. Now about 50-70% of the time it quickly becomes clear the person has never done this before or only done it one or two times and is quickly confused. We don't advertise experienced because we hate new people, but because we want fast effective farming. Is that wrong? I recognize we can't have that mean anything (refer back to number of people who lied), but to people who want to not waste their time what else could or should be advertised? If advertising "experienced" or "pro" is elitest or doesn't show anything, what instead should be advertised?

In retrospect this all sounds like the HA problem. Emotes=skill except not at all. Emote shows you put time in at least. Farming emotes would solve everything, rank three is a sheep and rank twelve shows a big corn husk. (I couldn't mean that less seriously, don't flame)

I usualy declare my exp points when looking for a group. I hit nearly 4mil exp so far and see this as a way of declaring how good I am or am not. I never really thought about some of your points b4 but in the end, farming or not it still is a good indication that you have been playing the game for a while and know how to play and also I have played the most difficult areas to get my FoW armour etc. So Im either an exp farming, lucky-drop (then able to buy FoW) nOOb or an experienced player who has earned my exp and FoW armour the hard way.

I think to be honest high exp is still a good sign not a bad one...really how can anyone say the opposite?

I yell gogogo
Mending FTW!

No seriously, half the time they are experienced, and the other half they arent. Just add them to your group but dont enter the mission. Talk to them for 5 minutes, in those 5 minutes, i usually find out if its a halfwit 7 year old who will run and aggro, or a mature player who will be a team player.

True, best way is to talk, easiest is ask about skills, but just dont allways assume you have a better build than someone who has been playing Warrior for 10 months. If you have a prefference then ask... dont demand otherwise declaring someone a nOOb, he just might have a better build than you are asking for.

A lot of the time I re-do missions to help people out and cant allways remember the missions because it has been months since I last played them, so its safe to say Im allways open to having someonelse take lead and tell me what to do, then I just consentrate on doing that best. Othe times like FoW chest runs I generaly take the lead and 'ask' others to bring certain skills. One thing I do insist on is them bringing rez otherwise i wont rez them myself.

Had a guy in ToA a couple of nights ago spamming this:

"2.5 MIL EXP W/M ALL ELITES,COMPLETED GAME 5 TIMES, LOOKING TO HELP GROUP BECAUSE I'M BORED"

Suffice to say this guy was spamming the message before I went into UW & was still spamming it when I got out about one & a half hours later.

Can't imagine why these guys think spammnig messages like this will get them in groups. Just convinces me that they're 12 year olds with ego issues.

Low or high level doesn't necessarily demonstrate experience. While low lvl are certainly at a disadvantage because of lower stats, they might be their 3rd or 4th character with all unlocked skills from previous characters.

I've played Crystal Desert missions with my lvl 10 and I was instructing everyone on what to do and we did just fine. However, it was hard for me to get in a group... I find it easier to start my own groups.

I think I saw you saying that in Abaddon's Mouth a while back, and funny but true, I also saw a warrior in RoF saying a similar bit about being housebroken...

made me laugh (I would have picked you for our group but in both cases it was already full and we were just taking a few minutes to get set and coordinated)

EDIT:

@mrbb

I would trust their knowledge of the mission/quest/area. I would not trust that their character has enough health or attribute points. I am fairly sure that my lvl 20 monk running 16 healing and 13 divine favor would have been a better option in keeping the team healthy than the lvl 10 monk at 7 healing and 6 divine (I don't know actual stats just making a point). I would have been happy to have lower damage output (if he went smiter) or added healing, but to assume that he could handle all healing for a 8-person team is a bit...silly

Had the lvl 10 monk, or his lvl 11 buddy, not been so set that he was THE healer (what if I reeeally wanted to heal?) I would have stayed on the team and we could have worked something out. Kinda along the lines of people being impatient - people being pushy does the same thing to me.

Your right, talking to them about skills is always best. Saying exp doesn't mean alot if your skill bar is totally nuts. Now I don't mean something alittle different, I mean completly insane. To continue my Sorrow's Furnace example, if the Minion Mancer is carrying Taste of Death or the Warrior has Sheild of Judgement, they are immediatly gone (I do ask about skills and these actually do receive kicks). Skills that work against what is good for the team show they don't get it. When I run the SS I don't ever take Awaken the Blood or Blood Ritual, but I think I found things that work better. If a group didn't take me based on my leaving those out, I would just laugh at their narrow mindedness.

I tried that "useless mesmer lfg, guaranteed to die, but has nice dance" nobody chose me. Then I tried the "experienced.." thing. Erm, nobody chose me. D'oh!

i ususally jst party with my guild. but if i do go with other people i would talk to them first if they had said that and see how EXP they were so i dont waste my time with some newb who picked up on that phrase.

Meh I would some information along with that.

Like:

"Exp Tank that won't aggro everything and will listen LFG"

Talk to any pug for 5 mins and you're likely going to end up with half of them leaving.. cause you took too long.

I usually ask them a few questions, after which I can pretty well tell if they are Exped or not.

I like the "byebyebyebyebyebye" Response...

I have actually met people that are really good that are like that though, they only were timed.

I like inviting people into my group then when were all ready to go- say nm noobs I'm going to go solo the mission

or spam selling 5 black dyes for 1k each then keep changing districts and keep the pms going.. my favorite prank is getting a whole group into fow and then aggro the whole field and disconnect.. sometimes for fun too I'll scam people out of thier ectos

Good. That way, you don't end up with leavers halfway through the mission because it took too long. And why are you complaining? Those are the unreliable ones, anyway.

Yet they have it in PvP and it seems to me 9/10 who are rank anything obtained it IWAY, not the right way.

r9+ = Nice IWAY tiger, go play a real build.
Few million exp/fow armour = wow you farm a lot.

Blind invites, friend's list, guild, reputation. I could care less as to which it comes from, I just want to play. If in my mind I know I'm experienced, and can keep the group going long enough to get some fun out of it, it doesn't matter what the rest of them do. If they suck, big deal; just makes it more of a challenge. You wanna run around with a group of experienced players who barely break a sweat in battle, I would imagine that can get boring pretty quickly. Yes it's fun to play with people you know, there isn't any pressure to perform at 100%. Someone dies, you make a joke. In a PUG, emotions flare, you don't know what's going to happen next.

If you're playing with 7 other people who know what they're doing, you can play at a lower level than them since they'll pick up the slack. There is always room for improvement, why limit your abilities?

The only way you can really tell if they're experienced is when they're in the group. Ask them how much they know about the area, could they list off the skillbar of any random enemy that you'll encounter? Do they know the exploits, despite how much some people might hate them at least it shows they're familiar with the area (to some degree). But regardless of anything, if they're wearing full knights/ascalon they better say simply for vanity purposes and they'll equip some better gear when the fight starts. Otherwise, boot them please. They have to learn.