The Much Maligned PUG

i have such a small guild that i have been through this game 4 full times surviving only on PUGs. i have been the necro (never had trouble getting a group); i have been an Ele (never had the monk shout at me for trying to tank when i'm being chased across the map by bladed Aatxes); i have been a warrior (never been shouted at for being Leeroy when i'm trying to take the aggro for the casters); and finally i have been a Monk (never had a warrior charge of to certain death and then spam i'm dead!).

i have encountered no real problems in my PUGs. yet from reading this forum you would think that the entirety of all PUG population is made up of total N00bs.

i think that this is undeserved.

i have met a few warriors who do not listen but they are always only come one at a time, i can survive without them. i have been i groups of people who are willing to spend 15mins whilst i outline the 'how not to die' rules in UW and FoW and Thunderhead and Aurora Glade.

People only remember their bad experiences. People only post their bad experiences. Its not much of a post to say; today i played with an OK PUG.

the secret to playing with PUGs is patience. they do not know you, you must explain things fully because they do not know your play style.

i'm sure people have had good experiences with PUGs and i would like to hear them. as i'm sure everyone does.

Some groups gel some don't. but a good player can still play in a group that they don't get on with. don't take offence, don't give offence. only make jokes about Koreans


one of mine was when i did all of the Kryta missions with the same group. no fails. no deaths. no sticky moments.
we simply gel'd. all are now on my friends list.

(and yes, PUGs are good for expanding your friends list. not your ignore list. my ignore list has none.)


just give people a chance eh?

Guild Wars isn't my first experience with Pick up Groups and won't be my last.

While I'm glad you have the patience and tolerance for them, I have to say that they are maligned for a reason. I would rather eat a bowl of asbestos than play with most of the people I've met in PuGs again.

But I would not be so narrow-minded to say that anyone of quality will be limited to playing with Guild Mates or friends and that all PuGs are bad. They definately are one of the leading reasons for people being cliquish, though.

PUGs FTW... it's the best way to meet people, instead of just staying inside a little bubble and never experience the strategies of other players.

Bitching about PUGs mostly applies to PVP.

Bitching about a PVE group would be kind of silly because PVE is so simple to get through, that people can't screw it up for you that much.

edit: with the exception of FoW and UW

I do have to say that the majority of my PUG experiences have been horrible. It's always funny when you can beat a mission much easier using henchmen than player characters. However, despite my apparent bad luck with PUGs, I've had some really priceless experiences with them too.

I will never forget the PUG I did Abbadon's Mouth with on my ranger. I had advertised myself as a Choking Gas ranger, 'cause at the time I was set up to use Practiced Stance to keep Choking Gas up constantly. I got invited to a group, and we went into the mission with a few words on strategy, but nothing much. Once we got in the mission though, it was stunning. We breezed through Abbadon's Mouth so quickly, and decided we'd give Hell's Precipice a try. It was the same story there, as we only had 2 deaths throughout the entire course of the mission and the enemies fell quickly.

I had a good experience with thunderhead. we were a very well balanced group for the mission, everone listened to one another and it was a breeze! i had no idea why people said the mission was so hard until i attempted to help my guild mates through it! HA!

Thunderhead isn't hard. It is one of those missions where people who either lack common sense or are emotionally unbalanced can easily sabotage it for their entire group.

Alot of people end up joining pickup-spam groups and get their PUG experience from that.

Your PUG experience will suck if you don't talk to the people in your group through PM's first. Just ask them what they do, and as long as they don't say something incredibly stupid let them in (roughly half will say something incredibly stupid or nothing at all, these are the people who would have screwed you over otherwise).

Some people in this game are jerks, and others are really cool, just like in real life. I've also had a lot more good experiences from PUGs than bad.

PUGs in PvP, particularly HoH are probably the most annoying for me. I'm no veteran at PvP, but I'm no n00b either. My character's versatile enough and sensible enough to adapt to most groups, but unfortunately, even when the Tournament group I'm in are winning, there will always be one who will say "OMFG u suXX0R!" and leave, even though the opposing team were wiped out, and leave so the third round is a foregone conclusion (Usually it's the W/Mo or the Mo/Me that goes)

PvE PUGs are largely a different matter. I've only had 3 or 4 terrible experiences with quest PUGs, maybe a few more with mision PUGs, and some fantastic ones with some PUGs for some of the more difficult co-ops. PUGs only need 1 bad apple to spoil them, but in a team of 8, that means another 7 are potentially good players, and all feel exactly the same towards the one who's ruining it.

95% of my PUGs have been fine. Compliments eary tend to smooth things over. Last night joined a pick up group and finished the last quest. Everyone just gelled perfectly.

If you ever have the chance to be a Monk with a character "Magical Powder" as the supporting blood necro, do it. Best necro I have ever worked with.

I was in one group where the leader just spit profanities off at everyone. Group was together for all of 2 minutes. Bad groups are a rare instance for me.

I only play in PUGs and I've been fine with it. Yes you run into a few jerks, but there really hasnt been that many to make me hate the game or anything. I've met many more nice people than idiots.

While most of the time I just use henchies for side quests, I have used PUGs for all the storyline missions up to the Wilds (as far as I've gotten). Most have seemed to work well enough to get the mission done without restarts, and some have been very enjoyable experiences (notably running one of the Kryta missions with myself, 2 other R/?'s and a ?/R or two. Power Rangers jokes the whole way through ). I've had a couple where a tank or monk decided to drop out, as well. That kinda sucked, but those tended to be the groups where we were having fun and decided to keep going and ended up beating the mission. I've also had people do stupid stuff during missions, but never anything that endangered the rest of the group (I had a team member run into the big horde of charr that Rurik says to "avoid at all costs" in Ruins of Surmia. Quickest death I've ever seen). People complain about PUG's, but I think that "one bad apple..." just about sums up the PUG experience.

That's my two cents about PUGs (in PvE at least, I haven't tried Tombs yet).

Ann, you make some terrific points. My friend's list is filled with tons of people who are incredibly skilled with whom I stomped the PVE missions and quests perhaps better than if I were with my guild. Because you musn't forget, when someone good has no one in his guild to play with, what else to do other than join a PUG?

very true point, but usually it starts off with an aggro issue. Then an argument, then someone drops from group. I think it's silly to get worked up over a quest in a videogame.

the aggro arguments and the quitters are my biggest beef. Even when you pull and try to be careful, it's like you got the baby Rex in the scene in Lost World. They go nuts, and it takes EVERYONE to get out of target range to shake that aggro.

But I have gotten into a lot of good pugs so far as well. The best is when you get into one that wants to keep going with two or three missions. That really rocks.

One of my best nights so far...

I got in with a group and we rolled along, doing a few missions then got to riverside where you have to split up to go on. The next mission only me and one other person from that original pug re-formed. We had to add four new people.

Then it got ugly. People were arguing, someone quit, the whole fun and chemistry was gone. The monk and I, the two original members went back to the outpost and managed to get through the mission ourselves.

We arrive at the next mission outpost and lo and behold there's the rest of our group! We re-team and we all had a blast doing another two missions. It was really exciting and fun because we all knew each other and what our chars did at that point.

Nights like those are rare and I don't expect to experience a repeat of that evening. Was a lot of fun though.

Don't forget the Penises on the Minimap crowd, and the racist types! Just today somebody was drawing swastikas on the minimap in one of my groups.

That did wonders for group cohesion, of course.

Pugs are how good guilds/friendships are made
*cough* sB

THANK YOU! I thought I was the only one. I too have great PUG groups, and my friend list is huge. My ignore list is 0. I don't know WHAT is wrong with everyone at these forums. I'm beginning to wonder if they're completely sane.

i have like 6 in friends
and like 2 in ignore
i feel so such a loaner

Indeed.

Ignore list is useless to me. If someone is griefing in the team or whatever, chances are I'll probably never see or hear from them again. So why waste space? Although I have pretty much the same opinion about the friends list as well. Not too social, so I tend not to ask to group.

You Are So Nice...
Just What I Needed
The Compliment ^____^

There are nice pugs. Though, bad experiences can scar ur opinion of the PUGs in general. I've had too many bad PUG experiences. As a result, most of the missions i do, i do them with clansmen or with henchies. If i'm in a nice mood (which is most of the time) i add a few ppl from pug, but it would be my clansmen who would be leading and doing most of the work. Comes down to trust basically.

BTW.... Try playing as a mesmer. Very likely, u wont be too popular - very difficult for a mesmer to get a group. I end up using guildies/henchies because groups didnt want to take me...

Therefore I play only with Guildmates or with henchies. Only when we need someone we try to pickup some random person. I had almost only bad experience with PUG.
A little bit OT : We are one of the nice PUGs

lol.

one problem with that: Jalis lacks common sense AND is emotionally unbalanced to an epic degree

i am glad that people do enjoy PUGs despite what i read everywhere on this board.

anyway another reason PUGs are fun is because they provide that little bit of randomness that makes the game interesting.

EDIT: i am always happey to have mesmers in my team. a mesmer won my PUG thunderhead keep last time. any inteligent person wants a mesmer in their team.

Thanks for questioning my sanity just because my experiences with Pick up Groups has mostly been in the range of medicore to completely awful. I don't know about you, but I can't see how you can remain sane playing in most of these Pick up Groups.

Jalis calms down when he takes his throne, but yeah, dude was going through some stuff in the process of taking his Keep back.

Maybe because I've had horrible Final Fantasy XI flashbacks I have problems sitting around spending hours making a group of all quality people, so the only randomness I get to experience is in more of a "What sort of problems will one of our redundant Warrior/Monks go out of his way to present our team with" sort of thing.

When you get a good PUG, it's better than henchies.

Depends on where you are though. At Thunderhead Keep, only 5% of PUGs actually finish the mission. =P

You can add me to friend list.

Come get some PUGs with me. We'll get great ones, and I will restore your sanity!

Haha. The only thing I really need to do is the Ring of Fire missions and only because I recently got interested in an Axe Warrior (IE: Eviserate) not to mention Panic after the recent patch.

A PUG I was in beat Thunderhead the first time through, more often than not though most PUGs have at least one idiot that will not listen and randomly attack monsters. I've met far too many people unable to grasp the concept of hitting the T key when a target is called, and far more people unable to understand why only one person should call a target.

I dread doing missions because of PUGs, for every good group there are 50 bad groups. In WOW I was in a guild with well over 500 people(the guild list would not display more than that)and could always get some people together for an instance. If somebody acted like an idiot everybody would know it and they would be made fun of. One time in WOW our warrior from a sister guild said to wait by some barrels that could be interacted with while he went AFK, somebody asked if it was okay to open them up. The warrior said "yes, go ahead", somebody broke open the barrels which caused a whole bunch of enemies to come running in and kill us, then the warrior came back and said "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN I WAS BEING SARCASTIC".

See my experience with PUG's have been generally good, especially if you think in terms of percentages. If you are in a group where all 8 members are good that's 100% Now I'm sure we've all run into ppl who do things like call targets over your primary target caller, leave the group halfway through after they've capped the skill they wanted, run off or way ahead aggro'ing to many monsters and the list goes on.

However that being said generally speaking you only run into say one of those per time out so that means that you are still in a group that is 87.5 good. So really in actual fact the majority of ppl in Pugs are actually quite good to play with.


On a side note my biggest complaint with PuGs has always been warriors who dont know their role. IMO a Ranger should call and pull acting as really a crowd control. Warriors should hold back to protect the weaker armor groups, instead Warriors always seem to run ahead to meet the aggro'd monsters negating a rangers work as crowd control. Then since the take a huge amount of damage right of receive the bulk of the heals allowing them to charge forward full health, while everyone else is drained.

I however am starting to understand that they do this because they need to keep their adrenaline up to maintain effectiveness. I still wish Warriors would be more patient and accept a role as cleanup/protector instead of a front line damage dealer.

In summary the majority of ppl in pugs are good ppl and the small percentage thats not pls try to work with your group.

The real problem is not the PUG's but the elitist attitude of the very immature players who "think" they have mastered the game an anyone who doesn't play like them or listen to "them" or makes a mistake "god forbid" are nothing more than noobs. Well that's pretty noobish in and of itself to think that way. No one is perfect, no not even you think you are elitists, you've got your butt kicked a bunch of times as well, no one has never lost a battle nor never made a mistake. So I'd suggest getting off your elitist pedestal and cooperate with one another instead of acting like you are some god an everyone under you is suppose to bow at your feet or else they are a noob. I've seen this same attitude destroy the population of many online multiplayer games, when you don't group with "new" players and help them along, even if they don't listen the first few times, and you just ignore them or treat them like scum you lower your population an eventually you have nothing but the elitist left, much like the gods of lore and we all know what happened to them, people forgot about them, those noobs of lore just let them dwindle and disappear and went about their majority merry way while the gods sat back in wonder why no one worshipped them anymore.

My philosophy is I will join a team and I will not leave a team unless it disbands totally of course. The more you play together with the same people the better you will get. Quitting and hoping for a better team the next time around is only another "chance" opportunity for just as much failure as success. I happened to be a pretty good player though and have built a reputation as such and also a helpful person instead of a greedy selfcentered selfrighteous selfish bassturd only thinking of myself and my own glory. I now just go around joining missions with either my W/Mo or Mo/W whatever there is a call for and help those PUGS complete the missions that others are too selfish to help out.

If you're not willing to be patient and help others out even if it takes 26 tries (like when we did the lornars pass run), you are the noobs, not those that are mere newbs.

Thanks for the self-righteous lecture about how not everyone is perfect, Sonya. You are right, I should be more patient with War/Mos who body pulls a massive train of monsters that our party can't possibly handle with our Monk who had already established that he was out of energy. That is our fault for being elitest and not his, who are we to judge or criticize him.

Nice twist of words, but, just because they did it once, thrice or maybe four times doesn't mean they won't eventually learn it is bad for the group. I've been in those types as well. I agree one should only give so many chances, but, to just abandon a group team because of ONE mistake is what I am talking about this elitist attitude. You'll do what you please anyway, but, just as you might call someone a noob for their mistakes, there's a name for those that abandon groups as well. Too bad it would be red engine gored. heh

But at any rate I joined a capping group for Mineral Springs last night and though we got smoked early on, nobody quit and we continued on and smoked the AI the next round (darn drylak healers). We continued to Mineral Spings and the first boss we found dropped something someone needed and then they "left". Fortunately the rest were gracious players, we all stuck together until everyone had capped their skill(s) they were after and then I even helped a ranger get to one collector after everyone else had left and sold him a protection icon I got from another collector for 300gp. These are rare moments in the game I know, but, at least I stick with them for as long as I can, I don't abandon them just because I got what I wanted or we wiped out a few times trying a mission. Main thing is no one is perfect and everyone deserves a few extra chances to catch on to what is going on or their role in the group. Then if they don't seem to understand or conform and appear to be nothing more than a "griefer" to the group, yes, I can understand leaving or kicking said person.

PUGs are like a box of chocolates, you never know.....well, you know the rest

I can agree with that, but unfortunately the difference between people who make mistakes and are willing learn from them and people who play like a awful and are totally unrepentant pretty staggering.

Sometimes "What the heck was he thinking?" is a more natural reaction than "You probably shouldn't do it that way".

[QUOTE=Red Sonya]I've been in those types as well. I agree one should only give so many chances, but, to just abandon a group team because of ONE mistake is what I am talking about this elitist attitude. You'll do what you please anyway, but, just as you might call someone a noob for their mistakes, there's a name for those that abandon groups as well. Too bad it would be red engine gored. heh[QUOTE=Red Sonya]

I don't call someone an idiot until after the party wipes due to them doing something they have repeatedly been told is bad for the party. I don't drop unless we got far too much deathpenalty in the first mobs of a EA/Mission.

I've done Mineral cap runs three times with full henchmen. I've just really burnt on horrible parties and was somewhat offended at your rant since I don't see intolerant and cliquish players as harmful to the enivornment as scrubs who aren't willing to learn.

I can agree with that, but unfortunately the difference between people who make mistakes and are willing learn from them and people who play like a awful and are totally unrepentant pretty staggering.

Sometimes "What the heck was he thinking?" is a more natural reaction than "You probably shouldn't do it that way".

I can agree with you here. I don't call someone an idiot until after the party wipes due to them doing something they have repeatedly been told is bad for the party. I tend not to drop unless we got far too much death penalty in the first few mobs of a EA/Mission.

I've just really burnt on horrible parties and was somewhat offended at your rant since I don't see intolerant and cliquish players as harmful to the enviornment as rude scrubs who aren't willing to learn. At least, it was always been the later the ruined my fun more than the former, since an elitist will perform while a scrub more often than not prevent your success. Both tend to be jerks about it, but I can put up with a jerk who can back it up.

i beat first try with a pug... Its very easy... Nevrethe less for sum1 like me i can only join pugs so u get use to not beening able to win soem missons. You see even though I've played 100s of hours on pvp (tombs) i still haven't made it to HOH even though i'm pro at pvp.