You straight up didn't play vanilla WoW. Tired of people either 200% downplaying the issues vanilla WoW had that WoW goes through today or outright not even acknowledging them. Ninja looting was just as rampant back then if not more so as it is before WoW made personal loot a thing. Actually, it was MORE SO a problem back then for sure because you had fucking hunters stealing loot for rogues even though they were supposed to be using mail armor and not leather, but they would ninja leather pieces anyway.
Not to mention the fight over weapons. You had rogues, hunters, warriors, fucking sometimes even paladins cause why the hell not fighting over the same weapons because the hunters wanted the meagre stat sticks that they didn't even really use. And don't even get me started on the hell hunters would raise when a rogue/warrior would roll on a bow and act like they just committed the most heinous act in existence.
Seriously gtfo if you're gonna continue to act like loot drama/ninjaing wasn't fucking rampart in vanilla WoW. You clearly never played back then so your opinion is already invalid.
No it was not. The only one time we had it happen to us in my 2 40 man raiding guild the ML stool all the stuff off the Rag on our first kill and left. Guess what Blizzard ban the guy for 2 weeks and we got our gear back. The only other times I know of Ninja looters were in other guilds. WHY? Because we had a network of guilds who kept in contact with one another. Sorry Bro but LFD is worse than your over dramatization of Ninja looting. LFD killed MMOS Ninja looting never did it just made people be smarter about the people you let in. O and BTW one of the Ninja looters was so well known on our server he had to transfer off it because no one would take him in a raid. His name DemonDruidz. The guy got run off the server. It happened, but LFD groups are the bane of MMOs.
You still never played vanilla WoW. Either that your're practicing being an ostritch with sticking your head in the sand. And its funny how you're acting like PUGs are only run for raids. 90% of PUGs are for dungeon runs.
Firstly Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand, it is a myth and a silly one at that.
Secondly the biggest problem I had with looting in vanilla WoW was not the ninja looter, it was that self-righteous twat who threw a hissy fit because they thought someone was guilty of ninja looting and continued the tantrum until they got their way or the group broke up. Strangely this was usually the same person who would argue incessantly about their right to roll on an item because it was a minor upgrade for them when it was clearly better suited to a player of another class and a clear major upgrade to the player concerned.
Sorry Axehilt no we had more problem players in LFD WOW by a long shot. I refuse to use any Automated tool because the drama that it brings. I can count on 1 hand the time I had to deal with Ninja looters in Vanilla WOW and that was very early on. After people knew the problem players on my realm people no longer had issues again. I was an officer of 2 different 40 man raiding guilds and I kept in touch with over 50 guilds on my server to keep players like this out of our guild as well as others. Sorry but Ninja looters were not a big problem as we have ass hats today because of LFD.
It's great that you had a giant and unusual network of guilds working to achieve that, but it wasn't the reality for the majority of players.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
None of what the OP suggests addresses the core issue of PUGs. And that basically with gauging player skill.
MMOs still do not generally have an affective method of gauging individual skill-level from someone whom you don't know. As a result people tend to resort to arbitrary methods (gear score, achievement points, etc.) to hope for the best. There are really only two ways to address the PUG experience:
1) Make the content easy enough that any idiot could do it (not a fan of this method).
2) Add some sort of PvE MMR system to MMOs (which can be problematic, as this tends to fracture the playerbase).
Furthermore, there needs to be more systems like the honor system, where people can reward others for not behaving like asshats. Even still, no system is perfect.
So I was reading a lot of the posts, and I think you guy's ideas are definitely closer to the mark of dealing with the pugs than my ideas. I'm perfectly fine with that, because my main goal was to get people acknowledging that pugs are still a problem, and thinking of possible solutions to bring back the pugging experiences of the old days.
And I have to say one of the posts that really struck me was the one comparing MMOs to convenience. I do have to agree that as games become faster and more convenient, the quality of social interaction has dropped considerably. And as someone else mentioned earlier, the LFD tool really diminished the community's ability to police itself against anti-social players. In reference to WoW specifically, it's very possible that the community had always been bad, and so LFD tool only made the problems with pugging more apparent. I never played Vanilla myself, so I can't say either way.
Someone mentioned just having robots fill the empty roles, and of course that's a solution. However, it's also just another convenience, and doesn't really solve the problem of modern MMOs not being MMOs anymore but massively single player experiences.
And maybe that's the wall that we are hitting, maybe MMOs do have to go back to being less mainstream, and less convenient. FFXIV is clearly a much slower game, and maybe the next gen MMOs have to be slower games that gives guilds back tools it needs to police communities again. And maybe players that still crave that convenience should go the MOBA route and leave MMOs alone.
I know that 10 minutes doesn't sound like a long time to form a group, but nowadays where a queue for a tank or a healer was near instant, 10 minutes is a long time. I'll be honest saying that I did use LFD tool to pug every chance I got. I was hoping for the solution to bad pugs would not involve undoing the progress that MMOs have made to appeal to a wider audience. But it's clear that something has to change, MMOs simply cannot exist the way they are now.
It sounds like personal loot is definitely a step in the right direction though, but it's just one of many, MANY problems affecting the quality of pugs today. FInally, I want to mention that I'm sure people are very happy with pugs and their MMOs minimizing social interaction to obtain gear. I've always been in the camp that MMOs should be about the experience of playing with other people, and not just about the gear grind. Because the relationships with real people last a lot longer than any epic quality gear.
You straight up didn't play vanilla WoW. Tired of people either 200% downplaying the issues vanilla WoW had that WoW goes through today or outright not even acknowledging them. Ninja looting was just as rampant back then if not more so as it is before WoW made personal loot a thing. Actually, it was MORE SO a problem back then for sure because you had fucking hunters stealing loot for rogues even though they were supposed to be using mail armor and not leather, but they would ninja leather pieces anyway.
Not to mention the fight over weapons. You had rogues, hunters, warriors, fucking sometimes even paladins cause why the hell not fighting over the same weapons because the hunters wanted the meagre stat sticks that they didn't even really use. And don't even get me started on the hell hunters would raise when a rogue/warrior would roll on a bow and act like they just committed the most heinous act in existence.
Seriously gtfo if you're gonna continue to act like loot drama/ninjaing wasn't fucking rampart in vanilla WoW. You clearly never played back then so your opinion is already invalid.
No it was not. The only one time we had it happen to us in my 2 40 man raiding guild the ML stool all the stuff off the Rag on our first kill and left. Guess what Blizzard ban the guy for 2 weeks and we got our gear back. The only other times I know of Ninja looters were in other guilds. WHY? Because we had a network of guilds who kept in contact with one another. Sorry Bro but LFD is worse than your over dramatization of Ninja looting. LFD killed MMOS Ninja looting never did it just made people be smarter about the people you let in. O and BTW one of the Ninja looters was so well known on our server he had to transfer off it because no one would take him in a raid. His name DemonDruidz. The guy got run off the server. It happened, but LFD groups are the bane of MMOs.
You still never played vanilla WoW. Either that your're practicing being an ostritch with sticking your head in the sand. And its funny how you're acting like PUGs are only run for raids. 90% of PUGs are for dungeon runs.
Dude I played Vanilla. I know what the fuck I am talking about. I was just smart enough to know to have a network of friends to keep as far away from morons as possible. I learned this from my UO days where you get people who would camp the guild house so a GM could not get to the Guild stone to kick people out of the guild that were killing members and looting them. In Vanilla I was smart enough to know this. I had more players that could not stand dance as tanks or mages that tried to pull shit to top DPS charts. Yes I did the days of having a hunter pull for tanks. Stance dancing on Mag and Ony. I was a Tank during those days. So dont tell me I dont know what I am talking about kid. I do I was just smarter than the lazy ass player who needs everything done for them.
Sorry Axehilt no we had more problem players in LFD WOW by a long shot. I refuse to use any Automated tool because the drama that it brings. I can count on 1 hand the time I had to deal with Ninja looters in Vanilla WOW and that was very early on. After people knew the problem players on my realm people no longer had issues again. I was an officer of 2 different 40 man raiding guilds and I kept in touch with over 50 guilds on my server to keep players like this out of our guild as well as others. Sorry but Ninja looters were not a big problem as we have ass hats today because of LFD.
It's great that you had a giant and unusual network of guilds working to achieve that, but it wasn't the reality for the majority of players.
The players in the guilds I had contacts in didnt suffer from Ninja looters in their raids. Now yes some morons got caught doing that in their guilds and were GKICK(ed) that day. We learned WHO they were and were not welcome in our guilds. The people that OFTEN bitched about Loot ninjas that I knew off often were people who OPENLY lost due to not having enough DKP. Now Yes I know DKP is a shitty loot system, we didnt have EPGP at that time. However it was the loot system that was used and if IKICKASS bids 1000 DKP on the Dark Iron Ring because he is full 8/8 T1 in MC and thats really all he needs out of MC and you have 100 DKP. He is not a loot Ninja. Sorry but yes we had a lot of Loot drama about that too. Rules were very clear and people BITCHED about it anyway. People BITCHED about the NEED GREED system that was put into place. They BITCHED about EPGP systems. PEOPLE EVEN BITCH ABOUT PERSONAL LOOT. Sorry but no Loot Ninjas were there but not all over the place unless you were really into only PUGGING content then I dont feel sorry for you one bit. Join a Guild Make friends that are fair and stick by a set of rules, if they want a piece of gear you need because they need it too and fairly ask dont bitch that they want a shot at it too.
Sorry but people make too big of an issue over gear and I hate to say it. IT DONT MATTER THAT PIECE WILL DROP AGAIN. What matters way more than loot and gear is Community and people not trying the content like a fast food joint. If content is raced through people are going to get bored because you cannot keep up with the content. If people are not making friends and communities are toxic they leave your game and you loose money. If you want a safe game which needs to protect you from all the bad people that might be in a virtual world and have no responsibility maybe you should not be playing MMOs. You should play single player games because you needing to be treated like a kid protected from everything kills what an MMO is.
Originally posted by Bigbadwlf So I was reading a lot of the posts, and I think you guy's ideas are definitely closer to the mark of dealing with the pugs than my ideas. I'm perfectly fine with that, because my main goal was to get people acknowledging that pugs are still a problem, and thinking of possible solutions to bring back the pugging experiences of the old days.
And I have to say one of the posts that really struck me was the one comparing MMOs to convenience. I do have to agree that as games become faster and more convenient, the quality of social interaction has dropped considerably. And as someone else mentioned earlier, the LFD tool really diminished the community's ability to police itself against anti-social players. In reference to WoW specifically, it's very possible that the community had always been bad, and so LFD tool only made the problems with pugging more apparent. I never played Vanilla myself, so I can't say either way.
Someone mentioned just having robots fill the empty roles, and of course that's a solution. However, it's also just another convenience, and doesn't really solve the problem of modern MMOs not being MMOs anymore but massively single player experiences.
And maybe that's the wall that we are hitting, maybe MMOs do have to go back to being less mainstream, and less convenient. FFXIV is clearly a much slower game, and maybe the next gen MMOs have to be slower games that gives guilds back tools it needs to police communities again. And maybe players that still crave that convenience should go the MOBA route and leave MMOs alone.
I know that 10 minutes doesn't sound like a long time to form a group, but nowadays where a queue for a tank or a healer was near instant, 10 minutes is a long time. I'll be honest saying that I did use LFD tool to pug every chance I got. I was hoping for the solution to bad pugs would not involve undoing the progress that MMOs have made to appeal to a wider audience. But it's clear that something has to change, MMOs simply cannot exist the way they are now.
It sounds like personal loot is definitely a step in the right direction though, but it's just one of many, MANY problems affecting the quality of pugs today. FInally, I want to mention that I'm sure people are very happy with pugs and their MMOs minimizing social interaction to obtain gear. I've always been in the camp that MMOs should be about the experience of playing with other people, and not just about the gear grind. Because the relationships with real people last a lot longer than any epic quality gear.
That is your key right there. Relationships with real people last longer than Epic gear in any instances. LFD has taken that away because people dont understand that old school struggle to get the gear and making friendships a long the way mattered. Today LFD is nothing more than a fast food joint.
MBOAs are becoming more popular than MMOs because they are 3 minute queues and 10 to 20 minute matches that if you dont like the people you are with its over fast. You never have to see them again so you can queue again with other people and jump on that treadmill. MBOAs do have some level of friendships made, just like in the days of Starcraft and other non MMO games. However there are not as many stories about friends from these games lasting yes and even a decade or more. I can tell you, I have a friend that I have known since 1998 when I played UO that while he is not playing MMOs still text me every few months to say hello. I have others from that time that will email me a few times a year just to say hello. I have friends from SWG that we talk all the time about life and stuff. I do not have any of the friends I played SC or Diablo 1/2 anymore because these games did not go to the social level that MMOs done.
This is also why I dont like fast food LFD tools. Tonight a husband wife team my wife and I just meet a few weeks ago just started FFXIV. We took them on their first instance run it went well. They enjoyed it so much they waited 2 weeks instead of pugging and hurry up and level. They waited 2 weeks until our schedules could match up and we did Tam Tam and Cooper bell. Guess what we had a blast tonight. Now there is talk about creating a static group. Most players today would say screw that I will just pug it with the DF or in wow LFD. They wouldnt wait why should they and if they rushed they wouldnt have made new friends. Now our 2 husband wife teams are going to do stuff together and schedule our instances runs ahead of time so we can do them together because its more enjoyable than dealing with LFD BS. That is what an MMO is about. Not QUEUE QUEUE QUEUE and no one else matters expect yourself.
What about slowing the exp rate down and not having abilities handed to you when you level up? What if you had to actually do quests (meaningful quests) to unlock abilities spells? GW2 NOW does this but honestly the game is still a solo experience with so much optional content that is kind of useless to do anyway. FFXI did this and it worked well but they conformed to increased exp methods to the point now that people will literally join a part in abyssea and instantly afk expecting to be max level when they wake up from their nap. To add though, one type of content in FFXI that I truly loved was Voidwatch. You could have a group of people of whatever joibs you could get really and it was random which job would be useful to triggering things but you could also reset the monster to get different triggers if they were all things you couldn't do. At the end you were rewarded individually with look exp and their currency type which avoided the ninja lotting thing and so on. So you ended up working as a team as the class you wanted while being rewarded individually for your effort etc. More games need stuff like that.
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Ive had some great memorable pugs as well as horrible i wish i could forget ones.
The problem is not everyone can be superstars, So it requires some introspection from the player to "help" such people.
The problem is that more often than never, those less skilled players are also arrogant pricks who think they are the best and don't listen to any advice. It requires some maturity to listen to other people's advices, and many MMO players, be they young or old, turn into immature 13 year olds in the middle of their hormone rush when the log into an online game. Telling them they do it wrong hurts their fragile egos.
Yep and when you add in a Cross Realm LFD tool this turns a gaming community into a pile of shite. Yes in an online game you have your ass holes however when they are stuck with realm only ways of grouping they either find other like minded people or everyone knows them and people dont want to run with them.
Originally posted by mgilbrtsn I'm a bit stupid. Can someone explain PUG. thx, marc
They are those ugly little dogs who are so deformed their eyes sometimes pop out of the sockets when they sneeze. Some people think that since they are so hideously ugly that they are cute because they are small o something. You aren't alone, the whole thing makes no sense to me either. I mean how are ugly little buggers cute?
Originally posted by Adjuvant1 I pug on purpose often because the material has become so routine, I yearn for the challenge of the problem solving to make it work. I consider it impressive when people screw up so badly to the point I can't "fix" it.
Yeah, I always considered pick up groups to be a sorta random difficulty modifier.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
1) Specialization makes pugging, or any other sort of grouping, much harder. In Guild Wars 2, for example, you can grab five people and go. But in many games, you can easily spend as much time trying to find a player of the underrepresented specialty (commonly but not always healers) as actually doing group content. Most people want to log on and play a game, not log on and wait, so that leads many people to avoid grouping entirely. Which makes getting a group even harder.
4) That would encourage players to figure out which group composition results in the easiest run and insist on that. Some classes would be completely unwanted on the basis that if they let you join, it makes the run harder--even if you're good at your class.
City of Heroes was also a noteworthy exception to the PUG problem. I never had or heard of anyone having problems with pretty much any group makeup when running missions. As a matter of fact, I thought that strange combinations of archetypes made some groups very interesting.
This was because of the free-form dynamic dungeons as well as the flexible class system.
CoH had dynamic dungeons so people could and subtract from groups and thus you had "PUGs" that ran for hours and hours and sometimes the people who started the PUG to begin with are not even in 3 hours later with all original people having slowly been replaced and some other person taking the leader.
Combine that with the fact that a "role" was not some boring ass healer crap like in most MMORPGs, but had many ways to fulfil the basic premise. Defenders could add resistance or defense or heal or some combo or even be a debuffer. Various controllers had multiple types of stuff. This of course lead to some issues as most people could not really apreicate a Storm Defender and many Storm Defenders sucked and just cause chaos. But a good Stormy with a team who knew how to coordinate it right worked well and was fun.
Anyway you won't see the same phenomenon in these static content, static group size games. And unforatunately its value to the genre will continue to be vastly overlooked and underestimated. All MMORPGs need to strive mightily to achieve what COH grouping achieved in regards to ease/flexibility of grouping and the resultant genuine preference to group that it instilled. Instead we just get more and more of this "You must be forced. The beatings WILL continue" stupid ass Warden from Cool Luke style BS.
"Are you the type of player that's suited by temper to playing with a Pick-Up group? Or are you a perfectionist with an inflated sense of your own self-worth and general dislike of actual people who might even (sometimes/often) be not-good total mad-pro players (like yourself)?
Do your temper control issues make grouping with you a frightening prospect for potential team-mates?
Take this quiz and find out! If you're not suited to playing with real, random people, you will be grouped with auto-bots instead."
Oh god, the horrors of PUGs. Some of my more memorable experiences:
1. I'd occasionally queue as a Justicar in full Hammerknell gear for PUGs back when Hammerknell was the endgame content: I joined a group who had 4 members of another guild. We went into a Tier 2 expert dungeon and wiped to the first boss multiple times, even after me explaining the fight to them and how to do it over and over again in voice chat. We barely managed the trash pulls before that. I actually had to use cooldowns and I was raid geared. The trash pulls were nothing impressive.
So I decided to take them to Tier 1 instead. It was pretty much me soloing the dungeon. Most of the times, they'd die to mechanics on that bosses (standing in fire for example) so I was literally soloing about half the boss fights. After a grueling 3 hours in a Tier 1 dungeon (they usually take 15-20 minutes) I had the most healing and damage done on the meters... as a tank.
2. I'd joined the LFG queue for Tier 2 dungeons. I didn't need anything from it and had all the achievements, just wanted to see how'd I get matched. Somehow, I managed to wipe more in the dungeons than doing progression content in the raids. I've had groups that could not get through most dungeons, including the easiest one of the Tier 2 dungeons. Keep in mind that my HP and mitigation was about 200% higher than what was required to complete those dungeons. Not only can healers not keep up a raid geared tank, but DPS classes were doing 1/4-1/3 the DPS they should have been doing at their gear level and that's the numbers when they are actually ALIVE which was infrequently.
3. In Guild Wars 2 as a Ranger, if I decide to join a PUG I can literally just view every party member on equal level to my pets, complete with the dying every 5 seconds. Fortunately, it's entirely possible to solo most of the dungeons in GW2, so my Ranger can easily carry them through. Everyone just wants to exploit their way through dungeons anyway, not that anyone even does them anymore when you can world boss farm (stand in one spot and attack the dragon toes!) for 2 hours straight with better loot returns. It's more of a struggle to get through explorable mode dungeons with a PUG than it is to duo it with a guild member.
I miss the days when cross realm grouping wasn't a thing , and I knew everyone on my server, so I knew which groups to join and which not to. It doesn't help that MMOs moving to action combat now require more and more skill to complete effectively and bad players bog the group down even further.
And to people who might claim this is elitism: I don't rage at my party members (I do on Teamspeak and Guild Chat though) and I try to be as helpful as and patient as possible when doing these groups. Sometimes it's even a bit fun playing the roulette and seeing just as bad a group you can get. I don't feel like most MMOs (though that's changing) require a heavy skill requirement to play either and I'm not claiming to be the best player either, so it boggles my mind how players can be that incompetent. When you play at such a low level, you also bring people down with you and waste everyone's time.
As far as systems to help PUGGing: More exclusions (forcing groups to single servers, class role system, ranking systems, gearscore requirements) mean a better overall experience for PUGGing, but each exclusion has a major impact on the time it takes to find a group. Modern MMOs have been favoring shorter playtimes and have some have more inclusive systems like cross realm LFG, that really effect the overall quality of PUGs you get since the player pools aren't effectively separated.
"Are you the type of player that's suited by temper to playing with a Pick-Up group? Or are you a perfectionist with an inflated sense of your own self-worth and general dislike of actual people who might even (sometimes/often) be not-good total mad-pro players (like yourself)?
Do your temper control issues make grouping with you a frightening prospect for potential team-mates?
Take this quiz and find out! If you're not suited to playing with real, random people, you will be grouped with auto-bots instead."
Or maybe you're just a normal adult person with a family and a job, and don't have time to waste babysitting people who don't even try to get better and don't listen to advice anyway, so you stick to your guild full of "real people" who don't feel they are entitled that you walk them through group content but do their best to participate.
Unfortunately in some MMORPG instances are designed to be done fast - and that leaves little room for pleasantries. Keep up, and listen or gtfo noob. Getting the prize efficiently > journey, especially if its not trouble free.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
An answer is to get rid of the 'inspect' function along with epeen meters and let people learn how to play with each other again without arrogant arses applying metrics every 2 seconds. Works in many games like GW1,2,lotr,eso and there is little drama and instance runs can fail, people basically play and learn and have fun.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
So this is a quick replay. I have been reading everybody's feedback, and I came to the conclusion that the decline in fun of pug groups is at least 1 of 3 different things, we 3 different solutions:
1.) Bad pugs is a mechanics problem:
Obviously if an MMO is structured heavily around the solo experience, than grouping is going to suffer. Just like an MMO structured around PvE, later adds PvP , the PvP is going to suffer. An example of pugs being a mechanics problem are dungeons that do not require teamwork, loot that doesn't encourage players to do their jobs better, and LFD system that encourages leeching, and allows bad players to get away with, or even reward their bad behavior.
2.) Bag pugs are a people problem:
It's clear that MMOs today are designed for possibly a younger, less mature demographic than MMOs of 10 years ago. A whole generation of players don't know what pug grouping was like before cross LFD tool existed, so this is the new normal. The game is so easy now that there's no incentive for players who don't know how to play to ever learn how to play. Inversely there's no incentive for people in guilds that do know how to play to bother staying in a dungeon to teach other people how to play. So what's left is a pug group with just one or two people that know what they are doing, and everybody else running into walls.
3.) Bag pugs are a skill problem:
So this theory suggests that it's not people's unwillingness to learn teamwork, it's just that the learning curve is too high. People play the game for fun, and being forced to learn rotations, gear itemization, and dungeon mechanics is too much for the average player. A game that's overly complex drives away potential new players, because they are just always dead, and veteran players have to avoid pugging entirely for their own safety.
Like I said, this is just my observation. Maybe I'm on the right track here, but If these are the issues, I think 2 out of 3 of them can be solved.
I see the OPs point but I think I have a better, though harder to implement solution.
Bots. Yes bots, similar to companions from games like SW TOR. Raids and Dungeons are scripted so why not add the option to control a team of fellow AI companions. No more wait times, no more drama. Most MMORPGs have become a primarily solo experience anyway, why not take it one step further and do away with the unwanted forced involvement with strangers. Sounds crazy? Yeah maybe it does, but its no more crazy than what companies have already done to what is supposed to be a multiplayer enviroment.
I've never seen this suggested anywhere before but it sounds crazy enough to work. Perhaps the genius kind of crazy. Hirelings would be an answer for the time pressed people who demand the LFG tools which have pretty much killed server communities in mmos who don't carefully implement them like FFXIV, could also act as a gold sink if developers so desire, would be great for learning new fights/dungeons as a tank/healer without fear of fucking up and wouldn't replace the old fashioned method of making friends and doing content with them.
It shouldn't be hard to add hirelings with basic scripts or commands and them workable and would allow the more important fix of murdering LFG tools and fiddling with megaservers so they are for the open world only and you have to choose a server for your dungeon/raid pool.
Comments
Firstly Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand, it is a myth and a silly one at that.
Secondly the biggest problem I had with looting in vanilla WoW was not the ninja looter, it was that self-righteous twat who threw a hissy fit because they thought someone was guilty of ninja looting and continued the tantrum until they got their way or the group broke up. Strangely this was usually the same person who would argue incessantly about their right to roll on an item because it was a minor upgrade for them when it was clearly better suited to a player of another class and a clear major upgrade to the player concerned.
It's great that you had a giant and unusual network of guilds working to achieve that, but it wasn't the reality for the majority of players.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
None of what the OP suggests addresses the core issue of PUGs. And that basically with gauging player skill.
MMOs still do not generally have an affective method of gauging individual skill-level from someone whom you don't know. As a result people tend to resort to arbitrary methods (gear score, achievement points, etc.) to hope for the best. There are really only two ways to address the PUG experience:
1) Make the content easy enough that any idiot could do it (not a fan of this method).
2) Add some sort of PvE MMR system to MMOs (which can be problematic, as this tends to fracture the playerbase).
Furthermore, there needs to be more systems like the honor system, where people can reward others for not behaving like asshats. Even still, no system is perfect.
I wasn't aware there was a huge problem with PUGs.
Seems if you like them, you do them, and if you don't, you don't. There's a lot of ways to accomplish "stuff" in most games apart from PUGs
Ive had some great memorable pugs as well as horrible i wish i could forget ones.
The problem is not everyone can be superstars, So it requires some introspection from the player to "help" such people.
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And I have to say one of the posts that really struck me was the one comparing MMOs to convenience. I do have to agree that as games become faster and more convenient, the quality of social interaction has dropped considerably. And as someone else mentioned earlier, the LFD tool really diminished the community's ability to police itself against anti-social players. In reference to WoW specifically, it's very possible that the community had always been bad, and so LFD tool only made the problems with pugging more apparent. I never played Vanilla myself, so I can't say either way.
Someone mentioned just having robots fill the empty roles, and of course that's a solution. However, it's also just another convenience, and doesn't really solve the problem of modern MMOs not being MMOs anymore but massively single player experiences.
And maybe that's the wall that we are hitting, maybe MMOs do have to go back to being less mainstream, and less convenient. FFXIV is clearly a much slower game, and maybe the next gen MMOs have to be slower games that gives guilds back tools it needs to police communities again. And maybe players that still crave that convenience should go the MOBA route and leave MMOs alone.
I know that 10 minutes doesn't sound like a long time to form a group, but nowadays where a queue for a tank or a healer was near instant, 10 minutes is a long time. I'll be honest saying that I did use LFD tool to pug every chance I got. I was hoping for the solution to bad pugs would not involve undoing the progress that MMOs have made to appeal to a wider audience. But it's clear that something has to change, MMOs simply cannot exist the way they are now.
It sounds like personal loot is definitely a step in the right direction though, but it's just one of many, MANY problems affecting the quality of pugs today. FInally, I want to mention that I'm sure people are very happy with pugs and their MMOs minimizing social interaction to obtain gear. I've always been in the camp that MMOs should be about the experience of playing with other people, and not just about the gear grind. Because the relationships with real people last a lot longer than any epic quality gear.
Dude I played Vanilla. I know what the fuck I am talking about. I was just smart enough to know to have a network of friends to keep as far away from morons as possible. I learned this from my UO days where you get people who would camp the guild house so a GM could not get to the Guild stone to kick people out of the guild that were killing members and looting them. In Vanilla I was smart enough to know this. I had more players that could not stand dance as tanks or mages that tried to pull shit to top DPS charts. Yes I did the days of having a hunter pull for tanks. Stance dancing on Mag and Ony. I was a Tank during those days. So dont tell me I dont know what I am talking about kid. I do I was just smarter than the lazy ass player who needs everything done for them.
Pugs are bad because people suck. There is literally no way to program a game to prevent that.
Stop playing with idiots and your gaming experience will improve a thousand fold.
The players in the guilds I had contacts in didnt suffer from Ninja looters in their raids. Now yes some morons got caught doing that in their guilds and were GKICK(ed) that day. We learned WHO they were and were not welcome in our guilds. The people that OFTEN bitched about Loot ninjas that I knew off often were people who OPENLY lost due to not having enough DKP. Now Yes I know DKP is a shitty loot system, we didnt have EPGP at that time. However it was the loot system that was used and if IKICKASS bids 1000 DKP on the Dark Iron Ring because he is full 8/8 T1 in MC and thats really all he needs out of MC and you have 100 DKP. He is not a loot Ninja. Sorry but yes we had a lot of Loot drama about that too. Rules were very clear and people BITCHED about it anyway. People BITCHED about the NEED GREED system that was put into place. They BITCHED about EPGP systems. PEOPLE EVEN BITCH ABOUT PERSONAL LOOT. Sorry but no Loot Ninjas were there but not all over the place unless you were really into only PUGGING content then I dont feel sorry for you one bit. Join a Guild Make friends that are fair and stick by a set of rules, if they want a piece of gear you need because they need it too and fairly ask dont bitch that they want a shot at it too.
Sorry but people make too big of an issue over gear and I hate to say it. IT DONT MATTER THAT PIECE WILL DROP AGAIN. What matters way more than loot and gear is Community and people not trying the content like a fast food joint. If content is raced through people are going to get bored because you cannot keep up with the content. If people are not making friends and communities are toxic they leave your game and you loose money. If you want a safe game which needs to protect you from all the bad people that might be in a virtual world and have no responsibility maybe you should not be playing MMOs. You should play single player games because you needing to be treated like a kid protected from everything kills what an MMO is.
That is your key right there. Relationships with real people last longer than Epic gear in any instances. LFD has taken that away because people dont understand that old school struggle to get the gear and making friendships a long the way mattered. Today LFD is nothing more than a fast food joint.
MBOAs are becoming more popular than MMOs because they are 3 minute queues and 10 to 20 minute matches that if you dont like the people you are with its over fast. You never have to see them again so you can queue again with other people and jump on that treadmill. MBOAs do have some level of friendships made, just like in the days of Starcraft and other non MMO games. However there are not as many stories about friends from these games lasting yes and even a decade or more. I can tell you, I have a friend that I have known since 1998 when I played UO that while he is not playing MMOs still text me every few months to say hello. I have others from that time that will email me a few times a year just to say hello. I have friends from SWG that we talk all the time about life and stuff. I do not have any of the friends I played SC or Diablo 1/2 anymore because these games did not go to the social level that MMOs done.
This is also why I dont like fast food LFD tools. Tonight a husband wife team my wife and I just meet a few weeks ago just started FFXIV. We took them on their first instance run it went well. They enjoyed it so much they waited 2 weeks instead of pugging and hurry up and level. They waited 2 weeks until our schedules could match up and we did Tam Tam and Cooper bell. Guess what we had a blast tonight. Now there is talk about creating a static group. Most players today would say screw that I will just pug it with the DF or in wow LFD. They wouldnt wait why should they and if they rushed they wouldnt have made new friends. Now our 2 husband wife teams are going to do stuff together and schedule our instances runs ahead of time so we can do them together because its more enjoyable than dealing with LFD BS. That is what an MMO is about. Not QUEUE QUEUE QUEUE and no one else matters expect yourself.
My favorite breed of dog. Wrestling with mine was an endless source of comedy.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Yep and when you add in a Cross Realm LFD tool this turns a gaming community into a pile of shite. Yes in an online game you have your ass holes however when they are stuck with realm only ways of grouping they either find other like minded people or everyone knows them and people dont want to run with them.
They are those ugly little dogs who are so deformed their eyes sometimes pop out of the sockets when they sneeze. Some people think that since they are so hideously ugly that they are cute because they are small o something. You aren't alone, the whole thing makes no sense to me either. I mean how are ugly little buggers cute?
Yeah, I always considered pick up groups to be a sorta random difficulty modifier.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
This was because of the free-form dynamic dungeons as well as the flexible class system.
CoH had dynamic dungeons so people could and subtract from groups and thus you had "PUGs" that ran for hours and hours and sometimes the people who started the PUG to begin with are not even in 3 hours later with all original people having slowly been replaced and some other person taking the leader.
Combine that with the fact that a "role" was not some boring ass healer crap like in most MMORPGs, but had many ways to fulfil the basic premise. Defenders could add resistance or defense or heal or some combo or even be a debuffer. Various controllers had multiple types of stuff. This of course lead to some issues as most people could not really apreicate a Storm Defender and many Storm Defenders sucked and just cause chaos. But a good Stormy with a team who knew how to coordinate it right worked well and was fun.
Anyway you won't see the same phenomenon in these static content, static group size games. And unforatunately its value to the genre will continue to be vastly overlooked and underestimated. All MMORPGs need to strive mightily to achieve what COH grouping achieved in regards to ease/flexibility of grouping and the resultant genuine preference to group that it instilled. Instead we just get more and more of this "You must be forced. The beatings WILL continue" stupid ass Warden from Cool Luke style BS.
Just needs to be an entry exam.
"Are you the type of player that's suited by temper to playing with a Pick-Up group? Or are you a perfectionist with an inflated sense of your own self-worth and general dislike of actual people who might even (sometimes/often) be not-good total mad-pro players (like yourself)?
Do your temper control issues make grouping with you a frightening prospect for potential team-mates?
Take this quiz and find out! If you're not suited to playing with real, random people, you will be grouped with auto-bots instead."
Fuck the autobots, group me up with the decepticons any fucking day.
Oh god, the horrors of PUGs. Some of my more memorable experiences:
1. I'd occasionally queue as a Justicar in full Hammerknell gear for PUGs back when Hammerknell was the endgame content: I joined a group who had 4 members of another guild. We went into a Tier 2 expert dungeon and wiped to the first boss multiple times, even after me explaining the fight to them and how to do it over and over again in voice chat. We barely managed the trash pulls before that. I actually had to use cooldowns and I was raid geared. The trash pulls were nothing impressive.
So I decided to take them to Tier 1 instead. It was pretty much me soloing the dungeon. Most of the times, they'd die to mechanics on that bosses (standing in fire for example) so I was literally soloing about half the boss fights. After a grueling 3 hours in a Tier 1 dungeon (they usually take 15-20 minutes) I had the most healing and damage done on the meters... as a tank.
2. I'd joined the LFG queue for Tier 2 dungeons. I didn't need anything from it and had all the achievements, just wanted to see how'd I get matched. Somehow, I managed to wipe more in the dungeons than doing progression content in the raids. I've had groups that could not get through most dungeons, including the easiest one of the Tier 2 dungeons. Keep in mind that my HP and mitigation was about 200% higher than what was required to complete those dungeons. Not only can healers not keep up a raid geared tank, but DPS classes were doing 1/4-1/3 the DPS they should have been doing at their gear level and that's the numbers when they are actually ALIVE which was infrequently.
3. In Guild Wars 2 as a Ranger, if I decide to join a PUG I can literally just view every party member on equal level to my pets, complete with the dying every 5 seconds. Fortunately, it's entirely possible to solo most of the dungeons in GW2, so my Ranger can easily carry them through. Everyone just wants to exploit their way through dungeons anyway, not that anyone even does them anymore when you can world boss farm (stand in one spot and attack the dragon toes!) for 2 hours straight with better loot returns. It's more of a struggle to get through explorable mode dungeons with a PUG than it is to duo it with a guild member.
I miss the days when cross realm grouping wasn't a thing , and I knew everyone on my server, so I knew which groups to join and which not to. It doesn't help that MMOs moving to action combat now require more and more skill to complete effectively and bad players bog the group down even further.
And to people who might claim this is elitism: I don't rage at my party members (I do on Teamspeak and Guild Chat though) and I try to be as helpful as and patient as possible when doing these groups. Sometimes it's even a bit fun playing the roulette and seeing just as bad a group you can get. I don't feel like most MMOs (though that's changing) require a heavy skill requirement to play either and I'm not claiming to be the best player either, so it boggles my mind how players can be that incompetent. When you play at such a low level, you also bring people down with you and waste everyone's time.
As far as systems to help PUGGing: More exclusions (forcing groups to single servers, class role system, ranking systems, gearscore requirements) mean a better overall experience for PUGGing, but each exclusion has a major impact on the time it takes to find a group. Modern MMOs have been favoring shorter playtimes and have some have more inclusive systems like cross realm LFG, that really effect the overall quality of PUGs you get since the player pools aren't effectively separated.
Unfortunately in some MMORPG instances are designed to be done fast - and that leaves little room for pleasantries. Keep up, and listen or gtfo noob. Getting the prize efficiently > journey, especially if its not trouble free.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
So this is a quick replay. I have been reading everybody's feedback, and I came to the conclusion that the decline in fun of pug groups is at least 1 of 3 different things, we 3 different solutions:
1.) Bad pugs is a mechanics problem:
Obviously if an MMO is structured heavily around the solo experience, than grouping is going to suffer. Just like an MMO structured around PvE, later adds PvP , the PvP is going to suffer. An example of pugs being a mechanics problem are dungeons that do not require teamwork, loot that doesn't encourage players to do their jobs better, and LFD system that encourages leeching, and allows bad players to get away with, or even reward their bad behavior.
2.) Bag pugs are a people problem:
It's clear that MMOs today are designed for possibly a younger, less mature demographic than MMOs of 10 years ago. A whole generation of players don't know what pug grouping was like before cross LFD tool existed, so this is the new normal. The game is so easy now that there's no incentive for players who don't know how to play to ever learn how to play. Inversely there's no incentive for people in guilds that do know how to play to bother staying in a dungeon to teach other people how to play. So what's left is a pug group with just one or two people that know what they are doing, and everybody else running into walls.
3.) Bag pugs are a skill problem:
So this theory suggests that it's not people's unwillingness to learn teamwork, it's just that the learning curve is too high. People play the game for fun, and being forced to learn rotations, gear itemization, and dungeon mechanics is too much for the average player. A game that's overly complex drives away potential new players, because they are just always dead, and veteran players have to avoid pugging entirely for their own safety.
Like I said, this is just my observation. Maybe I'm on the right track here, but If these are the issues, I think 2 out of 3 of them can be solved.
I've never seen this suggested anywhere before but it sounds crazy enough to work. Perhaps the genius kind of crazy. Hirelings would be an answer for the time pressed people who demand the LFG tools which have pretty much killed server communities in mmos who don't carefully implement them like FFXIV, could also act as a gold sink if developers so desire, would be great for learning new fights/dungeons as a tank/healer without fear of fucking up and wouldn't replace the old fashioned method of making friends and doing content with them.
It shouldn't be hard to add hirelings with basic scripts or commands and them workable and would allow the more important fix of murdering LFG tools and fiddling with megaservers so they are for the open world only and you have to choose a server for your dungeon/raid pool.