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Why is the quality of PUG's so low?
bunnyhopper
Member CommonPosts: 2,751
Now we all know that a pug, whether it is involved in PVE or PVP, is never going to match the quality of a premade/a group of players used to working together time after time (and if they do something is going badly wrong). So no one expects amazing teamwork.
But taking that aside, why do we so often see PUG groups where even the most common sense basics are such a freak occurrence that they are enough to make you gasp in amazement?
At first I thought it could be down to two key elements:
(i) The composition of the group is random and so team synergy is all over the place.
(ii) People are new to what they are doing (not done much pvp, not run a dungeon before).
But looking at it, neither really goes to explain what goes on in the Benny Hill world of pugs and random matchmaking. I've seen plenty of people running about in gear which points to the fact that, yes they have been in there numerous times before. I have seen penty of group comps which are just fine and yet there is zero teamwork per say aside from the occasional zerg (when fortune means the random roamers on the same team have bumped into each other).
So what exactly is going on? Why do we see people randomly wandering off? Why do we see people never using team synergy skills? Surely not everyone is specced solo dps? Just what is going on?
There has always (pretty much) been a two tier structure to mmos. You get a vast amount of content which is facerollingly easy and requires zero skill, then you get certain elements at endgame which are vastly different and require teamwork.
Now that makes perfect sense, you have people getting into clans/guilds and getting taught the ins and outs from that. BUT, given there seems to be a glaring gap where common sense should live (you know randomly walking away from your team mates is not a great idea), should games be incorporating more lower level content which promotes team gameplay basics?
Take GW2 for instance, the entire game is one mindless zerg (in combat terms) until you either step foot in a dungeon or step foot in a ranked pvp tourney. So why is there no content along the path to endgame which demonstrates that combos are a good idea? Why not have a DE in which the boss can only be damaged via combos/group synergy moves? How about a mission that requires you to stay within a certain proximity of an NPC healer?
In another thread recently I naysayed people who suggested that combos should be explained in more depth to players. Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps even the fundamentals of teamwork should be gradually demonstrated to every mmo player via a series of quests/tutorials or something.
Disclaimer: The OP (to wit me) just got involved in a bad (is there any other kind) pug and is bitter and ranting about the whole experience (which was probably his fault anyway).
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Comments
Did you care about the lore in Shadowbane? Let's be real honest here. The only 'lore' that mattered was that the Chinese came, saw, and conquered.
PUGs are bad because the players in them are bad - that's the only reason. People will try to find excuses, but in the end, they're just not good. A game that has strict dependencies on personal performance (the healer actually healing) means that the entire group is balanced around one or two players and their good skills can carry the team. In these kinds of games, bad DPS typically just makes the fight longer but still beatable as long as the tank/healer are good.
In games that aren't so strict about role (like GW2), every player must perform well or the group suffers. This is why GW2 pugs can seem absolutely terrible compared to a silent WoW random where everyone knows what role they need to fill in the group. Saying that 'everyone can perform every role' is a double-edged sword that has prevented me from pugging at all - instead, I look to my guild's GW2 branch if I want any fun there.
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But even then, it doesn't explain the complete randomness you often see. Seriously you get more structure from a bunch of ferrets traped in a windsock.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
in every game in every pve or pvp content are always more than 1 ways to win it, so a pug group are made with ppl that run different strategies, and of course everyone considering his way the most successful.
Well to some extent that is the case in every team. But even when someone is being "carried" to the extent you suggest, it would necessitate them actually staying within the proximity of their better team mates (or just hiding).
I'm talking about stuff like randomly wandering off (not stealth classes or node cap heavies, but healers etc), or standing in AOE's trying to finish someone whilst you are fighting in the near by area.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I think most of it is actually because each of them is convinced they are playing 'right' and everyone else is a PuG moron. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy created by each person knowing they are the good player and finding amusement in the 'antics' of the lessers, creating what is in reality 5 individuals each trying to make the others look bad.
That ties in with what defector1968 wrote and there is probably an element of truth to it.
It certainly explains some of the random wandering. But i'm not sure it explains some of the basic things that just get missed more often than not.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I have been playing healers in most games and yes tank and healer can carry a game but nowadays it seems that grouping has become very painful and really not something I enjoy anymore. Everyone talks about only grouping with guildees and this is truly sad that the genre has been reduced to this dynamic. I feel very upset when I play because I end up soloing and to be honest not something I want at all but the alternative is too painful.
Nothing can be done about it and no , games where people do not speak is no better. Last I played WoW when they first introduced the lfg tool and instant groups it was like playing with 4 bots. To be honest SWTOR's companions were more fun, at least they made me laugh with their comments instead of the wall of silence I encountered in WoW.
Haha, yes, indeed. I'd say this actually goes for the internet and life in general as well!
Here's something interesting I noticed. I never complained about another player in a dungeon run. Like, ever! Not even a sarcastic remark! (Yep, yep, don't hold it in, I can hear the round of applause brewing in there!)
Thing is, almost none of the people I used to run regularly with did it, either. To us, getting a slow / tough PUG was all part of the game: some players weren't familiar with the mechanics, so we patiently told them; some were undergeared, so we'd try to play smarter and be ready to complete more slowly. And when we were running with better (or better geared) players, we'd expect the same.
And you know what? If enough people show patience, PUGs actually begin to get better, because players have the time to *learn* dungeons and raids. To me, "many bad players" are not the cause of lack of patience; they're the direct result of it!
When I hear people saying "Sorry, I don't have the time to carry a bad / undergeared player", I'm honestly embarrassed for them. I'd even go so far as to say it's shameful. People knock WOW's community all the time, but I remember filling a spot for a really good guild on a raid run they did, and them positively showering me with loot, and having a good time doing it.
I honestly think things got way way worse. And I blame lack of patience with other players.
Often, it's because no one is organizing the group. If you have five people in a group who don't communicate at all, then what would you expect to happen? If you take it upon yourself to organize the group and explain what is going on and what people need to do, you'll find that you get much higher quality PUGs, even with exactly the same players as before.
Occasionally, you'll get people who are just idiots. (Actually, you can often detect such people before the group actually starts the dungeon you're working on.) But most players can be perfectly competent in a properly organized PUG.
Having a pre-made or guild group doesn't magically make players better. If you have 25 players split into 5 guild groups, and then scramble the groups so that they're five groups of randomly chosen players with still decent group compositions, then the players are just as good as before--and the groups will be, too, if the players are willing to put in the same organizational work as they would for pre-made groups.
The answer to this question is extremely simple. The quality of PUGs is so low because MMO's have been made extremely easy to play to accomodate greater numbers of potential customers. As such your statistical chance of encountering a poor player has gone up by orders of magnitude when compared with the days of games like EQ1, where a truly bad player couldnt actually make it to max level because if they died too much they would lose too much XP and thus start losing levels, and probably give up out of frustration. This isnt even accounting for the time to level issue.
Now, we have MMOs that the average player can max level in less than 100 hours of play, and super simplified combat, etc.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Don't agree with the underlined. Taking aside individual player skill, a premade that is used to working as a team is superior (perhaps not by much, but by enough) to a team comprised of that premade split up and spliced with another premade. The reasons being that whilst the basics are essentially the same, you know exactly when and how someone is going to react if you have been playing with them for months/years on end.
As for the first part, yeah I agree.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Well, lots of people here are obviously drawn to the 'bad player' influence, which I don't dispute. However there is something people are overlooking here, which is bad game design.
Tera BGs are a classic point in case. Yes, the Tera community has its share of bad players, but very poor game structure is equally if not more to blame for bad pugs. Tera BG is team king of the hill with 2x points for win, but BG ranking, contribution points and league tables reward incredibly selfish play styles. Kill/death ratios mean players run at the first sign of danger, capping bases gains points while def is unrewarded (go figure), dc saves your win ratio so you are often 2-3 men down in the precious final seconds, healers recieve nothing for healing, and so on, and so on.
There is so much scope for great pvp. I have seen awesome premades in action, with seamless tank/sorc/archer nukes wiping 15 man zergs. But because of game design, i am stuck in pugs where people use healers are human shields...
Content can no longer be facerolled through. Contrary to popular belief, EQ was actually a very easy game when you didn't try to go too far outside of the box. Raids were challenging, but if you really wanted to PUG your way through a raid, you could usually zerg the content -- not that I ran too many PUG raids aside from Naggy/Vox.
In modern MMORPGs, group content isn't really conducive to random groups. Boss encounters are often challenging and require coordination or prior knowledge which most PUGs simply do not have.
Really good point actually. In GW2 for instance, the way the maps/teams are rotated makes it even less likely people are going to bother trying to organise. Couple that with the fact it is point capture and you see people running all over the shop. Speaking purely about pug/hotmatches.
From WAR I recall people caring more about dps/heal scores than actually caring whether or not that dps or those heals were actually effective.
Perhaps the actual structure of the pvp doesn't help in some instances (pardon the pun).
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Ok, so with all the stuff I've seen so far, it seems to come down to:
Whether that's correct or not is purely academic in most games. Most games have mechanics built into the game that very, very strongly discourage you from grouping with the same players repeatedly. One player is higher level than the other, so they really can't group without it being the wrong level for one of them. And then once you get high enough level that you stop getting meaningfully stronger, there's nothing left to do but start another character or quit the game.
If a game lets you hit the power cap quickly with much of the game still ahead of you like Guild Wars, you can group with the same players a lot. A special case of this would be a game without much progression, like Puzzle Pirates. Uncharted Waters Online's ability to borrow the skills of the highest in the group can make mismatched levels work, too, but that relies on some extremely unusual game mechanics. But in most games, the penalties for grouping with players that are the "wrong" level greatly exceed any benefits from getting used to each other.
Not sure what level disparity has to do with it (in terms of pvp at least).
Anyway I think the reason PUG's seem even worse in GW2 than normal is because of the actual game mechanics. It may well be the case that some care more about the Glory and vanity skins than combat/team wins. You get more Glory cycling points so people just run off to them. Great.....
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
I do agree with you if one of the people in the group is a leader, often times most are followers or no one wants to take the lead. If someone does and is good at it than a PUG can be very good
The problem, and I've made this point time and time again, is that people are no longer playing MMOs to have a good time, they're being hyper-competitive. Gotta get that super drop, gotta get to that next level as fast as you can, anyone who can't keep up with you is just slowing you down and you don't need them. That's one of the reasons I don't play in groups anymore, I don't want to run, run, run, hurry, hurry, hurry. I want to be slow and methodical and when I couldn't find anyone who wanted to play that way, I stopped playing with everyone.
It's like they did things over on Anarchy Online, back in the day. People would pull 10 missions out of a terminal, all in the same general vicinity and they would RUN through the missions, killing everything, then jumping back outside to the next one. Lather, rinse, repeat. These people were doing 10 missions an hour easy, just for the XP. I'm sorry, I find absolutely no fun in that, but it goes for both PUGs and guild groups as well. Nobody has any patience in an MMO anymore.
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Ah, you're talking about PVP and I'm talking about PVE. No wonder we're talking past each other.
In terms of PvP, my opinion is this.
In all games that I've played post-WoW, wPvP has been replaced with manufactured e-sport PvP with no purpose. Except these e-sport instances have objectives (capping nodes and flags). Half of the little, selfish bastards that que up, ignore the objective (if they are even aware of them at all) and "pee vee pee" mid-field with their rogues-like characters and huge (in thier own minds) egos. Most of the time costing the match for everyone else.
Private Deathmatch jerks, squeal like little pigs in wPVP though.
It's not "low", it's random. Everyone has a PuG story where they absolutely kicked ass, and many more they don't remember where the group was OK.
I've been in PuGs where one member ragequit because we all sucked (we did), and then the 4 of us remaining cut though the dungeon like it was butter. No idea what changed, except we all decided that the rest of us weren't quitters (or something).
Pugs... oh my... how they want me to slam my head in to a desk. I don't expect much at all, I really don't, thats what makes it so bad. On Rift, if someone can pull 600 dps (which btw, is extremely easy to hit, even just fresh hitting 50) I'm happy, yet I see people who pull 200-400 dps and over-all just doing funky stuff or dieing a lot. I just really don't get it. I don't expect things to be good and everyone to be good (which you would be seeing 1k dps being as low as it goes for even the lowest geared individual). Its just people seem to be so bad and if things at all are designed around all the players being 'on ball'... things shoot down hill so fast.
Its something I just don't get. I just can't see people being as stupid as I see in pugs. Maybe its my false sense that everyone has basic common sense or a brain, but I just don't see it. It frusterates me because I feel deep down they are more then capable, they just don't try.
Having a 'closing gap' of sorts to try and ease people in to more difficult content I honestly don't think would work. Some people might just be to far out of reach. Not to mention, they could end up just getting carried through and be a weight on other people's backs they need to pull through themselves. One thing that did use to help for raiding aspect was raid progression, which sadly seemed to be neglected as of lately. I don't know why, It really spices things up and gives us a reason to play the game through and work to achieve something, all the while helping to fine tune our skill. Then again... I do know a lot of players today are seeking instant gratification, which is a terrible thing for both game and the player.