The Problem(?) of PUGs

[Abelfaec]

Going to go right on ahead and lol at this. This bit specifically:



The only thing limiting the way casual guilds want to play is ... the way they play, which is casually. No one is making a rule that says casual guilds can't do shit. I don't know if you realized this, but you can be in a guild and also go on a pug. A pug is not some formless entity floating around SoD eating everything so that you can't have it, it's just people, and a whole shit of a lot of them are casuals who find a few free hours to join a pug a week. Pugs are one of the MAJOR ways casual guilds are advancing these days - oh my god! Who knew?

I would also like to point out that you've turned your bias into insulting assumptions and insinuations. This a topic that is splitting the player base up and calling out what they value. I understand who you are and what you want, but if you regress to insults about our intelligence because we disagree you do nothing but come off like an asshat. We all have our biases on this, we all have our opinions, quit making yours so abrasive.

 

[Dimmi]

I would like to claim my reward for coming up with the lore-based-zones-aren't-for-PuG Raids-idea, tia

I would also like to mention that I think it's an awful idea and smacks of Jim Crow elitism.

I'm on board with a couple other posters in this thread (I don't play anymore, so don't put any weight behind this) as far as the massive influx of rules and restrictions go. When there was no more making level 1 toons to curbstomp half the adept population in a single day...what's the point of going on? *wink*

As my final act in my official capacity as the most recent poster in this thread at the time of this posting, I'm calling for a vote of no-confidence in Chancellor Vellorum (if I spelled that wrong it's on purpose) and meesa proposin big bombad clone army of the republickin.

whoops....this isn't chillville.....*shrug*

 

[Tarutao]

As a final thing to point out, I would note that Tao stated in my still yet to be trashcanned "Purpose of the 2/3rds Rule" post that:

"We'll handle it from here, and if any chances happen (which there is no assurance will happen), there won't be room for discussion/bitching afterwards."

I'm not in a position of authority over Admin-Slaar. If he opens that discussion up, then it's open. I wouldn't have opened it. Be grateful to him.

 

[eqjenius]

I think the "problem" that some of us are arriving at is that in the upper tiers, progression almost exclusively occurs through raiding. If you don't raid, you can't progress. If you can't progress, then lots of people have lost their motivation to play the game.

Whether it's quests, spells, or loot, most progression requires players to raid progressively meaner bosses. By making upper-tier content accessible to only groups of guild-tagged players, we're excluding a lot of players from progression. And, IMO, one of the more social and interesting aspects of the game.

I do not want record-keeping and I don't want to stop people from playing with their friends? How about answering the question I put forward at the beginning: Is it the general idea that there should be some content for guilds alone?

No, and why should there be? As much as guilds are created to encourage a sense of community among a specific group of players, they're equally created in order to exclude bad or unreliable players from the ranks, and to make game content exclusive to that guild alone. They're formed in order to make progression easier for the members of that guild and only those members, usually at the expense of players in other guilds and non-guilded players.

Why do guilded players deserve special treatment from the devs? Where's the moral high ground here? Why do we refer to <tagged> toons as "cohesive" and toons without <tagged> as "mercenaries"?

What if there were no restrictions at all on pugs? Guilds are reduced to social creatures with loot structure and are no longer linked to progression in any meaningful sense.

Guilds are social creatures with their own loot structures. Those structures allow guilded toons to progress faster than non-guilded toons. That's why people create them. That and the social aspect.

 

[Abelfaec]

I don't understand why content shouldn't be designed to benefit guilds, and be reserved for them. I just don't think standard content should be reserved for guilds just -because-

 

[cian2]

This change is just yet another example of REDACTED taking a good suggestion and turning it into something negative. Let's be clear here - the reason this change was made is because Solo made a pug that killed Gongo and Essence. On that raid we had 11 people who were "flagged" (a completely imaginary thing btw) and had to swap out an unflagged toon for a flagged one. We killed those two non-MQ/quest related bosses and Exo/CW tears flowed.

It seemed pretty logical that the "problem(?)" was that the imaginary flag system is hilarious arbitrary and essentially makes zero sense - you can have a character with 10 sanctum items who IS NOT flagged for the zone. Sound simple, right? Restrict the flagging penalty to zones that have an actual flag system that exists - ToT, Yclist, Spires, Tur'ruj. But instead that was taken and twisted into some sweeping rule change that ends up hurting the average player far more than it hurts people like Solo who pug to gear a scumbag alt.

I feel like I'm in the twilight zone seeing awful change after awful change go in, and it's like no one cares. I imagine it has got to be difficult for the devs who are actually *adding* things to the game to see, as well...

 

[Swandillia]

People, inflation is an essential aspect of MMOs. If you want to guarantee that the new zones you design won't be used, design it for a player base that's progressed beyond it. Exo, CW and FWF aren't gonna spend time in new T8/T9 zones. The lower tiered guilds will. But then they already had a T8 zone in Thaz, so... I don't see the point.

LOL i think that those guilds would MOST CERTAINLY explore new content, even if it IS several tiers below them... if only just to see the boss encounters, figure them out, and learn their loot.... you don't know something's not worth it for you unless, and until, you try it....

Just sayin....

 

[Dimmi]

Nope.

 

[Thade]

I don't see what this has addressed. This change seems to solve nothing yet create more problems. If it's not broken, don't fix it.

 

[Abelfaec]

It seems basic to me, if a raid port is available via clickie or spell cast it should dictate that it doesn't require flags.

We made Prison super easy to get to, now we're scolding people for taking advantage of that ease.

If you want to see less pugs here require that everyone click in from Ef, problem solved.

 

[huey]

Those structures allow guilded toons to progress faster than non-guilded toons. That's why people create them. That and the social aspect.

This person or particular sentence isn't really what I'm picking on, but one part of it is my whole problem with stuff. Progress. Are these non-guilded toons really progressing? I'm not against pugs. I'm not really necessarily wanting anything to be for guilds only. Personally, I'd just like to see things earned. If the people in the pugs actually "progressed" to whatever they're gonna pug then hey, I'm all for it. But when some Tier 9 pug shows up, some monk with 3.5k hp scums in because of a friend, or because they're an alt of a ringer, or just because of a free slot, and suddenly a character that might've been around 2 months or a person that has been in game not long at all and has maybe gone on three other raids ever suddenly sees content someone else that has raided for two years hasn't seen or gets an item, etc. etc..... well that just kinda sucks imo.

I mean it's the exact kinda thing I've always heard people on live or WoW bitch about where they worked their asses off....some new expansion comes out....they change it so that anyone can get in whatever zone it was you just spent months working up to, and they just made the gear you just spent months or in some cases years working up to trivial....suddenly some guy plays for two months and bam, is wearing the same thing or better.

Nobody wants to earn anything anymore it seems. As I said a ways back, or maybe in some other thread, I can't remember, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this kinda stuff.

 

[Severien]

Let's stop a minute; you are saying is that if rate of progression were a number, determined by the amount you play, let's say a casual guild progresses at a rate of 2, and hardcore progressions guilds progress at 5, these units and numbers are purely fictitious but that's irrelevant.

If a casual guild's rate of progression was scalably lesser than that of a hardcore guild, yes, they progress slower. No one is saying casual players expect to progress rapidly, or even to the upper tiers. Alot of casual players have accepted they won't see tiers 8+. What you do not understand by the nature of your tunnel vision mentality is that casual players would just like to progress at some rate, and these new rules are restricting their ability to do so beyond their already inconvenient schedule for playtimes.

Casual players are already at a disadvantage, we're just further crippling them.

I don't understand why content shouldn't be designed to benefit guilds, and be reserved for them. I just don't think standard content should be reserved for guilds just -because-

Its hard to tell what side of the issue you even stand on when you make posts like these. I don't even know or care what you're arguing for. Are you saying we're crippling them by banning pugs or by allowing pugs? IMO banning the pugs cripples them a hell of a lot more than letting people pug whatever the fuck as long as they're capable of it. The reason for this is that it allows them to raid: 1. On a more flexible schedule, and 2. Occasionally they get to join a raid a tier or two over their own content level.

Lets give an example. Let's say we have a tier 6 ranger - we'll call him Aragorn. Aragorn is in a casual guild that raids Monday at 7pm and Saturday at 7pm. Because Aragorn is a casual, his raid attendance is spotty - this is okay. Some people just play that way. But this week Aragorn can't make either of his guilds scheduled raids. He does, however, find time to log on Wednesday at 5pm and finds himself a pug on Valor A and gets a loot. Kapow! A casual just progressed!

I'm sorry if my irritation at Magina has made you butthurt. When your rebuttal to a posting is a quotation with "lol at this" I might not always be nice. I might use sarcasm. This doesn't mean that my opinion is "tunnel vision mentality." I don't even pug more than once a month. I just think its wrong to tell people they can't experience content. Pugs - and ringers for that matter - are victimless crimes, if you think I'm full of shit just go track all the T5, T6, T7, T8 or whatever tier you think this is a problem at and find out just how much shit is waiting to be killed. No single zone or encounter under roughly T9 is absolutely essential to a guilds progression through the tiers. You can make some argument for prison (we sidestepped IP in Numinous, at least for the purposes of farming its loot, due to another guild actively trying to block us out of it), especially when keying for sanctum enters the equation, but at that point you aren't casual anymore and that's fucking competition - get over it. Go join the very pug that's sucking up all your combine gems/frags/rituals/stones whatever.

 

[Severien]

This person or particular sentence isn't really what I'm picking on, but one part of it is my whole problem with stuff. Progress. Are these non-guilded toons really progressing? I'm not against pugs. I'm not really necessarily wanting anything to be for guilds only. Personally, I'd just like to see things earned. If the people in the pugs actually "progressed" to whatever they're gonna pug then hey, I'm all for it. But when some Tier 9 pug shows up, some monk with 3.5k hp scums in because of a friend, or because they're an alt of a ringer, or just because of a free slot, and suddenly a character that might've been around 2 months or a person that has been in game not long at all and has maybe gone on three other raids ever suddenly sees content someone else that has raided for two years hasn't seen or gets an item, etc. etc..... well that just kinda sucks imo.

I mean it's the exact kinda thing I've always heard people on live or WoW bitch about where they worked their asses off....some new expansion comes out....they change it so that anyone can get in whatever zone it was you just spent months working up to, and they just made the gear you just spent months or in some cases years working up to trivial....suddenly some guy plays for two months and bam, is wearing the same thing or better.

Nobody wants to earn anything anymore it seems. As I said a ways back, or maybe in some other thread, I can't remember, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this kinda stuff.

Things aren't as difficult as they used to be. There are new difficult things. It's basic mudflation. SoD is very fortunate that its mudflation is very, very low in comparison to retail MMOs. However, you can't release new content and expect to have zero mudflation at the same time. A fresh raiding guild of fresh 65 players should actually be starting at like tier 4 or 5 these days, because there are a lot more tools available to the players - t4 buyables, new spells, a buttload of tomes (esp codices), charms, tmaps, even different mechanics than when that content was new. You can expect faster progression in those lower tiers for a lot of the same reasons. In many ways this is not a bad thing - the more content we add at the top end, the bottom end should get a little easier to get lower players closer to the median. You can't smear the playerbase across the entire spread of content and have an active thriving game at the same time - there wouldn't be enough people to slum with. Does it trivialize your accomplishments from back in the day? Well, a little, in some ways, but for the most part no. You still got the satisfaction of earning it and being a leg up in your game at the time. Rather than being pissed that someone else had a bit of an easier time doing it, you should be happy that you have new people to do things with in a game driven by social interaction. The extreme cases are frustrating but that's an element of the "social" part of this game. Just like in the real world, who you know can be more important than how competent you are. That's just life, and we aren't about to fix society within our video game (try - people will always find a way around it).

 

[eqjenius]

Nobody wants to earn anything anymore it seems. As I said a ways back, or maybe in some other thread, I can't remember, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this kinda stuff.

A poster earlier in the thread said he started in August and now he's Tier 8. Kinda blows my mind as I'm Tier 10 and I've been playing a couple of years.

Nature of the beast, though. Is it a problem? Despite my "back-in-my-day-we-had-to-wear-onions-on-our-belts-and-we-enjoyed-it" feelings when I read this, I myself am basically fully raid buffed any time I solo or do a group. This would have been inconceivable for me a year and a half ago, but now I've got access to whatever class I need buffs from and can box whatever class or character I need to down a mob.

Still, yeah I do think it's a problem, but I think solutions can be found which are better for the game than these restrictions on pugs.

 

[Woogie526]

A poster earlier in the thread said he started in August and now he's Tier 8. Kinda blows my mind as I'm Tier 10 and I've been playing a couple of years.

Nature of the beast, though. Is it a problem? Despite my "back-in-my-day-we-had-to-wear-onions-on-our-belts-and-we-enjoyed-it" feelings when I read this, I myself am basically fully raid buffed any time I solo or do a group. This would have been inconceivable for me a year and a half ago, but now I've got access to whatever class I need buffs from and can box whatever class or character I need to down a mob.

Still, yeah I do think it's a problem, but I think solutions can be found which are better for the game than these restrictions on pugs.

I survived 2 boss fights in thaz. I have only won loot in city of mercy. I wouldn't consider myself tier 8' I just didn't expect to be able to add to a tier 8 encounter and could.

 

[Zapple]

A poster earlier in the thread said he started in August and now he's Tier 8. Kinda blows my mind as I'm Tier 10 and I've been playing a couple of years.

No, what he meant is that a couple tier 8 pugs (he said thaz, I assume lower) actually took him along even though he doesn't have enough gear or AAs to really contribute much there. Fomelo his character: Here is his dude. No way is that character tier 8. I wouldn't consider my own characters to be tier 8, but they are actually useful contributors against tier 8 mobs at least. I've also kept up some pretty bad characters in easier tier 7-8 pugs with just constantly keeping group hot up on my cleric. They can survive at times but they aren't very useful.

What happened in his example was a pug of mostly on and over-tiered characters let a few new characters like that ride on their coattails in places like LT water or earth where the gear of those new 65-like characters usually wouldn't cause them to splat every pull since there's really not much in the way of aoe damage gear check to deal with in those places. A lot of guilds even do that sort of thing to gear up new recruits or bad alt characters. Usually happens in pugs when the raid leader is just desperate to fill up the last few slots due to lack of interest, or someone's playing an actually good character, etc.

I stand to benefit from these new policy changes since there's some things around my guild's tier that were pugged constantly that now can't be anymore and will likely be up for me to kill, but I still can't say pugs bothered me much. Almost always stuff up to kill as a plan B even if your guild only does a couple nights a week. Maybe less now that thaz is gone, but oh well.

 

[DookeyKing]

Designating some content as off limits to pugs is simply eliminating competition. So, is competition bad now? I'm pretty sure competition for targets/loot was the whole reason behind not using instances.

Just because the competition doesn't all wear the same tag doesn't mean diddly. This change is molly coddling a few crybaby guilds.

 

[totillion]

Purely as an idea - destroy as you see fit.

What if there were instanced raid zones, but they could only be accessed by guilds. In order for a guild to access these instances the guild would need to earn entry by completing a certain long involved quest, or paying a huge sum of plat. They would get flagged for the instance, and once they began the instance they would get X hours to clear then the flags expire. The point being, that a guild could earn the right to raid chosen content at a time which is convenient to them - although at a cost of a plat and/or time sink (quest).

Obviously, a guild could circumvent the Pay-to-Raid and raid whatever content is up and available.

And PuGs could keep on PuGging whatever they wanted.

 

[Minerios]

Reading this thread brings back lovely (hum...) memories of the few guilds I've been in that self-destructed. A problem festers for a while, leadership asks for advice, shit is hurled this way and that, leadership doesn't want to impose its views, guild breaks up.

What I'm saying is that at this point, in my humble opinion, with people on both (every?) sides of the issue pretending to speak in the name of "the players", the best thing that could happen would be for Slaar and company to say "those are the rules, deal with it", whatever the rules they wish to enforce. Because regardless of which way the ruling goes, there will be screaming and flailing, so let's get it over with.

 

[eqjenius]

What if there were instanced raid zones, but they could only be accessed by guilds. In order for a guild to access these instances the guild would need to earn entry by completing a certain long involved quest, or paying a huge sum of plat. They would get flagged for the instance, and once they began the instance they would get X hours to clear then the flags expire. The point being, that a guild could earn the right to raid chosen content at a time which is convenient to them - although at a cost of a plat and/or time sink (quest).

Obviously, a guild could circumvent the Pay-to-Raid and raid whatever content is up and available.

And PuGs could keep on PuGging whatever they wanted.

Basically, guild-only tmaps. My question remains the same: why do guilds deserve special considerations?

Look at it another way: Suppose guilds were eliminated completely, or every guild was merged under the <Dalaya's Veterans> tag. What would the difference to the game be?

As far as I can figure it, the only differences would be that 1) People would talk to other players more often, and 2) Higher level players would find it a bit more difficult to be exclusive and to horde game content for themselves. That's about it.