PUGs are fun!

[jcTharin]

I like PUGs. PUGs are good. I see so many people on the forms talk about bad PUGs. And I think “come on! They’re one of the best parts of the game!”
In this game it’s easy to lose your sense of adventure. You know all the quests, you’ve done them all before, and you know what’s around every corner. Eventually there’s no more exploration, no more discovery, no more adventure.

If you want to add some heat what’s a better spice than a bunch of idiots that will end up unleashing hell?

Really, what’s so bad about a bad PUG run?
So you died. So what? This isn't like PnP, you don't lose any XP or levels or stats. At the most you lose some time and coin.
The PUG was a waste of time? If you don’t enjoy spending time playing this game why are you playing it?
People in the PUG were rude? OK yah, I agree with you there. Jerks suck.

OK I'm done for now. I just wanted to rant.

[Calebro]

I pug most of the time because I find it entertaining as heck. There are however times when I've had enough f2p, and roll p2p quests. There are even times when that gets annoying and I want guild runs.

Last night:
LFM goes up on a new lv 4 toon: WW hard, lv 3-5, speed runs, BYOH
I stepped in.
By the time I was done with the first part, I had 3 bards, a pally, a wiz, and myself. I wait at the last fight for everyone to get in. One of the bards asks where we are. I tell him WW chapter 1. Everyone shows up except the bard, who asks again where we are, so I tell him again. I give him directions through WW to chapter 1, even though I know how this is going to go.
Finally everyone gets in.
Finish the last fight and move on to chapter 2. The wiz (who made a note of going to buy pots before coming in, but never drank any) dies. And immediately releases. I drop him. The lost bard dies, but is smart enough not to release. One of those two grabbed Arlo during the run and he's about to die. I'm wand whipping Arlo instead of fighting, trying to get him to follow me.
Quest complete.
Run the bard to the shrine (that wasn't cleared because this was a speed run). Get him up. I tell them to FO, and I do so. I make my way to chapter 3 with no blue dots on my WW map, but I see blue bars dropping speedily.
I enter chapter 3 and I'm done clearing the main junction room and on my way to Red when someone says in VC "are you solo'ing chapter 3?"
"Yep. LFM said speed runs. That means when the quest is complete we move on. Feel free to join me if you guys would like to continue the chain with me."
They catch up a bit. Multiple pug deaths later, someone is complaining that we don't have a healer.
BYOH! If you didn't know what it meant, why didn't you ask?
Finally completed WW.

I leave the group and invite the only competent player (a bard) to join me in Depths. I throw up an LFM, same style. During the course of the 4 quests, I get multiple tells asking what BYOH means (yay!) and only a single person joins because we don't have a healer. That person asks where the quest is. We tell him House D. "Is that in Market?" Nope. It's in House D. "I don't see you on my map in Market." That's because we're in a quest in House D. "I'm in Market 2 and I can't see you."
Dropped.
We two-man it with no issues.

I like this bard, but I'm done with f2p content for the night. so I ask him if he's premium, vip, f2p.
He's f2p, so I buy him a pass for STK and open LFM.
We finish with a full group, but they're squishy, so we don't want to bring them with for Tangleroot next (which I buy buy the bard a pass for again).

LFM goes up, same style. But this time "difficulty dependent upon group" is added.
Five ranger icons and a bard. Only 3 of us are actually healing ourselves, two of them are kiting everything and continually dying, and one of them keeps opening everything on elite even though the party is all level 5's and 6's. I tell them that the LFM said difficulty depends on the group, and this group shouldn't be running elite all the way through, and that as the party leader I should be the one opening the quests at an appropriate level. Said player continues to open elite repeatedly. I tell them that as the under-leveled trap monkey, I've had to use skill boost, and a heroism pot just to find the traps, and that elite is going to wipe us.
Finally we finish, and the bard and myself (the two lowest leveled toons in there) were the only ones that never died.

I'm done with pugs for the night. Unfortunately no guildys in that level range were on-line, so I log.

Long story short: I like to pug, until it gets to be too much of a headache. Last night was one of those nights.

[Jay203]

I pug most of the time because I find it entertaining as heck. There are however times when I've had enough f2p, and roll p2p quests. There are even times when that gets annoying and I want guild runs.

Last night:
LFM goes up on a new lv 4 toon: WW hard, lv 3-5, speed runs, BYOH
I stepped in.
By the time I was done with the first part, I had 3 bards, a pally, a wiz, and myself. I wait at the last fight for everyone to get in. One of the bards asks where we are. I tell him WW chapter 1. Everyone shows up except the bard, who asks again where we are, so I tell him again. I give him directions through WW to chapter 1, even though I know how this is going to go.
Finally everyone gets in.
Finish the last fight and move on to chapter 2. The wiz (who made a note of going to buy pots before coming in, but never drank any) dies. And immediately releases. I drop him. The lost bard dies, but is smart enough not to release. One of those two grabbed Arlo during the run and he's about to die. I'm wand whipping Arlo instead of fighting, trying to get him to follow me.
Quest complete.
Run the bard to the shrine (that wasn't cleared because this was a speed run). Get him up. I tell them to FO, and I do so. I make my way to chapter 3 with no blue dots on my WW map, but I see blue bars dropping speedily.
I enter chapter 3 and I'm done clearing the main junction room and on my way to Red when someone says in VC "are you solo'ing chapter 3?"
"Yep. LFM said speed runs. That means when the quest is complete we move on. Feel free to join me if you guys would like to continue the chain with me."
They catch up a bit. Multiple pug deaths later, someone is complaining that we don't have a healer.
BYOH! If you didn't know what it meant, why didn't you ask?
Finally completed WW.

I leave the group and invite the only competent player (a bard) to join me in Depths. I throw up an LFM, same style. During the course of the 4 quests, I get multiple tells asking what BYOH means (yay!) and only a single person joins because we don't have a healer. That person asks where the quest is. We tell him House D. "Is that in Market?" Nope. It's in House D. "I don't see you on my map in Market." That's because we're in a quest in House D. "I'm in Market 2 and I can't see you."
Dropped.
We two-man it with no issues.

I like this bard, but I'm done with f2p content for the night. so I ask him if he's premium, vip, f2p.
He's f2p, so I buy him a pass for STK and open LFM.
We finish with a full group, but they're squishy, so we don't want to bring them with for Tangleroot next (which I buy buy the bard a pass for again).

LFM goes up, same style. But this time "difficulty dependent upon group" is added.
Five ranger icons and a bard. Only 3 of us are actually healing ourselves, two of them are kiting everything and continually dying, and one of them keeps opening everything on elite even though the party is all level 5's and 6's. I tell them that the LFM said difficulty depends on the group, and this group shouldn't be running elite all the way through, and that as the party leader I should be the one opening the quests at an appropriate level. Said player continues to open elite repeatedly. I tell them that as the under-leveled trap monkey, I've had to use skill boost, and a heroism pot just to find the traps, and that elite is going to wipe us.
Finally we finish, and the bard and myself (the two lowest leveled toons in there) were the only ones that never died.

I'm done with pugs for the night. Unfortunately no guildys in that level range were on-line, so I log.

Long story short: I like to pug, until it gets to be too much of a headache. Last night was one of those nights.

you're lucky you even found a competent one to stick with you at all

[Ninetoes]

We finish with a full group, but they're squishy, so we don't want to bring them with for Tangleroot next (which I buy buy the bard a pass for again).

I love pug stories (how do I climb this ladder???), but I've dragged 5 other squishy, mouthbreathers through Tangleroot before. TR is pretty gosh darn easy, especially if you use the environment to your advantage. (I'm looking at you, rotating bladey-spikey traps of NPC killing!) So I guess I'm not with you on the whole "you're squishy, don't come with us" thing. Then, when I run a pug, it's because I want company, not because I need help. Hence, I don't really care if they make something harder, especially a place like TR.

Kudos to you for buying a pass for a complete stranger, no one does that.

[jcTharin]

that's another reason i do pugs, to find competent players to invite to my guild.

its really hard to find competent players that haven't already been snatched up by a guild yet

but so far i have found two golden players

a ranged built ranger that was actually good at being a ranged player, killed everything really fast and wasn't a drain on the party in any way

and an ac fighter that just made the quests go smoother

[Calebro]

I love pug stories (how do I climb this ladder???), but I've dragged 5 other squishy, mouthbreathers through Tangleroot before. TR is pretty gosh darn easy, especially if you use the environment to your advantage. (I'm looking at you, rotating bladey-spikey traps of NPC killing!) So I guess I'm not with you on the whole "you're squishy, don't come with us" thing. Then, when I run a pug, it's because I want company, not because I need help. Hence, I don't really care if they make something harder, especially a place like TR.

Blade trap set-up:
OK, I've got the box here, but I'm going to draw the mobs through the trap and we'll fight them right here.
"Oh, we're going to pull?"
Yeah, we're under level and there's a bunch of mobs up there. It's easier this way. I'll be right back.

Behind me I hear DING DING
And then over VC: "Thanks for the warning jerk!"

.... really....?

As for the squishyness, this is what was happening with level 5's and 6's because of the group. Had I brought 3's and 4's along it would have been much much worse.

Kudos to you for buying a pass for a complete stranger, no one does that.

Actually, that's where all of my TP goes. I buy passes for cool people that I come across all the time.
Last night STK was 13 points. Then TR was 25.
If you're p2p and you're stingy with 37 tp that you can get back in an hour of questing....

[petegunn]

I pug most of the time because I find it entertaining as heck. There are however times when I've had enough f2p, and roll p2p quests. There are even times when that gets annoying and I want guild runs.

Last night:
LFM goes up on a new lv 4 toon: WW hard, lv 3-5, speed runs, BYOH
I stepped in.
By the time I was done with the first part, I had 3 bards, a pally, a wiz, and myself. I wait at the last fight for everyone to get in. One of the bards asks where we are. I tell him WW chapter 1. Everyone shows up except the bard, who asks again where we are, so I tell him again. I give him directions through WW to chapter 1, even though I know how this is going to go.
Finally everyone gets in.
Finish the last fight and move on to chapter 2. The wiz (who made a note of going to buy pots before coming in, but never drank any) dies. And immediately releases. I drop him. The lost bard dies, but is smart enough not to release. One of those two grabbed Arlo during the run and he's about to die. I'm wand whipping Arlo instead of fighting, trying to get him to follow me.
Quest complete.
Run the bard to the shrine (that wasn't cleared because this was a speed run). Get him up. I tell them to FO, and I do so. I make my way to chapter 3 with no blue dots on my WW map, but I see blue bars dropping speedily.
I enter chapter 3 and I'm done clearing the main junction room and on my way to Red when someone says in VC "are you solo'ing chapter 3?"
"Yep. LFM said speed runs. That means when the quest is complete we move on. Feel free to join me if you guys would like to continue the chain with me."
They catch up a bit. Multiple pug deaths later, someone is complaining that we don't have a healer.
BYOH! If you didn't know what it meant, why didn't you ask?
Finally completed WW.

I leave the group and invite the only competent player (a bard) to join me in Depths. I throw up an LFM, same style. During the course of the 4 quests, I get multiple tells asking what BYOH means (yay!) and only a single person joins because we don't have a healer. That person asks where the quest is. We tell him House D. "Is that in Market?" Nope. It's in House D. "I don't see you on my map in Market." That's because we're in a quest in House D. "I'm in Market 2 and I can't see you."
Dropped.
We two-man it with no issues.

I like this bard, but I'm done with f2p content for the night. so I ask him if he's premium, vip, f2p.
He's f2p, so I buy him a pass for STK and open LFM.
We finish with a full group, but they're squishy, so we don't want to bring them with for Tangleroot next (which I buy buy the bard a pass for again).

LFM goes up, same style. But this time "difficulty dependent upon group" is added.
Five ranger icons and a bard. Only 3 of us are actually healing ourselves, two of them are kiting everything and continually dying, and one of them keeps opening everything on elite even though the party is all level 5's and 6's. I tell them that the LFM said difficulty depends on the group, and this group shouldn't be running elite all the way through, and that as the party leader I should be the one opening the quests at an appropriate level. Said player continues to open elite repeatedly. I tell them that as the under-leveled trap monkey, I've had to use skill boost, and a heroism pot just to find the traps, and that elite is going to wipe us.
Finally we finish, and the bard and myself (the two lowest leveled toons in there) were the only ones that never died.

I'm done with pugs for the night. Unfortunately no guildys in that level range were on-line, so I log.

Long story short: I like to pug, until it gets to be too much of a headache. Last night was one of those nights.

I have to ask "so did you and the bard get it on"?

[ZeroTakenaka]

I pug most of the time because I find it entertaining as heck. There are however times when I've had enough f2p, and roll p2p quests. There are even times when that gets annoying and I want guild runs.

Last night:
LFM goes up on a new lv 4 toon: WW hard, lv 3-5, speed runs, BYOH
I stepped in.
By the time I was done with the first part, I had 3 bards, a pally, a wiz, and myself. I wait at the last fight for everyone to get in. One of the bards asks where we are. I tell him WW chapter 1. Everyone shows up except the bard, who asks again where we are, so I tell him again. I give him directions through WW to chapter 1, even though I know how this is going to go.
Finally everyone gets in.
Finish the last fight and move on to chapter 2. The wiz (who made a note of going to buy pots before coming in, but never drank any) dies. And immediately releases. I drop him. The lost bard dies, but is smart enough not to release. One of those two grabbed Arlo during the run and he's about to die. I'm wand whipping Arlo instead of fighting, trying to get him to follow me.
Quest complete.
Run the bard to the shrine (that wasn't cleared because this was a speed run). Get him up. I tell them to FO, and I do so. I make my way to chapter 3 with no blue dots on my WW map, but I see blue bars dropping speedily.
I enter chapter 3 and I'm done clearing the main junction room and on my way to Red when someone says in VC "are you solo'ing chapter 3?"
"Yep. LFM said speed runs. That means when the quest is complete we move on. Feel free to join me if you guys would like to continue the chain with me."
They catch up a bit. Multiple pug deaths later, someone is complaining that we don't have a healer.
BYOH! If you didn't know what it meant, why didn't you ask?
Finally completed WW.

I leave the group and invite the only competent player (a bard) to join me in Depths. I throw up an LFM, same style. During the course of the 4 quests, I get multiple tells asking what BYOH means (yay!) and only a single person joins because we don't have a healer. That person asks where the quest is. We tell him House D. "Is that in Market?" Nope. It's in House D. "I don't see you on my map in Market." That's because we're in a quest in House D. "I'm in Market 2 and I can't see you."
Dropped.
We two-man it with no issues.

I like this bard, but I'm done with f2p content for the night. so I ask him if he's premium, vip, f2p.
He's f2p, so I buy him a pass for STK and open LFM.
We finish with a full group, but they're squishy, so we don't want to bring them with for Tangleroot next (which I buy buy the bard a pass for again).

LFM goes up, same style. But this time "difficulty dependent upon group" is added.
Five ranger icons and a bard. Only 3 of us are actually healing ourselves, two of them are kiting everything and continually dying, and one of them keeps opening everything on elite even though the party is all level 5's and 6's. I tell them that the LFM said difficulty depends on the group, and this group shouldn't be running elite all the way through, and that as the party leader I should be the one opening the quests at an appropriate level. Said player continues to open elite repeatedly. I tell them that as the under-leveled trap monkey, I've had to use skill boost, and a heroism pot just to find the traps, and that elite is going to wipe us.
Finally we finish, and the bard and myself (the two lowest leveled toons in there) were the only ones that never died.

I'm done with pugs for the night. Unfortunately no guildys in that level range were on-line, so I log.

Long story short: I like to pug, until it gets to be too much of a headache. Last night was one of those nights.

If I were you, I'd invite that bard to my guild.

[CrimsonEagle]

If you want to add some heat what’s a better spice than a bunch of idiots that will end up unleashing hell?

Lol....I like this.

[Ninetoes]

Blade trap set-up:
OK, I've got the box here, but I'm going to draw the mobs through the trap and we'll fight them right here.
"Oh, we're going to pull?"
Yeah, we're under level and there's a bunch of mobs up there. It's easier this way. I'll be right back.

Behind me I hear DING DING
And then over VC: "Thanks for the warning jerk!"

.... really....?

As for the squishyness, this is what was happening with level 5's and 6's because of the group. Had I brought 3's and 4's along it would have been much much worse.

In all fairness, the trigger point for that blade trap in TR right after the 2nd shrine is a little deceptive without knowing exactly where to stand. If that was happening to people at 5 and 6, there's no excuse other than simply not listening to directions

I don't even fight those guys, I just tumble around through the spinny-trap until they all fall down. Same story on the end boss in that place.

[Calebro]

In all fairness, the trigger point for that blade trap in TR right after the 2nd shrine is a little deceptive without knowing exactly where to stand. If that was happening to people at 5 and 6, there's no excuse other than simply not listening to directions

I don't even fight those guys, I just tumble around through the spinny-trap until they all fall down. Same story on the end boss in that place.

....which is exactly why I searched and found the box before telling them that we were pulling.... so they'd see where the box was and they'd stay behind it. The "we'll fight them right here": should have been enough, but I found the box first to illustrate.
And you're absolutely correct on the "not listening" part.

jcT, I really didn't mean to hijack your thread with my story.

[Frodo_Lives]

Some PuGs are really good, others not so much. I find with most low - mid level quests you only need one or two other decent players to complete a quest fairly smoothly. The other 3 or 4 players can be average or very bad and you still have a real good shot at getting the quest done. It really takes a group full of clueless wonders to completely mess up any chance of completion for a lot of low -mid level quests. Hey sometimes stuff happens, but 99% of the time you can recover and complete quest.

I joined a Tear of D run on elite on a Paladin and it was a fairly good group other than the 8 con wizard (who was 8th level) who decided to go off on his own, and got a little mouthy when typing about optionals. To be fair the leader probably didn't see his typed comment asking about doing optionals cause we were in the middle of a huge fight and when no one responded to him right away he got a little snotty (he was promptly ignored by the entire party because of his attitude). Of course he dies, curses at us, called us a few names and dropped group. The rest of us were actually laughing at him cause he was a complete idiot and finished the quest with no arcane no problem at all.

Usually in a PuG I start off with a fairly easy or standard quest on normal or hard to kind of take the groups measure before jumping into a harder quest on elite.

Last night I formed a group for Xorian Cipher elite that was a bit of a toss up. I was on a ranger and there were a few other players that were pretty good. The cleric, rogue, and wizard (although next to no hastes) were all ok to good. However the other two melee were pretty bad (ranged ranger and paladin). Had to explain to the paladin for literally 3 minutes both voice and typed to hit a cha rune to see if he had enough charisma with little to no response other than him running everywhere in the room other than where we were and where we were telling him the rune was.

I ended up casting resist on everybody, including the other ranger and paladin (even though they were both high enough level to have the spell) and other than the cleric was the only one healing even in between fights it seemed. I don't even think that anyone else was using deathward!

It wasn't a great PuG, but still managed to get a difficult (for it's level) quest done on elite and get my 14k xp. I've had people drop at the first sign of adversity which always makes me laugh.

[vindicater]

I love Puging especily on Kyber other than a coule of pretty lame idiots out there exactly 2 that i have on squelch it has been great pug after great pug. I really like running with someone at level 6 then at 14 they send you a tell saying you are on there frinds list and if you mind helping them in a quest. Shoot I drop what i am doing swap toons whatever it takes to help out and when I log out feel better than I did when I loged on. I always enjoy helping people as long as they are not bumming.

[redraider]

I actually really like pugging most of the time. I am on my third TR toon, so I have had a chance to get F2P feel. I will say that I have learned to be self healing.

My latest TR was a 20 Barb. He is now a lvl 5 3/1/1 WF Barb/Ftr/Wiz and will TR +1 around 12 or 18 to remove the Lvl of Wiz. It doesn't really matter the storm the F2P players bring, I can survive dang near everything and those F2P stone fit just fine in my pocket!

[LightInDark]

Love to Pug it just adds the spice to life (well DDO life), reminds me of when I was clueless and did stupid things.