Anyone notice a deterioration in Shroud PUGs lately?

[Zion_Halcyon]

First off, Thank you to the group I ran with last night who allowed me to finally get completion #21 and cleanse the taint off of one of my GS items. It was one of the better PUGs and we killed Harry in one go in part 4.

But man, before that, it seems like the last 2 weeks the quality of Shroud PUGs has been suffering greatly.

I saw a number of firsts for me - first time it took an HOUR to finish part 2 (because no one would listen to instructions and the leader of the raid had no spine to give out clear directions anyway), first time I EVER saw part 4 go THREE rounds (because no one was killing the gnolls in round 2) and then end in a wipe (incidentally, same group as the one that took an hour to do part 2), and then even a separate pug that COULD NOT FINISH PART 2 - Yes, I am talking a total wipe.

I am seeing things like this more and more in the Shroud, and it has nothing to do with even piking or someone not having a DR breaker or any of that stuff. It seems to be one of two things, or sometimes both:

1) People who just don't listen. It doesn't matter if they don't have speakers or a mic either - they ignore typing just as well and run all over the place wanting to be Conan the Barbarian when really they are acting like Leroy Jenkins. And I don't completely believe these people are trolling either - too many of them out there. I think they are legitimately ignorant.

2) Raid Organizer who just refuses to take charge. Sometimes, a disorganized group needs a kick in the butt to get their **** together. In the case of the horror story of an hour to do part 2, we had me pulling the ele, and no one over in the SW corner to keep me healed while the other guys were prepped. So yeah, I died a billion times, and when I tried to take charge (no mic, so tried via typing), all I got was lip from a garbage healer saying it was my job to kill the ele before they ran out of mana, nevermind that none of the other key mobs were even prepped. I was the only one trying to even separate the mobs, the rest were running all over the maze and killing the mobs over and over - it was a miracle we even finished part 2 at all. Of course, hell came to breakfast later when we wiped in THREE rounds in part 4 because no one would listen when I said to kill the Gnolls.

Anyway, I asked the raid leader to give people some direction to make things go quicker, and he tells me "don't sweat it, we'll get it eventually." No further help from the man leading the team. Pathetic. This isn't just a quest you can grind out - it's a raid where you need to do things in a specific order, and because of the length, it's a real pain to have to keep repeating it over and over, for the sake of "getting there eventually".

So I've seen this a lot lately, not just in the Shroud, but in a lot of raids.

Has anyone else been seeing this **** going on too as of late?

[elujin]

most inportand is a leader who take charge and seccond is to lissen .
i think alot of people are scared to admit they are running it for the first time when your new just say so and hope for instructions i am flagging for shroud at the moment and the first words i will say entering a raid group will be "hi i never been there before "

[Zion_Halcyon]

most inportand is a leader who take charge and seccond is to lissen .
i think alot of people are scared to admit they are running it for the first time when your new just say so and hope for instructions i am flagging for shroud at the moment and the first words i will say entering a raid group will be "hi i never been there before "

Yep, that's always good, but I just got the feeling in the groups I mentioned that they knew the shroud a little from the portals in part 1, and then lost all sense of what the hell they were doing when part 2 hit....

[lazlow]

title says it all....if it took an hour to complete part 2 one shouldnt be shocked by failure, should have just notched it up to a small shard run and moved on the next shroud forming. Too many shroud runs available to waste time grinding one out with incompetents.

[Vint]

I have noticed a great decline at high levels in about any quest. I know the hot thing now is to not hurt feelings, but some of these people have no clue. Then we get in trouble for not wanting to waste our time with them.

[DragonMageT]

most inportand is a leader who take charge and seccond is to lissen .
i think alot of people are scared to admit they are running it for the first time when your new just say so and hope for instructions i am flagging for shroud at the moment and the first words i will say entering a raid group will be "hi i never been there before "

+1 (and definitively speak up and say first timer here).

To OP:
Yes, I have also noticed the same. Last PUG I was in, part 3 I had to break crystals above doors because we
didn't have a person to unlock doors and they didn't know their puzzles, not 1, not 2, but 3 different doors.

I do mean I broke the crystals with throwing axes, do you know how long that takes, a long time
I thought to myself, Rreally ?, almost a party wipe in Part 3, geesh.

I'm sticking to guild runs for the time being.

[MrWizard]

have not been on much, but joined a shroud last night.
good people, at least some, that I ran with before.

there were about 5 I never ran with, but recognized some guilds. I knew they did not speak english welll.

part 1....everyone went everywhere...like 3 different portal paths at once. Was crazy.


Part 2..someone zoned in, ran to the middle, and brought just the lion to us. Someone else grabbed everything else while we were fighting the trash and had the named lion by us.

As we got the trash down, the suspect people killed the lion before we even started beating the other ones down...
so.....we get the lion back..

start beating things down and they kill the fire elemental that runs right back to the middle...

we kill them all and wait for them to fully reset...or at least we thought, as someone had run and brought the fire elemental and the lion back to us in the SW..

we tried typing, yelling, talking, screaming, everything and these players just did not care...did not listen...and just kept being idiots...

ddoor and we all left them...I went to bed.

it was horrible.

[Tholar]

I wasn't in the party for this, but it happened last night. I listened into the argument the spilled over into another channel after it was over.

Part 4, 1 cleric is out of mana.

Second cleric stops healing, and demands to be paid for his mana pots, before he will continue. He still had mana, just stopped.

There has to be more to this story, but that is from one side only.

[RTN]

Nope, unless by lately you mean over the last year. Then, yes. Since the switch to F2P, casual setting, dungeon setting, sp/rez/hp items in the store, etc., things have definitely gotten worse at end game (say L15 and up). People have piked and easy buttoned their way into raids, where this won't work anymore. Either they don't care or else, and I suspect this is the case, they just don't know any better. The learning curve at the beginning and middle game has been so carebear-ified that they have no clue how to actually play when they reach content that isn't completely nerfed.

[Feylina]

I know my guilds been a little lax on our raids l8ly. usually you can find at least 5 raids a night from us or the Hedro / Horn's raid-o-thons lol.

I wonder if others, like me, are breathelessly waiting for U-7. Or maybe grinding as many EBig Tops as they can before they put the squash on it .

[Impaqt]

Ran a shroud last night that went as well as any I've run lately. Mobs were even "Epic Warded" and had the accompanying lag.. 1 round part 4. No bard.

then again, I Joined a shroud yesterday(On the same character, so you know the outcome) where it was mostly a "Guild Run" and they were relatively new. it was the first shroud run for some of them even.

They warned me ahead of time, but hey, I figured what the hell....

Portal DPS was terrible. But they followed a good leader and we got through part 1 with little incident. Part 2 got a little scary. I was on my L17 Sorc and managed to get the aggro of both the earth ele and the Kobold. Wound up just taking both of them down while the rest of the group worked on Orc and Cat.

We got that part done first try.

Part 3 went as smooth as can be expected for a group that had probably 5 or 6 people that never played Lights out before. No wall. got it done with 4 chests.

we wiped in Part 4. We pretty much all expected it and had fun getting killed.

Moral of the story, its all about attitude. we were ALL shroud newbs at one point. expecting newer players to have all the gear and skill of 3+ year players is not realistic. If you cant deal with that, be more selective in your LFM's or dont join random shroud pugs.

BTW.... +1 "The Light Wardens" for a Fun spectacular failure. You folks will be up to speed on the shroud in no time for sure.

[smithtj3]

I know the hot thing now is to not hurt feelings, but some of these people have no clue.

If only people said on voice chat what they say on the forums. . . now that would be an interesting game.

[Odium]

Always join the groups that have these words (as long as your completing): Speed run, No DDoor, Loot after quest

newer, not so well equipped characters will avoid these due to their need to ransack ingredients in part 4.

These groups, at least on Khyber, have netted me multiple Elite completions that were faster and more efficient than standard normal runs.

[Vint]

If only people said on voice chat what they say on the forums. . . now that would be an interesting game.

I would but to many people would get emotionaly hurt, so it is frowned upon.

[CE2JRH123]

I've had a couple go 2 or 3 rounds. PUG'ed a hard where part 4 went 4 rounds and got stuck drinking a bunch of potions, but then some excellent people put in the effort to replace them. I've had the occasional slightly messy part 2. Total times usually 25-40 minutes, with the occasional rough run hitting 50 minutes to 1 hour.

Not really a big deal. I exclusively PUG, so sometimes things go bad; I've grown to accept it.

[itsameabob]

I pug out shrouds and lead them on a regular basis. I've never really had a hard time with them. There was a three rounder once, but it was late at night, so I just let anyone in. We had 3 caster, a bard, 4 divines, so we were a bit DPS light that run. Still a solid run overall.

Most of my pugs are one rounders though, and fairly smooth runs overall. Look for the lfms with {jerk} Somewhere in the title.

[Chai]

Yeah definately. I mean, if Panzy would just solo the darn thing faster, the rest of us waiting at the entrance to part 1 could get our loot without having to watch a movie while afk for most of the time, GAWD!!! Having to come back to look at the screen every 15 minutes or so totally smacks of effort...

[Entelech]

Yes, over the past few months, I've noticed that Shroud runs have been problematic.

But then, I'm also a lot more experienced in knowing how a run *ought* to go, so maybe I am just a bit more critical.

What I have found amusing is that raid leaders are getting really snotty and picky about who they take in an LFM, and yet the raids are incompetence festivals anyway. And it's usually the simple stuff that gets us.

We get Fighter 12/Ranger 6 DPS builds that lack DR breakers and use THROWING WEAPONS.

We get 20 FvS builds that don't have a single healing spell. They literally cannot even save themselves.

We get folks of all descriptions who seem to insist on bouncing randomly on the 5x5 puzzles in Part 3, even when my gimp-looking Fighter 6/Rogue 2/Wizard 12 has used Knock to get in with them and is trying to use a solver.

And, most aggravatingly, we get people who do not listen to voice chat and CANNOT EVEN SEEM TO UNDERSTAND TYPED ENGLISH. If you cannot communicate, you cannot raid.

[Zion_Halcyon]

I've had a couple go 2 or 3 rounds. PUG'ed a hard where part 4 went 4 rounds and got stuck drinking a bunch of potions, but then some excellent people put in the effort to replace them. I've had the occasional slightly messy part 2. Total times usually 25-40 minutes, with the occasional rough run hitting 50 minutes to 1 hour.

Not really a big deal. I exclusively PUG, so sometimes things go bad; I've grown to accept it.

I can adapt to a slow moving pug in the shroud as long as people are showing progress, not regressing or not listening. Did I mention all my shroud nightmare scenarios were on normal?

It's a little different if killing harry in part 4 is slow going than if he is getting healed because no one is killing the gnolls, and meanwhile DPS are dying left and right because our healers are running out of mana due to the poor job done by the casters of fingering the gnolls and getting them out of there, or whoever else is supposed to be on gnoll duty.

[Xithos]

A small modicum of selectiveness has kept the shrouds I have been involved in lately under 25 minutes and relatively stress free. Things in the LFM such as "know your puzzle and have DR breakers" kind of thing. Although, if the level of play ability I have seen from TR leveling is any indicator of the state of the endgame where folks are not selective at all and don't predominantly run with guildies/buddies, I would guess that the shroud would be a nightmare.