Questions...

[Llewndyn]

Ran a couple PUGs this life, and maybe I've been off soloing and doing guild-only runs, but has the general etiquette of the game changed? You be the judge:

Scenario 1. Ran an elite PoP PUG, we get in, I'm having a blast killificating stuff with my newly-acquired instadeath spells. They consume SP quite quickly, especially when I'm really the only one killing anything, so we get to the lightning room and I say I will stay out and pull lever then go shrine. The cleric is standing outside with me, looking at me then at the room like an idiot, like he had no idea what he was supposed to do. I watched the group in the room hit a couple buffs, stop moving, wait 15 seconds by watching my buff bar, then hit switch and run up. I think the cleric was trying to move just far enough in that I'd pull the lever thinking he was in, then he could jump out and not have to risk dying. First, is it possible to die in the lightning room? All the air eles do is throw you around, so stand in a corner and you're golden? Apparently it IS possible. Everyone dies in the room, and the cleric had moved too far in and fried himself on the door I think. The following ensues:

PL: "Why would you do that, what are you, 5?"
Me: "???"
GM1 (sorc): "Why didn't you ask and make sure we were all ready, you're a ******" (paraphrasing)
Me: "You all buffed, and weren't moving, I assumed you were ready. Not sure how you even die in there"

I go in and clear the room out with no fanfare. They try to get me killed in Lailat room, but because I'm not a complete gimp I manage to kill the room off in short order. I think in order to show me how it's done, this SAME EXACT CONVERSATION ensued at every door from then on out:

GM1 (at lever): "Is everyone ready?"
PL: "I believe so, I think we are ready"
GM1: "Does everyone have buffs?"
PL/others: "Yes, yes I have buffs"
GM1: "OK I'm going to pull lever now, be ready everyone"

ARE YOU FRIGGIN KIDDING ME?! Pathetic. If you can't do a room in Prison of the Planes, with 3 other people in said room with you, don't blame me. It's not my fault. I can do a room on my own. I could LONG before I got decent gear or completionist. Gimme a break.

Is it now known etiquette to go through 11 levels and ways of asking if everyone is ready before doing anything? How pathetic has PUGging become if that's the case?!

Who was in the right here?

Scenario 2: We are doing an elite Rainbow run, which went really well, get to the end, make short work of the end boss, and people are looting chests. In order to show I am a team player and not a tool, I cast Greater Teleport on the group and zone back to Meridia with everyone. The sorc pipes up and says "thanks to whatever a**hat cast GT, I didn't get end chest"... ***?!

Greater Teleport gives you 58 seconds to click Accept. In that time, you can swap weapons, make sweet love to your partner, check inventory, raid buff, and STILL have 40 seconds to teleport! If it's not what you want you can also click....DECLINE. I respond with something like "It's not my fault you are dumb. I will take your statement as a compliment, thanks!" and drop party. Is it now rude to cast greater Teleport? Because if so I could have saved a ton of plat not buying a stack of said scrolls...

Who was in the right here?

Scenario 3: RWTD elite run, we get in, the group is just not mechanically able to blast through, and I'm not helping a whole lot as I don't have enough death spells to spam them and in wraith mode I'm kind of susceptible (300 damage per hit hurts, no matter WHO you are). I figure I will break streak (893.... sniff) and run it on hard, and everyone is cool with that (we didn't have a healer, and I had no pots, so switching to alive mode was not an option, I would have been a burden on the party). Then people start dropping, leaving me, a ranger (who was awesome) and a bard. I say let's hop in on hard, and he complains that it will break his streak and he needs his streak and why can't we run it on elite? I mention he has no say in the matter as he hasn't contributed anything yet, and he drops group. Here is why this is on here:

a) When he joined, he asked for a share. To a walk-up.
b) When told it was a walk-up, he complained he could not get into the Vale. After some back and forth, he had never been to Gustavine. We spent the latter half of Ritsac guiding him there.
c) Once IN the Vale, he died twice trying to run to Meridia. He then asked for help getting out as he couldnt kill anything.

I sent him a tell informing him "don't worry bud, I'm sure some group will run this and let you pike and contribute nothing and you'll get to cap real soon. Have a nice night!" I'm really kind of sick of the streak BS. If you can't pull your own weight even a LITTLE bit, you don't need to be on a streak. I KNEW RWTD would be tough for me because of my build choices. I refused to use the PM light damage absorbtion enhancement, opting to run on Hard and get it over with instead. I refuse to pike and have others run the quest for me, but it appears to be a common theme: so many people demand an elite streak when they couldn't complete 2 quests in a row on hard no matter which 2 quests they are. They get into a run, and if the rest of the group doesn't do the quest for them or they run into ANY adversity, they leave and find a group willing to let them actipike (actipike means you run along with the group, maybe cast haste or throw the odd heal, but other than that shield block or do nothing) and get all the way to cap and we end up with a further cheapening of the TR process. I'm trying to figure out which one is less detrimental to the game: People who hog out Otto's boxes each life or people who actipike their way through 5 lives then get all whiny when they can't finish a quest and blame Turbine, other players who used to pull them through, lag, or an odd combination.

Who was in the right here?

I'm looking forward to a spirited debate, and am willing to concede if there is a genuine change in etiquette that puts me in the wrong, though I am hard pressed to see that happening. Thanks for reading, have a nice day.

[Kawai]

never seen anyone write themselves up with multiple examples of being classic tool.
congrats.

[Llewndyn]

never seen anyone write themselves up with multiple examples of being classic tool.
congrats.

I can see you looked real close at why I wrote what I did. It's great to get such thoughtful responses.

I don't believe I was being a tool. If I go into one of the rooms in PoP, and buff, then stand there, I am ready to go. I assumed that was common knowledge. Apparently it's not. I want to know why.
If someone casts greater teleport on me, and I haven't looted the chest yet, I loot the chest and take it, or hit decline. I assumed that was common knowledge. Apparently it's not. I want to know why.
If I can't hold my own and have no idea how to get to a quest, I probably wouldn't run it on elite if the rest of the group, all of which have way more HP/ SP than me, just died running it and they KNOW HOW TO GET THERE. I would not whine about a hard run if I knew I could not do an elite run on my own or contribute much to the successful running of an elite quest. I assumed that was common knowledge. Apparently it's not. I want to know why.

Are my responses mean? Yep. Are they elitist? Probably. Would I do them again if given another chance? Absolutely. Do I feel remorse or that I'm in the wrong? Nope.

That doesn't mean I'm NOT in the wrong, though. Explain how I am in the wrong in any of these scenarios, maybe I'm missing something. If I am a "classic tool", and I PUG a LOT, I would have more stories. But I don't. I just wondered if maybe something changed recently that I was unaware of, and I'm tired of people being/ doing stupid and letting them get away with it. No one let ME get away with it when I was coming up in this game, and rather than whine and assume everyone else was the problem I learned from each mistake and criticism, even if I changed nothing because of it.

In closing, thanks for responding, and I hope you will come back and explain a little more, as if I AM being a tool, I would like to see how, and maybe suppress it.

Love,
Llew

[Fedora1]

Scenario 1 - I'd have to hear their side of the story. It might seem like you waited long enough, but then again we only have your word.
Verdict: Undecided.

Scenario 2 - You were in no way to blame for the other idiot accepting the GT before he looted the chests.
Verdict: Innocent.

Scenario 3 - Might have been better once the bard dropped group to let that be the end of the story instead of sending him the tell.
Verdict: Justified but not classy.

[Miow]

Let me try to be a little nicer, you make some valid points but being harsh with people and how you communicate with them can completely make your feelings irrelevant regardless of validity.

[Wipey]

Heh so you got couple lives under your belt, learned to run stuff faster and faster, learned to make better builds and more things are annoying you than when you was a first lifer.
It appears everybody else is so slow or butthurt primadonnas.
In other news, water is wet.

[Bowser_Koopa]

Llewndyn has become an elitist, I'm not sure if I should be happy about this or sad. I could go dig up earlier posts where Llewndyn defended the casual/noob population and now he has graduated to the expecting people to only hit his LFM if they "Know it".

This seems to be natural progression of Vet characters according to DDO forumites. I personally don't believe it happens 100% of the time but hey it happens.

But to answer your 3 scenario questions you aren't wrong or right. You clearly have reached the point where you are trying to give puggers regardless of who they are credit for learning all the things you have been taught or learned yourself without accepting the possibility that they simply may not have the knowledge, gear or player skill to do the things that now come naturally to you.

So either you'll learn to post LFM's that say BYOH or Know It or Zerg Run only or the other multitude of catchphrases veterans and/or elitist use to try to get only other like people to join the LFM and not delay your quest to beat the quest in what you feel is an acceptable amount of time and/or resources.

Or maybe you will accept that others may not have your skill or knowledge and need a helping hand and be willing to help them.

Just for clarification I fall into the first crowd, while I don't hate teaching "noobs" etc with my limited playtime I generally just want to get X amount of things done in Y time as fast as possible.

Bowserkoopa,

Watching the Elitist population grow one person at a time.

[kned225]

By your own admission, you're a mean elitist. You shouldn't be grouping with newbs. Leave that to the vets who have the patience and desire to deal with the ups and downs of newb-grouping

Time to brush-up on those elitist, exclusionary lfms and enjoy the company of your own kind

[Kawai]

...especially when I'm really the only one killing anything...

...looking at me then at the room like an idiot

PL: "Why would you do that, what are you, 5?"
Me: "???"
GM1 (sorc): "Why didn't you ask and make sure we were all ready, you're a ******" (paraphrasing)
Me: "You all buffed, and weren't moving, I assumed you were ready. Not sure how you even die in there"

Whole conversation reeks.
-Cant see them being ready if that's the complaint from more than one person.

And since only your side of story, expected some embellishing. --np.
-but the embellishments show your maturity level in your replies.
They died, obviously, from the gate itself.

any "completionist" would know this.
what's more.... any Veteran/Leader/"Completionist" wouldn't be involved in this kind of drama or even think of bringing it here.
i suspect, could b wrong, many Stones r involved IF actual completionist?
...even so. takes all kinds.

...I go in and clear the room out with no fanfare. They try to get me killed in Lailat room, but because I'm not a complete gimp I manage to kill the room off in short order.

so many examples in two sentences. *rolls eyes

...ARE YOU FRIGGIN KIDDING ME?! Pathetic.

and again.

then, u seek validation for it.

Who was in the right here?

..."It's not my fault you are dumb. I will take your statement as a compliment, thanks!" and drop party. Is it now rude to cast greater Teleport?

Been known for long time that one doesn't cast it directly on chest.
if accidental, a simple Im sorry would suffice, would it not?
instead, another tantrum, and come here to seek validation.

Next, your entire Scenario 3 is just boiling over with Immaturity from someone claiming to be Veteran/Leader.

Cant see anyone with that kind of experience acting like you did.
-not to mention the rude & mean things you said to a person who is obviously new to the quest.

Would you act like this in public?

whatever.
Sad.

[Enoach]

Ran a couple PUGs this life, and maybe I've been off soloing and doing guild-only runs, but has the general etiquette of the game changed? You be the judge:

Scenario 1. ...
Who was in the right here?

Scenario 2: ...
Who was in the right here?

Scenario 3: ...
Who was in the right here?

I'm looking forward to a spirited debate, and am willing to concede if there is a genuine change in etiquette that puts me in the wrong, though I am hard pressed to see that happening. Thanks for reading, have a nice day.

Scenario 1: On the pulling the lever which you group felt was too soon, and by the evidence of the Cleric not being in the room. The wrong in this situation is not the action you took by assumption, that was a misunderstanding. The wrong is in the attitude expressed by both parties.

Scenario 2: The Greater Teleport at the end of a Vale quest is very appreciated by many players, but might I suggest that you can avoid this situation by simply standing back from the chest before you cast a spell that puts up a dialog that in some cases prevents any other action especially when there are "Are you Sure?" messages popping up. While I agree the "No" button is easy to press and it is on the player to press the right button. But again you can avoid this type of drama by being more practical and realize not everyone is as fast as you in looting. Providing the GT was not the issue, it was the timing.

Scenario 3: As the PL you set what difficulty you wanted to run the quest, you notified the party of your intent. As can be expected some left because they wanted to do this on a different difficulty. The continuing of the conversation after the person left the group was by no means a positive on this encounter with someone not at the same level as you in the game. However, that will be their impression of people like yourself (generally causing a tainted view of that group).

As a note about the amount of death spells available for RWTD; I've found that Greater Shout (while not a DPS spell) helps to equalize the fights against the Eladrin. It may not be glamorous but it can go a long way in reducing the damage taken by the whole party. You took the step of picking a difficulty you felt the party you had could survive, but you can also go one step further by adding additional survivability to your party.

[Memnir]

You should solo more. That's the only takeaway I get from the whole OP.
If other people annoy you so much, and if you are (seemingly) unable to interact in a sociable manner with people of lower sill sets then yours... Yeah, solo more.


Frankly, the only scenario that I think you are totally absolved of is the Greater Teleport thing. That's on them. The others are very debatable where the blame should rest. Honestly, I think you are as much to blame for what happened as the other folks in the party... just in different ways. If you cannot have empathy for newer or less skilled players - remove them from the equation and just solo.

I'm not saying that as a bad thing. I mostly solo myself these days. For different reasons, maybe, but I still solo more then I group. If and when I do group, I let go of my preconceived notions of skill and preparedness on the behalf of the rest of the party. I expect things to go wrong, and have to engage in teaching moments, and know that silly things may happen. That's what is wonderful about PUGs... they are a total grab-bag of skill and readiness. But, if you cannot do likewise, then perhaps it's time to give the PUG scene a break for a while.



My opinions only - your mileage will no doubt vary.

[voodoogroves]

I tend to not post 'BYOH' and isntead go with "in progress".

This lead to an ADQ earlier today where someone joins, zones in to the sands and asks where the quest is.

I try not to be too much of a jerk, but X things in Y time....

[Llewndyn]

Scenario 1 - I'd have to hear their side of the story. It might seem like you waited long enough, but then again we only have your word.
Verdict: Undecided.

Scenario 2 - You were in no way to blame for the other idiot accepting the GT before he looted the chests.
Verdict: Innocent.

Scenario 3 - Might have been better once the bard dropped group to let that be the end of the story instead of sending him the tell.
Verdict: Justified but not classy.

And that's what I was hoping to get at. I really have wondered if maybe I was in the wrong and this was how etiquette has changed, kind of like how HoX changed after EDs came out or what have you. I haven't PUGged a bunch of PoP runs since then, so I have nothing to quantify it against.

The bard one, I admit, was not particularly classy, but it hit a nerve. We had already wiped, he had contributed nothing but whining about having to run back to the Twelve, and it really gets on my nerves when someone is lazy and just EXPECTS things to be handed to them. I would prefer someone join and try hard and die, over and over and over again, and keep trying, than someone who is used to being useless, joining and expecting to pike through an elite streak. I had an 893 quest streak, and I worked or helped with every quest. Even when I was useless for DPS, I found a way to contribute, be it buffs, rez, heck even grabbing aggro and dying so the group could take on the boss and get a few free minutes without trash to contend with. This guy smacked of "I would never lower myself to running something on hard", and he had no idea how hard the quest was on elite because he couldn't stay alive long enough to get there. Even with just hearing my side, the deaths and issues even getting into the Vale are irrefutable. How much would he have been able to contribute? While I could be wrong, and even if he added 0 to kills or DPS he might have been a CC powerhouse, so you have a valid point, but I was still annoyed and am tired of letting people just be obtuse and get away with it because the vast majority of the server population is way too polite to call them on it.

If I join your PUG, go in and die doing something stupid, you can all feel free to call me on it, SS and post it to the forums, and I will accept those consequences. It happens, and I deserve what happens. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and I will call you out on it when you can't make it to a quest, half the party leaves because the quest is too tough, you've obviously never run it since you had no idea how to get to it or how to get to the area you need to access in order TO get to it, but demand the group carry you through elite so you can get free XP.

[Llewndyn]

Heh so you got couple lives under your belt, learned to run stuff faster and faster, learned to make better builds and more things are annoying you than when you was a first lifer.
It appears everybody else is so slow or butthurt primadonnas.
In other news, water is wet.

Not true. I have zero problem running things slowly. I had 0 problem with the PoP group if they had told me they weren't ready yet. I said what I was going to do, then waited for them to buff, then told the cleric to hop in, he didn't, I waited 15 seconds, what more could I have done?

In the second, the group was AWESOME. The run took 35 minutes, which is not super fast, but for the most part everyone used great teamwork and no one got left behind, which is why I was caught off guard when the sorc in question jumped my case at the end.

The last one, I will concede I was a bit of a d-bag, but as I said, it hit a nerve. Sue me.

[Fedora1]

You mixed up two of my verdicts I think.

I said on the bard one (scenario 3) you were justified, but probably should not have sent the last tell.

It was scenario 1 I said I needed to hear the other side of the story.

[Llewndyn]

Llewndyn has become an elitist, I'm not sure if I should be happy about this or sad. I could go dig up earlier posts where Llewndyn defended the casual/noob population and now he has graduated to the expecting people to only hit his LFM if they "Know it".

This seems to be natural progression of Vet characters according to DDO forumites. I personally don't believe it happens 100% of the time but hey it happens.

But to answer your 3 scenario questions you aren't wrong or right. You clearly have reached the point where you are trying to give puggers regardless of who they are credit for learning all the things you have been taught or learned yourself without accepting the possibility that they simply may not have the knowledge, gear or player skill to do the things that now come naturally to you.

So either you'll learn to post LFM's that say BYOH or Know It or Zerg Run only or the other multitude of catchphrases veterans and/or elitist use to try to get only other like people to join the LFM and not delay your quest to beat the quest in what you feel is an acceptable amount of time and/or resources.

Or maybe you will accept that others may not have your skill or knowledge and need a helping hand and be willing to help them.

Just for clarification I fall into the first crowd, while I don't hate teaching "noobs" etc with my limited playtime I generally just want to get X amount of things done in Y time as fast as possible.

Bowserkoopa,

Watching the Elitist population grow one person at a time.

As a first/second/third+ life character, I never demanded others do quests that I knew I would not be able to contribute to. I ran them on difficulties I could handle first, and worked my way up. I'm an elitist for expecting other people to do the same?

I bend over backwards (it's an expensive enhancement, costs 3 AP) to help new players. Not by giving them plat so I have another notch on my yuletide log every Christmas, but because I believe in the "if you help them, they will return the favor and the server will be a gooderer place" mantra. This is 3 examples of times I did not ignore silly questions or try to help teach people, and I think that's pretty good odds. I can post about the dozens of PUGs I join where I have John Stamos teach people life lessons while I play an acoustic guitar in the background, but who wants to read that tripe?

The irony of me being a "noob defender" who now seems quite elitist is not lost on me, and it's something I wrestle with daily. I don't consider myself an elitist, because I don't:

1. Join a group and link a bunch of epic items I can't use just to make people feel inferior
2. Remind people over and over how many lives I've done as some idiotic justification for my behavior
3. Insult everyone for every little infraction, perceived or real
4. Come to the forums and write whiny... wait
5. Play the elusive bardcherarti
6. Have a toon in Ravensguard (why do you keep denying my application?!)

For those reasons, and because I have no facial hair (and all bad guys have facial hair and cut off jorts with chained wallets), I consider myself a benevolent new player helper, nothing more.

[Teh_Troll]

So the OP managed to find groups full of people less experienced than he was and had to come here to make us think he was a competent player?

Fascinating . . .

[Teh_Troll]

By your own admission, you're a mean elitist. You shouldn't be grouping with newbs. Leave that to the vets who have the patience and desire to deal with the ups and downs of newb-grouping

Time to brush-up on those elitist, exclusionary lfms and enjoy the company of your own kind

LOLz . . . the other elitists won't run with him.

[Llewndyn]

And since only your side of story, expected some embellishing. --np.
-but the embellishments show your maturity level in your replies.
They died, obviously, from the gate itself.

I'll ignore the maturity level quip, that's not very nice. There is no embellishing, thus the quotes around what they said. It IS from memory, but it's implied that if I put quotes around it, I'm not embellishing things. When I went back to rez, only the cleric's stone was in the gate. The other ones were in the back of the room, toward the middle. It's possible they hit the gate, ran from it and got 2nd hit killed, though, so that could be true. I was at the shrine, so was not there to see.

any "completionist" would know this.
what's more.... any Veteran/Leader/"Completionist" wouldn't be involved in this kind of drama or even think of bringing it here.
i suspect, could b wrong, many Stones r involved IF actual completionist?
...even so. takes all kinds.

Once you attain completionist/ vet status, you do not learn supreme Shaolin patience. It DOES take all kinds. You obviously know few if any completionists or veterans. They/We are all people too, with varying dispositions and mannerisms. To imply that as a completionist or vet I must now be above all drama is short-sighted and incorrect. I can't read your second sentence, so am going to guess you are implying I died quite a bit on my way to completionist? I did. I died. A lot. I never blamed anyone else for it. I don't blame lag for it. I died because I rolled a 1 or I screwed up or I wasn't ready when I should have been. Implying that new players don't need to bring any accountability to the table is asinine. Also, I am asking in my post if things had changed. You could have responded with "Yes, this is how it is now" and I would be fine with that, and would go into PUGs assuming they would act like the above people and plan accordingly. Attacking me like I forced them to suck is lame. Were you the sorc in the second example?

Next, your entire Scenario 3 is just boiling over with Immaturity from someone claiming to be Veteran/Leader.

Please re-read my post. Where do I claim I'm the leader? I'll concede I was a bit of a jerk in my response to him but it's alright for him to demand we run a quest for him so he can pike? And I'M the immature one? Got it.

Would you act like this in public?

If someone acted like some of these people (entitled, ungrateful) in public, yes, I would, can, and have responded rudely to them in public. Maybe it would be nicer to ignore it and just smile and walk away, but in these few instances I did not do that. Also I note you ignore in scenario 1 where in order to get back at me they let me go into the Lailat room first then backed up and hit the lever, hoping to kill me. I don't need validation, I was asking if maybe something had changed because I hadn't PUGged for a couple months, not often, any way. If you are nice to me, I am nice back. If you are rude to me, I don't care HOW many lives I've done, I'm going to be rude back.

[Teh_Ghoul]

Don't cast gt, some people will even report you to gms for it. I will never learn the spell or buy the scroll again. Sucks for the normal people that might have appreciated it.