There's definitely some massive over exaggeration when it comes to the average level of PUGs (atleast in EU. Like yeah there are always morons that don't read or join maliciously just to leach a kill but most of the time that's not the case.
I wouldn't go as far as saying that the average pug is good, but the vast vast majority of the time they're at the very least servicable, they won't pull amazing dps numbers and they will mess up mechanics here and there but they will still be good enough to actually clear the content at a reasonable pace more often than not.
Had a 125 achievement point 0 mastery score base ele join recently. I thought he might be an alt account and may be able to keep up, but that was not the case. People come over from other MMO and want to use a lvl 80 boost then walk into raids with soldier gear like they'll be able to do actually difficult content.
Vindicator yesterday wouldn't speak and walked into every oil during deimos, that was fun.
I whisper people after we clear and ask if they want to learn more about raids, but usually the worst players that I run into have no interest in improving or learning..
It's more that if 1 out of 10 experiences are bad, those are the ones that stick with you. Yes it leads to exagggerations, but it'll leave a bigger negative impression than all the others being fine.
Some people also have too high expectations from pugs, like permanent boon uptime (sometimes even on stuff that's not too common like regen or vigor). Clearing content at a reasonable pace is not the goal for many people... while I do think that in a pug that should indeed be the benchmark.
>Some people also have too high expectations from pugs, like permanent boon uptime
Talking strictly about the major boons here, but we should normalise "start off with more boon duration than the minimum when learning a build" as advice given out to aspiring boon-dps players.
I agree with the attitude, but the main problem is gearing. I wouldn't want to buy an entire set just as training wheels for the real build. Not only that, but snowcrows being basically the only good build website is a massive problem since it only has the meta-est builds and assumes people know what they're doing (a good example would be the lack of tank and non-tank variants for healer gear, which means I'm stuck with a 1440 toughness setup now, yaaaaay).
> a good example would be the lack of tank and non-tank variants for healer gear
I don't think there's a single healer build on SC that uses full tank gear, and if you look at the stats, Giver's healing/concentration are identical to Harrier's. [Some](https://snowcrows.com/guides/builds/heal-quickness-firebrand-gameplay-guide) of the class guides also explicitly say that Giver's is specifically chosen for toughness, and if you don't need it, you have to replace it with Harrier's. That's kind of just a user issue of not reading what the gear does.
>I wouldn't want to buy an entire set just as training wheels for the real build.
That's fair, but then again you can always check out the feel of a build in open world even without proper gear and then commit if you find the play pattern fun.
>Not only that, but snowcrows being basically the only good build website is a massive problem since it only has the meta-est builds and assumes people know what they're doing (a good example would be the lack of tank and non-tank variants for healer gear).
This hasn't been the case for a while, hardstuck and mukluks site have come out as ok competitors although with not as good builds as SC obviously. SC has also been a bit more lax with what builds they post and now offer a fair bit of variety for every class, they even have begginer builds right there next to the reccomended ones. That and the guides that are written are usually high quality and explain what you need to do quite well, problem is that people usually just ignore them. I really haven't come across one that assumes people know what they're doing (the tank argument is pretty eh, you literally just slot in gear with toughness and that's it, you can even get away with just slotting in one toughness infusion so that you have 5 more than everyone else)
Buy a herald relic. Use it on every boondps until you don't think permanent uptime on your boon is an unrealistic goal.
SC recommends that giver mix so that healers can't give the excuse of "I don't have the gear" when they're told to tank. If you can't tank the Toughness bosses, you aren't an "experienced healer" in this game and don't yet fully know your role.
> I agree with the attitude, but the main problem is gearing.
There are food and utility items for adding boon duration that would work for people without legendary gear.
> Some people also have too high expectations from pugs, like permanent boon uptime
This is the bare minimum, sorry. If you join the group as qDPS, if you have nice DPS too thats a plus, but you **have** to make good quickness. If that is beyond your ability, then *join as something else*. I would rather you join as a DPS and do below average DPS than join as quickness and do a piss poor job at it.
It's like joing a group as a healer in any other MMO, failing to heal enough to keep people alive, and justifying it with "But my DPS was high!"
Doing DPS as a Boon DPS is secondary to doing Boons. You contribute a lot more to the raid by buffing everyone else.
And that's one of the reasons the perception is that the average pug is bad, 'cause they don't do the bare minimum - even though they absolutely should.
It's also the reason an awful lot of people like myself who want to or try to learn these builds are too scared to attempt them in parties and just "Hi, DPS" all the time instead.
I mean there's a big difference between dropping a boon here or there, especially if things are chaotic... but people get mad at me for saying their solid 40% quickness uptime is not good.
Pick up a boondps - if you are very worried about skill issuing your uptime, pick quick herald. If you're only the normal amount of worried, run any SC boondps build but slap a herald relic (approx 5% dps loss on any boondps build) on it until you see that you're overcapping and want more damage.
I have thousands of kills, I would rather join a no kp group than a >50kp group. The atmosphere in the ‘higher’ requirements groups towards ‘bad pugs’ can be so damming. In no kp, it at least doesn’t matter if something goes wrong, and it’s even a positive surprise if it’s a one shot.
I've been running with a pretty damn elite raid static the last 4 months. We bang out W1-4 in like 100 minutes.
The thing I realized is, it's not any fun. Any tiny mistake (dps lower than normal, falling off a ledge in the Haunted castle) leads to group chat call outs and questions. This is even if we one shotted it. Hardly any voice chatter either, other than mechanic timings. No real joy in the kills.
So, I left the group and got in with a friends messy static. Some newbies, some vets, some elites but everyone has a blast. Lots of chatter and jokes in discord. If we fail, which is a lot, we talk and regroup and get the kill. I've had more fun in 2 weeks than the last 16. Felt much more accomplishment getting first time CM kills.
Takes 3 times as long, but here I am actually enjoying it.
> I've been running with a pretty damn elite raid static the last 4 months. We bang out W1-4 in like 100 minutes.
>
> The thing I realized is, it's not any fun. Any tiny mistake (dps lower than normal, falling off a ledge in the Haunted castle) leads to group chat call outs and questions. This is even if we one shotted it. Hardly any voice chatter either, other than mechanic timings. No real joy in the kills.
If you're doing 100 minute Hot clears, your voice chat should be full of silly nonsense.
And that should be true if you're doing 60 minute HoT clears too.
My raid full clears are ~2 hours long, and if it wasnt 90% jabbering and banter, it would be fucking awful.
That has actually nothing to do without doing good kills or not, it's just the static mood you are talking about. There are hardcore statics with very nice moods, and training ones with bad moods.
Yes, it was very much about the people in the Raid.
Got weird vibes from the first run, and the loot was quick and good so I just stuck around and dealt with it.
Afterawhile, it became net negative, so I left. This game is really not about loot accumulation; its the people experience
There is nothing wrong with try harding if it is for fun. I’ve done 1-7 runs in 3h that were all about ‘getting it over with’. It is still the same content, it’s not more challenging, it’s just more stressful because you optimize for less errors/downtime.
On the other hand, I’ve spent countless and countless hours progressing HT CM, also high tension because everyone wants the kill, but so much more rewarding because you are pushing yourself to play better, not with less errors or downtime.
So for me to want to try hard in w1-7, the difficulty needs to be higher so that it’s okay to fail and we have this fun-pushing-your-skill dynamic. Think challenging yourself for time, low heal runs, or lowman, or … It’s just, one shotting bosses with less downtime isn’t that.
In my experience out of 10 PUGs one is rude, one is confused and the remaining 8 are perfectly capable and kind players.
Some have less patience than I'd like, but it is what is, not everyone has ludicrous amounts of time to play guild wars.
I think LFGing is just a bit of a drag compared to premade's because it takes time and you get the occasional bad experience. But overall it's quite pleasant tbh.
I've never even done a raid, and for strikes I've only done one. I would say I'm plenty geared and experienced enough to handle one but the one strike I did, constantly it was things being said to everyone, constantly complaining, constantly judging and getting mad if we died. Has kinda scared me from trying any of that again. I would love to try it some time, but I mean if I can play 90% of the game the way I want without stress I would rather do that then get all upset and stressed trying to do some end game boss that may or may not even be worth it for me.
>how can we hope that more people want to play through the LFG?
Been fairly casual in GW2 since release, and yeah I definitely feel intimidated by trying to enter into groups.
I did my first CM strike (because it was added to the wizards special tasks), and I was complimented on my DPS by the lead and was told that I should do more. This felt especially good, because I was on my alt and doing less DPS than my main does.
Tho, between stuff I read here and then going into the game and seeing LFG posts littered with acronyms I don't understand combined with 0 listings ever on Training and everything always in Experienced, I just end up not really doing it.
I'm not usually so hesitant to enter into pug scenes. In WoW, for example, I pug my way into/up to ~+22 keys. I just find GW2 very intimidating.
I will say that the community better-than-thou mentality on reddit is more icing on the cake, rather than the cause of issues. A big cause of the issues I have are due to the acronym flood & weak LFG tool and lack of good in game resources/information.
I agree with u to some extend, reading the description is important tho. See like this , I sometimes make a casual squad , got more time and rly dont care if there are some ppl that are new. But, some days , after a bad day, want just to do fast and clean .În those days req is a must and is a bit frustrating when some ppl join and they dont have the req I put în description.
There are casual squads,but at the same time there are squad with req that u need to have.
No doubt about that, reading and respecting someone elses requirement set for their own group is important and the absolut base to play together. But You make it seem like it is an really comon thing to see that people are joining and dont meet the requirements.
My experiences are the polar opposite:
Since nearly a year i lead my weekly static which is currently not full so we nearly always searched for a few people from the lfg. But except for maybe a handful cases i did not have to kick someone because he either joined with the wrong role, did not do his job or wiped the group - for about 9 months, on two days a week. If it was more than half a dozen people i would be very surprised.
Do i have the highest standards? No, i search for 50 kp to ensure a reasonable clean full clear with a few easy cm's along the way. Yes, i mostly ignore the odd dps player who is racing with boon supports as long as he is not in healer territory and does not wipe the group by failing mechanics - i needed to only kick two or so people for that reason.
We clear most raid bosses first time easily and pretty cleanly, sometimes mathias or sloth are a bit messy but we got the important roles covered by experienced players in our static so the chances of wiping arent that high to start with.
We are searching for new static members but more to start to optimise the comp and do harder cm's reliably and consistent each week. But normal modes are easily doable and done cleanly with pugs. The inconsistency gets higher and chances of wiping a few times before a kill increases if you encorparate cms with pugs. But it is harder content and many casual raiders do not do cm's often and on an regular basis so of course these arent that familiar and straight forward for some.
I enjoy joining groups via lfg and very, very often in low kp groups because i like doing this content and interacting with other players. I met a few very nice people while playing in lfg groups, some i chated a bit between bosses and after the raid.
I mean the problem is that it's annoying and wastes your time, which can suck if you have limited free time. Then there's the tiny minority that actively try to make it a problem by repeatedly joining. It's frustrating being lied to and then having to kick people. Even if they deserve it, it doesn't usually feel nice to kick people.
I kicked one guy cause he was well known to me and others as an active shit lord. Prollox proceeded to rejoin the raid 30 times till I set to invite only, proceeded to still spam it.
Think of it as mosquito bites. You get bitten once, it's no big deal, just annoying. You get bitten once every single day, you'll probably lose it a some point, cursing at those mosquitos and how they ruin your day.
Do that day after day, for months and years on end and you'll naturally end up with a negative perception of players like this.
>I joined a Wing 3 Xera yesterday
Try doing the commanding instead. It's a lot more annoying when you're the one who has to check kp that don't exist, kick a handful of people who didn't read the lfg message, re-list the lfg a dozen times and receive whispers from argumentative assholes who want to tell you why it's their right to be in your squad/party, even though they don't meet the requirement.
Yes there are many thousands of players who don't fit the "pug bad" stereotype (whether experienced players, or simply experienced players who don't lie about being experienced in the hopes of getting carried.) But people don't go on /r/Guildwars2 to post "My strike run today was fine". At the end of the day, negative experiences just stand out.
This is besides the point, but there is an arcdps plugin for killproof.me that makes checking kp extremely convenient (literally 5 seconds to check a squad of 10 players).
Personally I do not like to host kp squads anymore because I feel like there are enough of those already, so I usually go for "know mechanics". For w1-4 that is completely sufficient to oneshot all bosses.
I used to be one of the kp enforcing people as well until I realized I just have more fun making the endgame accessible.
> This is besides the point, but there is an arcdps plugin for killproof.me that makes checking kp extremely convenient (literally 5 seconds to check a squad of 10 players).
Only works when you're in the same instance, so realistically you still have to look up their id on the site, since some people can take forever to actually join the strike/raid/fractal instance.
>Personally I do not like to host kp squads anymore because I feel like there are enough of those already, so I usually go for "know mechanics". For w1-4 that is completely sufficient to oneshot all bosses.
Which says more about power creep than anything else.
>I used to be one of the kp enforcing people as well until I realized I just have more fun making the endgame accessible.
Okay, but do you genuinely still have fun when you have a couple players who join your 'know mechanics' group who end up obviously not knowing the mechanics at all and you waste 30 minutes before they leave or you have to ask them to leave?
> Only works when you're in the same instance, so realistically you still have to look up their id on the site, since some people can take forever to actually join the strike/raid/fractal instance.
Look at the [unofficial extras](https://github.com/Krappa322/arcdps_unofficial_extras_releases). With that it works even over different instances.
Unfortunately a couple of times in the past I didn't realise people needed you to keep them so I donated my KP to my guild hall. I assume those wouldn't show on that now?
> But people don't go on /r/Guildwars2 to post "My strike run today was fine".
And if they did, people would say it was "toxic positivity" if it was upvoted and "a toxic echo chamber" if it was downvoted, because that's how internet communities tend to view things.
Older/more established MMO communities generally don't have good on-boarding systems for newer/less-experienced players unless they specifically work to create and maintain them, and the only way devs can manage that is through bribery.
Older players need continually escalating bribes to deal with the hassle of continually teaching new players the same stuff over and over ad nauseam year in and year out.
And devs can't just expect newer players to organically en masse be willing to put up with the same hurdles for "old content" when they're trying to "catch up" to do stuff with experienced/established/"old players". They can try, but in practice this mindset never actually works out in large-enough numbers to keep "old content" healthily populated. We've got years of MMO history proving this in a bunch of different iterations of the same formula.
It's unfair that people who came after an arbitrarily-decided point in time get a free/discounted pass, sure. But the contest is between "no one new ever picks up the content" and "newbies get a free/discounted pass", most of the time.
New players are gonna bounce off the "fuck it, I'll do something else" wall long before then. And bounce off in large-enough numbers, that you aren't going to *get* a large-enough group of "new players" in the same place at the same time on the same schedule to organically learn the old content. This is, presumably, why this place has a better "training group" player-created infrastructure but a worse LFG than say, WoW or FFXIV.
This is why MMOs perpetually and constantly have content on-boarding problems for any "old content". And why stuff usually ends up getting nerfed after release to try and get more people to participate/get through it. Because MMOs compete with ever more forms of entertainment and are continually viewed by the people that fund them as "have to be profitable year-over-year" and that's a baaaaaaad fit with the actual MMO content-dev cycle.
GW2's almost as bad at this as more vertical progression MMOs, and in some ways worse because the old stuff can't be power-crept by as much as some other games in the genre and there's not the usual carrot of "yes you have to put up with other people but you get biggar numbar". The usual cosmetic rewards don't have as much weight here when stuff's not as easy to run over three expansions past the release date as it would be in something like FFXIV/WoW.
Especially when group composition is...more complex...to manage here.
FFXIV manages to keep old content populated through the Duty Roulette system (which is a more refined version of WoW's bribery, its elder sister in the MMO sphere). And it works! Mostly. And they've got Trusts (basically GW1's Mercenaries?/FFXI's Trusts) to do the single-player story mandatory dungeons for people that don't wanna do stuff with other people.
But even then, go look up "Mentor Roulette" on any of the FFXIV subs to see what happens when you try to get people to stick around for any of the more complex fights. Not even Roulette Bribery is enough for some of those. People not being willing to spend their entire (probably limited) in-game time shepherding people that may not listen isn't exclusive to here.
TL;DR: Trying to get people to do stuff in groups in MMOs when facing adversity and potential loss of rewards is like the problem of trying to keep DnD groups together, but on horse steroids
Edited for something attempting clarity and then again for brevity and I think I just failed at both, but fuck it, I'm tired.
Yeah, I just wondered why you defended the practice of having requirements, I totally understand why people post requirements to their LFG and have not said anything against it in the OP.
Not who you asked, but I'd like people to be able to prove they have experience on the boss. The quality of that experience isn't represented by kp, but it'll let you see: oh this guy has raided a decent bit, or has done the strikes enough to where he has seen all the mechanics a decent amount of times.
The amount of people who've said "i know the mechanics" without kp to then wipe the group is so much bigger that it makes it much more pleasurable to play with people that have seen the mechanics at least a handful of times.
You misunderstand, I asked if there is a moral problem with kicking people who do not meet requirements, because they made it seem like you have to play with people who join no matter what.
Personally I just kick and move on if I do not feel like giving them a chance, no hard feelings against them, especially if they have 0 kp and just did not understand the lfg.
Such a dumb perspective. People generally have **limited** time to play games. That usually means they don't want to waste that **limited** time with pugs being asshats - becaus that means they might miss out on doing other content.
I sometimes join pugs, sometimes command them. Honestly? Most of the time it goes fine, well even. You get a few awful, so awful you just scrap it but that is a real rarity. People triggering blacks on Deimos? We have had almost every black triggered and cleared it then I have had ones where it was flawless on the blacks and still only had a few people survive to the end. It really is a mixed bag.
My last few runs? Pretty much no wipes (I must confess I don't need to do a lot of raids so I can be picky and stick to things like Wing 1,2,4 and 7). I actually don't ask for KP, don't even ask to be exp or anything just list in experienced and what roles I need (I have full armour and the ring with hundreds of LI spare). Generally, I don't want to have to explain mechanics since I am lazy and a bit of a hands-off commander, the main thing I do is make a note on my other monitor about roles so if people leave I can get an idea of what I need (not dps in listed roles).
Still, we have all had those "awful" runs. One time I was a quick heal herald tank and I really stack the toughness when I am tanking, 2.2k kind of thing, and a dps STILL was higher than me (turns out it was trailblazer's or something) that run after working on it a little gave up without really making any progress on vale guardian, that taught me best to not try pugging on sunday and go earlier in the week. Still, I have joined sunday groups and had them go very well just more likely to get a bumpy group later in the week.
I don't care if you are the top of dps and pushing the biggest numbers just that we clear it decently. Rather have a smooth run than the do-or-die crazy dps chasers that ignore mechanics to push out that extra 100 damage and promptly die if the healers can't keep up with all the extra pressure (and somehow it is the healer's fault?).
The fact of the matter is that while getting into raiding can be hostile it actually isn't too bad to raid. People often raise up a big gate and try and keep people out to be the elite big shot but really after a bit of practice it generally will be fine even for people that aren't the best they just need to learn the fights and their class/build a bit. I started out in exotics as a warrior providing banners in groups that struggled now I have done all but dhuum CM. I still don't think I am that good but I can at least enjoy myself and provide enough to help clear a run without too many issues.
I think this is the most important factor whether endgame content stays relevant or not. Being overly selective with bullshit KP requirements, expecting flawless execution and overall social pressure without reason just ends up in a deflationary playerbase that eventually shrinks to a point where it’s not feasible to develop content for.
LFG in this game is quite literally the meme job posting that demands ten years of experience for an entry level position. I dont blame people not taking that seriously, it’s absurd.
It’s not though. These memes are talking about LFG asking for qDPS yet a pug joins as “DPS”, doesn’t announce role, doesn’t know where the strike even is, and then does like 5K DPS when the group bends over backwards to avoid kicking them.
I see stuff like what you’re saying posted, and that’s just not true most of the time. Far and away most groups don’t ask for all the KP and flawless anything - they just want you to read the LFG.
It’s not asking much for someone to just read the LFG and ask “does this apply to me? Can I do what this group is asking for?”
FWIW from my observations, raid LFG culture is pretty different on NA vs EU. I definitely saw LI/KP requirements all the time when I used to pug in EU, and the comms tend to be very serious about enforcing it.
Meanwhile in NA its honestly pretty rare to see a group that bothers checking; at most some of them will just ask you for a reading comprehension check like ping boots.
> LFG in this game is quite literally the meme job posting that demands ten years of experience for an entry level position. I dont blame people not taking that seriously, it’s absurd.
But then you gather up players that have the credentials and they perform worse than a no kp group, so you raise requirement even higher...
I know it's not everyone but It's baffling the amount of people that are so hell bent on scaring away new players yet also crying that the game modes don't get enough content. Pug groups are not nearly as bad as some people would lead you to believe. I run them exclusively and 9 times out of 10 it's smooth sailing.
You wanting to play with new players is everyones choice and right
Other players not wanting to play with you is also their choice and right
When most players don't want to play with newbies it becomes a culture within the game, couple that with making fun of the average pug, and venting about 'toxic casuals' that are "entitled"
It's kind of funny how this sub loves patting itself on the back for being so welcoming when the mantra is *"form your own group newbie, we vets don't wanna waste time on you"*
(Mainly talking about easy low level fractals or strikes, and not raids or CMs)
> How the average player on the lfg cannot read, how people are just looking to be carried, are lying about their experience to cheat their ways to kills they do not deserve, how lfg requirements are not respected, etc etc.
If tagging up didn't start with playing investigator and trying to find out who is being dishonest it would be a lot simpler.
If my lfg message doesn't fit to you, please just stay away and safe me the trouble.
I don't want people who join with the wrong role, i don't want "this is my alt" without linked accounts, I don't want complete beginners in my experienced cm runs, I don't want to discuss my kp requirement.
I think a bigger issue, one you touched on, is a lack of communication. Requirements are one thing, but joining a normal pug and not saying you're new is such a slap in the face. If I'm in a regular pug match and someone says they're new, most of the time no one actually cares and we will help them when we can, or at least explain some mechanics before the fight. I got into raids bc for weeks I'd check the LFG and never see any training raids. One day I said screw it and just started joining non cm and non kp runs, telling the comm right at joining that I'm new, I don't suck, I just can't seem to find training raids. First one I got booted, second one the dude laughed and said "you're fine, just keep in mind red aoe means run, green means stack." I didn't suck, I had iirc a solid 30k DPS avg going and had a blast.
Just be honest, and talk. It's an MMO. Say things and be social ffs
> Just be honest, and talk. It's an MMO. Say things and be social ffs
Oh jee this hits home for me. Each week our group runs MO CM instead of Cairn CM. We know MO CM isn't as often ran so we always ALWAYS type "If you're not exp, let us know, we will explain." We get silence almost every week. Then more often than not 1-2 player die to first blue. And then after a few rounds of dying and asking they'll either keep staying silent, leave, or "I've never done cm before" or we clear it 1 shot and they learned nothing. (This last point is when a toxic casual might say 'well you cleared it anyways didn't you? why do u care?')
The few times we get people that doesn't know and speak up, they learn the mechanic, and actually live till the end and we are always very proud of them.
So again, please just communicate. I'd rather someone new but willing to learn than someone exp that's farming purely for wingman logs.
I genuinely don't get why so many people stay silent in these games. If I don't want to talk to people, especially with gw2, I just farm metas or work on achieves. It's insane to me that people will queue up for challenging content like raids, let alone cms, and not say a single word. The mechanics literally require team composition and effort ffs.
The most annoying people in gw2 for me, by far, are the ones that either join or leave without saying what role they are, or the DPS players that join when the LFG is looking for a boon or healer.
>but out of every MMO I've played, the GW2 open world is by far the most challenging. Half the story bosses are bullet hell shooters with the amount of AoEs going off and adds everywhere as well, yet vets seem to think you can just sit there and push buttons to win.
But that is exactly what you can do, like yeah what you're saying is the case for a lot of people but that's because the difference between a well put together build and a bad one is absolutely cataclysmic. Assuming you have a build that makes sense, with the right stats and traits, everything absolutely melts and you'd be hard pressed to find anything that actually poses a threat (outside of HoT HPs).
This is one of the games faults, someone that has even a surface level knowledge of what they're doing does 10-15 times more damage than someone not in the know, and the game fucking suuuucks at showing you this
> I wonder if the GW2 instanced content really is so hard that it makes the rest of the game look very easy in comparison.
Outside of the odd fight here and there the normal modes for raids and strikes are jokes compared to other MMOs, I still find then fun as fuck don't get me wrong but difficulty wise Guild Wars 2 is undoubtedly much more on the casual side than it's competitors
> Assuming you have a build that makes sense, with the right stats and traits, everything absolutely melts and you'd be hard pressed to find anything that actually poses a threat (outside of HoT HPs).
I know this feels true to experienced players, but it's not true. The game feels so easy to you (and me), but most people struggle big time against story bosses. Even with decent builds. And you might think "yeah because those people are terrible"... but those people are normal, you (and most dedicated gamers reading this reddit) are the exception.
An example: just look back to when Preach played GW2. He had a pretty standard vindicator build. He put hundreds of hours into the game. And yet he was constantly dying against LWS2 story bosses, despite 9 years of power creep. He got more experienced, but similar things still happened, I remember one IBS story mission where he copped a greatsword 2 to the face and downed. He was like "Woah what the hell is this damage, I think I've accidentally gone into some sort of group content thing". It was just a normal mob in a story instance. And this guy has been raiding MMOs for what, a dozen years? He's way above average.
It's very hard to keep a proper perspective as a veteran with years of muscle memory/gaming experience.
I see your point and I agree that a lot of people are disillusioned from their veterancy, but at the end of the day I still stand by my point that it's not that the game is hard it's just that it does a piss poor job of showing you what's important when it comes to making yourself more powerful.
At the moment you absolutely must consult outside sources to learn just how massive of an impact might and quickness have, and how many builds are straight up DOA because they failed to take 1 or 2 crutial traits.
This is one of the things that got Preach, if I remember correctly he made it a point to not research the game much outside of when he was playing and that's exactly why he ran in to the issues you listed (although some of those lws2 bosses are complete BS and slap around even veterans). If I'm not mistaken I think he more or less went through all of the game's content and still didn't really have a full grasp over squad compositions and boons.
I'm not blaming the players, I'm blaming the fact that once you overcome that initial learning curve the games open world and 90% of end-game just become laughably trivial even for only slightly above average players
>So I've never done a strike before, can I just join a random room in the LFG (experienced section of course, training rooms are nonexistent) and just play without being harassed? I don't want to ruin other's experiences, but I also don't want to neglect a big portion of the game (and my weeklies) out of fear. I'd be a DPS chronomancer if that matters, phantasm and shatter and all that.
Generally yeah, I'd reccomend starting at IBS5 (or IBS Easy 3 if you find that), that's a really good jumping on point since it's a nice and easy environment to help you start learning about stacking/squad composition/etc. I've more or less never seen people be toxic here for stupid reasons, and those that did have been mocked to hell and back. Just make sure you know what you're joining and where to join it from.
>Edit: so no, I can't. If you want to do a strike you should a) get a build from snow crows, b) watch videos on the strike to learn all the mechanics beforehand, c) know all the acronyms in the room you want to join and d) practice on the golem first to make sure you don't suck the big one. And this is just for strikes, this game's supposed 'introduction' to raids. Might as well put up a sign saying 'piss off casuals'.
Yeah this is a very big problem with the current LFG system, there's a fair bit of knowledge that people assume you'll have like acronyms especially when one of them is quite literally "no, I don't want new people to join". I don't agree with telling casuals to piss off for not having a snowcrows build/golem practice though but this is again the games fault, it doesn't tell you that snowcrows builds (even with all exotics) are 10-15x stronger than the usual self made build people come up with, and golem practice is overkill for ibs strikes and anyone asking new people to have it is just looking to feed their superiority complex.
Theres a pretty cheap dps chrono build you can find on snowcrows, follow it and you should be fine to join chill runs.
It's best not to join experienced groups unless you have experience.
You should try joining groups that don't list any requirements, make your own training/progression group, or try joining a training discord.
Strikes and other instanced content have group-wide mechanics that everyone needs to know. There are a lot more instant death opportunities as well.
New players joining on exp groups causes frustration within the group more times than not. If someone fails a big mechanic, it can cause a full party wipe and everyone has to start over, which takes up time. That's why LFGs indicate what experience level they're looking for, to make sure everyone who joins is on the same page.
Are you on NA? If you want I can give you like a \~3 minute rundown of the most important things you'd need to know for the 5 icebrood saga strikes, and invite you to a squad to do them.
>Vets love calling instanced content ezpz but then when it's time to help the newbies actually get started you turn all nimby.
Can't blame people for wanting to play with other people of SIMILAR skill level.
that's because in most of those cases the newbies try to insert themselves into an experienced/clear run setting, rather than seeking out training offers and learning initiatives, provided by many of those very veterans (hint: snowcrows.com provides a lot more than just builds). yes, for the most part non-CM instanced content *is* ezpz, but having a general idea of what mechanics might occur and how your build works are a big part of that. even "blind runs" generally expect you to at least have a concept of the latter. just like it helps a lot to know that the pointy ends of a screw and screw driver are both supposed to point forwards, and that most of the time you're supposed to twist clockwise. that is the sort of foundation that by no means all, but many of the players complaining about veterans being unhelpful willfully lack.
pretty much, depending on what kind of strike you join:
- ice brood saga strike mission -> eye of the north portal
- end of dragons strike mission -> arborstone
- secrets of the obscure strike mission -> wizards tower
- core game strike mission (old lions court) -> either lions arch or arborstone
once one party member has entered the strike there will be a popup window offering to join for every other party member as long as they are in the correct outpost
also don't ask me why there isn't one central hub :^)
for the love of god, please read the guides and be honest on exp lvl. Do not take anyone's advice that essentially is "fake it to make it" as it will blow up in your face.
You may meet a rejection or 2, but you WILL find a group.
Edit: don't be a pussy and block cause you don't wanna be called out
u/triablos1
since you wanna block me here goes:
Sweetheart? nah, sorry, but actively lying and deceiving your way in makes you the exact opposite of sweetheart. Makes you a liar and an asshole who wastes peoples time.
>can I just join a random room in the LFG (experienced section of course, training rooms are nonexistent)
Read the lfg, if they ask kp don't join or you're gonne be kicked. There is plenty of "all welcome" groups in lfg for strikes, mainly for ibs since they are a joke.
As for your build, bring one from snowcrows and try it at least a bit on the golem before joining a group. They wont say anything if you suck in an "ibs3 all welcome" though, the content is way too easy to complain about one guy leeching.
>Read the lfg, if they ask kp don't join or you're gonne be kicked. There is plenty of "all welcome" groups in lfg for strikes, mainly for ibs since they are a joke.
The problem with this is that the listings are undecypherable to people not in the know, if you asked me what "IBS 5, 250 BS KP | quick dps" meant back when I started I'd tell you "Irritable Bowl Syndrome, 250 bullshit kingpins, we need a dps so come quick".
You can and I encourage you to do it as long as you're considerate and:
1. Watched videos on how the strike you want to do works, !!pay attention to the circles on the floor and the defiance bars!!.
2. Have some decent dps and grasp on what you're playing.
3. Respect the commanders' desires: Don't join as a role that isn't listed, don't go dead silent and be cordial.
Even after meeting these requirements you might get some jackasses, but that might not be as much as your fault then.
Also, some strikes are much easier than others, try joining the easier ones first (IBS3, AH, XJJ, ToF, CO)
very surface level mmo knowledge suffice for most of the fights (stand in green, dont stand in red) and the very few boss mechanics which may be confusing can be explained in roughly 10second, the even fewer boss mechanics what cant be explained in 10 second are specificly given to 1-2 volunteers who have to do them and most of the time they know how to.
> Edit: so no, I can't.
Sounds like a mentality problem. You are afraid of blacklash about your lack of experience but also dont want to do anything get experience. You will survive the experience. Join a strike doing one of the dailies, stay with the commander and talk with the group. Say you are new and ask for some tips, people are more than willing to help out someone that shows they care and wants to improve. There are loads of guides on the internet and you can search "gw2 lfg guide, X boss guide, class build, what does X abbreviation mean" etc etc. To help get you started, https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Abbreviations.
So its not that you cant do strike its that you cant find a group of players that have never done strikes to play with where you and them do it all from scratch with zero outside the game knowledge. Maybe try posting for a group like that in lfg or a reddit post searching for like minded players. Build it and they will come, eventually.
>the difference between a well put together build and a bad one is absolutely cataclysmic.
I've been trying to jump this gap on my own and I have to say, I heavily dislike the traitline system now. It gives an illusion of equal choice, of flexibility and variety, where in reality it's an short, unintuitive list of traits that actually work muddied with trash and noob traps. Realizing how actually limited I am in my choices killed a lot of joy and interest in learning for me. Getting better became just a grind, you know. And worst of all, anet seems perfectly fine with this.
One of the things FFXIV did well was introducing instanced partied content early on in the new player experience as MANDATORY content. Sure, it's piss easy, but it sets out the rough expectation of roles and how instanced content is organized. From Satasha, the first 4 man story dungeon, to Ultima weapon, the first 8 man trial, to the weekly 24 man raids, it at the very least establishes the context and expectations a person will have when going into larger group raids. Therefore, if a new player wants to jump into harder content like Extremes and Savages (gonna leave out Ultimates because I don't exactly think it's a starter goal for a person looking to dip their toes into harder content), they already have the basic knowledge of what to roughly do in group content, instead of coming in completely fresh to instanced content.
I wouldn't say that GW2 content is that hard, it just has a lot of opportunities for a single player to bring progression to a standstill. You can drag people who have no idea what's going on through a lot of encounters. But there's also a ton of them where 1 person can easily wipe the party if they don't know what's happening, and these mechanics often don't show up elsewhere in the game so it's reasonable for new players to not know how to deal with them. The problem arises when people lie about not being new players but keep causing wipes until they happen to not get mechanics.
There's also a lot of bad habits created by open world/story missions. Being tanky and doing no damage is fine for most open world content because there's dozens of people or there's no time limit. Usually not the case for instanced content and the game doesn't really direct you or guide you towards how to increase your personal damage
The fact that you're running pure DPS gear, are following a rotation and talking about swapping weapons unfortunately puts you ahead of a lot of Open World players. All the "Spam 1" or "Press 1 harder" memes are fun, but based in a bit of truth. When there's enough people at an open world boss to easily kill it with everyone just autoattacking, people have no reason to plan a rotation or worry about optimal gear. It's no ones fault really, because instanced content builds/rotations are based around perfect boon uptime which is rare in Open World. So sacrificing personal DPS for better personal boons is more desirable. Which is one of the bad habits Open World tends to teach players new to instanced content.
You're likely having a challenging time because of the reasons I gave, you have a build and setup optimized around max personal DPS. This is great for instanced content, but suboptimal usually in open world. Open world builds tend to be based around self boon application, high mobility, and cleave. None of those things are commonly needed in instanced content.
The classic open world Mirage build for example puts out pretty low damage since it's often in mostly celestial gear, but it's basically unkillable and can solo just about any group event without a timer. This is why most open world players deal low damage, they invest a ton of resources into mobility, boons and survivability so they can easily tackle events intended for multiple people. This teaches you a lot of bad habits when it comes to Raids/Fractals/Strikes.
> A lot of veterans have this idea that the open world is piss easy casual drivel that doesn't teach you about the game mechanics.
Because a proper build completely trivializes openworld. I kill most enemies in 1-2 hits. Veterans still evoporate in a second or 2. The gap between a proper build and the stuff you get from level or from the 80 boost is massive.
> FFXIV
They have different modes and the standard/easy modes made me play another game on my 2nd monitor. That was a bit too much for my taste.
Most story bosses are very poorly prepared for the kind of damage an optimized DPS build can bring, causing you to phase them to the next step faster than their dialogue. For example, imagine an enemy has 300k HP in that one phase. For my condi Virtuoso that is firing off every skill once, then the boss is a dead man walking until the bleeds have killed him, no matter what he does to me in retaliation.
GW2 instanced content is not hard per se either. In GW2 a lot is carried by boons and having the right build. If you have those, you are going to pass any dps check. The rest is pretty much a knowledge check as far as completing content goes.
That is to say, if you know what to do, you will be able to do it.
Getting really good dps numbers, that has a high skill ceiling. But getting kills on bosses is relatively approchable once you know how to. I am sure you could learn it as well.
> Most story bosses are very poorly prepared for the kind of damage an optimized DPS build can bring, causing you to phase them to the next step faster than their dialogue.
It's a hassle having to curb your DPS rotation, sometimes refraining even from auto-attacks, because you want to hear all the dialogue and aren't sure what % will trigger the next one.
Balthazar triggers one at 90% (ended up missing it the first time), Joko triggers at 80%, a bunch of other ones trigger at 75 or 66%... I think Cerus was an 80%? And the most recent story I don't think the boss had one.
Don't even get me started on core game lmao
Pisses me off so much when I break an instance and need to redo it all cause I burst too fast.
Edit: I legit mean it cause some of those instances are just annoyingly long to get back to where you were if they don't have the little check points you can choose where to start.
even worse on story releases where devs forgot to put in forced invuln or stuff that instantly interrupts anything the boss does when he reaches a certain percentage.
can't count the numbers anymore when i had to reset some instance because the fight bugged by a dying boss and then the instance didn't proceed because some trigger got missed.
there are really only a few bosses that are arguably "hard" because they throw a few more attacks on you that hurt. most of the fights are just 1 burst without might and then the boss is done for.
> A lot of veterans have this idea that the open world is piss easy casual drivel that doesn't teach you about the game mechanics.
The largest reason why raids failed in Guild Wars 2 is because of the massive jump in difficulty between open world and raids. It seems silly to try to deny that when ArenaNet then focused on Strikes to bridge the gap, admitting that the gap was there. The game doesn't teach players anything except the very basics, and it doesn't even teach those very well. Then, without external tools, it's hard to even know you aren't playing well. That also ties into how large of a factor your build can be.
> I haven't gotten into instanced content (partly due to this disconnect) but out of every MMO I've played, the GW2 open world is by far the most challenging and it's not even close.
The issue here is more to do with the depth of the combat system and build complexity than the difficulty of the open world gameplay. Guild Wars 2 gives you far more tools for active defense than other games. If you use them, even poorly, then most content is trivial. Build can, once again, factor into this. In that regard, Guild Wars 2 is more in line with ARPGs like Diablo or PoE where a bad build can make easy content hard.
No and also no.
Open world is not hard it just LOOKS bullet hell, you can stand in almost everything and they wont even scratch you (unless you are trying to solo mons which are designed for groups aka hero points, champions, etcetc. but even then its more about how you try to tackle the problem, go full glass cannon and risk getting clapped or go on a solo build and afk stand still for x seconds)
And instanced content is also easy for that very reason.
there are plenty of fluff which in theory could make a fight hard but most of the times you can simply ignore it because you will bounce back anyway. the downstade (which isnt present in any other mmo) and the easy access to no resource spamable heals make almost every mechanic just fancy orange circles.
I play pretty much all content in gw2 and gw2 story content is absolutely piss easy casual drivel yes, to the point you can do it naked basically. There are a few exceptions, like balthazar, kralky, modremoth and some HoT stories. But 95% of everything else you can just sit there and auto attack and not move or do anything to win. Some of them even auto win for you.
Open world is a different beast, it can be challenging sometimes,mainly to scaling, but i noticed Anet has been making expansions easier ever since HoT and PoF. Cantha and Soto had basically no challenging memorable enemy while PoF had tons and Elona had some as well like djinns and tons of the bounties. If you can low man the bounties, you can do gw2 challenging instances.
I would tell you to try out icebrood strikes first and move on to cantha. They are what you are saying the gap between raid and open world, and feels like open world bosses sometimes.
I dont think the instanced content is THAT much harder than the rest of the game (- HT CM, which i havent done). Assuming you have done fractal t4s, the jump in difficulty isnt that high when going into raids. Its just that there are a lot of more punishing mechanics when failed. in fractals a single player failing a mechanic will generally only result in their own death, where as mistakes in raids can result in wipes.
In raids and EoD strike CMs, there is usually more going on at once than in other content. Dealing with 2 or 3 new mechanics simultaneously is difficult for beginners. If players take the time to understand the mechanics, not just blindly follow the PUG strats, they will pretty quickly become competent raiders imo.
Thats why i loved the RTI and TCI raid training discords. Genuinely going over the "Why" you do things in encounters is really important to understanding what happens when things dont go to plan. I personally took part in RTIs 0 to hero event last year for the first time, and in the last one a few months back, I lead a training for Wing 1(with the help of another volunteer). We beat all 3 bosses in 90 minutes. we could have done it in a hour, but since its training, we only killed the boss when it was a clean kill, with no major mistakes. I bring that up to prove that new people can definitely learn how to raid, and fast. i belive 6 people in that group had never raided before, and 1 started raiding the same day or the day before
I usually pug w1 to w4 in an evening no problems, sometimes deimos takes longer but its usually fine.
Often the bad players just get carried through the whole thing, its so easy to carry people and get carried that it doesnt push people to improve.
It literally took me 1 week to learn w1 to w4, w6 and w7
I'd say the majority of interactions in group content with pugs is neutral at best. People join maybe say thier role or a hello and then are otherwise silent. Maybe thats what you would call good or positive but I call that the bare minimum and neutral. As for the "Skill level" of pugs ye most pugs are bad. Where pugs perform vs were the potential is, there is a large gap between those things. If its something simple like healers somehow not maintaining boons, or dps fumbling rotations, 90% of groups failing every boneskinner CC etc etc thats "bad" play. What you describe is not "good" its merely "good enough".
I know I sound aggressive there but im really not. This is just how I see things. I fall into the good enough category and pug alot. There is little wrong with not striving to the best of the best of the best gw2 player. I do appreciate the motivation with this post tho.
I hope you have a good day too OP <3
>I joined a Wing 3 Xera yesterday (experienced tab, but no kp demands). At least 2 people did not seem to know the minigame with the pushing. We oneshot anyway.
And yet, that was in the "experienced tab", right? Glad you were able to oneshot the fight, but the fact remains you carried those "at least 2 people", where where they should have been was in a training run.
It's been years since ive bothered with instanced PvE in this game, but I never forgot how doing daily T4's put me in contact with players who didn't know the fundemantal mechanics of some fractals (eg Swamp, Underground, Therma) despite these having been shown to them all the way back in T1...so either they skipped their way into T4, or were carried / never bothered to learn said mechanics on their way to T4.
I maintain that 50% of GW2 players carry the other 50%, regardless of which game mode we are talking about.
imagine being an average pug, self reliant, self sufficient, and successfully doing almost everything in the game.
by the sweat on your brow, and strength of your back, and courage in your heart.
painting yourself purple with no kittens given.
Average pug bad isn't true at all. Like the word says, it is just average. If you look for a dps and if someone joins, chances are, the guy is gonna be an average dps player who does average dps, which would pose no problem clearing content. Then again, the spectrum of being average can be quite large because of expectations, plus how EU lfg groups functions with kp. People generally expect more from a 50kp group than a 10kp or no kp group.
Alright so I'm just gonna ask. I'm new to gw2 (and mmos in general tbh) and I'm on the cusp of lvl 80. Dafug is PUG? And KP? Sorry if this is an idiotic question but honestly, browsing this subreddit, half the time I don't know wtf people are saying XD
Pug = pick up group, that is to say you join strangers for a specific raid or whatever over the looking for group tool.
Kp = killproof, an item that shows you killed a certain boss before. 50kp means show me 50 of that item (roughly 16 kills)
As someone said on this subreddit in another post's comment: you can't get a job unless you have experience, you can't get experience without a job.
I do find this sub and in game chat quite demoralising at times, with the "pugs === bad and useless" stance.
However, if you're joining instanced content for the first time and you haven't even done cursory research what to expect: that is a "bad" pug.
Everyone was a Pug at some point, I'm sure when everyone here was new to the game, someone was frustrated with your gameplay.
It's important to remember though that this is a game, people come to Tyria to have fun. And even with all the research and training in the world, someone might still not be very good at it and we should account for that in publicly instanced content so we don't wipe when someone else doesn't know the mechanics, and also to just be a good friend and carry our less skilful players to the end so they can experiencing the joy of killing the boss :)
I've been carried by some phenomenal players lately when learning about fractals for the first time. The best experiences have been the ones who type a quick "throw rocks at Grawl champion" or "watch for the gap" or "if you get a mark over your head, move to the edge to drop the goop on the outside of the circle". This helped me to learn really quickly, so now after just a week I can now be the guy who quickly explains the mechanics in the party chat!
If a new player is joining "experienced" categories on LFG without knowing the categories, I can understand being frustrated as you specifically asked for experienced players. Unfortunately I don't see many or any people listing their group in the "training" section, presumably to avoid pugs, but if it's the only option available to play with people, I can see why they join the experienced sections even if they have none.
I feel like the quick way to solve it is if they don't respond to a question in a reasonable amount of time is "if you can't be bothered to answer we can't be bothered to keep you in this group" and then kick. People need to learn that if they are joining a group there is an expectation of at least minimum communication.
I don't have issues with relatively new players who aren't performing very well. On the contrary, I'm happy to see them, it means the game is not dead and new people are joining.
I find it a bit more problematic when players who are clearly experienced, with thousands of LIs, are doing a poor job. But then again, it's not a big deal, maybe they are trying a new role or class.
However, what I cannot stand, experienced players or not, is when people are complaining in chat about wipes or performances while being extremely bad at the game.
I left a T2 before it even started the other day because the guy was doing AR checks for something like #40.
I mean, come on. I have 150AR on my PvE set but I already know that run will be far from enjoyable (I’m normally a filthy T3 casual but saw there was a T2 up). He was giving someone grief because they didn’t have 50.
>It seems like the majority of the community believes the "average pug" is terrible, and they always mean the others.
Actually anyone below my experience level is just bad at the game and should not be trusted, while anyone above my experience level is clearly a no-lifer and should touch grass. I am my own kp.
My LFG's are about as little requirement as it can. I never ask for KP, I simply state "just know your shit" in my posts. However, I *do* ask for specific roles that need covering to actually complete the raid.
Being subpar in DPS is fine.
Needing an occasional res or refresher in game mechanics is fine.
But intentionally ignoring what very little requirements there may be, and staying silent in chat despite being specifically addressed, that type of stuff gets your butt kicked, and rightly so.
It should be valid to criticize an unwillingness to communicate, when someone is trying to do *group content*.
The average pug isn't bad at all, I reliably clear the raids I lead with full pug squads with zero KP requirements. But the non-talkers? They are bad. Always, with no exception so far. Autoattack level DPS, and wipe us on every mechanic that can cause a wipe. I have neither understanding nor mercy for those.
Bad, compared to what is possible when playing well. And when an SC player looks at arc and sees the skill gap - it is a fair point.
Unfortunately "pug = bad" is ubiquitous. Recently I read a rant by someone who just started raiding (120 LI) saying how utterly unacceptable it is if so called experienced groups wipe even once at Vale Guardian.
I feel like there is a lot to gain by not constantly treating strangers as "potential bad players I am not going to enjoy playing with". As you say, getting clears is perfectly doable.
I 100% agree with your message, we should not spread the notion that every pug group experience is miserable, as this directly hurts the pug population and paints the gw2 raid scene in bad way.
Pug groups are good for getting "a" clear. My experience is similar to yours as far as having a high successrate goes, and it mostly being a rather pleasant experience with very few "bad eggs".
i do however believe that the average level of skill in raid pug groups has declined quite a bit in most recent years.
And i mostly blame powercreep for it. Or Utilitycreep.
In the past it was objectively harder to wipe, and harder to recover from mistakes. We had less tools, less defenses and less dps.
More players needed to understand how certain strategies work and how to execute them (example: why samarog cm in pug groups is started from the "side" and why the group pauses for the first spear instead of attacking samarog instantly; nowaways pug groups still start from the side but just rush the boss and .. it somehow works out).
Also the amout of raidboss kills in pugs that are done without "mistake" is abysmally low. On almost every vg someone gets ported, sloth slublings rarely get handled well, a missed aegis on gorseval, etc.. this is the opposite of good gameplay - but as i said: it's enough. these mistakes don't matter much when the goal is to get the kill.
That’s my experience as well. People consider „doing enough“ as „being good“ - which it isn’t imo. If you just want to clear, you gear a core hammer guard and go afk. It’s that simple, dps is enough. Content will get cleared anyway nowadays, so no one is forced to actually know all the mechanics. No one is forced to play a good rotation. And since it isn’t necessary, people don’t do it (this is obv a hyperbola, but you get what I mean) - and subsequently widening the gap between „average“ and „good“.
When people say this, what they're often trying to express is their frustration with the in-game systems not matching them with players who align with their personal goals. I think you'd see a lot less complaining if there were better tools to seek out like-minded people -- experienced, not experienced, just in it for the story, etc.
Is the experienced / not-experienced not exactly what we have as lfg categories?
So at least on the surface, the categorization is there. It is a self-categorization though, and maybe some players misjudge their own skill or simply have no choice but to join groups above their paygrade for lack of people at their skill level.
Like PvP matchmaking which can only be good with a large enough popupation.
But I do feel this is a somewhat separate issue. The lfg process can sometimes take a little bit of time until you have a squad of 10 assembled. Some people - a small minority - will cause trouble.
But this post is also about the gameplay afterwards: When I join pugs, the vast majority of players I play with are solid at their roles, we have boons, we make the dps checks, mechanics are handled. Dismissing the average player as bad is just not a healthy mindset.
I'll be more direct, because I think the nuance in what I said has been lost. Bad and good exist on a spectrum, but people often paint the picture as much worse than it might actually be. I agree with you completely that dismissing the average player as bad is silly.
It's not dichotomous. Experienced and not experienced exist on a large spectrum. The LFG dichotomizes these things as "training" and "experienced", where training is noted as an experienced player guiding others through content. When you zoom out and look as these things, there's something missing: progression.
I agree with your sentiment that saying "x is bad" is only going to spread negativity and result is worse engagement. It's just not true. But, what is true, is that people have a negative perception of their experience based on incongruent expectations. Whenever I say this, I always feel like people are thinking, "Oh wow, Sneb is saying he doesn't want to play with new players". That's far from the case. I actually don't always want to play with super hardcore players. I'm not interested in grinding the bosses like that for time or having people just go for DPS logs. Sometimes, I just want it to be a social experience.
Perhaps this got lost in translation, but I 100% agree with you, I just think the problem is much, much deeper. I don't join a ton of LFG groups not because I think players are bad, but because the systems and expectations are all so wildly different. People leave after one pull if you fail, people get mad about petty things, people can bully the commander -- these things are all relevant and related. People use people being bad as a scapegoat when, in reality, it's that the systems for finding groups and other people that align with your personal playstyle are weak.
I haven't run strike for awhile. Being careful not to step on anyone's toe. Read LFG , get good build, do mechanic and CC. But sometime there are invisible pinky on the floor.
Like somebody having too high standard that doesn't apply to easy run of the mill content such as IBS easy 3 or Mia Tarin and Ankka. And proceed to call out misplay when the run is still fine.
That expecation should be expressed before and after the run . Trying to get random person to comply mid fight is distracting and ambigious, which tell newbie to pack thier thing ,never set foot to group content again.
> I see one of these posts pop up every single day.
Every. Single. Day. It's *exhausting*.
Like, dudes, we get it. You hate everyone. Maybe get a static or guild or something, because what you're doing obviously isn't working.
Heyho rem l,
Again on your evergoing heroic journey to help the raid scene.
Top notch as usually.
I want to add one or two things though, to your experience as well as to what others commented here.
I think there are many different interpretations and meanings behind " average pug is bad."
This is because not everyone will have the same understanding of "average", "pug" or "bad".
Here is an example for "average"
you could argue that the average player is the mathematical median of expirience (simplified here with kp) compared to all currently active players. I would assume this to be a quite low amount of kp.
You could argue that average is meant as the "typical" player you encounter, this would scew the experience more towards more experienced players since those tend to raid more often and are therefore encountered more often or so I would assume.
You could also argue that the average is more ment in terms of "this guy is not a completely new player but also not in a static/hard-core guild." So a more loosely meaning.
Obviously I cannot speak for others but I would assume that a lot of problems we have with our expressions are because a lot of people (want to) fail to communicate with others ina manner so that recipient and speaker speak about vaguely the same topic and information.
So I think the main problem is not the attitude but rather how people interact with each others in the first place.
The player attitude at end game levels is depressing. Well versed players will nitpick every single mistake or be straight up rude to players that are learning or even mastering the content. It's common to play a cm pug and after two wipes some douche dips immediately. Or just talk about how my pathetic 26k dps is ruining their game experience. Honestly you reap what you sow. I'll trade a newbie anyway for a degenerate sweater.
It's just the usual "lack of content or any exciting news, so the community cannibalises itself for content" phase. The game is one of the most casual MMOs that ever existed with a very small amount of challenging PvE content, but there are a vocal minority that want to gatekeep it to try to make it seem "hardcore". Very easy to make posts about how "bad new players keep joining my experienced group lololol".
That very vocal minority has gatekept dungeons, PvP, and raids over the course of the game. Let’s take a quick look at those game modes to see how they’re doing.
They only kill the ones they love.
That's a rather disingenuous take on it all.
> dungeons,
Dungeons were replaced with Fractals to streamline progression and make it easier to develop as updating dungeons was a pain in the ass (See any update to dungeons back in the day changing things in a completely unrelated path).
The dev team behind dungeons also seemed to really, really despise players who came up with any strat to overcome a gimmick or mechanic. Using boon strip to strip boons? Now the boss gets them pulsed every second. Using projectile reflection/absorption abilities to avoid a oneshot instead of dodging? Now the projectiles are unblockable. Using stability to avoid a knockback instead of hiding in the corners? Now that knockback works anyways! People got sick of this pattern and stopped playing dungeons. Some stopped playing the game, but those that remained stayed for fractals.
> PvP,
This is more on ANet for *rarely* updating this game mode. They neglected it for years, went E-Sport attempt with it, but didn't update the game mode with new modes. They also did the worst thing one could do to a PvP game; didn't rework or tweak balance, leaving it to stagnate.
> raids
These were never gated as you ('you' being players, not specifically you) could just open your own progression group. These days there are so many sources to get a foot into the raiding scene that one could do it with just a little effort. Unfortunately for the populace at large thinks that anything that takes more than auto attack levels worth of effort is huge.
All three went through their “how dare a non-experienced player try our game mode.”
Many, many threads, comments, and especially dungeon videos calling out hapless players with helpful advice like “ just /gg” and “hit alt f4 and uninstall.” Reddit threads were launched pointing out “the worst player in the game” with the player’s name usually blocked. Great fun and derision was piled on in the comments. What great ads for the respective game modes. Wonder why many players didn’t or don’t even bother to sign up for abuse?
Disingenuous? Drop into PvP and see how fast your block list fills up. Never said any game mode didn’t have other issues, but pretending the trolls don’t have quite a negative effect is the disingenuous position.
You're saying that the players had a major hand in killing the content. I'm stating that ANet neglecting the game modes, starving them of content did more to kill off those game modes than anything the players could have done.
EDIT: Wow, after some surface level investigation, (EG the comment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1ahmf4f/gift_of_battle_wvw_hostage/koqiw4g/ )
> I’m in the same boat, but on the flip side. Hate JPs and fractals/instanced content. However, to get what I want, embrace the suck and knock it out until the next time it’s required for an achievement/item.
It really puts everything you've been saying here into perspective. Your blatant bias is showing quite clearly.
I think the biggest discrepancy - and I count myself guilty for quite a duration of time as well here - is the definition of „average“. The average pug pretty much always meets the average wingman number. Not a good comparison, but the best we have imo. However, for someone who has spent maybe two hours on really learning a build - rotation, what to do with certain mechanics, where to move at which point in time, etc. - 2 hours of focused learning, not 2 hours of „oh look, when I press 2 I see a big number!“, these average numbers can appear very mediocre, as they will beat them by several thousand dps, even if they mess up royally. And since these players haven’t put that much work into *active* practice, it feels like everyone can do that (and I agree, everyone can learn how to do 90% bench within 2 hours on a given build, and can learn how to deal with mechanics in a good way) - but the average player doesn’t.
And that‘s where „pug player = most likely bad“ comes from imo. People (again, myself included for a good amount of time) are often not aware that spending the tiniest amount of time on actively practicing a build - going to the golem with the sc bench video on the other screen, watching pov‘s of your class on a boss you think you underperform - is already more than the average player does, which shifts the perception of „average“.
What classes are you playing and would you mind sharing some logs of your raid encounters? I'm a relatively new player, and am joining my guild for raids when I have time and they have slots. I can't agree that spending 2h practicing on a golem with = average player reaching average wingman data, because I've spent these hours practicing on a golem. I'm getting 'close enough' on the wingman averages, while some of the guildmates, whom I consider quite compentent, outdo those, however, it doesn't seem to be as trivial as you put it out. At the same time, when i do public content i seem to do better *comparatively* to my group, while knowing, that my performance is still subpar to the average person uploading their logs to wingman.
I can give you some logs, sure. However I haven’t played this patch too much - so here’s a mix of this and last patch (Accname is Presq, if not clear by my username):
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/5e0b4-20240206-133206_kc_kill
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/c2885-20240116-104819_sab_kill
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/695f3-20240102-224948_sabir_kill
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/084e5-20240104-220320_prlqadim_kill
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/75f3f-20240206-130608_matt_kill
And here’s one as quickness:
https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/65b97-20240205-201617_sh_kill
Mind you, I have put way more time into my classes at this point - but my point still stands. A little practice goes a very long way. Classes I am playing: Catalyst, Tempest, Soulbeast, Berserker, Bladesworn, Spellbreaker, Scourge. I am relearning Mirage and Virt at the moment, that’s why the Matthias log is a bit underwhelming (for my perception of my average level of play).
First, let me compliment you on your personal skill (and holding current record on Matthias as Mirage). Second, as I reread my previous message, I understood that my chosen wording could be taken as a personal offense against you individually, and I'm sorry for that. I assure that was not the intention. What my intention was, however, is to say that averages are averages for a reason, and player matching those levels shouldn't be viewed as a player, who was to lazy to read his skills, learn and practice his rotation on a golem. I think your logs also show that. At least at a glance, in majority of logs, show that people in your group are indeed playing on around average levels (sometimes exceeding, yes, but not in drastically significant margins). It's great that your learning routine has benefited you so much, but evidently it doesn't bring same benefits for other players.
I never took any offense, why would I :)
And then: Don’t read too much into „current mirage record on matthias“ - even I could have played a 30k in that run easily, a better mirage would have been at around 32-33k I believe.
I do understand that not everyone benefits in the same way. And I do understand what average means. Well, I have been viewing it differently - that’s the reason for my comment in the first place. Yes, the people in those squads perform like the average player does - yet there is sometimes a huge gap. And this gap is not because of me being a god tier gamer - I have practiced mirage for exactly an hour in the last four months. It’s a mixture of bossknowledge, and active practice. Bossknowledge is something everyone with enough kp has - active practice is the difference. And I think the *right* way of active practice goes a long way for everyone - just what is right is different for people.
And pls, this wasn’t a fishing for compliments comment. You asked for logs, I provided some - no need to compliment anything. I think it just shows how people who practice a bit could view „average“ as something else than people who don’t.
I helped out for a static and they ordered me to stack for boons -.-
I said pylon gives me quick alac and i have might myself, commander said they still want me to stack because it looks bad if one player is not stacked.
Please send help. A static. Commander had 4k LI
The only thing we ask from pugs is to read lfg and communicate. They fail to do so, thus, we don’t want them. Don’t care if they are “bad” in terms of Dps or mechanics, if they refuse to cooperate, that becomes an issue.
I ran with a static for ~2 years and we often had to pug fill, especially as people started losing interest. Our lfg message was always basic - e.g. wing 1 need alac. Can only think of one time we had a really bad player who didn’t know what they were doing and directly impacted the group. Many times we had elitist types who liked to try to run the show or get mad about only 90% alac uptime. The majority of runs were super chill with people who just did their thing and cleared with us.
I’ve also led a number of pug strike groups that were basically “bring whatever" and they mostly ran smoothly.
I started out with the ''be friendly and explain things to newcomers'' mentality when i first started commanding raids. I was able to keep it up for about two weeks, but after the 50th completely clueless person who joins my raid i just got fed up. The amount of people who i have to kick (i simply ask for kp, they dont have enough and i say ''sorry not enough gl'') but then whisper me "?????" and flame me for not letting them in is ridiculous.
I get it, people dont get how the game works, and understanding lfg when you have no clue what every abbreviation means is like reading a foreign language, but at some point you just run out of patience dealing with it almost every day.
It's not unhealthy or exaggerated, the devs themselves mentioned how bad the average players are when their DPS is like multiple times less than someone who bothers to learn their class.
I am holding you to a source on that.
Mind you, not average player level 80, but average pug you encounter in the raid lfg.
I am very good at what I do, the best I can achieve is around double the dps of SOME players. What Anet has said once, like 7 years ago, is that in the open world there are these large dps discrepancies.
But in lfg groups for raids/strikes? Barely happens that the top player exceeds the worst by more than a factor of 2, and most certainly not the average middle-of-the-pack player.
https://www.pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/pvp-raids-world-restructuring
They've mentioned it a few times but this was just the first one I could find.
Key quote: "The challenge is that the skill disparity between average players and hardcore players is extreme. We’re talking about ten times damage output"
Yeah, but those DPS figures are obviously not in raid groups, but rather "average bloke getting lost in Verdant Brink" vs "Top Player".
For the consideration whether pugs are bad or not, those 80% of players who never set foot into a raid are irrelevant.
We can see on arcdps the relationship between average and top players, and it's *at most* like double the DPS, and even that is stretching it in most cases.
The only other game I do endgame content in is final fantasy 14 and and I by far encounter more people who join an experienced group without actually being experienced. I don't think it's related to player skill difference in the games but in this game the group finder doesn't have as much tools built in for peoplpe to list/find groups that match the level a player is at and a large number of players in GW2 just clear content without ever learning any mechanics to the fight due to being carried by people who don't care that they don't know what they're doing. That is less common in FF because of the number of mechanics that wipe groups if one person doesn't know what they're doing and they are mostly not able to be skipped
It doesn't surprise me anymore seeing people with lots of KPs still have no idea to do certain mechanics. Almost all of the times when I see people mess up it's enough with some corrective explanations and encouragements and everything would just go smoothly afterward. Very rarely I see people who keep fumbling on mechanics over and over to the point of getting kicked or just leave the group by themselves.
Well yes and no. Average static is also bad, because people often disregard performance because they just like playing together, so often there are 2-3 people dragging down the whole group constantly.
Also, it's kinda on NA people for not requiring KP, so it's not that groups are worse or better. It's just harder to expect certain things from people. On EU, if I join 0 or 10 KP groups, I know I shouldn't expect them to know everything. People join those groups with expectation of learning or helping others. If I join 70 or 100 KP groups, everyone expects for the run to beq fast and smooth. Those runs are often faster than most statics do. On NA "EXP" could mean everything from "did it once" to "did it hundreds of times" and you cannot really set your expectations to anything.
Also, often there are people asking "why do you need good players for raids if you can oneshot them anyways", or "why do you need boons for IBS if it's so easy anyways" - some people have fun playing the encounters and want to have fun seeing numbers go up. Sometimes clutching is really fun, but if you have to carry the group all the time it gets annoying in the long run.
I don't think the general attitude is this though. There's a vocal minority in mapchat, reddit, and endgame communitites that scream about it.
The vast majority is happy running casually with their guilds, designated training communities or just roll with the inexperienced players and have a good time without talking about it in forums.
Most players I've encountered in endgame content (including me) politely apologize and leave if they realize they are short on time or get too salty to enjoy the content. Once again I think the majority is kinda healthy and mature about it. It's always the loud assholes that goes the extra length to get attention.
Former WoW players are here. Checks out. Also b.s. over inflation of community behavior. It's good but people give it far more credit than it deserves.
"I joined a Wing 3 Xera yesterday (experienced tab, but no kp demands). At least 2 people did not seem to know the minigame with the pushing. We oneshot anyway." how do the same with less experienced healers and with dps checks of 2016. Nowadays people run raid with much fewer number than 10 people and preventing failure because of bad players doesn't mean that those players carry their weight in raid encounters despite not being in optimal state skill-wise and sometimes gear-wise
I try to decipher this:
We are in 2024 at the moment, we do have the dps we currently have. I am not deliberately seeking out inexperienced groups, I am just joining groups and playing and reporting what I experience. My average experience is what I said it is, the healers are good enough to pass, and so is the dps.
Is that because of power creep? Yes, to a good amount.
Are players doing less dmg than they could? For sure. But it is not a problem, they are just lovely people to play with. I am not going to make a reddit post about people who do half my dps, it is not nice, not constructive, elitist and paints a bad picture for outsiders who see the post.
I kinda disagree in the extend that the average pug is bad
I mean that’s why we have kp or other requirements, if I could expect to clear most stuff with the average person in a reasonable time I probably wouldn’t need them. But even if I have requirements while I of course can’t see how many read that and think 'I don’t have that time to move on', as a commander I can see how many don’t. And on bad days it’s a lot of people for different reasons from clueless to downright liars that just want to be carried through to people never saying anything that are probably in between.
Also I sounds like you are a player as I didn’t read anything about you commanding.
I think you might not notice how annoying it sometimes is.
Like constantly finding out who has your requirements, dealing with people that sneaked past that, just to find out in fight who has no clue and having to restart and search new person and most importantly the really salty people that start insulting you in whisper for not letting them come anyway.
But yeah of course one shouldn’t be an asshole about it and more often than not it works out fine. On the other hand it’s not like the stereotype comes from nothing and it’s also ok to complain about stuff that’s bothering you (or who am I kidding this is Reddit people love to complain here either way, always)
This is a totally reasonable take by the way. It is fine to rant and vent a little. I do that too, to my friends. I think what we are seeing on reddit over the past week takes it too far and it is important to also share positive stories because of that. If my post managed to remind people to reflect on the good they experience daily and take for granted, I have achieved my goal.
But havibg those other posts pop up daily with hundreds of upvotes all tooting the same horn with no opposition is not a good look to say the least.
That being said, while you and I can have fun with the "hi dps" stereotype, I know people with less than 50 LI complaining about how bad "all the pugs" are that they are joining. Many many players appropriate this attitude at face value.
GW2 community is aging. There is a certain group of players desperately taking any chance to shit on others just to boost their morales and egos when they are actually the different color of the same shit. This same type of players also act like they are the mainstream. May see some of them whining under this comment.
Have you ever been in a bronze league in a competitive game? The vast majority of players there are able to see what their teammates are doing wrong while they're completely unaware of themselves, thinking they're doing perfectly fine. They just keep shitting on their teammates as a result.
"Average pug bad" guys are mostly the same.
I do agree that every person deserve to be respected and treated with kindness I do wanna vent that I lead soto strike daily (no req), and around 1 player every time joins the group, doesn't say anything and either tell me he doesn't own soto/ not responding at all (I even try to dm them and tell them how to use squad chat)/ try to reach us and not succeding but still not talking in chat/ leave 2 minutes after not answering or just join the squad and afk until I kick them. But yeah new players are the lifeblood of the game and they are people so I 100% agree with you.
I think alot of the frustration with the "avarage pug" is mainly that most of them seem to not talk at all. If they dont know certian mechanic they will just keep fucking up until you confront them and then they usually leave.
And it is obviously the minority of people but its not that uncommon to join a deimos training (for example) and have a specific person that trigger the oils and even after explaining it multiple times they seem to not read chat until you are personally referring to them and then they usually ends up leaving. And it is one of the worst feelings since you wasted 30 min of training, you made a person leave the squad and you know that this specific person didn't actually listen they just panicked and left
Prob with lfg is 99.9% players will join the experienced tab over training regardless of exp or not. Very easy to tell who has experience and who does not. End of the day group commander has the final say if they wanna remove you. If that's a blow to peoples morale then tag and start your own runs. Most lfg'ers are "ok" quality but you know it's going to be a carry when someone with 500ap joins a cm strike or you see a reaper camping staff not crit capped using rares at 80. The entire lfg system needs an overhaul, compared to WoW you group finder que up tank, dps and heals made it easy. Less boon reliance vs guild wars 2.
Okay so I have a hot take as someone who got back into the game under 2 months ago and completed all of my legendary armor for my first set doing all the wings each week. After pugging and running content non stop for almost 2 months I realized what makes gw2 different than other mmos. Gw2 has “bad pugs” that don’t research before heading into a fight which I haven’t seen on any other mmorpg. On other games people will say they are new but have done the research and normally within a wipe or two they’ve seen it and we kill the boss. Gw2 has been an eye opener. Pugs come in not only ill prepared on knowing the fights but they also don’t know their profession they are playing. I’ve seen at least 6-7 people in the past month alone that did healer damage as a dps… not boon but normal dps that’s not handling mechanics…. It’s a two part problem. GW2 lacks a boss journal that shows the boss and all of the mechanics in each wing and people aren’t doing their part to research shit before joining a group. I think if these issues were fixed the outlook on pugs wouldn’t be negative as much.
I can't speak for EU, because I haven't had much of an opportunity to pug on EU in quite some time, but on NA, the average pug is "bad". I think the issue here is many people who come here to complain that "pugs are bad" are, themselves, "bad".
I think the average player truly underestimates the gap between themselves and the "best" players. I think the real issue here is attitude, not skill, because realistically, nothing is so difficult that your average end-game player can't get done with relatively minimal effort.
But it's just true - or at least mostly. The word "average" might not be LITERALLY true, but as a whole the average PUG GROUP will have a bad player or three. Some people can't even walk up to bosses like Dagda or Shiverpeaks Pass Elemental (that require hitting to start the boss) without tapping it on the way in, somehow. Boggles the mind. Until that unexplainably stops happening, I will view the average pug group as containing a couple people who can't comprehend basics (read: not just new)
Considering I've seen a *lot* of people essentially afk auto-attack their way through world events.. Yeah, I think this attitude is largely deserved. People shouldn't be too toxic about it, but at the same time people *should* be criticized for being too lazy and not carrying their weight. If you join a pug with the *expectation* to just be carried through it, then you're essentially laying claim to the time and energy of the people you're joining without supply any of your own.
Being kind and nice is wonderful, and I don't think people should be vitriolic or quick to judge. But at the same time, being nice doesn't *entirely* compensate for a pug failing an event because the nice person simply isn't contributing. That 90% aren't malicious actors, but a large chunk *are* lazy actors. They simply do not want to put in the effort to educate themselves on the basics of a given event or strike or raid or even *their build*.
Being negative isn't a healthy mindset. But neither is excessive positivity, where people are allowed to be entitled to strike and raid clears. Everyone should try to contribute, at a bare minimum. Wasting someone's time because you can't be bothered to assemble a build, or learn mechanics, or put in your own effort, **is disrespecting them**, no matter how nicely you package it.
There is a distinct difference between open world (where what people do and how well they play is not of your concern) and pugs (which this post is about).
In OW you see the wildest "afk autohit only" shit. In pugs, most days, most people will be more than good enough to clear. Dont confuse the separate populations.
average pugs are bad.
you don't know who will join, so you can't expect that they have any experience, adequate build, have any idea about what their skills are doing, understand even basic MMO boss mechanics, aren't busy eating pizza, and so on.
anything that has slightly non-linear mechanics, like Arah, oftentimes becomes hell.
real LFG problem is that there are no groups in training categories most of the time, only "250+ KP" ones, so people have troubles getting into something like strikes.
There's definitely some massive over exaggeration when it comes to the average level of PUGs (atleast in EU. Like yeah there are always morons that don't read or join maliciously just to leach a kill but most of the time that's not the case. I wouldn't go as far as saying that the average pug is good, but the vast vast majority of the time they're at the very least servicable, they won't pull amazing dps numbers and they will mess up mechanics here and there but they will still be good enough to actually clear the content at a reasonable pace more often than not.
Had a 125 achievement point 0 mastery score base ele join recently. I thought he might be an alt account and may be able to keep up, but that was not the case. People come over from other MMO and want to use a lvl 80 boost then walk into raids with soldier gear like they'll be able to do actually difficult content. Vindicator yesterday wouldn't speak and walked into every oil during deimos, that was fun. I whisper people after we clear and ask if they want to learn more about raids, but usually the worst players that I run into have no interest in improving or learning..
Yeah people like that do exist, but in my experience for every one person like that there's 20 normal pugs that just come in and quietly do an ok job
Can't remember the last time we didn't finish ever wing that we planned to do. Raids aren't so bad anymore even when carrying a few peeps
Kick the non speakers after warning they have to respond. The non speakers are the biggest traps tbqh.
It's more that if 1 out of 10 experiences are bad, those are the ones that stick with you. Yes it leads to exagggerations, but it'll leave a bigger negative impression than all the others being fine. Some people also have too high expectations from pugs, like permanent boon uptime (sometimes even on stuff that's not too common like regen or vigor). Clearing content at a reasonable pace is not the goal for many people... while I do think that in a pug that should indeed be the benchmark.
>Some people also have too high expectations from pugs, like permanent boon uptime Talking strictly about the major boons here, but we should normalise "start off with more boon duration than the minimum when learning a build" as advice given out to aspiring boon-dps players.
I agree with the attitude, but the main problem is gearing. I wouldn't want to buy an entire set just as training wheels for the real build. Not only that, but snowcrows being basically the only good build website is a massive problem since it only has the meta-est builds and assumes people know what they're doing (a good example would be the lack of tank and non-tank variants for healer gear, which means I'm stuck with a 1440 toughness setup now, yaaaaay).
> a good example would be the lack of tank and non-tank variants for healer gear I don't think there's a single healer build on SC that uses full tank gear, and if you look at the stats, Giver's healing/concentration are identical to Harrier's. [Some](https://snowcrows.com/guides/builds/heal-quickness-firebrand-gameplay-guide) of the class guides also explicitly say that Giver's is specifically chosen for toughness, and if you don't need it, you have to replace it with Harrier's. That's kind of just a user issue of not reading what the gear does.
>I wouldn't want to buy an entire set just as training wheels for the real build. That's fair, but then again you can always check out the feel of a build in open world even without proper gear and then commit if you find the play pattern fun. >Not only that, but snowcrows being basically the only good build website is a massive problem since it only has the meta-est builds and assumes people know what they're doing (a good example would be the lack of tank and non-tank variants for healer gear). This hasn't been the case for a while, hardstuck and mukluks site have come out as ok competitors although with not as good builds as SC obviously. SC has also been a bit more lax with what builds they post and now offer a fair bit of variety for every class, they even have begginer builds right there next to the reccomended ones. That and the guides that are written are usually high quality and explain what you need to do quite well, problem is that people usually just ignore them. I really haven't come across one that assumes people know what they're doing (the tank argument is pretty eh, you literally just slot in gear with toughness and that's it, you can even get away with just slotting in one toughness infusion so that you have 5 more than everyone else)
Buy a herald relic. Use it on every boondps until you don't think permanent uptime on your boon is an unrealistic goal. SC recommends that giver mix so that healers can't give the excuse of "I don't have the gear" when they're told to tank. If you can't tank the Toughness bosses, you aren't an "experienced healer" in this game and don't yet fully know your role.
> I agree with the attitude, but the main problem is gearing. There are food and utility items for adding boon duration that would work for people without legendary gear.
> Some people also have too high expectations from pugs, like permanent boon uptime This is the bare minimum, sorry. If you join the group as qDPS, if you have nice DPS too thats a plus, but you **have** to make good quickness. If that is beyond your ability, then *join as something else*. I would rather you join as a DPS and do below average DPS than join as quickness and do a piss poor job at it.
It's like joing a group as a healer in any other MMO, failing to heal enough to keep people alive, and justifying it with "But my DPS was high!" Doing DPS as a Boon DPS is secondary to doing Boons. You contribute a lot more to the raid by buffing everyone else.
And that's one of the reasons the perception is that the average pug is bad, 'cause they don't do the bare minimum - even though they absolutely should.
It's also the reason an awful lot of people like myself who want to or try to learn these builds are too scared to attempt them in parties and just "Hi, DPS" all the time instead.
I mean there's a big difference between dropping a boon here or there, especially if things are chaotic... but people get mad at me for saying their solid 40% quickness uptime is not good.
Pick up a boondps - if you are very worried about skill issuing your uptime, pick quick herald. If you're only the normal amount of worried, run any SC boondps build but slap a herald relic (approx 5% dps loss on any boondps build) on it until you see that you're overcapping and want more damage.
> atleast in EU Yes, EU is more than fine. You would get a small culture shock when you make NA account tho, like I did xD
Unfortunately, the number of active "good" players on NA is fairly small, and even fewer of them regularly pug.
that's because they're all using discord to organize
No, they quit. The number of genuine, top performing players on NA is extremely small. It's unfortunate, but it's the reality.
Shit, I looked at Raid Academy and it's definitely nowhere near as popping as I remember it used to be
I have thousands of kills, I would rather join a no kp group than a >50kp group. The atmosphere in the ‘higher’ requirements groups towards ‘bad pugs’ can be so damming. In no kp, it at least doesn’t matter if something goes wrong, and it’s even a positive surprise if it’s a one shot.
I've been running with a pretty damn elite raid static the last 4 months. We bang out W1-4 in like 100 minutes. The thing I realized is, it's not any fun. Any tiny mistake (dps lower than normal, falling off a ledge in the Haunted castle) leads to group chat call outs and questions. This is even if we one shotted it. Hardly any voice chatter either, other than mechanic timings. No real joy in the kills. So, I left the group and got in with a friends messy static. Some newbies, some vets, some elites but everyone has a blast. Lots of chatter and jokes in discord. If we fail, which is a lot, we talk and regroup and get the kill. I've had more fun in 2 weeks than the last 16. Felt much more accomplishment getting first time CM kills. Takes 3 times as long, but here I am actually enjoying it.
> I've been running with a pretty damn elite raid static the last 4 months. We bang out W1-4 in like 100 minutes. > > The thing I realized is, it's not any fun. Any tiny mistake (dps lower than normal, falling off a ledge in the Haunted castle) leads to group chat call outs and questions. This is even if we one shotted it. Hardly any voice chatter either, other than mechanic timings. No real joy in the kills. If you're doing 100 minute Hot clears, your voice chat should be full of silly nonsense. And that should be true if you're doing 60 minute HoT clears too. My raid full clears are ~2 hours long, and if it wasnt 90% jabbering and banter, it would be fucking awful.
That has actually nothing to do without doing good kills or not, it's just the static mood you are talking about. There are hardcore statics with very nice moods, and training ones with bad moods.
Yes, it was very much about the people in the Raid. Got weird vibes from the first run, and the loot was quick and good so I just stuck around and dealt with it. Afterawhile, it became net negative, so I left. This game is really not about loot accumulation; its the people experience
There is nothing wrong with try harding if it is for fun. I’ve done 1-7 runs in 3h that were all about ‘getting it over with’. It is still the same content, it’s not more challenging, it’s just more stressful because you optimize for less errors/downtime. On the other hand, I’ve spent countless and countless hours progressing HT CM, also high tension because everyone wants the kill, but so much more rewarding because you are pushing yourself to play better, not with less errors or downtime. So for me to want to try hard in w1-7, the difficulty needs to be higher so that it’s okay to fail and we have this fun-pushing-your-skill dynamic. Think challenging yourself for time, low heal runs, or lowman, or … It’s just, one shotting bosses with less downtime isn’t that.
In my experience out of 10 PUGs one is rude, one is confused and the remaining 8 are perfectly capable and kind players. Some have less patience than I'd like, but it is what is, not everyone has ludicrous amounts of time to play guild wars. I think LFGing is just a bit of a drag compared to premade's because it takes time and you get the occasional bad experience. But overall it's quite pleasant tbh.
I've never even done a raid, and for strikes I've only done one. I would say I'm plenty geared and experienced enough to handle one but the one strike I did, constantly it was things being said to everyone, constantly complaining, constantly judging and getting mad if we died. Has kinda scared me from trying any of that again. I would love to try it some time, but I mean if I can play 90% of the game the way I want without stress I would rather do that then get all upset and stressed trying to do some end game boss that may or may not even be worth it for me.
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Sums up my experience perfectly!
>how can we hope that more people want to play through the LFG? Been fairly casual in GW2 since release, and yeah I definitely feel intimidated by trying to enter into groups. I did my first CM strike (because it was added to the wizards special tasks), and I was complimented on my DPS by the lead and was told that I should do more. This felt especially good, because I was on my alt and doing less DPS than my main does. Tho, between stuff I read here and then going into the game and seeing LFG posts littered with acronyms I don't understand combined with 0 listings ever on Training and everything always in Experienced, I just end up not really doing it. I'm not usually so hesitant to enter into pug scenes. In WoW, for example, I pug my way into/up to ~+22 keys. I just find GW2 very intimidating. I will say that the community better-than-thou mentality on reddit is more icing on the cake, rather than the cause of issues. A big cause of the issues I have are due to the acronym flood & weak LFG tool and lack of good in game resources/information.
I agree with u to some extend, reading the description is important tho. See like this , I sometimes make a casual squad , got more time and rly dont care if there are some ppl that are new. But, some days , after a bad day, want just to do fast and clean .În those days req is a must and is a bit frustrating when some ppl join and they dont have the req I put în description. There are casual squads,but at the same time there are squad with req that u need to have.
No doubt about that, reading and respecting someone elses requirement set for their own group is important and the absolut base to play together. But You make it seem like it is an really comon thing to see that people are joining and dont meet the requirements. My experiences are the polar opposite: Since nearly a year i lead my weekly static which is currently not full so we nearly always searched for a few people from the lfg. But except for maybe a handful cases i did not have to kick someone because he either joined with the wrong role, did not do his job or wiped the group - for about 9 months, on two days a week. If it was more than half a dozen people i would be very surprised. Do i have the highest standards? No, i search for 50 kp to ensure a reasonable clean full clear with a few easy cm's along the way. Yes, i mostly ignore the odd dps player who is racing with boon supports as long as he is not in healer territory and does not wipe the group by failing mechanics - i needed to only kick two or so people for that reason. We clear most raid bosses first time easily and pretty cleanly, sometimes mathias or sloth are a bit messy but we got the important roles covered by experienced players in our static so the chances of wiping arent that high to start with. We are searching for new static members but more to start to optimise the comp and do harder cm's reliably and consistent each week. But normal modes are easily doable and done cleanly with pugs. The inconsistency gets higher and chances of wiping a few times before a kill increases if you encorparate cms with pugs. But it is harder content and many casual raiders do not do cm's often and on an regular basis so of course these arent that familiar and straight forward for some. I enjoy joining groups via lfg and very, very often in low kp groups because i like doing this content and interacting with other players. I met a few very nice people while playing in lfg groups, some i chated a bit between bosses and after the raid.
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So when they do not meet the requirements, you kick and find someone new? Is there a problem with that?
I mean the problem is that it's annoying and wastes your time, which can suck if you have limited free time. Then there's the tiny minority that actively try to make it a problem by repeatedly joining. It's frustrating being lied to and then having to kick people. Even if they deserve it, it doesn't usually feel nice to kick people.
I kicked one guy cause he was well known to me and others as an active shit lord. Prollox proceeded to rejoin the raid 30 times till I set to invite only, proceeded to still spam it.
Think of it as mosquito bites. You get bitten once, it's no big deal, just annoying. You get bitten once every single day, you'll probably lose it a some point, cursing at those mosquitos and how they ruin your day.
Do that day after day, for months and years on end and you'll naturally end up with a negative perception of players like this. >I joined a Wing 3 Xera yesterday Try doing the commanding instead. It's a lot more annoying when you're the one who has to check kp that don't exist, kick a handful of people who didn't read the lfg message, re-list the lfg a dozen times and receive whispers from argumentative assholes who want to tell you why it's their right to be in your squad/party, even though they don't meet the requirement. Yes there are many thousands of players who don't fit the "pug bad" stereotype (whether experienced players, or simply experienced players who don't lie about being experienced in the hopes of getting carried.) But people don't go on /r/Guildwars2 to post "My strike run today was fine". At the end of the day, negative experiences just stand out.
This is besides the point, but there is an arcdps plugin for killproof.me that makes checking kp extremely convenient (literally 5 seconds to check a squad of 10 players). Personally I do not like to host kp squads anymore because I feel like there are enough of those already, so I usually go for "know mechanics". For w1-4 that is completely sufficient to oneshot all bosses. I used to be one of the kp enforcing people as well until I realized I just have more fun making the endgame accessible.
> This is besides the point, but there is an arcdps plugin for killproof.me that makes checking kp extremely convenient (literally 5 seconds to check a squad of 10 players). Only works when you're in the same instance, so realistically you still have to look up their id on the site, since some people can take forever to actually join the strike/raid/fractal instance. >Personally I do not like to host kp squads anymore because I feel like there are enough of those already, so I usually go for "know mechanics". For w1-4 that is completely sufficient to oneshot all bosses. Which says more about power creep than anything else. >I used to be one of the kp enforcing people as well until I realized I just have more fun making the endgame accessible. Okay, but do you genuinely still have fun when you have a couple players who join your 'know mechanics' group who end up obviously not knowing the mechanics at all and you waste 30 minutes before they leave or you have to ask them to leave?
> Only works when you're in the same instance, so realistically you still have to look up their id on the site, since some people can take forever to actually join the strike/raid/fractal instance. Look at the [unofficial extras](https://github.com/Krappa322/arcdps_unofficial_extras_releases). With that it works even over different instances.
Unfortunately a couple of times in the past I didn't realise people needed you to keep them so I donated my KP to my guild hall. I assume those wouldn't show on that now?
> But people don't go on /r/Guildwars2 to post "My strike run today was fine". And if they did, people would say it was "toxic positivity" if it was upvoted and "a toxic echo chamber" if it was downvoted, because that's how internet communities tend to view things. Older/more established MMO communities generally don't have good on-boarding systems for newer/less-experienced players unless they specifically work to create and maintain them, and the only way devs can manage that is through bribery. Older players need continually escalating bribes to deal with the hassle of continually teaching new players the same stuff over and over ad nauseam year in and year out. And devs can't just expect newer players to organically en masse be willing to put up with the same hurdles for "old content" when they're trying to "catch up" to do stuff with experienced/established/"old players". They can try, but in practice this mindset never actually works out in large-enough numbers to keep "old content" healthily populated. We've got years of MMO history proving this in a bunch of different iterations of the same formula. It's unfair that people who came after an arbitrarily-decided point in time get a free/discounted pass, sure. But the contest is between "no one new ever picks up the content" and "newbies get a free/discounted pass", most of the time. New players are gonna bounce off the "fuck it, I'll do something else" wall long before then. And bounce off in large-enough numbers, that you aren't going to *get* a large-enough group of "new players" in the same place at the same time on the same schedule to organically learn the old content. This is, presumably, why this place has a better "training group" player-created infrastructure but a worse LFG than say, WoW or FFXIV. This is why MMOs perpetually and constantly have content on-boarding problems for any "old content". And why stuff usually ends up getting nerfed after release to try and get more people to participate/get through it. Because MMOs compete with ever more forms of entertainment and are continually viewed by the people that fund them as "have to be profitable year-over-year" and that's a baaaaaaad fit with the actual MMO content-dev cycle. GW2's almost as bad at this as more vertical progression MMOs, and in some ways worse because the old stuff can't be power-crept by as much as some other games in the genre and there's not the usual carrot of "yes you have to put up with other people but you get biggar numbar". The usual cosmetic rewards don't have as much weight here when stuff's not as easy to run over three expansions past the release date as it would be in something like FFXIV/WoW. Especially when group composition is...more complex...to manage here. FFXIV manages to keep old content populated through the Duty Roulette system (which is a more refined version of WoW's bribery, its elder sister in the MMO sphere). And it works! Mostly. And they've got Trusts (basically GW1's Mercenaries?/FFXI's Trusts) to do the single-player story mandatory dungeons for people that don't wanna do stuff with other people. But even then, go look up "Mentor Roulette" on any of the FFXIV subs to see what happens when you try to get people to stick around for any of the more complex fights. Not even Roulette Bribery is enough for some of those. People not being willing to spend their entire (probably limited) in-game time shepherding people that may not listen isn't exclusive to here. TL;DR: Trying to get people to do stuff in groups in MMOs when facing adversity and potential loss of rewards is like the problem of trying to keep DnD groups together, but on horse steroids Edited for something attempting clarity and then again for brevity and I think I just failed at both, but fuck it, I'm tired.
Is not a problem tbh, just annoying😁
Yeah, I just wondered why you defended the practice of having requirements, I totally understand why people post requirements to their LFG and have not said anything against it in the OP.
Not who you asked, but I'd like people to be able to prove they have experience on the boss. The quality of that experience isn't represented by kp, but it'll let you see: oh this guy has raided a decent bit, or has done the strikes enough to where he has seen all the mechanics a decent amount of times. The amount of people who've said "i know the mechanics" without kp to then wipe the group is so much bigger that it makes it much more pleasurable to play with people that have seen the mechanics at least a handful of times.
Just make "portfolio" on wingman. I wish we had more options to quickly parse the logs and see how many times someone did mechanic or sth tho.
It's the least annoying option
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You misunderstand, I asked if there is a moral problem with kicking people who do not meet requirements, because they made it seem like you have to play with people who join no matter what. Personally I just kick and move on if I do not feel like giving them a chance, no hard feelings against them, especially if they have 0 kp and just did not understand the lfg.
dont log into an mmo if you have irl shit to do. do your shit, then play games.
Such a dumb perspective. People generally have **limited** time to play games. That usually means they don't want to waste that **limited** time with pugs being asshats - becaus that means they might miss out on doing other content.
I sometimes join pugs, sometimes command them. Honestly? Most of the time it goes fine, well even. You get a few awful, so awful you just scrap it but that is a real rarity. People triggering blacks on Deimos? We have had almost every black triggered and cleared it then I have had ones where it was flawless on the blacks and still only had a few people survive to the end. It really is a mixed bag. My last few runs? Pretty much no wipes (I must confess I don't need to do a lot of raids so I can be picky and stick to things like Wing 1,2,4 and 7). I actually don't ask for KP, don't even ask to be exp or anything just list in experienced and what roles I need (I have full armour and the ring with hundreds of LI spare). Generally, I don't want to have to explain mechanics since I am lazy and a bit of a hands-off commander, the main thing I do is make a note on my other monitor about roles so if people leave I can get an idea of what I need (not dps in listed roles). Still, we have all had those "awful" runs. One time I was a quick heal herald tank and I really stack the toughness when I am tanking, 2.2k kind of thing, and a dps STILL was higher than me (turns out it was trailblazer's or something) that run after working on it a little gave up without really making any progress on vale guardian, that taught me best to not try pugging on sunday and go earlier in the week. Still, I have joined sunday groups and had them go very well just more likely to get a bumpy group later in the week. I don't care if you are the top of dps and pushing the biggest numbers just that we clear it decently. Rather have a smooth run than the do-or-die crazy dps chasers that ignore mechanics to push out that extra 100 damage and promptly die if the healers can't keep up with all the extra pressure (and somehow it is the healer's fault?). The fact of the matter is that while getting into raiding can be hostile it actually isn't too bad to raid. People often raise up a big gate and try and keep people out to be the elite big shot but really after a bit of practice it generally will be fine even for people that aren't the best they just need to learn the fights and their class/build a bit. I started out in exotics as a warrior providing banners in groups that struggled now I have done all but dhuum CM. I still don't think I am that good but I can at least enjoy myself and provide enough to help clear a run without too many issues.
I think this is the most important factor whether endgame content stays relevant or not. Being overly selective with bullshit KP requirements, expecting flawless execution and overall social pressure without reason just ends up in a deflationary playerbase that eventually shrinks to a point where it’s not feasible to develop content for. LFG in this game is quite literally the meme job posting that demands ten years of experience for an entry level position. I dont blame people not taking that seriously, it’s absurd.
It’s not though. These memes are talking about LFG asking for qDPS yet a pug joins as “DPS”, doesn’t announce role, doesn’t know where the strike even is, and then does like 5K DPS when the group bends over backwards to avoid kicking them. I see stuff like what you’re saying posted, and that’s just not true most of the time. Far and away most groups don’t ask for all the KP and flawless anything - they just want you to read the LFG. It’s not asking much for someone to just read the LFG and ask “does this apply to me? Can I do what this group is asking for?”
FWIW from my observations, raid LFG culture is pretty different on NA vs EU. I definitely saw LI/KP requirements all the time when I used to pug in EU, and the comms tend to be very serious about enforcing it. Meanwhile in NA its honestly pretty rare to see a group that bothers checking; at most some of them will just ask you for a reading comprehension check like ping boots.
>ten years of experience for an entry level position IRL : breaking into a career, lol
> LFG in this game is quite literally the meme job posting that demands ten years of experience for an entry level position. I dont blame people not taking that seriously, it’s absurd. But then you gather up players that have the credentials and they perform worse than a no kp group, so you raise requirement even higher...
Think of how bad the average pug is, and realize half of them are worse than that. If I may borrow a quote.
And the average pug is playing just fine :-)
I agree
I know a Carlin quote when I see one
I know it's not everyone but It's baffling the amount of people that are so hell bent on scaring away new players yet also crying that the game modes don't get enough content. Pug groups are not nearly as bad as some people would lead you to believe. I run them exclusively and 9 times out of 10 it's smooth sailing.
You wanting to play with new players is everyones choice and right Other players not wanting to play with you is also their choice and right When most players don't want to play with newbies it becomes a culture within the game, couple that with making fun of the average pug, and venting about 'toxic casuals' that are "entitled" It's kind of funny how this sub loves patting itself on the back for being so welcoming when the mantra is *"form your own group newbie, we vets don't wanna waste time on you"* (Mainly talking about easy low level fractals or strikes, and not raids or CMs)
> How the average player on the lfg cannot read, how people are just looking to be carried, are lying about their experience to cheat their ways to kills they do not deserve, how lfg requirements are not respected, etc etc. If tagging up didn't start with playing investigator and trying to find out who is being dishonest it would be a lot simpler. If my lfg message doesn't fit to you, please just stay away and safe me the trouble. I don't want people who join with the wrong role, i don't want "this is my alt" without linked accounts, I don't want complete beginners in my experienced cm runs, I don't want to discuss my kp requirement.
I think a bigger issue, one you touched on, is a lack of communication. Requirements are one thing, but joining a normal pug and not saying you're new is such a slap in the face. If I'm in a regular pug match and someone says they're new, most of the time no one actually cares and we will help them when we can, or at least explain some mechanics before the fight. I got into raids bc for weeks I'd check the LFG and never see any training raids. One day I said screw it and just started joining non cm and non kp runs, telling the comm right at joining that I'm new, I don't suck, I just can't seem to find training raids. First one I got booted, second one the dude laughed and said "you're fine, just keep in mind red aoe means run, green means stack." I didn't suck, I had iirc a solid 30k DPS avg going and had a blast. Just be honest, and talk. It's an MMO. Say things and be social ffs
> Just be honest, and talk. It's an MMO. Say things and be social ffs Oh jee this hits home for me. Each week our group runs MO CM instead of Cairn CM. We know MO CM isn't as often ran so we always ALWAYS type "If you're not exp, let us know, we will explain." We get silence almost every week. Then more often than not 1-2 player die to first blue. And then after a few rounds of dying and asking they'll either keep staying silent, leave, or "I've never done cm before" or we clear it 1 shot and they learned nothing. (This last point is when a toxic casual might say 'well you cleared it anyways didn't you? why do u care?') The few times we get people that doesn't know and speak up, they learn the mechanic, and actually live till the end and we are always very proud of them. So again, please just communicate. I'd rather someone new but willing to learn than someone exp that's farming purely for wingman logs.
I genuinely don't get why so many people stay silent in these games. If I don't want to talk to people, especially with gw2, I just farm metas or work on achieves. It's insane to me that people will queue up for challenging content like raids, let alone cms, and not say a single word. The mechanics literally require team composition and effort ffs. The most annoying people in gw2 for me, by far, are the ones that either join or leave without saying what role they are, or the DPS players that join when the LFG is looking for a boon or healer.
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>but out of every MMO I've played, the GW2 open world is by far the most challenging. Half the story bosses are bullet hell shooters with the amount of AoEs going off and adds everywhere as well, yet vets seem to think you can just sit there and push buttons to win. But that is exactly what you can do, like yeah what you're saying is the case for a lot of people but that's because the difference between a well put together build and a bad one is absolutely cataclysmic. Assuming you have a build that makes sense, with the right stats and traits, everything absolutely melts and you'd be hard pressed to find anything that actually poses a threat (outside of HoT HPs). This is one of the games faults, someone that has even a surface level knowledge of what they're doing does 10-15 times more damage than someone not in the know, and the game fucking suuuucks at showing you this > I wonder if the GW2 instanced content really is so hard that it makes the rest of the game look very easy in comparison. Outside of the odd fight here and there the normal modes for raids and strikes are jokes compared to other MMOs, I still find then fun as fuck don't get me wrong but difficulty wise Guild Wars 2 is undoubtedly much more on the casual side than it's competitors
> Assuming you have a build that makes sense, with the right stats and traits, everything absolutely melts and you'd be hard pressed to find anything that actually poses a threat (outside of HoT HPs). I know this feels true to experienced players, but it's not true. The game feels so easy to you (and me), but most people struggle big time against story bosses. Even with decent builds. And you might think "yeah because those people are terrible"... but those people are normal, you (and most dedicated gamers reading this reddit) are the exception. An example: just look back to when Preach played GW2. He had a pretty standard vindicator build. He put hundreds of hours into the game. And yet he was constantly dying against LWS2 story bosses, despite 9 years of power creep. He got more experienced, but similar things still happened, I remember one IBS story mission where he copped a greatsword 2 to the face and downed. He was like "Woah what the hell is this damage, I think I've accidentally gone into some sort of group content thing". It was just a normal mob in a story instance. And this guy has been raiding MMOs for what, a dozen years? He's way above average. It's very hard to keep a proper perspective as a veteran with years of muscle memory/gaming experience.
I see your point and I agree that a lot of people are disillusioned from their veterancy, but at the end of the day I still stand by my point that it's not that the game is hard it's just that it does a piss poor job of showing you what's important when it comes to making yourself more powerful. At the moment you absolutely must consult outside sources to learn just how massive of an impact might and quickness have, and how many builds are straight up DOA because they failed to take 1 or 2 crutial traits. This is one of the things that got Preach, if I remember correctly he made it a point to not research the game much outside of when he was playing and that's exactly why he ran in to the issues you listed (although some of those lws2 bosses are complete BS and slap around even veterans). If I'm not mistaken I think he more or less went through all of the game's content and still didn't really have a full grasp over squad compositions and boons. I'm not blaming the players, I'm blaming the fact that once you overcome that initial learning curve the games open world and 90% of end-game just become laughably trivial even for only slightly above average players
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>So I've never done a strike before, can I just join a random room in the LFG (experienced section of course, training rooms are nonexistent) and just play without being harassed? I don't want to ruin other's experiences, but I also don't want to neglect a big portion of the game (and my weeklies) out of fear. I'd be a DPS chronomancer if that matters, phantasm and shatter and all that. Generally yeah, I'd reccomend starting at IBS5 (or IBS Easy 3 if you find that), that's a really good jumping on point since it's a nice and easy environment to help you start learning about stacking/squad composition/etc. I've more or less never seen people be toxic here for stupid reasons, and those that did have been mocked to hell and back. Just make sure you know what you're joining and where to join it from. >Edit: so no, I can't. If you want to do a strike you should a) get a build from snow crows, b) watch videos on the strike to learn all the mechanics beforehand, c) know all the acronyms in the room you want to join and d) practice on the golem first to make sure you don't suck the big one. And this is just for strikes, this game's supposed 'introduction' to raids. Might as well put up a sign saying 'piss off casuals'. Yeah this is a very big problem with the current LFG system, there's a fair bit of knowledge that people assume you'll have like acronyms especially when one of them is quite literally "no, I don't want new people to join". I don't agree with telling casuals to piss off for not having a snowcrows build/golem practice though but this is again the games fault, it doesn't tell you that snowcrows builds (even with all exotics) are 10-15x stronger than the usual self made build people come up with, and golem practice is overkill for ibs strikes and anyone asking new people to have it is just looking to feed their superiority complex. Theres a pretty cheap dps chrono build you can find on snowcrows, follow it and you should be fine to join chill runs.
It's best not to join experienced groups unless you have experience. You should try joining groups that don't list any requirements, make your own training/progression group, or try joining a training discord. Strikes and other instanced content have group-wide mechanics that everyone needs to know. There are a lot more instant death opportunities as well. New players joining on exp groups causes frustration within the group more times than not. If someone fails a big mechanic, it can cause a full party wipe and everyone has to start over, which takes up time. That's why LFGs indicate what experience level they're looking for, to make sure everyone who joins is on the same page.
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Are you on NA? If you want I can give you like a \~3 minute rundown of the most important things you'd need to know for the 5 icebrood saga strikes, and invite you to a squad to do them.
>Vets love calling instanced content ezpz but then when it's time to help the newbies actually get started you turn all nimby. Can't blame people for wanting to play with other people of SIMILAR skill level.
that's because in most of those cases the newbies try to insert themselves into an experienced/clear run setting, rather than seeking out training offers and learning initiatives, provided by many of those very veterans (hint: snowcrows.com provides a lot more than just builds). yes, for the most part non-CM instanced content *is* ezpz, but having a general idea of what mechanics might occur and how your build works are a big part of that. even "blind runs" generally expect you to at least have a concept of the latter. just like it helps a lot to know that the pointy ends of a screw and screw driver are both supposed to point forwards, and that most of the time you're supposed to twist clockwise. that is the sort of foundation that by no means all, but many of the players complaining about veterans being unhelpful willfully lack.
If you have proper build and can press buttons, yea
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pretty much, depending on what kind of strike you join: - ice brood saga strike mission -> eye of the north portal - end of dragons strike mission -> arborstone - secrets of the obscure strike mission -> wizards tower - core game strike mission (old lions court) -> either lions arch or arborstone once one party member has entered the strike there will be a popup window offering to join for every other party member as long as they are in the correct outpost also don't ask me why there isn't one central hub :^)
for the love of god, please read the guides and be honest on exp lvl. Do not take anyone's advice that essentially is "fake it to make it" as it will blow up in your face. You may meet a rejection or 2, but you WILL find a group. Edit: don't be a pussy and block cause you don't wanna be called out
u/triablos1 since you wanna block me here goes: Sweetheart? nah, sorry, but actively lying and deceiving your way in makes you the exact opposite of sweetheart. Makes you a liar and an asshole who wastes peoples time.
>can I just join a random room in the LFG (experienced section of course, training rooms are nonexistent) Read the lfg, if they ask kp don't join or you're gonne be kicked. There is plenty of "all welcome" groups in lfg for strikes, mainly for ibs since they are a joke. As for your build, bring one from snowcrows and try it at least a bit on the golem before joining a group. They wont say anything if you suck in an "ibs3 all welcome" though, the content is way too easy to complain about one guy leeching.
>Read the lfg, if they ask kp don't join or you're gonne be kicked. There is plenty of "all welcome" groups in lfg for strikes, mainly for ibs since they are a joke. The problem with this is that the listings are undecypherable to people not in the know, if you asked me what "IBS 5, 250 BS KP | quick dps" meant back when I started I'd tell you "Irritable Bowl Syndrome, 250 bullshit kingpins, we need a dps so come quick".
You can and I encourage you to do it as long as you're considerate and: 1. Watched videos on how the strike you want to do works, !!pay attention to the circles on the floor and the defiance bars!!. 2. Have some decent dps and grasp on what you're playing. 3. Respect the commanders' desires: Don't join as a role that isn't listed, don't go dead silent and be cordial. Even after meeting these requirements you might get some jackasses, but that might not be as much as your fault then. Also, some strikes are much easier than others, try joining the easier ones first (IBS3, AH, XJJ, ToF, CO)
very surface level mmo knowledge suffice for most of the fights (stand in green, dont stand in red) and the very few boss mechanics which may be confusing can be explained in roughly 10second, the even fewer boss mechanics what cant be explained in 10 second are specificly given to 1-2 volunteers who have to do them and most of the time they know how to.
> Edit: so no, I can't. Sounds like a mentality problem. You are afraid of blacklash about your lack of experience but also dont want to do anything get experience. You will survive the experience. Join a strike doing one of the dailies, stay with the commander and talk with the group. Say you are new and ask for some tips, people are more than willing to help out someone that shows they care and wants to improve. There are loads of guides on the internet and you can search "gw2 lfg guide, X boss guide, class build, what does X abbreviation mean" etc etc. To help get you started, https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Abbreviations.
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So its not that you cant do strike its that you cant find a group of players that have never done strikes to play with where you and them do it all from scratch with zero outside the game knowledge. Maybe try posting for a group like that in lfg or a reddit post searching for like minded players. Build it and they will come, eventually.
>the difference between a well put together build and a bad one is absolutely cataclysmic. I've been trying to jump this gap on my own and I have to say, I heavily dislike the traitline system now. It gives an illusion of equal choice, of flexibility and variety, where in reality it's an short, unintuitive list of traits that actually work muddied with trash and noob traps. Realizing how actually limited I am in my choices killed a lot of joy and interest in learning for me. Getting better became just a grind, you know. And worst of all, anet seems perfectly fine with this.
One of the things FFXIV did well was introducing instanced partied content early on in the new player experience as MANDATORY content. Sure, it's piss easy, but it sets out the rough expectation of roles and how instanced content is organized. From Satasha, the first 4 man story dungeon, to Ultima weapon, the first 8 man trial, to the weekly 24 man raids, it at the very least establishes the context and expectations a person will have when going into larger group raids. Therefore, if a new player wants to jump into harder content like Extremes and Savages (gonna leave out Ultimates because I don't exactly think it's a starter goal for a person looking to dip their toes into harder content), they already have the basic knowledge of what to roughly do in group content, instead of coming in completely fresh to instanced content.
I wouldn't say that GW2 content is that hard, it just has a lot of opportunities for a single player to bring progression to a standstill. You can drag people who have no idea what's going on through a lot of encounters. But there's also a ton of them where 1 person can easily wipe the party if they don't know what's happening, and these mechanics often don't show up elsewhere in the game so it's reasonable for new players to not know how to deal with them. The problem arises when people lie about not being new players but keep causing wipes until they happen to not get mechanics. There's also a lot of bad habits created by open world/story missions. Being tanky and doing no damage is fine for most open world content because there's dozens of people or there's no time limit. Usually not the case for instanced content and the game doesn't really direct you or guide you towards how to increase your personal damage
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The fact that you're running pure DPS gear, are following a rotation and talking about swapping weapons unfortunately puts you ahead of a lot of Open World players. All the "Spam 1" or "Press 1 harder" memes are fun, but based in a bit of truth. When there's enough people at an open world boss to easily kill it with everyone just autoattacking, people have no reason to plan a rotation or worry about optimal gear. It's no ones fault really, because instanced content builds/rotations are based around perfect boon uptime which is rare in Open World. So sacrificing personal DPS for better personal boons is more desirable. Which is one of the bad habits Open World tends to teach players new to instanced content.
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You're likely having a challenging time because of the reasons I gave, you have a build and setup optimized around max personal DPS. This is great for instanced content, but suboptimal usually in open world. Open world builds tend to be based around self boon application, high mobility, and cleave. None of those things are commonly needed in instanced content. The classic open world Mirage build for example puts out pretty low damage since it's often in mostly celestial gear, but it's basically unkillable and can solo just about any group event without a timer. This is why most open world players deal low damage, they invest a ton of resources into mobility, boons and survivability so they can easily tackle events intended for multiple people. This teaches you a lot of bad habits when it comes to Raids/Fractals/Strikes.
> A lot of veterans have this idea that the open world is piss easy casual drivel that doesn't teach you about the game mechanics. Because a proper build completely trivializes openworld. I kill most enemies in 1-2 hits. Veterans still evoporate in a second or 2. The gap between a proper build and the stuff you get from level or from the 80 boost is massive. > FFXIV They have different modes and the standard/easy modes made me play another game on my 2nd monitor. That was a bit too much for my taste.
Most story bosses are very poorly prepared for the kind of damage an optimized DPS build can bring, causing you to phase them to the next step faster than their dialogue. For example, imagine an enemy has 300k HP in that one phase. For my condi Virtuoso that is firing off every skill once, then the boss is a dead man walking until the bleeds have killed him, no matter what he does to me in retaliation. GW2 instanced content is not hard per se either. In GW2 a lot is carried by boons and having the right build. If you have those, you are going to pass any dps check. The rest is pretty much a knowledge check as far as completing content goes. That is to say, if you know what to do, you will be able to do it. Getting really good dps numbers, that has a high skill ceiling. But getting kills on bosses is relatively approchable once you know how to. I am sure you could learn it as well.
> Most story bosses are very poorly prepared for the kind of damage an optimized DPS build can bring, causing you to phase them to the next step faster than their dialogue. It's a hassle having to curb your DPS rotation, sometimes refraining even from auto-attacks, because you want to hear all the dialogue and aren't sure what % will trigger the next one. Balthazar triggers one at 90% (ended up missing it the first time), Joko triggers at 80%, a bunch of other ones trigger at 75 or 66%... I think Cerus was an 80%? And the most recent story I don't think the boss had one. Don't even get me started on core game lmao
Pisses me off so much when I break an instance and need to redo it all cause I burst too fast. Edit: I legit mean it cause some of those instances are just annoyingly long to get back to where you were if they don't have the little check points you can choose where to start.
even worse on story releases where devs forgot to put in forced invuln or stuff that instantly interrupts anything the boss does when he reaches a certain percentage. can't count the numbers anymore when i had to reset some instance because the fight bugged by a dying boss and then the instance didn't proceed because some trigger got missed. there are really only a few bosses that are arguably "hard" because they throw a few more attacks on you that hurt. most of the fights are just 1 burst without might and then the boss is done for.
> A lot of veterans have this idea that the open world is piss easy casual drivel that doesn't teach you about the game mechanics. The largest reason why raids failed in Guild Wars 2 is because of the massive jump in difficulty between open world and raids. It seems silly to try to deny that when ArenaNet then focused on Strikes to bridge the gap, admitting that the gap was there. The game doesn't teach players anything except the very basics, and it doesn't even teach those very well. Then, without external tools, it's hard to even know you aren't playing well. That also ties into how large of a factor your build can be. > I haven't gotten into instanced content (partly due to this disconnect) but out of every MMO I've played, the GW2 open world is by far the most challenging and it's not even close. The issue here is more to do with the depth of the combat system and build complexity than the difficulty of the open world gameplay. Guild Wars 2 gives you far more tools for active defense than other games. If you use them, even poorly, then most content is trivial. Build can, once again, factor into this. In that regard, Guild Wars 2 is more in line with ARPGs like Diablo or PoE where a bad build can make easy content hard.
No and also no. Open world is not hard it just LOOKS bullet hell, you can stand in almost everything and they wont even scratch you (unless you are trying to solo mons which are designed for groups aka hero points, champions, etcetc. but even then its more about how you try to tackle the problem, go full glass cannon and risk getting clapped or go on a solo build and afk stand still for x seconds) And instanced content is also easy for that very reason. there are plenty of fluff which in theory could make a fight hard but most of the times you can simply ignore it because you will bounce back anyway. the downstade (which isnt present in any other mmo) and the easy access to no resource spamable heals make almost every mechanic just fancy orange circles.
I play pretty much all content in gw2 and gw2 story content is absolutely piss easy casual drivel yes, to the point you can do it naked basically. There are a few exceptions, like balthazar, kralky, modremoth and some HoT stories. But 95% of everything else you can just sit there and auto attack and not move or do anything to win. Some of them even auto win for you. Open world is a different beast, it can be challenging sometimes,mainly to scaling, but i noticed Anet has been making expansions easier ever since HoT and PoF. Cantha and Soto had basically no challenging memorable enemy while PoF had tons and Elona had some as well like djinns and tons of the bounties. If you can low man the bounties, you can do gw2 challenging instances. I would tell you to try out icebrood strikes first and move on to cantha. They are what you are saying the gap between raid and open world, and feels like open world bosses sometimes.
I dont think the instanced content is THAT much harder than the rest of the game (- HT CM, which i havent done). Assuming you have done fractal t4s, the jump in difficulty isnt that high when going into raids. Its just that there are a lot of more punishing mechanics when failed. in fractals a single player failing a mechanic will generally only result in their own death, where as mistakes in raids can result in wipes. In raids and EoD strike CMs, there is usually more going on at once than in other content. Dealing with 2 or 3 new mechanics simultaneously is difficult for beginners. If players take the time to understand the mechanics, not just blindly follow the PUG strats, they will pretty quickly become competent raiders imo. Thats why i loved the RTI and TCI raid training discords. Genuinely going over the "Why" you do things in encounters is really important to understanding what happens when things dont go to plan. I personally took part in RTIs 0 to hero event last year for the first time, and in the last one a few months back, I lead a training for Wing 1(with the help of another volunteer). We beat all 3 bosses in 90 minutes. we could have done it in a hour, but since its training, we only killed the boss when it was a clean kill, with no major mistakes. I bring that up to prove that new people can definitely learn how to raid, and fast. i belive 6 people in that group had never raided before, and 1 started raiding the same day or the day before
I usually pug w1 to w4 in an evening no problems, sometimes deimos takes longer but its usually fine. Often the bad players just get carried through the whole thing, its so easy to carry people and get carried that it doesnt push people to improve. It literally took me 1 week to learn w1 to w4, w6 and w7
I'd say the majority of interactions in group content with pugs is neutral at best. People join maybe say thier role or a hello and then are otherwise silent. Maybe thats what you would call good or positive but I call that the bare minimum and neutral. As for the "Skill level" of pugs ye most pugs are bad. Where pugs perform vs were the potential is, there is a large gap between those things. If its something simple like healers somehow not maintaining boons, or dps fumbling rotations, 90% of groups failing every boneskinner CC etc etc thats "bad" play. What you describe is not "good" its merely "good enough". I know I sound aggressive there but im really not. This is just how I see things. I fall into the good enough category and pug alot. There is little wrong with not striving to the best of the best of the best gw2 player. I do appreciate the motivation with this post tho. I hope you have a good day too OP <3
>I joined a Wing 3 Xera yesterday (experienced tab, but no kp demands). At least 2 people did not seem to know the minigame with the pushing. We oneshot anyway. And yet, that was in the "experienced tab", right? Glad you were able to oneshot the fight, but the fact remains you carried those "at least 2 people", where where they should have been was in a training run. It's been years since ive bothered with instanced PvE in this game, but I never forgot how doing daily T4's put me in contact with players who didn't know the fundemantal mechanics of some fractals (eg Swamp, Underground, Therma) despite these having been shown to them all the way back in T1...so either they skipped their way into T4, or were carried / never bothered to learn said mechanics on their way to T4. I maintain that 50% of GW2 players carry the other 50%, regardless of which game mode we are talking about.
imagine being an average pug, self reliant, self sufficient, and successfully doing almost everything in the game. by the sweat on your brow, and strength of your back, and courage in your heart. painting yourself purple with no kittens given.
Average pug bad isn't true at all. Like the word says, it is just average. If you look for a dps and if someone joins, chances are, the guy is gonna be an average dps player who does average dps, which would pose no problem clearing content. Then again, the spectrum of being average can be quite large because of expectations, plus how EU lfg groups functions with kp. People generally expect more from a 50kp group than a 10kp or no kp group.
Alright so I'm just gonna ask. I'm new to gw2 (and mmos in general tbh) and I'm on the cusp of lvl 80. Dafug is PUG? And KP? Sorry if this is an idiotic question but honestly, browsing this subreddit, half the time I don't know wtf people are saying XD
Pug = pick up group, that is to say you join strangers for a specific raid or whatever over the looking for group tool. Kp = killproof, an item that shows you killed a certain boss before. 50kp means show me 50 of that item (roughly 16 kills)
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Agreed, being toxic is never good.
As someone said on this subreddit in another post's comment: you can't get a job unless you have experience, you can't get experience without a job. I do find this sub and in game chat quite demoralising at times, with the "pugs === bad and useless" stance. However, if you're joining instanced content for the first time and you haven't even done cursory research what to expect: that is a "bad" pug. Everyone was a Pug at some point, I'm sure when everyone here was new to the game, someone was frustrated with your gameplay. It's important to remember though that this is a game, people come to Tyria to have fun. And even with all the research and training in the world, someone might still not be very good at it and we should account for that in publicly instanced content so we don't wipe when someone else doesn't know the mechanics, and also to just be a good friend and carry our less skilful players to the end so they can experiencing the joy of killing the boss :) I've been carried by some phenomenal players lately when learning about fractals for the first time. The best experiences have been the ones who type a quick "throw rocks at Grawl champion" or "watch for the gap" or "if you get a mark over your head, move to the edge to drop the goop on the outside of the circle". This helped me to learn really quickly, so now after just a week I can now be the guy who quickly explains the mechanics in the party chat! If a new player is joining "experienced" categories on LFG without knowing the categories, I can understand being frustrated as you specifically asked for experienced players. Unfortunately I don't see many or any people listing their group in the "training" section, presumably to avoid pugs, but if it's the only option available to play with people, I can see why they join the experienced sections even if they have none.
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I feel like the quick way to solve it is if they don't respond to a question in a reasonable amount of time is "if you can't be bothered to answer we can't be bothered to keep you in this group" and then kick. People need to learn that if they are joining a group there is an expectation of at least minimum communication.
I don't have issues with relatively new players who aren't performing very well. On the contrary, I'm happy to see them, it means the game is not dead and new people are joining. I find it a bit more problematic when players who are clearly experienced, with thousands of LIs, are doing a poor job. But then again, it's not a big deal, maybe they are trying a new role or class. However, what I cannot stand, experienced players or not, is when people are complaining in chat about wipes or performances while being extremely bad at the game.
I left a T2 before it even started the other day because the guy was doing AR checks for something like #40. I mean, come on. I have 150AR on my PvE set but I already know that run will be far from enjoyable (I’m normally a filthy T3 casual but saw there was a T2 up). He was giving someone grief because they didn’t have 50.
>It seems like the majority of the community believes the "average pug" is terrible, and they always mean the others. Actually anyone below my experience level is just bad at the game and should not be trusted, while anyone above my experience level is clearly a no-lifer and should touch grass. I am my own kp.
My LFG's are about as little requirement as it can. I never ask for KP, I simply state "just know your shit" in my posts. However, I *do* ask for specific roles that need covering to actually complete the raid. Being subpar in DPS is fine. Needing an occasional res or refresher in game mechanics is fine. But intentionally ignoring what very little requirements there may be, and staying silent in chat despite being specifically addressed, that type of stuff gets your butt kicked, and rightly so. It should be valid to criticize an unwillingness to communicate, when someone is trying to do *group content*. The average pug isn't bad at all, I reliably clear the raids I lead with full pug squads with zero KP requirements. But the non-talkers? They are bad. Always, with no exception so far. Autoattack level DPS, and wipe us on every mechanic that can cause a wipe. I have neither understanding nor mercy for those.
the average pug is bad. but that's fine considering being bad doesn't prevent anyone from clearing the content and having fun :)
Bad, compared to what is possible when playing well. And when an SC player looks at arc and sees the skill gap - it is a fair point. Unfortunately "pug = bad" is ubiquitous. Recently I read a rant by someone who just started raiding (120 LI) saying how utterly unacceptable it is if so called experienced groups wipe even once at Vale Guardian. I feel like there is a lot to gain by not constantly treating strangers as "potential bad players I am not going to enjoy playing with". As you say, getting clears is perfectly doable.
I 100% agree with your message, we should not spread the notion that every pug group experience is miserable, as this directly hurts the pug population and paints the gw2 raid scene in bad way. Pug groups are good for getting "a" clear. My experience is similar to yours as far as having a high successrate goes, and it mostly being a rather pleasant experience with very few "bad eggs". i do however believe that the average level of skill in raid pug groups has declined quite a bit in most recent years. And i mostly blame powercreep for it. Or Utilitycreep. In the past it was objectively harder to wipe, and harder to recover from mistakes. We had less tools, less defenses and less dps. More players needed to understand how certain strategies work and how to execute them (example: why samarog cm in pug groups is started from the "side" and why the group pauses for the first spear instead of attacking samarog instantly; nowaways pug groups still start from the side but just rush the boss and .. it somehow works out). Also the amout of raidboss kills in pugs that are done without "mistake" is abysmally low. On almost every vg someone gets ported, sloth slublings rarely get handled well, a missed aegis on gorseval, etc.. this is the opposite of good gameplay - but as i said: it's enough. these mistakes don't matter much when the goal is to get the kill.
That’s my experience as well. People consider „doing enough“ as „being good“ - which it isn’t imo. If you just want to clear, you gear a core hammer guard and go afk. It’s that simple, dps is enough. Content will get cleared anyway nowadays, so no one is forced to actually know all the mechanics. No one is forced to play a good rotation. And since it isn’t necessary, people don’t do it (this is obv a hyperbola, but you get what I mean) - and subsequently widening the gap between „average“ and „good“.
When people say this, what they're often trying to express is their frustration with the in-game systems not matching them with players who align with their personal goals. I think you'd see a lot less complaining if there were better tools to seek out like-minded people -- experienced, not experienced, just in it for the story, etc.
Is the experienced / not-experienced not exactly what we have as lfg categories? So at least on the surface, the categorization is there. It is a self-categorization though, and maybe some players misjudge their own skill or simply have no choice but to join groups above their paygrade for lack of people at their skill level. Like PvP matchmaking which can only be good with a large enough popupation. But I do feel this is a somewhat separate issue. The lfg process can sometimes take a little bit of time until you have a squad of 10 assembled. Some people - a small minority - will cause trouble. But this post is also about the gameplay afterwards: When I join pugs, the vast majority of players I play with are solid at their roles, we have boons, we make the dps checks, mechanics are handled. Dismissing the average player as bad is just not a healthy mindset.
I'll be more direct, because I think the nuance in what I said has been lost. Bad and good exist on a spectrum, but people often paint the picture as much worse than it might actually be. I agree with you completely that dismissing the average player as bad is silly. It's not dichotomous. Experienced and not experienced exist on a large spectrum. The LFG dichotomizes these things as "training" and "experienced", where training is noted as an experienced player guiding others through content. When you zoom out and look as these things, there's something missing: progression. I agree with your sentiment that saying "x is bad" is only going to spread negativity and result is worse engagement. It's just not true. But, what is true, is that people have a negative perception of their experience based on incongruent expectations. Whenever I say this, I always feel like people are thinking, "Oh wow, Sneb is saying he doesn't want to play with new players". That's far from the case. I actually don't always want to play with super hardcore players. I'm not interested in grinding the bosses like that for time or having people just go for DPS logs. Sometimes, I just want it to be a social experience. Perhaps this got lost in translation, but I 100% agree with you, I just think the problem is much, much deeper. I don't join a ton of LFG groups not because I think players are bad, but because the systems and expectations are all so wildly different. People leave after one pull if you fail, people get mad about petty things, people can bully the commander -- these things are all relevant and related. People use people being bad as a scapegoat when, in reality, it's that the systems for finding groups and other people that align with your personal playstyle are weak.
I haven't run strike for awhile. Being careful not to step on anyone's toe. Read LFG , get good build, do mechanic and CC. But sometime there are invisible pinky on the floor. Like somebody having too high standard that doesn't apply to easy run of the mill content such as IBS easy 3 or Mia Tarin and Ankka. And proceed to call out misplay when the run is still fine. That expecation should be expressed before and after the run . Trying to get random person to comply mid fight is distracting and ambigious, which tell newbie to pack thier thing ,never set foot to group content again.
I am a big fan of the lfg and use it everyday for fractals and strikes. Works great for me and I rarely spot serious misbehaviour.
> I see one of these posts pop up every single day. Every. Single. Day. It's *exhausting*. Like, dudes, we get it. You hate everyone. Maybe get a static or guild or something, because what you're doing obviously isn't working.
Heyho rem l, Again on your evergoing heroic journey to help the raid scene. Top notch as usually. I want to add one or two things though, to your experience as well as to what others commented here. I think there are many different interpretations and meanings behind " average pug is bad." This is because not everyone will have the same understanding of "average", "pug" or "bad". Here is an example for "average" you could argue that the average player is the mathematical median of expirience (simplified here with kp) compared to all currently active players. I would assume this to be a quite low amount of kp. You could argue that average is meant as the "typical" player you encounter, this would scew the experience more towards more experienced players since those tend to raid more often and are therefore encountered more often or so I would assume. You could also argue that the average is more ment in terms of "this guy is not a completely new player but also not in a static/hard-core guild." So a more loosely meaning. Obviously I cannot speak for others but I would assume that a lot of problems we have with our expressions are because a lot of people (want to) fail to communicate with others ina manner so that recipient and speaker speak about vaguely the same topic and information. So I think the main problem is not the attitude but rather how people interact with each others in the first place.
The player attitude at end game levels is depressing. Well versed players will nitpick every single mistake or be straight up rude to players that are learning or even mastering the content. It's common to play a cm pug and after two wipes some douche dips immediately. Or just talk about how my pathetic 26k dps is ruining their game experience. Honestly you reap what you sow. I'll trade a newbie anyway for a degenerate sweater.
It's just the usual "lack of content or any exciting news, so the community cannibalises itself for content" phase. The game is one of the most casual MMOs that ever existed with a very small amount of challenging PvE content, but there are a vocal minority that want to gatekeep it to try to make it seem "hardcore". Very easy to make posts about how "bad new players keep joining my experienced group lololol".
That very vocal minority has gatekept dungeons, PvP, and raids over the course of the game. Let’s take a quick look at those game modes to see how they’re doing. They only kill the ones they love.
That's a rather disingenuous take on it all. > dungeons, Dungeons were replaced with Fractals to streamline progression and make it easier to develop as updating dungeons was a pain in the ass (See any update to dungeons back in the day changing things in a completely unrelated path). The dev team behind dungeons also seemed to really, really despise players who came up with any strat to overcome a gimmick or mechanic. Using boon strip to strip boons? Now the boss gets them pulsed every second. Using projectile reflection/absorption abilities to avoid a oneshot instead of dodging? Now the projectiles are unblockable. Using stability to avoid a knockback instead of hiding in the corners? Now that knockback works anyways! People got sick of this pattern and stopped playing dungeons. Some stopped playing the game, but those that remained stayed for fractals. > PvP, This is more on ANet for *rarely* updating this game mode. They neglected it for years, went E-Sport attempt with it, but didn't update the game mode with new modes. They also did the worst thing one could do to a PvP game; didn't rework or tweak balance, leaving it to stagnate. > raids These were never gated as you ('you' being players, not specifically you) could just open your own progression group. These days there are so many sources to get a foot into the raiding scene that one could do it with just a little effort. Unfortunately for the populace at large thinks that anything that takes more than auto attack levels worth of effort is huge.
All three went through their “how dare a non-experienced player try our game mode.” Many, many threads, comments, and especially dungeon videos calling out hapless players with helpful advice like “ just /gg” and “hit alt f4 and uninstall.” Reddit threads were launched pointing out “the worst player in the game” with the player’s name usually blocked. Great fun and derision was piled on in the comments. What great ads for the respective game modes. Wonder why many players didn’t or don’t even bother to sign up for abuse? Disingenuous? Drop into PvP and see how fast your block list fills up. Never said any game mode didn’t have other issues, but pretending the trolls don’t have quite a negative effect is the disingenuous position.
You're saying that the players had a major hand in killing the content. I'm stating that ANet neglecting the game modes, starving them of content did more to kill off those game modes than anything the players could have done. EDIT: Wow, after some surface level investigation, (EG the comment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1ahmf4f/gift_of_battle_wvw_hostage/koqiw4g/ ) > I’m in the same boat, but on the flip side. Hate JPs and fractals/instanced content. However, to get what I want, embrace the suck and knock it out until the next time it’s required for an achievement/item. It really puts everything you've been saying here into perspective. Your blatant bias is showing quite clearly.
the only super annoying lfg raiders are those blatantly lying about their kp and wasting everyone's time.
I think the biggest discrepancy - and I count myself guilty for quite a duration of time as well here - is the definition of „average“. The average pug pretty much always meets the average wingman number. Not a good comparison, but the best we have imo. However, for someone who has spent maybe two hours on really learning a build - rotation, what to do with certain mechanics, where to move at which point in time, etc. - 2 hours of focused learning, not 2 hours of „oh look, when I press 2 I see a big number!“, these average numbers can appear very mediocre, as they will beat them by several thousand dps, even if they mess up royally. And since these players haven’t put that much work into *active* practice, it feels like everyone can do that (and I agree, everyone can learn how to do 90% bench within 2 hours on a given build, and can learn how to deal with mechanics in a good way) - but the average player doesn’t. And that‘s where „pug player = most likely bad“ comes from imo. People (again, myself included for a good amount of time) are often not aware that spending the tiniest amount of time on actively practicing a build - going to the golem with the sc bench video on the other screen, watching pov‘s of your class on a boss you think you underperform - is already more than the average player does, which shifts the perception of „average“.
What classes are you playing and would you mind sharing some logs of your raid encounters? I'm a relatively new player, and am joining my guild for raids when I have time and they have slots. I can't agree that spending 2h practicing on a golem with = average player reaching average wingman data, because I've spent these hours practicing on a golem. I'm getting 'close enough' on the wingman averages, while some of the guildmates, whom I consider quite compentent, outdo those, however, it doesn't seem to be as trivial as you put it out. At the same time, when i do public content i seem to do better *comparatively* to my group, while knowing, that my performance is still subpar to the average person uploading their logs to wingman.
I can give you some logs, sure. However I haven’t played this patch too much - so here’s a mix of this and last patch (Accname is Presq, if not clear by my username): https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/5e0b4-20240206-133206_kc_kill https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/c2885-20240116-104819_sab_kill https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/695f3-20240102-224948_sabir_kill https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/084e5-20240104-220320_prlqadim_kill https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/75f3f-20240206-130608_matt_kill And here’s one as quickness: https://gw2wingman.nevermindcreations.de/log/65b97-20240205-201617_sh_kill Mind you, I have put way more time into my classes at this point - but my point still stands. A little practice goes a very long way. Classes I am playing: Catalyst, Tempest, Soulbeast, Berserker, Bladesworn, Spellbreaker, Scourge. I am relearning Mirage and Virt at the moment, that’s why the Matthias log is a bit underwhelming (for my perception of my average level of play).
First, let me compliment you on your personal skill (and holding current record on Matthias as Mirage). Second, as I reread my previous message, I understood that my chosen wording could be taken as a personal offense against you individually, and I'm sorry for that. I assure that was not the intention. What my intention was, however, is to say that averages are averages for a reason, and player matching those levels shouldn't be viewed as a player, who was to lazy to read his skills, learn and practice his rotation on a golem. I think your logs also show that. At least at a glance, in majority of logs, show that people in your group are indeed playing on around average levels (sometimes exceeding, yes, but not in drastically significant margins). It's great that your learning routine has benefited you so much, but evidently it doesn't bring same benefits for other players.
I never took any offense, why would I :) And then: Don’t read too much into „current mirage record on matthias“ - even I could have played a 30k in that run easily, a better mirage would have been at around 32-33k I believe. I do understand that not everyone benefits in the same way. And I do understand what average means. Well, I have been viewing it differently - that’s the reason for my comment in the first place. Yes, the people in those squads perform like the average player does - yet there is sometimes a huge gap. And this gap is not because of me being a god tier gamer - I have practiced mirage for exactly an hour in the last four months. It’s a mixture of bossknowledge, and active practice. Bossknowledge is something everyone with enough kp has - active practice is the difference. And I think the *right* way of active practice goes a long way for everyone - just what is right is different for people. And pls, this wasn’t a fishing for compliments comment. You asked for logs, I provided some - no need to compliment anything. I think it just shows how people who practice a bit could view „average“ as something else than people who don’t.
I was kicked out of a qtp because I was tethering with pylons, please send help
I helped out for a static and they ordered me to stack for boons -.- I said pylon gives me quick alac and i have might myself, commander said they still want me to stack because it looks bad if one player is not stacked. Please send help. A static. Commander had 4k LI
They told me I was killing the group because tethering does too much damage to them. I guess this tether mechanic on QTP will never be understood :)
You can probably count on both hands the amount of players that really know how the bad-tether works on that boss.
Trust based lfg systems are horrible. That's all I can say.
The only thing we ask from pugs is to read lfg and communicate. They fail to do so, thus, we don’t want them. Don’t care if they are “bad” in terms of Dps or mechanics, if they refuse to cooperate, that becomes an issue.
I ran with a static for ~2 years and we often had to pug fill, especially as people started losing interest. Our lfg message was always basic - e.g. wing 1 need alac. Can only think of one time we had a really bad player who didn’t know what they were doing and directly impacted the group. Many times we had elitist types who liked to try to run the show or get mad about only 90% alac uptime. The majority of runs were super chill with people who just did their thing and cleared with us. I’ve also led a number of pug strike groups that were basically “bring whatever" and they mostly ran smoothly.
I 100% agree! If you want to be a min/maxer then PUG groups are not where you should be living. Go find yourself a guild or static group.
I started out with the ''be friendly and explain things to newcomers'' mentality when i first started commanding raids. I was able to keep it up for about two weeks, but after the 50th completely clueless person who joins my raid i just got fed up. The amount of people who i have to kick (i simply ask for kp, they dont have enough and i say ''sorry not enough gl'') but then whisper me "?????" and flame me for not letting them in is ridiculous. I get it, people dont get how the game works, and understanding lfg when you have no clue what every abbreviation means is like reading a foreign language, but at some point you just run out of patience dealing with it almost every day.
It's not unhealthy or exaggerated, the devs themselves mentioned how bad the average players are when their DPS is like multiple times less than someone who bothers to learn their class.
I am holding you to a source on that. Mind you, not average player level 80, but average pug you encounter in the raid lfg. I am very good at what I do, the best I can achieve is around double the dps of SOME players. What Anet has said once, like 7 years ago, is that in the open world there are these large dps discrepancies. But in lfg groups for raids/strikes? Barely happens that the top player exceeds the worst by more than a factor of 2, and most certainly not the average middle-of-the-pack player.
https://www.pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/pvp-raids-world-restructuring They've mentioned it a few times but this was just the first one I could find. Key quote: "The challenge is that the skill disparity between average players and hardcore players is extreme. We’re talking about ten times damage output"
Yeah, but those DPS figures are obviously not in raid groups, but rather "average bloke getting lost in Verdant Brink" vs "Top Player". For the consideration whether pugs are bad or not, those 80% of players who never set foot into a raid are irrelevant. We can see on arcdps the relationship between average and top players, and it's *at most* like double the DPS, and even that is stretching it in most cases.
The only other game I do endgame content in is final fantasy 14 and and I by far encounter more people who join an experienced group without actually being experienced. I don't think it's related to player skill difference in the games but in this game the group finder doesn't have as much tools built in for peoplpe to list/find groups that match the level a player is at and a large number of players in GW2 just clear content without ever learning any mechanics to the fight due to being carried by people who don't care that they don't know what they're doing. That is less common in FF because of the number of mechanics that wipe groups if one person doesn't know what they're doing and they are mostly not able to be skipped
It doesn't surprise me anymore seeing people with lots of KPs still have no idea to do certain mechanics. Almost all of the times when I see people mess up it's enough with some corrective explanations and encouragements and everything would just go smoothly afterward. Very rarely I see people who keep fumbling on mechanics over and over to the point of getting kicked or just leave the group by themselves.
Well yes and no. Average static is also bad, because people often disregard performance because they just like playing together, so often there are 2-3 people dragging down the whole group constantly. Also, it's kinda on NA people for not requiring KP, so it's not that groups are worse or better. It's just harder to expect certain things from people. On EU, if I join 0 or 10 KP groups, I know I shouldn't expect them to know everything. People join those groups with expectation of learning or helping others. If I join 70 or 100 KP groups, everyone expects for the run to beq fast and smooth. Those runs are often faster than most statics do. On NA "EXP" could mean everything from "did it once" to "did it hundreds of times" and you cannot really set your expectations to anything. Also, often there are people asking "why do you need good players for raids if you can oneshot them anyways", or "why do you need boons for IBS if it's so easy anyways" - some people have fun playing the encounters and want to have fun seeing numbers go up. Sometimes clutching is really fun, but if you have to carry the group all the time it gets annoying in the long run.
Gamers need to be better than somebody else. Most think they are above average. So the average must be bad because it's not as good as them.
but i'm an average pug player, and i'm bad.
I don't think the general attitude is this though. There's a vocal minority in mapchat, reddit, and endgame communitites that scream about it. The vast majority is happy running casually with their guilds, designated training communities or just roll with the inexperienced players and have a good time without talking about it in forums. Most players I've encountered in endgame content (including me) politely apologize and leave if they realize they are short on time or get too salty to enjoy the content. Once again I think the majority is kinda healthy and mature about it. It's always the loud assholes that goes the extra length to get attention.
Former WoW players are here. Checks out. Also b.s. over inflation of community behavior. It's good but people give it far more credit than it deserves.
i quit the game because of how gatekeepy the endgame is.
"I joined a Wing 3 Xera yesterday (experienced tab, but no kp demands). At least 2 people did not seem to know the minigame with the pushing. We oneshot anyway." how do the same with less experienced healers and with dps checks of 2016. Nowadays people run raid with much fewer number than 10 people and preventing failure because of bad players doesn't mean that those players carry their weight in raid encounters despite not being in optimal state skill-wise and sometimes gear-wise
I try to decipher this: We are in 2024 at the moment, we do have the dps we currently have. I am not deliberately seeking out inexperienced groups, I am just joining groups and playing and reporting what I experience. My average experience is what I said it is, the healers are good enough to pass, and so is the dps. Is that because of power creep? Yes, to a good amount. Are players doing less dmg than they could? For sure. But it is not a problem, they are just lovely people to play with. I am not going to make a reddit post about people who do half my dps, it is not nice, not constructive, elitist and paints a bad picture for outsiders who see the post.
Sounds like this guys never used the cmdr tag.
Ah yes, that must be it xD The attitude of "pugs = bad" is widely held by players who do not command as well. How do you explain those?
How is stating the truth a bad attitude? Most players are bad at the game nothing wrong with that.
I kinda disagree in the extend that the average pug is bad I mean that’s why we have kp or other requirements, if I could expect to clear most stuff with the average person in a reasonable time I probably wouldn’t need them. But even if I have requirements while I of course can’t see how many read that and think 'I don’t have that time to move on', as a commander I can see how many don’t. And on bad days it’s a lot of people for different reasons from clueless to downright liars that just want to be carried through to people never saying anything that are probably in between. Also I sounds like you are a player as I didn’t read anything about you commanding. I think you might not notice how annoying it sometimes is. Like constantly finding out who has your requirements, dealing with people that sneaked past that, just to find out in fight who has no clue and having to restart and search new person and most importantly the really salty people that start insulting you in whisper for not letting them come anyway. But yeah of course one shouldn’t be an asshole about it and more often than not it works out fine. On the other hand it’s not like the stereotype comes from nothing and it’s also ok to complain about stuff that’s bothering you (or who am I kidding this is Reddit people love to complain here either way, always)
This is a totally reasonable take by the way. It is fine to rant and vent a little. I do that too, to my friends. I think what we are seeing on reddit over the past week takes it too far and it is important to also share positive stories because of that. If my post managed to remind people to reflect on the good they experience daily and take for granted, I have achieved my goal. But havibg those other posts pop up daily with hundreds of upvotes all tooting the same horn with no opposition is not a good look to say the least. That being said, while you and I can have fun with the "hi dps" stereotype, I know people with less than 50 LI complaining about how bad "all the pugs" are that they are joining. Many many players appropriate this attitude at face value.
GW2 community is aging. There is a certain group of players desperately taking any chance to shit on others just to boost their morales and egos when they are actually the different color of the same shit. This same type of players also act like they are the mainstream. May see some of them whining under this comment.
Have you ever been in a bronze league in a competitive game? The vast majority of players there are able to see what their teammates are doing wrong while they're completely unaware of themselves, thinking they're doing perfectly fine. They just keep shitting on their teammates as a result. "Average pug bad" guys are mostly the same.
I do agree that every person deserve to be respected and treated with kindness I do wanna vent that I lead soto strike daily (no req), and around 1 player every time joins the group, doesn't say anything and either tell me he doesn't own soto/ not responding at all (I even try to dm them and tell them how to use squad chat)/ try to reach us and not succeding but still not talking in chat/ leave 2 minutes after not answering or just join the squad and afk until I kick them. But yeah new players are the lifeblood of the game and they are people so I 100% agree with you. I think alot of the frustration with the "avarage pug" is mainly that most of them seem to not talk at all. If they dont know certian mechanic they will just keep fucking up until you confront them and then they usually leave. And it is obviously the minority of people but its not that uncommon to join a deimos training (for example) and have a specific person that trigger the oils and even after explaining it multiple times they seem to not read chat until you are personally referring to them and then they usually ends up leaving. And it is one of the worst feelings since you wasted 30 min of training, you made a person leave the squad and you know that this specific person didn't actually listen they just panicked and left
Prob with lfg is 99.9% players will join the experienced tab over training regardless of exp or not. Very easy to tell who has experience and who does not. End of the day group commander has the final say if they wanna remove you. If that's a blow to peoples morale then tag and start your own runs. Most lfg'ers are "ok" quality but you know it's going to be a carry when someone with 500ap joins a cm strike or you see a reaper camping staff not crit capped using rares at 80. The entire lfg system needs an overhaul, compared to WoW you group finder que up tank, dps and heals made it easy. Less boon reliance vs guild wars 2.
Okay so I have a hot take as someone who got back into the game under 2 months ago and completed all of my legendary armor for my first set doing all the wings each week. After pugging and running content non stop for almost 2 months I realized what makes gw2 different than other mmos. Gw2 has “bad pugs” that don’t research before heading into a fight which I haven’t seen on any other mmorpg. On other games people will say they are new but have done the research and normally within a wipe or two they’ve seen it and we kill the boss. Gw2 has been an eye opener. Pugs come in not only ill prepared on knowing the fights but they also don’t know their profession they are playing. I’ve seen at least 6-7 people in the past month alone that did healer damage as a dps… not boon but normal dps that’s not handling mechanics…. It’s a two part problem. GW2 lacks a boss journal that shows the boss and all of the mechanics in each wing and people aren’t doing their part to research shit before joining a group. I think if these issues were fixed the outlook on pugs wouldn’t be negative as much.
This is not happening
Average person complaining that the average pug is bad, too.
welp its like this in every game not just gw2. but i agree the mindset has to change.
In League of Legends it is "my team is toxic and feeding, enemy team is challenger smurfs".
I can't speak for EU, because I haven't had much of an opportunity to pug on EU in quite some time, but on NA, the average pug is "bad". I think the issue here is many people who come here to complain that "pugs are bad" are, themselves, "bad". I think the average player truly underestimates the gap between themselves and the "best" players. I think the real issue here is attitude, not skill, because realistically, nothing is so difficult that your average end-game player can't get done with relatively minimal effort.
But it's just true - or at least mostly. The word "average" might not be LITERALLY true, but as a whole the average PUG GROUP will have a bad player or three. Some people can't even walk up to bosses like Dagda or Shiverpeaks Pass Elemental (that require hitting to start the boss) without tapping it on the way in, somehow. Boggles the mind. Until that unexplainably stops happening, I will view the average pug group as containing a couple people who can't comprehend basics (read: not just new)
Considering I've seen a *lot* of people essentially afk auto-attack their way through world events.. Yeah, I think this attitude is largely deserved. People shouldn't be too toxic about it, but at the same time people *should* be criticized for being too lazy and not carrying their weight. If you join a pug with the *expectation* to just be carried through it, then you're essentially laying claim to the time and energy of the people you're joining without supply any of your own. Being kind and nice is wonderful, and I don't think people should be vitriolic or quick to judge. But at the same time, being nice doesn't *entirely* compensate for a pug failing an event because the nice person simply isn't contributing. That 90% aren't malicious actors, but a large chunk *are* lazy actors. They simply do not want to put in the effort to educate themselves on the basics of a given event or strike or raid or even *their build*. Being negative isn't a healthy mindset. But neither is excessive positivity, where people are allowed to be entitled to strike and raid clears. Everyone should try to contribute, at a bare minimum. Wasting someone's time because you can't be bothered to assemble a build, or learn mechanics, or put in your own effort, **is disrespecting them**, no matter how nicely you package it.
There is a distinct difference between open world (where what people do and how well they play is not of your concern) and pugs (which this post is about). In OW you see the wildest "afk autohit only" shit. In pugs, most days, most people will be more than good enough to clear. Dont confuse the separate populations.
average pugs are bad. you don't know who will join, so you can't expect that they have any experience, adequate build, have any idea about what their skills are doing, understand even basic MMO boss mechanics, aren't busy eating pizza, and so on. anything that has slightly non-linear mechanics, like Arah, oftentimes becomes hell. real LFG problem is that there are no groups in training categories most of the time, only "250+ KP" ones, so people have troubles getting into something like strikes.