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Pick-Up Group: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:VG cats pick up group expanded 7689.jpg|link=VG Cats|
{{quote|Some poor bastard desperately needs/wants an item from a [[Final Fantasy XI|BCNM]], an item he cannot afford to or is unable to purchase. Thus, the aforementioned poor bastard must organize a band of people he has never met before and trust them to not rip him off.
We call this a prick up group.
|''[http://bannable-offenses.blogspot.com/2008/01/deal-or-no-deal.html GM Dave], Bannable Offenses''}}
You're playing a MMORPG, and you decide that you need a group of people to take on the next dungeon/mission/area/cake.... but all of your friends are either offline or clinically dead. What's a player to do? Never fear, you can find a '''Pick-Up Group''' to play with! After shouting things like "LVL 654 [[Munchkin]] LFG!" for five minutes or so, you will be rewarded with an Adventuring Party to kill things with! <ref>LFG, for those not in the know, means "Looking For Group." (No, not [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|that]] way. Get your mind out of the gutter. Not [[Looking for Group|the comic, either]].)</ref>
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** ''[[Champions Online]]'' works the same way, where at peak times every quest objective will have a bunch of heroes waiting outside for enough players to take it down.
* Sort of averted in ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' in which pickup parties are regularly used to level, and can even do reasonably well, even if the group is made up of four Japanese speakers, one French speaker and one English speaker (and that was before french was supported by the auto translator).
** Much of this is because ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' is such a group-intensive game, it is much harsher on people completely unable to play well in a group. There's is a sharp decline in completely incompetent players as you go from each "tier" of area to the next, since if someone is unable to even do basic actions, they will be incapable of pulling their weight. By the time you get to the 30s or so, you just simply won't encounter people that are unable to even bluff their way through partying. Sadly, the standards of skill that are required of a persistent player aren't quite that high, still often leading to bad players(It's now also possible to solo to 75 on some jobs now, with Fields of Valor and Campaign, but with the majority of the playerbase as veterans, [[noob]]lets can still be sniffed out in seconds flat because of other events, not to mention the length of time it would take to solo to the level cap). In comparison, most [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s that offer solo options tend to have a very gradual decline in players that lack party skills, oftentimes having people get to the level cap and are unable to fulfill their assumed role in a party setting.
* Notorious in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' in both [[PvP]] and [[PvE]] aspects.
** Extensive automated matchmaking systems exist that place you into available spots in regular dungeon runs, Alliance vs. Horde battlegrounds and, as of latest update, a low difficulty mode of raid dungeons with reduced loot quality. Rest assured, there WILL be someone in your group vocally expressing their displeasure at others' performance, justified or not.
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* While PUGs are just something you have to put up with sometimes in MMO games, they are by far the norm for smaller volume online games like shooters and flight simulators. Short of joining a clan, playing with a group of people you knew is virtually impossible, and the lack of character levels meant that you had no idea what grade of players you were going to play with beforehand. One of the first ones to seriously tackle this was the XBox system debuting in ''[[Halo]] 2'', which allowed virtual pickup groups to stick together from one game to another, had integrated ranking, and mandatory support for voicechat that allowed meaningful strategizing in the heat of battle.
** These days, much of the utility of voice chat in online FPS seems to be to complain of team stacking. However, games that offer smooth integrated voice support like ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' seem, unsurprisingly, to do much better than those without.
* [[Scrappy Level|Positron's Task Force]]... the bane of ''[[City of Heroes]]'' players everywhere before it was redesigned and split into two separate Task Forces.
** Task Forces got much better after the old version of Positron's. It had the bad combination of being early in the game where the players' characters are rather weak, being overly long, and sending them up against three of the most annoying villain groups available at that level range. The developers have long since learned from their mistakes and the newer task forces (including the current version of Positron's) are much better.
** There isn't really anything that a Pick Up Group cannot beat in [[City of Heroes]], even the Lord Recluse and Statesman Task Forces, as long as the members are willing to ''communicate'', and are willing to at least give cursory attention to making sure the team has decent support, damage, and durability. ([[Leeroy Jenkins|Leeroying]] does not have -near- the stigma in Cities as it does elsewhere.)
*** Let's face it, [[Poor Communication Kills]]. In just about any game, a '''Pick-Up Group''' will do significantly better if they ''talk'' to each other. It's frankly about 90% of the difference between a PUG and a guild run anyway.
*** Leeroying is so much of a not-problem that a common phrase bandied about is "''[[WoW]]'' has Leeroy Jenkins as a player. We have it as an ''[[Splat|archetype]].''"
*** Though it probably belongs in [[Troper Tales]], this troper would also like to attest that, in his short free-trial-period with ''City of Heroes'', he was deeply impressed with the maturity and generosity of the player base. The traditional problem with
* Semi-averted with [[EverQuest]]. Although not as group-intensive as FFXI, it becomes increasingly difficult to solo at the higher levels (depending, of course, on character class). More averted back in the days when Verant Interactive ran the game, XP was twice as hard to gain, dying was much more of a punishment (your gear stayed on your dead body, and if you happened to bite it in a dangerous area or deep in a dungeon, you were SOL), and anti-twink measurements were taken. You learned how to work as part of a group or you quit playing.
** Totally true, however, for [[Everquest 2]]. In [[EQ 2]], dying only loses you a modicum of exp that will regenerate anyway if you just take a break, and while grouping nets you better rewards it's by no means necessary to reach the End Game. Ironically, on the off-chance you end up in a good pickup group, you'll have friends for life.
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* Can be played straight or averted in [[Metal Gear]] Online. As a shooter it deserves a mention because most of the game types are team based with a set team objective (Base Capture, Race, or Bomb Mission for example). Most of the time if you don't have a clan you join a game with whoever is online playing the game type you want. You lose hard if you don't work as a team, which tends to lead to a lot of 'lag switching n00b' comments. Heck, you get those comments from your opponents if you actually DO play as a team and win! Seems a lot of players don't get that MGO is more tactical than Call of Duty.
* [[Puzzle Pirates]] is based almost exclusively on this. If you want people who aren't in your crew to help pillage, you need to assemble a pick-up group. Pillages quickly become luck of the draw, whether you get skilled players and are set to make a fortune on a pillage, or bad players, where the pillage costs you thousands of coins with no return. And the only real way to make the money back is more pick-up groups!
* [[
** levels 90-120 however (which are pretty much 97% of the total exp need to get from 1-120), are a complete breeze with those elite team members. As a comparison, most of those clan teams will usually take 30–45 minutes on ''any'' floor, while PUG usually take 50–110 minutes on the lower level floors. Really bad PUG may take over two hours on a large.
* Seeing as most of the time, it's nearly impossible to keep track of a regular party in ''[[Adventure Quest Worlds]]'', you will probably encounter these every day. No exceptions.
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