Recruitment questions

sockmunkey

Ok, long time MMO player. Ive been with Cryptic for ages but still fairly new here. One of the things ive adored about past cryptic games is guilds and group success rarely went hand in hand. By that I mean, ive never felt the need to be a part of a guild, much less an elite one, to see the entire game. That said, champions is known to be considered extremely easy and its hard to fail, at all, there.

From my own understanding of this game, and from what ive seen in Mad Dragon. The failure rate seems higher. Folks are more critical of others. It seems less about group up play your character well and win. And more about follow the strat, play very well, and hope the others are doing the same. Needless to say PUGS are much less fun here then CO.

The solution, most folks agree on is a guild. Ok, im fine with that. But this is my problem. Im a casual player. So while im a team player in groups, im not all that guild centric. Im not into power raids every night. I mostly would rather do stuff on my own and group up from time to time. I hate voice chat..loathe it actually. And this game is not all that text chat friendly. But I like to cut up and chat with others when im not running from or trying to blast a half dozen devils. Id hate to join a group and find out 90% of whats happening is on some voice chat some place and not in guild chat.

I guess my point is (I know, finally, right) Is my play style viable in this game? Can I succeed here with my limitations? Or am I simply going to be disappointed because the only way im going to see Epic Castle Never is in a progression type guild that mandates voice chat.

shiftergoddess

I think it really depends on what guild (if any) you pick. I've seen several threads and even just browsing some of the Founder's guilds that prefer text chat to voice. Though most is due to being RP guilds instead.
Coming from WoW, i never liked the gimmick fights that required a strict strat that no one could deviate from or it'd be a raid wide wipe. So i get what you're saying about just jumping in and playing the dungeon as you play.
The voice chat thing though is iffy, since in the higher level content might require say a healer to be able to call out to dps to help nuke down adds or crowd control something, and being able to listen in vent/mumble/ect can help in those situations. Me personally, i've always preferred just to listen and pay attention to the other people in the group and work that way but not everyone can "go with the flow". Do a dungeon enough and you get a sense of when adds will come and what the mobs in said dungeon do.

I doubt this was helpful but in short, no i don't think you'll be disappointed but you'll have to do a lot of looking around. We try to keep our vent for joking around and hanging out, when we use it so i'm sure there's a guild out there that'll match your specifications.

scrolltro0l

I beleive I understand where you're coming from.

I've used to always want to be part of groups that have organization and assets. For example: Servers, Websites, Leadership, etc. But, groups that possess such things tended to be very hardcore. The groups that called themselves casual were usually disorganized and/or just social.

However, I've noticed in many games that there are quite a few groups that have acknowledged this issue, and have formed a hybrid-style group; strong resources and winning-oriented gameplay without the "Saturday Night Training". This is the exact type of community we've made here at LaggyGamerz, and I can assure you that I've come across many other groups (though they may be few) that have the same mix of competitiveness and laid-back approach.

I think it has much to do with the economy; hardcore groups made sense back in the day because people had lots of time outside of work/school. That's not the case anymore for most families.

sockmunkey

Thanks, thats actually helpful. Gives me something to look forward to.

Ill admit, im not an elite player, by any means. But Id like to feel im more then competent, and I take a measure of pride when I can play my character well. But like anything, there are days im on my game and there are days im not, or care to be.

On those days, I simply don't want to feel like im less then nothing, either because of a honest mistake. Or because I'm not being a team player and couldn't run that night. And I simply refuse to have someone scream in my ear their indignation about it.

I quit AoC for a lot of the reasons I mentioned. The game was fun, for the most part. But i'm not a good fit for hard core group. And the more casual ones always had a hard time completing raids. Frustrating when the guild can only fill up half the raid, leaving you to pug the rest. But more frustrating is when you as a player can do everything "right" and still fail because of others. Wipe happens, I know this. I enjoy a challenge. but to me, challenges should be personal. Spending an entire night so you can get 20 lemmings to all go through the hoops in the right order gives, me personally, very little accomplishment. One thing I loved form CO was pretty much ANY group of folks could meet up and go beat up the bad guy. Sure it was easy, but it was fun too.

With only 5 people, I expect the end level raids and coordination is much easier. But others are telling me the raids are pretty difficult. And my few runs at the Mad Dragon didn't do much to counter this. I guess i'm just trying to find my place here. and im not really sure where that is yet.

Anyhow, thanks for the help and sorry for babbling.

antaxious

You can do every single dungeon with pugs. its just smoother with a premade. And of course once in a while youll meet that one guy that fails so hard that your group will fail. But hey, leave party and start over. This game is not hard, it might be harder than the other game you talked about but its not hard at all. There are also no strategies.. and with pugs the only strategy there is is how to use an exploit correctly.. So no you do not need a guild if you really dont want one.

smurph115

it could work with the right guild. anything works with the right guild.