People don't want to invest time only to lose.

What the hell is a pug, or pugging?  Just curious.....

Ok… so, just putting together a lot of the responses:

Why don’t you form a premade?

1. It’s inconvenient
   1. The people you’d like to form a team with aren’t online when you are
   2. I like to just get a game in and move on (I don’t have time to wait for my premade teammates to finish a game)
   3. A pug can typically get a game going in 3-5 minutes; it takes longer if you are a premade
   4. Trying to get your teammates on vent can be a pain in the butt
   5. The games built in infrastructure doesn’t make it easy to play with the same guys regularly
   6. There is no team auto-match feature
   7. There is no tool to help people form premades automatically
2. Community outcry 
   1. A premade is fine IF they only play other premades, aren’t tricking people into playing them, etc
   2. Premade are generally viewed in a very negative light
3. StAck3D_ActR is playing HoN
4. Localized connectivity issues
5. Some individuals simply like playing with random players best

I’d like to address a few of these. 

Regarding incovenience

it wasn’t all that difficult for me to get a premade started and keep it alive.  I kept joining games that Kokujin and Kassaum hosted and eventually got on voice chat with them and played with them most of the time.  Boom.  I’m part of a premade.  So if any of you are wanting to go the premade route, I’d say keep joining custom games hosted by the same players and get on their team if possible.  Some just don’t want to form teams, but I’m reasonably sure that many would enjoy forming a premade. 

With a premade as big as mine, I don’t really have any issues waiting for someone to free up to get a game in with them.  Someone is typically free.  I formed my 1^st premade based on who was typically playing at the same time as me.  I’d just hop on their vent server when I was free and ask them if they were in game, if so, when will you be done, and last, are you interested in playing one with me afterwards.  Then I’d just browse the forum/internet while I’d wait for them to free up. 

It often does take awhile to get a game in if you are a premade (this is a pretty reasonable complaint and a good reason to steer clear of premades of joining a premade).  This gets worse based on how big you team is.  A 5v5 game can take a LONG time to fill, but games fill up faster with less players.  This is probably more unique to my premade as its fairly well known (eg if you are just starting a premade, you probably wouldn’t have any shortage of people willing to join your games). 

Consider that a premade is usually a group of 2-4 players.  As I proved with my XvX Vent bal games (http://forums.demigodthegame.com/365726), it was somewhat painful to get people up and running using ventrilo.  It took about an hour in one instance just to get 6 additional players up and running with vent.  BUT – keep in mind that a premade isn’t constantly reconfiguring ventrilo.  A one time setup is all that’s needed and you need not bother with that again.  Another thought regarding those XvX vent bal games – if I was attempting to start another premade, I’d wager that I could have created another 6 person one just on the basis of people enjoying playing together.

While the game’s infrastructure doesn’t do all that much to get you and a premade team in a lobby, using voice chat does.  And quite well at that.  I say, I’m hosting to my premade.  They join.  I hold slots in the lobby for them as needed.

Fair enough, tperge.

The funny thing is even if people form a "premade" (for the record I hate this god damn awfully annoying term) no one plays against each other because of how 1990s the Demigod online interface is.

Even I can agree that the term doesnt fit.  Usually they are just friends, if even that.  Perhaps with clanwars (if that ever happens) real teams may actualy form.

Because I'm just a casual player.   

I've used voicechat and have been part of premades, but I got turned off for a few reasons.  The first reason is that it seemed like, unless we were doing an inter-clan fight, we always fought low-skilled PUGs who didn't know any better and got stomped.  That wasn't that fun.  The second reason is personal: judging from the voices I heard on Vent, I am an older player in the Demigod community (34).  I have a wife and a demanding career, and while it's fine to play a couple of games of Demigod in the evening, I don't want to put a headset on and isolate myself from the rest of the house.  The third reason is my experience was that the people who use Vent were too hard-core for my tastes and cared too much about winning.  I couldn't relate, and, I had no desire to subject to myself to hearing a teenage basement dweller who yelled and whined like his balls were being cut off just because a flag wasn't locked within 5 seconds of when someone demanded it, or because a heal didn't come in at the right time.

These are just my personal experiences.  I'm sure there are pleasant premades out there somewhere, who don't care about losing. 

I have no doubt that only dedicated premades can make full use of the strategic potential of the game.  For example, playing exclusively as a PUG definitely skews you to take Erebus, Sedna, UB or Oak because you need to be as self-sufficient as you can, and can't count on your teammates supporting you well.  But it's still fun playing in all PUG games, as long as you don't care about losing. 

By the way, PUGs are not blameless here.  I can't tell the number of times I've been in games where PUG players tried to stack teams based on win/loss records.  I can understand the motivation- no one wants to play alongside a noob- but it's still embarassing.  The times when I've asked players to mix up teams, no one has ever taken me up.

I picked up Demigod because I thought it had space for casual players as well as hardcore players.  Wasn't that how it was marketed?   Maybe the real problem isn't PUGs vs. premades, it's that the community is too small and the interface isn't set up effectively enough to segregate hardcore vs. casual players.  (By casual, I do not mean Noob players, who don't know what they're doing.  I mean PUG players of moderate skill who know the basics but don't have time/inclination to do anything outside the game lobby).

There were plenty of AUS premades when the game was released.

Many left before the connection issues were fixed, many left because of the QQ from people at losing, many left because of the <10 3 man teams there were only 3 or 4 that were really good to play against, I think a lot simply got bored with playing cataract over and over again.

oh my, i had the same thought when it happend. wtf did they thought when they done this stupid thing.

absolutly!

i know this. my question was more retorically (or how do you say that in english correctly?)