I’m not looking to get into a “premades are fine if” discussion (Eg, it’s ok to be in a premade if you don’t do blank and so on. I recently started a thread about that over here http://forums.demigodthegame.com/365479 and I think that’s been covered). Where possible, please steer away from that in this thread and just stick to my “why don’t dedicated puggers form premade teams” question – unless, I suppose, that line of thinking is the reason you stay away from forming a team. Thanks for all of the responses so far.
Background on me and my team
Rawrrrr went into a little detail, but I’d like to flesh this out a little so it might be a little clearer where I’m coming from. 1st, I played over 250 games as a dedicated PUG before I started forming a premade. I started a premade because I found some players I enjoyed playing with that were on at relatively the same time as me. Logically, the more you play with the same people, the better your teamwork gets (especially if your team has good players in it). And as it’s a team game, having high levels of coordination during fights or for citadel upgrades, etc, goes a long way. So, to me, it seemed like the absolute best decision for having fun with the game and taking things to the next logical level of play. At least, in my opinion, but I digress for now.
Over time, I invited more and more players to my team. I initially did this so I’d have more people available to play with at various times of the day making it much easier to get games going with the added benefit of voice chat. As of today, my premade has 10-15 people in it. These people aren’t all on at the same time and I may only bump into some of them a few times on the weekend. So, in many respects, it’s more like a small clan without calling it that. People band together when they are available and get some games in. Sometimes no one will be on or I feel like mixing things up, so I’ll PUG. Anyway, my 8 man vent server (these are free btw and there is a public vent server now as well) is the glue that holds it together. People pop into my vent server when they are done with work, etc, and see who’s on. If someone is free, then we typically get a game going. My server is almost always populated between 5PM-2AM ET by at least 2-4 people, so we can get some type of game up and running.
Why I find it crazy to exclusively PUG
When I PUG, I don’t typically play against or with the same people. And because of this, I don’t necessarily know what I’m getting when people join my team. Sure, you can check stats and get some idea, but you simply don’t know how someone is going to handle themselves in game. Could be you have horrible chemistry with your new teammate and now the knucklehead is flaming you or going AFK at your crystal. Could be your PUG teammate decided he had something he needed to do that he forgot about, so he quit 8 minutes in leaving you with an AI. Perhaps one of the people you are pugging with just wants to do his own thing and isn’t interested in coordinating an attack or buying a citadel upgrade. And so on. All of these factors are mitigated almost completely by playing with people you know on a dedicated team. So, IMO, you eliminate a substantial amount of frustration by going the premade route. Or you could deal with all of that plus desyncers and host disconnectors. The downside to premades now, which I don’t want to go into in this thread, is the grief you get from pugs and the general community (a premade is fine if). So, while forming a team meant you could avoid a lot of shite at one point, now it means that people direct a lot of their frustration at you, which sullies the experience. And to hopefully keep it form coming up, I’ll reiterate: I play premade v premade, my premade v my premade, pug, and my premade v pug. In short, I play all types of games possible, but I typically enjoy pugging the least.
